Book 72: The Penelopiad by Margaret AtwoodOne of Canongate's new Myths series, this is a lovely looking book with a delicious typeface and delicate red-ink chapter headings etc. The story's good too, and overdue - what DID Penelope do and think through all those long years of waiting for Odysseus? Why WERE her maids killed along with the troublesome suitors on his return? (Actually Atwood doesn't offer a definitive answer to this, even a fictional one). It's both colloquial and poetic, and some of the characterisation is wonderful, like the brilliantly bitchy and manipulative version of Helen. Letting it down slightly is the chorus of the twelve hanged maids who pop up between chapters - although they have a formal function they don't really have a dramatic one, or not one that really worked for me anyway.Tags: 50 Book Challenge 16:43 . . .
Thank you very much to Donna, who emailed me about ReadItSwapIt, a clever, sociable way of recycling books and refreshing your bookshelves which is FREEEEEE!Tags: reading sharing 15:25 . . .
Book 69: And Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers by Louise RennisonI used to giggle uncontrollably when reading Louise Rennison's books. This is (I think) the sixth volume of 'Georgia Nicholson's confessions' and it's fair to say that the formula (mad teenage jargon, the mysteries of boys, unfortunate clothing/cosmetics crises) is wearing a bit thin. The characteristically striking title doesn't even live up to its promise - it's just shoehorned in at the end. More fun than anything else the average eleven-year-old will get to read this year, though. (And yes, I realise that I am NOT eleven.)Book 70: Biche by Stephanie TheobaldOddly enough, this book's heroine could be Rennison's Georgia all grown up and living in Paris. There's still a Gang of oddball friends, still a high level of absurdity, hilarity, irony and social awkwardness, still a vague search for Lurrve while navigating through confusing sexual territory (and the protagonist is called George). The one big difference is that Biche is full of incredibly filthy sex, so don't be rushing out to buy it for your pre-teen daughters just yet.Book 71: On Beauty by Zadie SmithReading On Beauty is quite like being dragged under water by a persistent current, though in a good way. You just sink into its world without putting up a fight. I suppose it’s claustrophobic in a way, focusing on the lives of relatively few main characters in the relatively rarified setting of American academia - but it’s also expansive, covering all the big subjects that can touch a life. The debt to E.M. Forster is obvious, his favourite themes running through the story – the way we all live by rigid personal rules that we can hardly articulate even to ourselves, the urge to ‘only connect’ with others but the terrible frustrations involved in making ourselves understood. Less good are the direct plot parallels with Howard’s End: for Helen Schlegel’s accidental theft of Leonard Bast’s umbrella Smith substitutes a very forced mix up of Zora and Carl’s respective Walkmans; instead of Margaret and Mrs Wilcox’s aborted trip to Howard’s End there’s a much less resonant scenario with the house of a friend of Carlene Kipps. That’s probably just quibbling by a die-hard Howard’s End fan though… Tags: 50 Book Challenge 19:25 . . .
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