The Two Sides of Italy

As I've mentioned before (but will mention again because I'm literally counting down the days), I will very soon be off for a week or so in Italy. London seems to have forgotten what summer is about and instead of sun, we've had rain, rain, rain, rain. So lazy days of sunshine and pasta sounds heavenly to me and I can't wait to go. I've been preparing by reading non-fiction books about Italy and today I'll share my opinions of two of these with you - they each give an honest account of life in Italy but oh what different lives they tell of. 

"Extra Virgin" by Annie Hawes
This is the most wonderfully life-affirming story of two young British women, who are fed up by the London weather and price levels (oh do I know that feeling!) and flee to Italy for a summer of rose-pruning. In the small, traditional village of Diano San Pietro, Annie falls in love head over heels in a small hovel of a house that she and her sister buys on a whim. In the following years, they live part-time in the Ligurian mountains (to enjoy life) and part-time in London (to make money enough to enjoy life) and "Extra Virgin" is the story of how two very British women who know nothing about olives (the horror!!) learn to adapt to the Italian way of life where every piece of string or wood can be fashioned into furniture and where food is something that you forage for in the mountains and turn into feasts. 
The worst thing about this book is that it left me perpetually hungry for proper Italian food. Go away Pizza Express, I want a proper meal of antipasti, primo, secondo and homemade wine. 
It is a fantastic non-fiction book because Annie conjures up the characters with such vividness that they leap off the pages. It is a book about people and about the Italian spirit and it is absolutely gorgeous. This is la dolce vita sprinkled with village feuds and a dash of fresh olive oil. 

"Gomorrah" by Roberto Saviano
Have you been to Napoli? We went there a few years ago on a daytrip and I wasn't impressed. Everything was dirty and people were less than welcoming. It was a different Italy to the one I knew - which is mainly Liguria, Umbria, Piemonte, Tuscany and Rome. This was crime capital in a way that I hadn't imagined. At all. 
So when I started reading "Gomorrah", I had a clear picture of Napoli in my mind but it was nowhere near as horrible as the picture painted in this book. It's divided into sections focusing on the different types of crime happening in Napoli and spreading not only across Italy but across Europe and the world, like rings in water. There is the smuggling from China, the workers in small, factories in Napoli sewing designer clothes that end up as far away as the Academy Awards red carpet in Hollywood. There is the drug cartels, supplying Italy with cheap heroin and testing the drugs on volunteers who'll do anything for a free fix, even die. The toxic waste dumping and the mountains of landfill waste. And then there's the violence. Everyone in Napoli might not be involved with mafia-like gangs but everyone is a potential victim in their wars. 
It is not a happy read, it won't make you feel good. It will probably make you feel worried, even scared. But it is an important book because it deals with a topic that no one wants to touch out of fear for repercussions. When I closed it, having read the last page, I admired Saviano that he had the courage to write this book and hope that it will inspire others to do the same. 

Review: "Cassandra at the Wedding" by Dorothy Baker

Take one motherless, disillusioned, obsessive, neurotic grad student battling to finish her thesis and trying to come to term with her twin sister's wedding. Add a swimmingpool, a stiff drink, a wedding dress disaster and a whole lot of unspoken tension. Recipe for disaster? So I should think.

Cassandra is going home to her childhood home to celebrate the wedding of her twin sister Judith to a young doctor. It is a joyous occasion for everyone - apart from Cassandra. For her it is a horror story. She and Judith used to do everything together but when Judith met her fiancee what was supposed to be the future was suddenly the past. The possibility that one of them might end up getting married and setting up home with someone else has never crossed Cassandra's mind and when the reader meets her, she is in a state of shock. As the book progresses, Cassandra seems to get more and more erratic and angry, her actions becoming increasingly selfish and destructive at the same time.

"Cassandra at the Wedding" by Dorothy Baker is a classic. It is at the same time funny, heartbreaking, sad, tender and beautiful. Cassandra's difficulty coping with her sister's marriage becomes more and more encompassing until it obliterates her sense of perspective completely. What is so impressive is that even though Cassandra behaves like a selfish, spoiled brat towards her family, her sister, her sister's fiancee, it is impossible not to like her and not to empathize with her.
Dorothy Baker has given her such a strong voice that the reader will not fail to see the story from Cassandra's angle. Even when she is horrible, I still felt for her and that is the strength of this book.

The story itself and Cassandra herself is actually pretty sad. She is so miserable, so unable to find her place in life, yet it is told with a certain cheerfulness. The juxtaposition enhances the misery yet highlights that for everyone around Cassandra, for her immediate family, this is a time for celebration, while for her it is more like a funeral than a wedding and her mourning are a pair of glasses that colours how she sees all the events around her.

At the same time, Cassandra and Judith can be seen as representing a very exciting historical period in American history. Judith follows a traditional pattern, getting married, laying her ambitions aside to devote herself to her husband and let their life be dictated by his career. Cassandra is the modern woman who finds this incredibly difficult to accept and who instead follows her ambitions and her heart. She has no interest in men and actually behaves quite masculine herself at times but she feels out of place and cannot find her way.

Read it if: You like to be challenged by a clever story with realistic and not necessarily likeable characters. If you like a 1960s vibe and reflections on the changing roles of women.

