Second hand books

A propos of this article in the Guardian:


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/21/secret-histories-secondhand-books


Alas, most of my books are second hand, and yet I've never found anything as salacious as the commenters (below the fold) have. I usually find train tickets from 2005; occasionally a birthday dedication; often a 'my love, always' sort of comment.


I'll always make a point of writing a dedication in a book - to me, that makes it 'unthrowawayable', but perhaps that isn't the case for everyone.


At home, there's a Chambers dictionary on some shelves above the family computer. Tucked into the front pages there's a pressed flower, the flower my dad gave my mum on their first date: December 31st, one year in the late seventies. The spine on the dictionary broke many years ago. But it's still there, serving its purpose, its newfound purpose. I haven't used that dictionary to look up a word for years.

2011 in books

Right, this isn't going to be an especially interesting one, unless you're a supergeeknerd who quite likes lists and miscellanea and books. So, on second thoughts, that's most of my friends, and hopefully the sort of people who read this blog.


What follows is a list of all the books I read this year. It's fairly eclectic:


January 2011

• Mario de Sa-Carneiro: Lucio's Confession. This is an excellent work by a fascinating bloke. If you like dramatic openings, this is definitely one for you; if you like dramatic ends.....Chekovian guns, did I hear you say?
• Wilkie Collins: The Woman in White. Marvellous. Can't beat Victorians for a bit of scandal!
• Michel Foucault: The History of Sexuality. Required reading for everyone. Fascinating. And don't be put off by this idea that Foucault is really hard. That's bollocks. It all makes perfect sense if you will just try to step outside of your own preconceptions (which is, in a nutshell, what his own work is all about).
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wallpaper. An excellent novella about a mad woman in the yellow room. Has this text made it onto the school syllabuses yet? Because it really should - it's not that hard, pretty short (a godsend for time-pressed teachers), and a heartbreaking piece of social history to boot.

February 2011

• Bram Stoker: Dracula. I took a course in Victorian fiction and sexuality, and another about the development of Victorian science and sensation, so I also read
• George Gissing: The Odd Women 
• Mary Elizabeth Braddon Lady Audley's Secret
• Edward Bulwer Lytton A Strange Story
• Henry James A Beast in the Jungle and, finally,
• Henry Harland, A Responsibility. I enjoyed pretty much all these books - the Braddon especially so - and if you're looking for a super-engaging read, I'd definitely recommend most of them. Gissing is an easy read, despite what people might say, but Dracula isn't really worth bothering with. It gets a bit slapstick and ridiculous at the end.

March 2011

• R L Stevenson: Jekyll and Hyde. Wonderful, with or without the anal imagery. Lots of talk of 'back passages' leads to sniggering aplenty.
• D H Lawrence: Lady Chatterley's Lover. Ignore all the 'quivering' and 'throbbing' and so on, and feel Lawrence's passion for the English countryside, for art, for liberty, for the body, for the machine age. This is an outstanding book and little deserves the reductive stereotype it somehow received. Though one of my friends did once suggest, tongue in cheek, that Mellors is a 'sort of sexual super hero, saving the world one shag at a time', and that was pretty funny of her.
• Evelyn Waugh: Vile Bodies. There aren't many 'classics' that will make you laugh out loud, but this will. ''For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist!''
• James Joyce: Dubliners. If you haven't read this you have no soul and I won't speak to you again. If that's inspired you to take it from the shelf this minute, do start with the final story, 'The Dead' as it a beautifully wintery read (a Christmas party, and snow all across Ireland).
• D H Lawrence: Sons and Lovers. This is a bit inconsequential and I didn't enjoy it much.

April 2011

• Jonathan Safran Foer: Eating Animals. I was hoping this book might turn me vegetarian, but it didn't. He analyses the American meat industry, but the work is at its best when he talks about his Jewish grandmother, who, whilst starving to death, rejected an offer of pork (''if nothing is sacred....'') and when he discusses his hopes and fears for his toddler son.
• Graham Swift: Shuttlecock. Swift is one of the finest writers of this century, and there's little else I can say about him without gushing. He comes up again later, don't worry! [EDIT: actually he doesn't. Have I really only read the one book by him this year? Gush, must sort that, etc]

May 2011

• Susie Orbach: Fat is a Feminist Issue. It's always important to understand the key arguments of a discipline, even if you don't agree with them. As it is, I thought this was a pretty good read. One of the main things she wrote that stuck with me, is that women eat to control their anger. Where society won't let them be angry, women will eat instead - the mouth is, quite literally, too occupied with food to be able to articulate an emotion that will be negatively received by society. I thought this was a pretty canny point and is something I sympathise with. 
• Richard Yates: Revolutionary Road. I chose this because it had been looking down on me from my shelf for far too long. It was pretty good, if pretty sad too. Suburban America can be so cruel.