Review: "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe

Some books  retain their freshness decade after decade, never losing their relevance. "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe is one of those books. It is truly special. Published in 1958, it was written during the 1950s when women wore smart skirt suits to the office and only worked to fill the time until they could get married. Preferably to a man with a good enough job to fund a house with double-garage and school fees for two children. Last year, apparently, the book got a bit of a renaissance because it was featured on Mad Men - however, I found it thanks to you wonderful people in the blogosphere!

Every day young women flood out of the subway stations in central New York making their way to the city's offices. One of them is Caroline, a young graduate from a good college, who discovers that she has ambitions and slowly starts to work her way up in the world of publishing. While working for a publishing company in the glamourous Rockefeller Center, she meets the obsessive actress Gregg who becomes her flatmate, the beautiful April who is as terrible with men as she is with personal finance and the successful single mother Barbara, divorced at the tender age of 21.

As chapter after chapter weaves their stories together into one story, I felt like these girls became my friends. Their world absorbed me completely and as they experienced bad romances, difficulties in their careers and worry about families and futures, I became more and more enthralled to the story. When the last page turned, it felt completely wrong. I just did not want to let go. I craved knowledge of what happened next and the last few days, I have been thinking about all of them, especially about Caroline and Barbara.

It is a story of looking for love and finding instead sex, friendship or rejection. Of trying to figure out whether to pursue a career or while away the hours until a walk to the altar. It is absolutely fascinating and many of the observations are as relevant today as they were then. Like the lecherous senior executive who will grab any female thigh when he's had a bit too much to drinks or the girl who brings even her bridal underwear to work in order to get the approval and envy of her colleagues. It resonates with me as a modern office girl and I found the office politics very familiar, just as the trouble that these girls experience with prioritising family, work and boyfriends is just like the stuff that my friends and I talk about today.

The beauty of this book is in its relevance, in the way that all girls will recognize something of themselves in these girls even though the books was written over fifty years ago. Also it is beautifully written with every girl's voice being distinct and characteristic.

Read it if: You enjoyed "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles" or "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You prefer a good book to a re-run episode of Sex & The City.

50 Shades of Boring

The last few years it has seemed like one hyped booked after another has taken the book markets with storm and in a way that is great. It keeps interest in the industry and hopefully brings in people that otherwise wouldn't read but it also means that some genres get put in a box. 
If you haven't heard of "50 Shades of Grey" by E.L. James, I have to asked where you have been for the last few months because this book has been everywhere. Literally swept the globe, invading book shop after book shop and defining a new genre that goes by the name mommy porn. Which in my humble opinion is a horrible name and evokes some nasty pictures reminiscent of Stifler's mom but that's besides the point. The point is that this is one of those hyped books that I can't figure out whether I like or hate. 
The story about it is more interesting that the plot as it were. It started out as a fan fiction blog imagining a heavily sexual relationship between Edward Cullen and Bella Swan of Twilight. Oh yes, someone actually got so fed of with the lack of s.e.x. and abundance of lukewarm romance in the Twilight books that they took matters into their own hands. Well done and a fun idea but if you ask me, it doesn't really work as a book. 
The heroine is a young woman called Ana. Short for Anastacia. She is pretty without knowing it, clumsy and quite bookish - not a party girl. So far, so Bella (though Bella is not bookish, I guess). By coincidence she meets the very handsome, very rich, very eligible Christian Grey who turns out to be a bit of a pervert who doesn't do girlfriends but instead have young women sign contracts detailing their relationships. Sounds pervy, doesn't it? 
In the end, it isn't. Not really. The first book was okay, entertaining, it had novelty factor and I will admit that Christian Grey is quite a catch. But by book three, I was so weary of the same boring sex scenes over and over and over that I skipped them. And then you might as well not read the bloody book in the first place. 
So instead of writing up reviews of all three books and driving myself nuts in the process, here comes the list of all of the things that annoyed me about the three "50 Shades..." books:

• All of the characters apart from Ana and at times Christian are decidedly 2-D and lack personality. 
• The ridiculous psycho-babble about why Christian Grey is who he is - who gives a ....?
• The fact that Ana climbs the career ladder faster than you can say casting couch.
• The cover art. Cringe.
• The way it airbrushes sex (no limbs get in the way, nothing is ever awkward). 
• The focus on all things material - I don't want to know the brand of her shoes!
• The fact that it is hyped up to be boundary-breaking when really it is very very vanilla (as Christian would say). 
• Book three. All of it. Every single bloody page.

Read it if: You are curious what the hype is about. You have never read erotic fiction before and want to be put off it forever. 

Review: "Palladian" by Elizabeth Taylor

There is a smell of history, old days about this book - not about my actual copy but about the story. It is not the fusty, musty smell of something old and shoved-away-into-a-corner-of-the-attic, it is more like the smell of distant memories. A smell of a silk dress hanging in a wardrobe, a smell of good quality tea leaves and autumn leaves falling from teas. It is a good thing, a good smell. 