June 2011

• A S Byatt: The Children's Book unfinished. I really could not stand this at all.
• J G Ballard Crash. I hated this too.
• Ali Smith The Accidental. Luckily I had more luck with the final book of the month. She is wonderful, frenetic, unexpected, staccato, joyful, absurd and delightful. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK.

July 2011

• Ali Smith Hotel World. Again, pretty much perfect.
• George Orwell Books and Cigarettes. Evidently, June was a good month.

August 2011

• Francoise Sagan: Bonjour Tristesse. I wasn't expecting this to be as good as it was. I thought it would be an overrate cult-classic; actually, it's an underrated one. A wrenching story recalled with clarity and finesse.
• James Joyce: Ulysses. In August I wrote many thousands of words about this book - specifically, the role of fashion and clothing within it. I really enjoyed the project and my final marker suggested the work was publishable. I'm now considering turning some of the chapters into journal articles. (Believe me, I write academic work far better than I write this blog.) Throughout June and July and August I read a ton of books about Joyce but I haven't included those because, first, no-one gives a toss and, secondly, they're all very boring with long and silly titles that academics like to give their books.

September 2011

• Vita Sackville-West. All Passion Spent. VSW was chums (more than chums, in fact) with Woolf, and it must have been hard being a novelist and having her as your friend. Sure enough, she's second rate in comparison, but this is still a very enjoyable (and relevant) book about how women can become invisible once they're married.
• Huraki Murami: 1q84. I read this before everyone else and aren't I a jammy cow about it?!
• Barbara Ewing: The Circus of Ghosts. I remember quite enjoying this at the time, but can't remember it now. So I wouldn't bother if I were you.

October 2011

• Andrew Kaufman: The Tiny Wife. This is super and lovely and perfect and well done to Harper Collins for giving me a copy. I have nothing but love and admiration for them, and for AK.
• Evan Manderly: Q. This is a fun little read about love, time travel, and Freud. Really.
• Ali Smith: The Whole Story (and other stories). unfinished. Despite my love of her novels, I just couldn't get into these. There is one especially good story about working in a bookshop though, which tickled some of my funny bones.
• Zadie Smith Changing my Mind. Zadie Smith is a polymath, and I am jealous.
• Sebastian Faulkes: Pistache. A charming collection of literary rip-offs. Highlights include: Kafka trying to book a holiday online; and Joyce giving a best-man speech.

November 2011

• Iain Banks Stonemouth. This is his new novel, coming out in April 2012. It's good, but it's no The Crow Road.
• Nabokov: Lolita. Light of my life, fire of my loins! 
• Louise Foxcroft: Calories and Counting. This book will be published in January by the lovely Profile books, to coincide with the January detox rubbish. A brilliant look at all the silly things humans have done to their bodies in the name of dieting. 
• Nick Hornby: High Fidelity. Hornby is an excellent writer. I was surprised at just how good though. Lines and scenes from this book are still reverberating in my head. I only just learnt that a film had been made (I KNOW, HOW OUT OF TOUCH AM I?) so must look into that. I bet the book's better!
• Banana Yoshimoto Lizard . Simply beautiful. It's been a very long time since writing moved me to tears (in fact, since Mrs Ramsay died in To the Lighthouse: 'Mr Ramsay stumbling along a passage stretched his arms one dark morning, but, Mrs Ramsay having died rather suddenly the night before, he stretched his arms out. They remained empty.').
• Akira Yoshimura: One Man's Justice unfinished. Nope, I just couldn't get into this.
• Stuart Maconie: Adventures on the High Teas: In search of Middle England. The blurb for this book describes it as a mix of Orwell and Bryson, which is an insult to the both of them. It's fine, but only fine: stick to Notes from a Small Island by Bill instead.

December 2011

• Will Wiles: Care of Wooden Floors. This is an extremely well-constructed novel about a haphazard flat-sitter and an OCD freak.It's pretty funny. Out in February.
• Julian Barnes: A Sense of an Ending. I didn't especially like it, but Booker-prize winning stuff, for sure. I sort of had to read this though.