"Palladian" is a governess novel, much in the tradition of Jane Eyre. The poor, orphaned Cassandra Dashwood (a nod to Jane Austen whose sister was called Cassandra and who wrote about the Dashwood sisters?) is not all alone in the world. Her former head mistress and now friend Mrs. Turner has found her a position as a governess with a good, wealthy family and now she has to leave her childhood behind and take charge of someone elses. 
Being a young, bookish, shy and timid girl, Cassandra is not the best suited person to fit into a family where everyone have their cross to bear and their secrets to hide. 
Marion Vanbrugh is a widower whose love of books and Greek has left him with little interest in the real world whereas his brother Tom is so bruised by reality that he sedates himself with drink and sex. Aunt Tinty suffers from anxiety to a degree where it is almost disabling her but which nobody acknowledges. Pregnant Margaret has much to be happy about, her pregnancy, her career as a doctor, but she is depressed and unhappy and snaps at people at every turn. Nanny has seen better days, nothing is as good now as it once was, it is all going to the dogs...
Sophy Vanbrugh, Cassandra's young charge, is a ray of sunlight even though she has a morbid fascination with graveyards and funerals and fears that she will never be as beautiful as her late mother. 


It is a novel that is hard to pin down. Some pages are so sad that I wanted to stop reading, while others are full of hope and Cassandra's youthful optimism. It is beautiful, the words building a little world so full of characters and all of them come to life, none are left one-dimensional. 
In "Palladian", Elizabeth Taylor draws on great authors such as Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Daphne du Maurier, yet the novel is fully her own. It is a bittersweet story full of sadness yet with little sparkles of humour and love. It is a joy to read and while reading the second half, I was unable to put it down, so enchanted was I with the story. 


Read it if: Your favourite Jane Austen heroine is Anne Elliott. If you enjoy Virago classics and a good cup of tea. 


For other bloggers' review of "Palladian", try:
Booksnob
Fleur Fish in her World
Heavenali

Snow White and The Huntsman - a far cry from fairytale

This is a test. If I say Snow White, which image springs to mind? Let me guess... a young lady with black hair, a yellow, blue and red dress, large eyes, surrounded by squirrels and a birds and all kinds of cute animals. It is the Disney Snow White I am referring to... I have a feeling that for many of us, she is who springs to mind when we hear the words Snow White. 
The original Snow White, however, was the main character of a German fairy tale and as with most fairy tales, there are several versions but the most famous one is probably the one told by the Brothers Grimm in Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs. Though the queen in the Disney version is quite grim, she is nowhere near as scary as the original queen in the Grimm version who, upon finding out that Snow White (at the tender age of seven) has grown more beautiful than herself, commands a huntsman to take Snow White into the forrest, kill her and bring back her organs... oh yes, pretty nasty stuff. 
Snow White is getting the big overhaul this year with Hollywood bringing out not just one but two versions of the fairy tale. "Mirror, Mirror" looks quite cute and pretty-ish whereas "Snow White and the Huntsman" is going for a darker version of the story. 
My boyfriend and I went to see "Snow White and the Huntsman" at a late screening recently. There was only seven people in the cinema and we settled in to enjoy what we expected to be an action-packed adventure but unfortunately left with a bit of a meh feeling. 


The good parts were: 

• Kristen Steward who adds character and steely courage to Snow White. She is pretty but she is also a really tough girl who takes on the queen and her beauty is more about what is on the inside than what is on the outside. 
• Charlize Theron as the evil queen. Magnificent. 
• The dwarfs are cool! They are not cute and they are not funny like the Disney versions, they are hardcore warriors fighting to survive.
• The costumes, especially the queens dresses, are spectacular and the scenery in the dark forrest is really well-made with a spooky atmosphere. 

The not so good parts: 

• The huntsman doesn't do it for me - it might be prosaic but I kept thinking that he could do with a shower and a shave... He just was a bit too much of a pretty boy made rough only by grime and beard, they should have gone for someone a bit more rugged. 
• The enchanted forrest. Dear me... they could have gone a bit lighter on the fairies, not to mention the deer. It was too much, next time stick closer to real nature which is amazing enough without the added sparkly and glitter. Did Twilight and sparkly vampires teach you nothing people? 
• The ending. Too fast and too little time and energy spent on tying up the lose ends. 

Watch it if: You have a thing for fairytales and loved Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. You want to see Kristen Steward in a role that is a bit more Joan of Arc and a bit less damsel in distress. 

Move over Mary Poppins!

We've probably all been there - working as a nanny. Some of us only a few times, watching kids while their parents were out for dinner or at the cinema, others of you readers may have worked as au pairs or live-in nannies. Or some of you might be planning to. I have only done the occasional night of babysitting but I have a thing for nanny novels. I love reading about nannies, not sure why but I do. So here are three good nanny novels:

"What the Nanny Saw" by Fiona Neill
Ali is an English student fighting to make enough money to make it through university so when she spots an opportunity to take a year out from university and come back debt-free, she jumps at it. Soon she finds herself at the center of the family living in the most expensive villa on Holland Park Crescent in London. The Skinners are filthy rich and as both mum and dad works long hours in the world of finance, Ali is left with a lot of responsibility for the children: two teenagers and a pair of four-year-old twins. When the family's life is shook by the downfall of Lehman Brothers, Ali has to decide where her loyalty lies and fight to separate her own personal life from her job as a nanny.

"The Diary of an American Au Pair" by Marjorie Leet Ford
Newly jobless and with a wedding just cancelled, Melissa wants to make a real change in her life so she takes on a job as a live-in nanny with a London family. Arriving in the United Kingdom with a suitcase full of romantic fantasies about life in London, she soon realises that these are indeed just fantasies. She is regarded as a bit of a curiosity - an American girl - and finds it hard adjusting to a life which is very much led under the motto of "Make do or mend". Fresh bathwater and heating is seen as a luxury even though she gets to visit splendid castles and meet fascinating people. It is a steep learning curve and perfect if you are considering moving to the United Kingdom.