...and that's it! I'm currently reading On Balance by Adam Phillips, and Room by Emma Donoghue. That'll take me up to 45 (on 43 currently) with only three unfinished. Which isn't bad. I don't think I'll make it 52 books this year, and even a target of 50 is a bit of a push. I told someone the other day that I'd read 47, so I apologise for my poor numeracy/memory.

But, oh, what a year it's been.

[For the above entry you can thank Ellie and Dave who, on January 1st 2011, convinced me that starting a blog about books was a good idea. They were right, as always!]


[EDIT: 19/12/11: Actually I also read Help! by Oliver Burkeman. He writes a column for the grauniad, about self-help, and this is a collection of his essays. Please ignore the 'self-help' tag because it's actually very good. Also I read The Fine Colour of Rust by an Oz writer called P A O'Reilly. It'll be coming out in February, published by the lovely Harper Collins (who supplied several of the above titles). It's very mumsy (lots of middle-aged humour about getting fat and losing sex appeal) but also genuinely affecting in places, as well as laugh out loud. It's an easy, but not patronising, read. Finally, I forgot that I read about half of Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus which was the most overrated piece of rubbish to be published this year. Not good at all. I wrote a blog piece about how bad it is [click here to enjoy] and I'm reminded of its terror every time I see the book. Which is currently propping up my CD player.]


[EDIT 2: 19/12/11]: So now let's ''do the math'' because ''math'' is fun. There are 43 books in the list, plus the two I'm reading now, plus the three I forgot = 49. 52 you are so close!]


[EDIT 3: 19/12/11] I forgot Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb too. Hungarian, excellent, dark, hilarious. A must-read for anyone obsessed with death. Current total = 50. These edits are indicative of my having lost my book journal for a couple of months, coupled with a quick scan of my books now.]

Kindle Rant #6617181910101037645

This is a blog post which puts the argument (that is, the argument for 'book books') far better than I could (and there are pictures!):

http://woodgreenbookshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/one-of-my-bookshelves.html

Book Porn

This is a wonderful site I found earlier.

E-books can never do this:

or this:

There are many more beautiful examples here: http://bookporn.tumblr.com/

It would only be so long...

until I, like every other online cesspool, would make reference to Pippa Middleton's bum.

Actually, sorry - I mean her new book!

Here is an article on the Guardian Books site today, in which Alison Flood (sorry, Al - normally you're ace) decries the ridiculous advance Pippa recently got for her book on party planning: http://bit.ly/ugb3sX

It's very late and I'm very tired, and as usual there's wine involved, but I'd just like to point something out here. Publishers have to juggle talent and money. Talent and money. Sadly, the two don't always come together. So, when you get someone like Pippa, who they know they'll make mega bucks off, they'll give her a massive advance, just to keep [her] profit safe [with them]. What that means, then, is that they have more money. And what do they do with all this money?

Oh, that's right. Spend it on developing new and interesting authors. Cos, y'know, wealth begets wealth in the same way that poverty begets poverty.

So, sometimes, it pays. Selling out pays.

Keep your eyes on the dollar

Guardian making a quick buck from the Levenson Inquiry:

Ouch - pretty bad form, no?

How does this happen?

Already, already it is mid-November. How has it been a month since my last entry?

A quick update on what I've been reading recently, to be followed by some choice top tips about the how to behave in a bookshop:

I've just started a book entitled Calories and Counting. It's a history of dieting from the Greeks onwards, and so far, it is amazing. It'll be on the recommends table at work in January (when it is to be published). Profile Books are a super lovely publishing company too, so I'm glad to support them in whatever little way I can. I'm due to write a review of a novel called Q: a love story for Harper Collins too. I really must crack on with that - the novel is good - I never knew that Freud had spent his early career studying eel genitalia - but not wonderful. Not as wonderful as The Tiny Wife, which is a very short work by Andrew Kaufmann, which I finished at the start of the month. I also re-read Lolita and was once again amazed, simply amazed.

Here are some bookshopp etiquette tips in case today if a bookshopping day for you:

1. Customers: it's fine if you buy all your books from Amazon, but don't expect there to be any bookshops in ten year's time. And that's fine, if that's how you want it. But browsing in a bookshop only goes so far, and certainly not far enough to pay the rent. As found out the owner of The Travel Bookshop, a beautiful indy in Notting Hill.