"The Nanny Diaries" by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
Manhattan mums seem to spend very little time actually mothering their children in this novel. Instead they get their hair and make-up done, have time for facials and shopping and spend large amounts of money decorating and re-decorating after which they host parties to show if the re-decorations and the new clothes. Nanny is a young lady who works as a nanny for one of these mums. Her charge is the cutest little boy whom a flux of nannies and a lack of maternal love has left insecure and lonely. As the story progresses, Nanny grows to love him and he learns to trust her as they both struggle to survive in a household where a nanny is worth less than a Hermes bag and where a little boy is just an accessory.

Review: "Cityboy" by Geraint Anderson

Ever wondered why bankers make so much money? This book won't give you the answer but it will tell you all sorts of other things about bankers... Stuff that seems too outrageous to be true. Now, I am not one for generalisations but Geraint Anderson, author of "Cityboy Beer and Loathing in the Square Mile" is quite a credible storyteller. He started writing the "Cityboy" column for a London newspaper, while working in banking and has years in the industry to use as material for what is a semi-biographical book.


"Cityboy" is the story of a young man, a real hippy with a German-inspired ponytail and an aspirational goatee, who is offered a job in the city as a stockbroker after a rather haphazard job interview that takes place in a noisy pub. He jumps on the chance to make some money but as the years roll by and he finds himself becoming more and more successful at work, he seems to lose himself more and more in a spiral of drugs, greed and gold diggers. 
Driven by a serious competitive streak, our hero fights his way through an incredibly large number of boozy lunches, dinners that turn into all-nighters and all-day drinking sessions that turn into cocain-fuelled mornings after. On this journey from innocent hippy to disillusioned professional, our hero meets some pretty stereotypical people who all represent a certain type of person that the author has met in his working life in city and they help illustrate the tale of craziness. From the self-made trader with a penchant for stripper and orange-tanned Essex golddiggers to the mathematical genius with no social skills, it is a parade of stereotypes but somehow it works. 


So what did I make of this book? It is somewhere in that strange grey zone between fact and fiction but most of all it is fun. Don't read it for the prose because in terms of writing, it's no beauty - at times it is even a bit annoying. Don't read it for the opinions on the world of finance, there are better books for that. Read it for the humour and the stereotypes. Read it to recognize people you meet on the tube in the morning and to appreciate your own colleagues more. 


Read it if: Your favourite book is "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis. Your or your partners works in banking. You are a part of the Occupy movement and want to hear the nasty tales from an insider. 

Italian books?

In less than two months, my boyfriend and I will be going to Italy on vacation and I cannot wait! So in (eager) anticipation I'm planning to read lots of books about Italy or by Italian authors but I have to admit that I find it difficult to find good ones. So this is an official call for help! Please please please recommend books that I can read to get in the dolce vita mode. 


So far, these are on my list to read: 

Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted by Annie Hawes

From amazon.co.uk: "Fed up with cold, foggy London and the high cost of real estate, Annie Hawes is persuaded by her sister Lucy to travel to Italy and graft roses for the winter. The sisters arrive in rural Liguria with some formal Italian, no knowledge of rose grafting, and visions of Mediterranean men and sun. What they find is a town full of hard-working, wary olive growers smack in the middle of an olive oil depression who think these two young Englishwomen are nuts. Extra Virgin tells the story of the sisters' acclimation--theirs to Liguria and Liguria to them--and how they fell in love with a crumbling farmhouse in the hills."

Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano

From amazon.co.uk: "Saviano has created a perfectly realized, morally compelling journey through the brutal world of contemporary Italian mob life in this ceaselessly violent tale of the Camorra, a network of thugs, exploiters and killers who run Naples and the surrounding countryside. Armed with a police band radio, Saviano visits one crime scene after another, recording the final words and circumstances of the dying and dead. The murders described are savage, cruel and senseless: The head... hadn't been cut off with a hatchet, a clean blow, but with a metal grinder: the kind of circular saw welders use to polish soldering. The worst possible tool, and thus the most obvious choice. Jewiss's translation of Saviano's intense prose flows beautifully from the pestilence and degradation of everyday life in the teeming Neapolitan slums to the futile efforts of the police to control the rich, organic chaos that is the only way the Camorra know how to live."

Review: "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman

If you have never been to Rome, then please put it at the top if your to do list. It is the most amazing city, a city that you have to visit at least once in your life. In "The Imperfectionists" by Tom Rachman, Rome is almost more of a character than a setting. It seeps into every line and the smell of fresh pasta and sweet flowering jasmine almost pours of the pages, making me hungry for both Italian food and a Roman holiday.


This is a book where you get more than you bargain for. It is a novel - indeed the full title is "The Imperfectionists: A Novel" - but it is composed of eleven short stories that all interlink and makes the total more than the sum of the parts. The plot, or plots, center around the happenings at the office on an international newspaper. Founded by an eccentric businessman in 1950s, it has been through good times and bad times and in 2004, when the reader is introduced to the story, it is going through what is decidedly a bad time. A new young publisher has taken over and he is by all accounts more interested in walking his dog than in newspapers and businesses and everyone from the editor-in-chief, cool and collected Kathleen, to the hopeful freelancer in Cairo are feeling the pressure.