2. Just because I work in a shop, I am not stupid. Have you read Ulysses? Five times over? We can have a brain off if the answer's 'yes', but otherwise, for now, accept that I do have a brain and I buck the 'retail = stupid' stereotype.

3. People who come in and buy the 'Life in the UK' book: I don't actually make the decision. You are all lovely, as a general rule, and I'd let you all stay, but it's not up to me, sadly.

4. Please do not let your kid/grandma vomit/shit in the bookshop. It feels excessive to state that this is not acceptable.

5. Do not assume that because I work surrounded by books that I must have necessarily read them all. Why would I read a David Nicholls book? Why would I read Sophie Kinsella? Why would you assume that my cultural opinions are in some way lacking for not having done so?

6. Please do not get pissy with me when I tell you that the book you want is out of print. I do not print the books.

....there'll be more to follow. There are always new breaches of behaviour occurring, and I'll notify you as and when they do.

Posh Bingo

On Tuesday night, Julian Barnes was awarded the 2011 Booker Prize for his novel A Sense of an Ending.


On Monday night, I went to see five of the shortlisted authors (there were actually six on the list but Barnes wasn't there) read from their works, talk about them, and then take questions from the floor (I do like that expression, as though one can 'take' a question as one takes tea or the newspapers). The event was hosted by Tom Sutcliffe, who is a journalist for, not least, the Guardian. The talk was at the Institute of Engineering and Technology, which I mention in particular because it is a fantastic venue. No microphone runners here! All the armrests have little flaps on them: lift them up and hey presto, a microphone. Wonderful. Only at the IET. Also of note is the fact the I met the publisher for the Granta title, The Sisters Brothers on the way in. He complimented me on my choice of bag (a Granta one, naturally) but unfortunately we didn't have time to chat and I didn't have a chance to ask him for a job later. If you're reading this: I was wearing the pretty green-with-sparkles-on cardigan, and I'm pretty sure you spotted me taking notes.

Carol Brich's Jamarach's Menagerie sounded fine, but there was no spark to it; she reminded me a lot of Jill Dawson reading Lucky Bunny a month ago ('The Book Stops Here' post, September). Patrick de Witt (The Sisters Brothers) was sexy and nonchalant and deadpan and aloof and I liked him, and the book, greatly.  Esi Edugyan was fine, but hardly remarkable; the same was true of Stephen Kelman (though his novel is, I think, a far greater one than hers). Finally, A D Miller was excellent. Thanks to him, I now know the meaning of 'snowdrop' in Russia: the term is used to describe a dead body that is buried under the snow and is found when the snow thaws. Only from a former foreign correspondent.

So the author bit was all fine, and then came the questions from the floor - hardly the best questions ever, but they were fine ('Have you read each other's books?' is hardly the cutting edge of culture). Thus ensued discussions of 'voice', first person/third person narrative, use of slang, authenticity, 'readability', cultural acculturation and mortality. This final part of the evening was by far the most exciting. And how long does it take to write a Booker-shortlisted novel? On average, two and a half years. Best get cracking.


My little piece above has been less than passionate. To be honest, the shortlisted titles were all so odd that I haven't really engaged with the prize at all this year. I found a first edition of the Julian Barnes at work an intend to buy it tomorrow. A fiscal relationship with the prize is probably the most sophisticated response I can manage. Well, thank fuck it's over for another year.

On Comments

Hello Readership

I feel that's a reasonable address. Why? Because I KNOW that people are reading this. I know that because blogspot has a clever little stats thingy, meaning I can see how many people are looking at this, when they are, and where they are too (as in 'where they are looking at the blog' not just 'where they are'. It's not that creepy.). Hell, I even know what browser most of you are using. I know, for example, that at four o'clock this afternoon, 8 people looked at this, the majority of whom were using Firefox.

It would be really helpful if you would leave comments. You may do so anonymously if you wish - but any sort of feedback would be good. If you want to slag things off, that's also helpful, criticism being the mother of improvement, but like any floozy, I'm highly receptive to compliments.

Thank you

xx

A dreaded sunny day...

(Hurrah to everyone who recognises that subject line.)

It's been two long weeks since I've updated, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about books and, indeed, reading them. I finished Barbara Ewing's The Circus of Ghosts recently (having been given a free copy by the publishers - thanks). I'd really recommend it. I think it's the follow-on novel of a previous title, but I only realised this when I was flicking through the list of Ewing's other titles. Anyway, if it is a sequel of sorts, it's not lacking at all. Except that the plot is a bit distracted at times, but I think that's more to do with Ewing that its sequentiality. Sometimes I wasn't sure if this was a Dickensian reconstruction of London life (which it does extremely well), a mock-up of hectic New York tenements (also done very well), a fictionalisation of mid-Victorian science (again.....), or a love story (stories, would be more accurate). Even if Ewing never quite decided what her novel was meant to be, it was enjoyable nonetheless. For a book to require zero effort is normally bad thing for me, but Ewing's book was an unexpected delight. One for the mums, I think.

I finished that Murakami proof, and my review is forthcoming. See, it's such an excellent novel that I really want my review to do it justice. I'm a bit of a slow thinker and writer, so it'll take me a bit of time to draft something that I think does it justice. Also, it doesn't come out until October 18th, so it's not like there's any rush on that.

I'm now reading Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight, from which I am expecting excellent things. As I understand it, if he had been an Anglophone writer (actually born Hungarian) he would easily be recognisable within the Anglophone canon. Because of his outsider status, he's taken a bit long to make his mark. Thus far, just 53 pages in, I can utterly see that he's far more gifted with words than most Anglophones are. With thanks to the Pushkin Press for publishing this!

For the future, I am hoping to do the following: write something about Auden (I got chatting to someone about him recently, and that reminded me how much more there is to him that just 'Stop all the clocks'); I'm hoping to read some Saramago, as, for professional reasons, I'll be going to an event about him; Lolita and Catch 22 will both be re-read, for Frances Wilson's book group at Somerset House (entitled 'How to become ridiculously well read in one year').

Sorry there are no pictures this time, but a boring list can only ever be that, illustration or no.

Keep reading, kids

x

The Book Stops Here #1

Last week I went to an evening called 'The Book Stops Here' .

I have been meaning to go to this night for months, since about February. But due to a series of jobs that involved dastardly night shifts, I could never make it. I finally made my way to TBSH last Monday, and it was a lovely 'celebration of finishing MA' night out. The premise is this: three of four writers are introduced by the (lovely) hostess; she praises them, and then hilariously cuts them down by reading out Amazon reviews (though of course these  reviews are generally indicative of the societal aptitude of the person writing them, rather than the literary talents of the writer in question). The writer then reads an extract, we all clap, we all buy expensive drinks, and repeat!

Tom Rachman was first on the bill. He was a lovely bloke: warm, affable, and told amusing anecdotes about his time as a journalist. We've sold a silly number of his book The Imperfectionists, but I've of course not actually read it. It was a delight to hear. 'World's oldest liar dies aged 126': Rachman has a real sense of character, a dry style, and his personability was really well reflected in his delivery. He did at times run a little too dry, though, but maybe it picks up over the course of the novel as a whole. Verdict: I won't buy it, but I'll get it from the library. (In honour of Emma's decision to read an awful Amazon review, I have decided to add the least flattering Google Image result available):

(Of course this is not unflattering in any way. I didn't investigate the link between Tom Rachman and mid-90s Brad, but I'm sure it's a salacious one.)

Then there was a break to squeeze past all the trendy people and go to the loo, and the privilege of paying four quid for a (small) cider. Oh, Soho, what are you doing to me?

Next up was Jill Dawson, reading from Lucky Bunny. This was a low point in the evening; I found her voice quite mesmerising, which sort of sent me to sleep at times. The extract she read wasn't great - people sitting around a table talking about clothes has to be pretty bloody good to be captivating - but I could identify certain themes and topics that I imagine would be quite fun on another reading: scandal, social aspiration, backstabbing and so on (has Soho actually changed at all since the '50s?). The cover of the book is absolutely lovely, and to be fair, Dawson does conjure up something quite glamourous and delicious about the whole thing. But on a windy Monday on a side street in Soho: no. Verdict: First, Middle, and Last Chapters only.

NB: This is not the real Jill Dawson. It's not me, either.

OH MY GOD, AND THEN THERE WAS ALI SMITH.

(Look, look, look will you, at that mischievous smile!)

Forgive the uncharacteristic syntax. Ali Smith is one of my favourite contemporary writers, and I was so incredibly excited to see how her prose (edgy, frentic, staccato) might fare in performace. She read an extract from her most recent novel, There But For The. She's just a wonderful, wonderful public speaker. She absolutely works her rhythms until they seem almost autonomous - her prose almost goes on without her. But not quite - irreverant and fun and sexy as her style is, you always feel safe with her; her experimental style never trips over itself, never clumsily falls down, never makes you think she's anything less than a brilliant, instinctive, yet utterly craft-driven writer. I should have done some fan-girling when we were finished, but due to some exciting work-related things, I'll probably meet her in another context quite soon. Thus I decided to stay professional.