Every chapter follows a different character and where this could lead to disconnect and to a lack cohesion, it instead brings out the best and the worst in every character as we get to see them from a range of angles. At worst this is interesting, at best it is riveting. Just like even the dodgy, grimy parts of Rome have a unique, rustic charm, even the most frustrating of these characters have personality and trait that makes you root for them.


My personal favourite was Herman Cohen who relentlessly chases spelling mistakes, Abbey Pinnola also known as Accounts Payable, the finance director and single mother of three and Oliver Ott, the young publisher who is as devoted to his dog Schopenhauer as most men would only be to their mother or vintage car. These three characters somehow spoke to me more than the others and I almost cried in the final chapter that features the young and hapless Ott.
Other chapters made my stomach hurt with the descriptions of loneliness and human tragedy, especially the ones about copy editor Ruby Zaga, who becomes someone else and much less happy, as soon as she comes to work, and Athur Gopal whose life changes in the blink of a moment.


This a beautiful novel, home of a range of stories that are like pearls on a string: every single one is beautiful and unique and together they are a piece of art.


Read it if: You long for a week in Rome. You always dreamt of working at an international newspaper.  You like literary fiction with a little more oomph!

Review: "Delirium" by Lauren Oliver

Last weekend I wanted to read something light and fun and essentially YA. I had that YA craving - do you know what I mean? So I went scouting on the shelves in our new study/library to see what I could dig out and ended up with Lauren Oliver's "Delirium". I kind of had regretted buying it and had occasionally thought that I would never get around to reading it but I decided to give it a try - my deal with myself was that if I was not captured by page 20, I would just forget about it and give it to charity. 

Surprise, surprise, by page 20 I had no idea about which page I was on as I was so engrossed in the plot! This is fine YA! It is a dystopian book in theme with books such as Hunger Games and just like many of these books, the protagonist is a teenage girl with an independent spirit. 

Lena Holoway is an orphan who lives with her aunt and uncle and spends her time either at school, running or with her best friend. the beautiful, stunning Hana. In this dystopian version of Portland, Maine, cities have become little islands in a desert of forgotten countryside. It is a world dictated by a disease, deliria also known as love. Scientist have found the cure for love and when you turn 18 you get the cure and are set on your life path. Based on interviews and data, society will dictate who you marry, what job you will do, how much money you will make and so on. All there is left for the individual to do is to navigate life within these strict and non-negotiable boundaries. 

Lena comes from a family of deliria sufferers and she looks forward to the day where she will be cured and free to start living without the fear of falling ill. But then something happens... or actually someone happens. She meets Alex who has not been cured and he awakes feelings in her that she never knew existed. 

Right, so as you can probably guess this is not the most surprising of novels. Actually, a lot of the plot is down-right predictable. The only part that really surprised me was the ending which was absolutely fantastic. It was a bit of a cliff-hanger but I might not read the sequel (or I might, we'll see) and it worked for me anyway because it had a real statement to it. 

The lack of surprise in the plot is counter-acted by the detail with which this dystopian world has been created; it is a believable and engaging. It really caught my attention and imagination and it kept me reading even when I knew what would happen next and that is the strength of the book. 

The plot is standard, as it were, the characters were ranging in quality with some being better and more believable than others but the dystopian setting is superb - if nothing else, read it for that. 

Read it if: You want a lighter, more YA appropriate version of the world from Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaiden's Tale". You are working your way through the best parts of YA dystopia. 

The Inspiring J. K. Rowling

Do you love Harry Potter? Do you find the story of how J.K. Rowling wrote the books inspiring? 

Then please take the time to watch the video below. It is the Commencement Address that J.K. Rowling gave at Harvard University in June 2008 and it is absolutely beautiful. It is called “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination" and it is both funny and inspiring and really beautiful. So with no further ado I give you this quote and urge you to watch the video: 

"Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now."

Review: "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

Show me someone who claims to have never dreamed of time traveling and I will show you a liar - because come on people, time traveling would be so cool!! Of course we only dream of traveling to the good times in history, the masked balls, the celebrations and the events that will go down in the history. The lack of opportunities for a shower and brushing teeth and the option to pop a pain killer the day after the party is something that we conveniently forget.

Luckily we have books that allow us to travel through time from the comfort of our warm chair with a hot cup of coffee next to us and the opportunity to brush our teeth at any time we should feel so inclined. Thanks to the authors of historical fiction we get to soar through the most interesting parts of history and dream ourselves away. 

Recently I bought a ticket for the "historical fiction time traveling machine" when I picked up "Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles. The destination was New York in the 1930's and as soon as I had read the first line, I was lost in a different world, off on adventures with a young lady called Katey Kontent. 

Katey Kontent is in her 20's, a daughter of Russian immigrants who left the land of samovars and revolution to seek their fortune in the land beyond Ellis Island. She is a girl who knows how to have a good time and during night out with her beautiful, charismatic friend Eve, she treats New York as her playground. Thought money is tight, these girls know how to party and when on New Years Eve they meet the rich, waspy banker Tinker Grey, they become fast friends with him and doors are opened to a different type of life. 

The story follows Katey through that fateful year of 1938 where her life changes, some parts for the better, some for the worse, and where events transpire that will set her on the path that will shape the rest of her life. It is a year of sorrows and joys, of gin martinis and silk stockings, of country clubs and scruffy flats, of women in pearls and young men with the world at their feet. 

Katey becomes increasingly entangled in this world of privilege and Tinker is always there in the back of her mind... 