It was a great night all in all - I'll definitely be back there next month. The venue itself was perfect (maybe only 100 capacity) and everybody had a seat. The website is: http://bookstopshere.wordpress.com/.

Book Crossing

Book Crossing is something you may already have heard of; it's the sort of thing that occasionally makes it into the bookish pages of broadsheets and lifestyle columns. If not though, the premis is thus: each book has a BookCrossing ID; when you've read the book, leave it in a public place for someone else to find; they can then log the book on the site, with their review attached; and you watch a beautiful literary journey unfold. Pretty neat and kooky, right?

So, there I was in a book exchange (I have no idea why it's called this, given that you pay for the books) in Notting Hill, and I found a book by one of my favourite writers: Ever After, by Graham Swift. (I've started the book, and I'm pretty busy right now and can't give it my full attention, due to essay crises, but suffice to say it's about a disaffected academic who recently tried to kill himself, and is battling between love and intelligence - it's right up my street!)

Anyway, flicking through the book I found that it had a BookCrossing ID: 651-3540751. Here is its history:

Oddly, I used to live just five minutes away from that very phone box (though not in 2005). I have no idea why the book is categorised under 'teens'. The site is pretty ugly, but they can work on that.

More to the point, the lack of Crossings makes me wonder, more than most books I buy second hand, about the journey the book has had.  Did the person who 'released' (what an odd verb to apply) have a particular person in mind, who they thought might pick it up? Has it been sitting in the Notting Hill bookshop since early 2006? (Certainly, the book was reduced from £3 to £2 to £1 to 50p, so that's a possibility!) Who gave it to the bookshop? Surely that it utterly against the ethos of the site  - and, as soon as I read the description - I felt complicit in a system that keeps knowledge and beauty (the difficult relationship between both is something that all Swift's novels contain) away from people, rather than encouraging them to read. If I saw a book left on a bus, I'd definitely read it - and take it home to continue reading - but would I ever give the book back to the public who gave it to me? I don't think so. I love owning books - who doesn't? - but the idea of not sharing the book also offends my sense of the importance of sharing books. Unfortunately, I think this situation is self-perpetuating - of course people are most likely to keep the books they enjoy the most, thus encouraging more shit to be shared, rather than more life-changing stuff.

I've not yet finished the book. What will I do when I do? I'd like to think I'll send it back into the wider world, so that someone else can enjoy. As a snippet from the New York Times says on the site, 'if you love your books, let them go': but is this too hard, as in the real life relationships that they parody, to do? From a cursory scan of the site, it seems to be very popular in mainland Europe. Maybe the continentals are more lovely than us?

EDIT: I wrote this a few weeks ago - some time in mid-August. I finished the book pretty quickly. I enjoyed it; as such, I won't be 'releasing' it back, because I want to own it. Anyway, isn't that what libraries are for? I don't feel bad about keeping the book. Bookcrossing is far too idealistic; the organisers have failed to acknowledge the weaknesses of their intended audience.

You should definitely read Ever After, but just not my copy.

Dear Joyce

Hello! It's been a while. I missed you (and I hope you missed me too).

My Joyce project has been handed in, but that doesn't mean it's over - I think there's much more material (geddit? cos it was aboot fashun, ken?!) in it still. But it is handed in, meaning that I've now time for an internship at a literary organisation, while doing the bookshop thing for a few days a week. Though, as ever, I am on the lookout for a better job (I pro-rata'd up my salary the other day and it's really not much at all. Boo.)

I've had so many thoughts of things to write about, but just not the time, so that will of course be amended soon. I got a proof copy of the new Murakami novel the other day (pub: 18th October) so that's my priority.

Anyway, over and out! xx

Review: The Night Circus

I was extremely excited to receive The Night Circus as a proof, but I think my reason for this was precisely and only because it's a proof - always very exciting to be able to see a book before it comes out in the shops.