It is an amazing book, a really fascinating beautiful story of life and what it does to us. It is about surviving and making the best of what you get given. About grabbing life in the moment and shaping it to your wishes. It is a reminder of the importance of enjoying yourself even when you have little money for rent and food and none for martinis. 

This is retro Manhattan. It is the clever entertainment for girls who find Gossip Girl and Sex In the City a little too pop culture and glossy. 

It is the book that you long to come home to because it takes you to a different world - a glamourous, tough New York where men are gentlemen and women are enjoying an new-found freedom. It is the ultimate time traveling experience.

Read it if: You enjoyed "Valley of the Dolls" by Jacqueline Susann. You love New York and have a secret longing for a life full of martinis, silk stockings and elegance. 

Nothing cheers a girl like going shopping - in Waterstones!

Yesterday I met up with a really good friend for lunch. We hadn't seen each other for almost a year so there was plenty to talk about! From the lunch, we went on to Starbucks to have a cup of coffee and she asked me if I could recommend any good books. Which is kind of like asking a chef for a good recipe - it is an open question with thousands of possible, correct answers. So after having raved on about a random assortment of books (such as "Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady" by Florence King), I realised that some of them (such as "Confessions...") might not be readily available at any book shop.
Now, my darling boyfriend is not one who can spend hours in a book shop (or in any shop for that matter...) so I spotted an opportunity and suggested that I could go with her to go with her to Waterstones to pick out books.


Oh the joy of being in a big, lovely shop full of new, delicious books hiding plots and characters behind beautiful covers, just waiting for me to come find them. There were so many books there that I wanted, had to have and which have now been added to my TBR. In the end I restrained myself and bought only two because we are moving to a new flat next week and have enough stuff to move already...


I will do a separate post about what I actually bought but this is what will be coming home with me next time I hit Waterstones:

"The Capital" by John Lanchester
Pepys Road: an ordinary street in the Capital. Each house has seen its fair share of first steps and last breaths, and plenty of laughter in between. Today, through each letterbox along this ordinary street drops a card with a simple message: We Want What You Have. At forty, Roger Yount is blessed with an expensively groomed wife, two small sons and a powerful job in the City. An annual bonus of a million might seem excessive, but with second homes and nannies to maintain, he's not sure he can get by without it. Elsewhere in the Capital, Zbigniew has come from Warsaw to indulge the super-rich in their interior decoration whims. Freddy Kano, teenage football sensation, has left a two-room shack in Senegal to follow his dream. Traffic warden Quentina has exchanged the violence of the police in Zimbabwe for the violence of the enraged middle classes. For them all, this city offers the chance of a different kind of life.

"Charlotte Street" by Danny Wallace
It all starts with a girl ...(because yes, there's always a girl...) Jason Priestley (not that one) has just seen her. They shared an incredible, brief, fleeting moment of deep possibility, somewhere halfway down Charlotte Street. And then, just like that, she was gone - accidentally leaving him holding her old-fashioned, disposable camera, chock full of undeveloped photos...And now Jason - ex-teacher, ex-boyfriend, part-time writer and reluctant hero - faces a dilemma. Should he try and track The Girl down? What if she's The One? But that would mean using the only clues he has, which lie untouched in this tatty disposable...It's funny how things can develop...

"The Marriage Plot" by Jeffrey Eugenides 
Brown University, 1982. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English student and incurable romantic, is writing her thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot -- authors of the great marriage plots. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different men, intervenes. Leonard Bankhead, brilliant scientist and charismatic loner, attracts Madeleine with an intensity that she seems powerless to resist. Meanwhile her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus, a theology student searching for some kind of truth in life, is certain of at least one thing -- that he and Madeleine are destined to be together. But as all three leave college, they will have to figure out how they want their own marriage plot to end.

10 Things I Love About... "The Rules of Civility" by Amor Towles

1) Katey Kontent. A heroine with that kind of name is made to be noticed and Katey Kontent is as cool, classy and confident as her name is cliched. 

2) The harsh reality - quote from page 63

"It wasn't about who had dibs now or who was sitting next to whom in the cinema. The game had changed; or rather, it wasn't a game anymore. It was a matter of making it through the night, which is often harder than it sounds, and always a very individual business."

3) New York in the late 1930s. A place of jazz and glamour, of old money and new fashions, of Depression era worries and of opportunities. If this book is turned into a film, it will be a feast for the eyes. 

4) Did I mention the glamour? - quote from page 47

"The men wore tailored suits and accented their breast pockets with untouched handkerchiefs. The women wore silk dresses in royal colors and chokers of pearls."

5) Katey Kontent's love of Dickens - quote from page 128

"Admittedly, there's something a little annoying about all those plucky underprivileged kids and the aptly named agents of villainy. But I've come to realize that however blue my circumstances, if after finishing a chapter of a Dickens novel I feel a miss-my-stop-on-the-train sort of compulsion to read on, then everything is probably going to be just fine." 

6) Tinker Grey. A fascinating character is all I can say... For some reason he keeps reminding me of the lyrics from Regina Spektor's "Man of A Thousand Faces":

The man of a thousand faces

Sits down at the table
Eats a small lump of sugar
And smiles at the moon like he knows her
And begins his quiet ascension
Without anyone's sturdy instruction

7) The truth about going to the hairdresser - quote from page 233

"Historically, once in the hands of a hairdresser, I had done whatever necessary to stymie conversation: grimacing; sleeping; staring blankly into the mirror; once I even faked ignorance of English."

8) The determination of Evie Ross - quote from page 15

"True, she was only five foot five, but she knew how to dance in two-inch heels - and she knew how to kick them off as soon as she sat in your lap."

9) The stories of elite Manhattan kids - quote from page 169:

"For a group freshly spilled from the country's finest schools, they were surprisingly aimless, but that didn't make them bad company. They didn't have much spending money or social status, but they were on the verge of having both." 

10) The stories of Russian immigrants in New York - quote from page 283:

"The first wind of the New York winter was sharp and heartless. Whenever it blew, it always made my father a little nostalgic for Russia. He'd break out the samovar and boil black tea and recall some December when there was a lull in conscription and the well wasn't frozen and the harvest hadn't failed. It wouldn't be such a bad place to be born, he'd say, if you never had to live there. 

The Descendants - loved the film, what about the book?

The other night I watched "The Descendants" - a wonderful, strange, bittersweet movie starring George Clooney and Shailene Woodsley. Personally, I think that Clooney is a wonderful actor  - he is so good at playing a little bit rough, confused and bruised. He does modern male incredibly well and "The Descendants" is no exception - it is Clooney at his finest portraying the tempest-tost land baron, husband and father Matt King. Matt was king in his own life, rich, privileged, married to a beautiful woman with two gorgeous daughters. At the opening of the film, however, this in the past because his beautiful wife is in a coma and he has not the faintest idea how to be a father to his two girls. The oldest girl is played by Shailene Woodsley, who complements Clooney perfectly and does a superb job of making a difficult, tormented teenage girl come to life on the big screen. She is definitely one to watch. 

It is a moving film about the loss of a wife and the loss of a parents but most of all it is about the loss of life as we know it. It is about what happen when what we thought was forever and took for granted can be taken from us in a second. I loved it, though it was bittersweet and a times sad and when the credits rolled I spotted some of my favourite words "Based on...". 
I love that! It is so fantastic to find out that a great movie is based on a book - a book that could be just as amazing. 


So "The Descendants" by Kaui Hart Hemmings is going straight on my TBR and here is what it says on amazon.com:
"Matthew King was once considered one of the most fortunate men in Hawaii. His missionary ancestors were financially and culturally progressive–one even married a Hawaiian princess, making Matt a royal descendant and one of the state’s largest landowners. 
Now his luck has changed. His two daughters are out of control: Ten-year-old Scottie is a smart-ass with a desperate need for attention, and seventeen-year-old Alex, a former model, is a recovering drug addict. Matt’s charismatic, thrill-seeking, high-maintenance wife, Joanie, lies in a coma after a boat-racing accident and will soon be taken off life support. The Kings can hardly picture life without her, but as they come to terms with this tragedy, their sadness is mixed with a sense of freedom that shames them–and spurs them into surprising actions.

Before honoring Joanie’s living will, Matt must gather her friends and family to say their final goodbyes, a difficult situation made worse by the sudden discovery that there is one person who hasn’t been told: the man with whom Joanie had been having an affair, quite possibly the one man she ever truly loved. Forced to examine what he owes not only to the living but to the dead, Matt takes to the road with his daughters to find his wife’s lover, a memorable journey that leads to both painful revelations and unforeseen humor and growth."

Review: "The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick DeWitt

There are so many reasons to pick up "The Sisters Brothers" by Patrick DeWitt. The title which is cool and awoke my imagination, the cover art that is like a punch in the face in a bookshop (in the best way possible) and the author's headshot in which he looks exactly like a literary author should. 

Another good reason to pick up "The Sister Brothers" is that it is a bloody good book. It is a piece of intelligent, literary Western fiction taking place in 1850's Oregon and when you read it, you can smell the dust in the air and feel the electricity of the gold rush. 
Eli and Charlie Sisters are the brothers, not just any brothers, they are the Sisters brothers. The murderous Sisters brothers whose paths few dare to cross. They are riding South from their Oregon shack on a mission to find Hermann Kermit Warm and ... well... kill him. It is a mission and as professional assassins, this is what they do for a living so initially, it is just another job. 
However, as they travel the dusty roads, Eli starts considering the life they are living. Though he is murderous and doesn't feel any guilt killing people who he deems to have "deserved it", he is also a gentle giant who dreams of opening up a clothing shop and marrying a nice girl. 
His brother Charlie is not gentle, not by any meaning of the word. He is ruthless and on the hunt for more money, more power and more whiskey. 


On their travels they meet a strange cast of interesting characters - from men hunting gold in the riverbeds to whores with an alcohol problem and a dentist who has failed at everything else. It is a tour through another time, a cool and collected Western that takes aim and hits you right in the imagination. It is a great book. A pretty fast read but one that you will find hard to put down because it is utterly fascinating. 
I found myself really rooting for Eli - even though he is a bit of a psychopath (nowhere near as bad as his brother though), he is also quiet a reflected individual. He thinks about right and wrong, about life and living and surviving. It is hard not to identify with him, not to find him lovable when he makes a big deal out of brushing his teeth. 


It is no wonder that "The Sisters Brothers" was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize because this is a winning novel, a really different (again, in the best way possible) book that makes an impression. It is clever, well-written, exciting - basically it is a good book!


Read it if: Your favourite cartoon figures are the Dalton Brothers from Lucky Luke. You usually like the novels that get nominated for the Man Booker Prize. You want to try something different that will leave you feeling rewarded at the end. 

Survival Kit for the Confused Reader

Today I am not reading a book but the Sunday Times  - it is Sunday after all and there is something about lazing indoors with a newspaper and a cup of coffee when it is raining outside. In the "Culture" section I came across a really interesting article about books; an author named Sandra Newman has written a book called "The Western Lit Survival Kit: How to Read the Classics without Fears". 

What is this, you now ask?

Basically, it is guide to all of the greats and goods of Western literature from a women who has read them all. Not only does she give you an idea of storyline and context but she also grades the books out of ten! Yes. Grades. Them. Proust, Austen, Dante. They all get a (fair) trial and are awarded points based on level of humour, importance and accessibility and some of them get a fair bit of criticism thrown in - Kipling, apparently, is irritating. 

From the interview in the Times, Sandra Newman sounds like a breath of fresh air. She tells it how it is, even when it comes to her collaboration with editors who apparently weren't that keen on a book about literatur: “They stubbornly wouldn’t believe that anybody was interested in literature. They thought we should do a book comparing literature to celebrities, or television...” 

Book bloggers of the world unite and prove them wrong. This sounds like a fascinating book and it will go straight on my TBR. Actually, if wasn't Sunday and it wasn't raining, I'd be heading straight for the book shop now!

Read the article here. 

Review: "Untold Story" by Monica Ali

There is something about book based on real persons... By using figures that are essentially real, they inhabit a strange land inbetween fiction and non-fiction and I have always found this grey-zone really interesting. One of the books that I found does this really well is "Life Mask" by Emma Donoghue about the actress Eliza Farren and the sculptress Anne Damer - it had me heading straight for the National Portrait Gallery to see sculptures.


"Untold Story" by Monica Ali is pure fiction but it is based on Princess Diana. The Diana. Princess of Wales. And to be honest, I had no idea to how to handle this. Is it wrong, is it right? Is it disrespectful or is  she making use of the artistic right of an author?
In "Untold Story", Ali speculates what would have happened if Diana if she had survived the car crash in Paris and had instead staged her own death to flee to a small town in America to live a normal life. Lydia is the name that Princess Diana takes on as she lives what is a typical life, working at a dog shelter and spending time with her girlfriends who think that she has fled from a powerful husband. It is American surburbia at its finest that has replaced the role of Kensington Palace.


As the story evolves we get the story from Lydia herself and from her former secretary who is the only person she has trusted with her secret. It is the story of a women so fed up with the difficulties of life in the spotlight that she is willing to give up everything, including her children, to start over. It is a choice that comes at a price, a high price and when a British paparazzi surfaces in this oh-so-normal American backwater (incidentally also called Kensington), it could all have been for nothing.

It is an interesting read - the story itself somehow does not come across as dramatic. It is very well-written but the beautiful literary style is very much at odds with the content. Because as much as I enjoyed reading Ali's well-crafted sentences and stylistically superior prose, I did not enjoy the use of Diana's name. The story could have been told just as well had it been based on a fictional character and I have to admit that I found the book an invasion of privacy. This feeling of partaking of something not quite right ruined the reading experience for me and the insensitivity in using the Diana icon overshadows what could have been a good read.

Youth In Revolt and a day in bed

I've been gone for a while, lost in a world of work and social engagements leaving very little room for books. I've missed blogging though so will be coming back, just have so much going on at the moment. Today was a hungover, partied-too-much day so spent it in bed watching movie and catching up on the news papers that I have been neglecting.


One of the movies was "Youth In Revolt" - having read the book and loved it (review on its way), I had to see the movie. It stars one of my favourite actors, Michael Cera, who does teenager troubles better than most actors. It was hilarious, really really fun but do read the book before you watch the film, it is the only way to do it with this one. As the book is quite long, the film only showed some of the scrapes that our anti-hero gets himself into but it was well edited and managed to convey the tone and spirit of the book really well!


Here is the official trailer - see you soon for the book review:

Quotes from a teenage revolution

I am in one of those moods where I can't stick to one book, it is almost physically impossible for me to keep attention on one book. However, last night I started reading "Youth in Revolt" by C. D. Payne and I having a really good time! It is absolutely hilarious, the story is full of twists and surprises and the dialogue is vivacious and fun!


So though I am still only half-way through the book, I will share a few quotes with you to give you a taste of the it and hopefully make you smile:


On moms and hairdressers (page 8): 
Mom gave me $20 this morning to get my hair cut. She likes me to get it professionally styled in a salon where they play loud music rock music. That way I can come out looking like a successful real estate agent, junior division. 


On having to cook a family dinner (page 170):
"This tastes like shit!" slurred Dad. 
"It's Thai food, Dad," I explained. "It's supposed to be spicy."
"Thai food!" he bellowed. "Who ever heard of Thai meat loaf!"
"It's a synthesis of Thai and American cuisines," I elaborated. 
"You're doing this deliberately! You're taking expensive groceries and deliberately sabotaging them. To get out of doing your work!"
Obviously the alcohol had not entirely impaired Dad's analytical faculties. 


Wondering what parents' worst nightmare is (page 260):
"That you will marry an American?" suggested Apurva. 
"That you will never leave home?" proposed Francois. 
"No," replied Vijay, "it is that you will ruin your life and bring disgrace and financial hardship upon the family." 
Wow, if that's true I may qualify as my parents' worst nightmare come true.