Should anyone come to my shop, though, I certainly wouldn't recommend this. This is one of the worst books I think I've ever read - not only is it not to my taste, but it's just awful - and that's an objective statement. Several things in particular:

1. Present Tense. Morgenstern only ever uses the present tense. Only the one tense. Of all the tenses out there - only ever present. And yes, it is incredibly annoying. With multiple shifts in time and space, I might expect her to develop a slightly more sophisticated sense of time past and time future - but no. Concomitantly, her use of verbs really isn't that exciting. There are lots 'is's; Morgenstern, please let your verbs do the work for you.

2. Her paragraphs are, typically, one sentence long, meaning that most of the book (note: I cannot bring myself to finish it) reads like the BBC news website. One one page alone, I counted 13 paragraphs. It's all very disjointed; I think she's trying to create a sense of the eiree and fantastical, but hasn't quite got there. Had Morgenstern put all those sentences together and tried to write a complete paragraph, I think other reviewers might have picked up on her inability to write and actually, over the course of a paragraph, develop at least one interesting idea (I don't think this book is aimed at people who like interesting ideas).

3. Having a magician father called Prospero and a daughter who frequently uses the stage name Miranda, and her not having a mother - this is hardly original.  I don't mind writers taking (as Eliot might suggest, stealing) from other writers, but at least please do it with some sort of inventiveness. Copying outright is an insult to your readership (whenever Prospero and Miranda do appear, I'm just reminded of all the people who've used that idea better).

4. Whilst generally I am a fan of shifts in time and space (this is broadly a fin-de-siecle novel, but only in the sense that it's set at the right time - Morgenstern hardly imbues her narrative with any sense of urgency or chaos or drama) these are pretty naff ones. And obvious too. And, somewhat paradoxically, they are all the same. If it wasn't printed at the top of each page (of course, the chapters are each about two pages long) I wouldn't have a clue which time/space dimension we were in, because they are so totally bland and there's no sense of character to each one.

5. Morgenstern is highly unoriginal. I'm not accusing her of any sort of plaigarism at all, but J L Rowling of course invented 'Gryffindor' so what's a 'gryphon' doing in this novel? It's just a bit too similar for me to feel comfortable with.

As I said at the start, this fantasy cum chick lit cum trash thing isn't really my jazz anyway, but I was hoping to be taken away by this - I read far too much of the same stuff, and I was really hoping to have a new genre exposed to me, something that would show me a new way to read. Perhaps that was being naive - I'd have settled for 'good', at the least. But this is so utterly awful, it really should offend anyone with two brain cells. Niffenegger is actually quoted on the front of here, and I was thinking of reading The Time Traveller's Wife after my course - but if N thinks this is good, I'd hate to read her stuff. (Two birds, one stone - most certainly killed already - thanks for that, Harvill Secker.)

The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern

Hello all

Just a quick one tonight. I'm absolutely drowning, not waving, in bookshop work and Joyce studies, but the good news is that the other day I was sent a proof copy of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

From the publisher:

In 1886, a mysterious travelling circus becomes an international sensation. Open only at night, constructed entirely in black and white, Le Cirque des Rêves delights all who wander its circular paths and warm themselves at its bonfire.

Although there are acrobats, fortune-tellers and contortionists, the Circus of Dreams is no conventional spectacle. Some tents contain clouds, some ice. The circus seems almost to cast a spell over its aficionados, who call themselves the rêveurs – the dreamers. At the heart of the story is the tangled relationship between two young magicians, Celia, the enchanter’s daughter, and Marco, the sorcerer’s apprentice. At the behest of their shadowy masters, they find themselves locked in a deadly contest, forced to test the very limits of the imagination, and of their love...

A fabulous, fin-de-siècle feast for the senses and a life-affirming love story, The Night Circus is a captivating novel that will make the real world seem fantastical and a fantasy world real




So that does, actually, sound quite good - I do love fin-de-siecle stuff, and if Morgenstern can pull off this fantasy angle, it should be rather fun. I'll let you know my thoughts, of course.


By the way, here is the image:

But - on my copy, the colours are inverted - I think it's better with the lighter colour. Not least because with the black cover it's all gone a little Stephanie Meyer. With her in mind, it turns out that the rights for the film are already under way, by the people who made Twilight (Summit, if you're interested).


Also the blurb from Niffenegger is longer on my copy: 'The Night Circus made me happy. Playful and intensely imaginative, Erin Morgenstern has created the circus I have always longed for ... This is a marvellous book'.


Looking forward!

News of the (Bookselling) World

I consider myself reasonably up to speed with 'current affairs' (lovely catch-all for 'stuff you should know to look cleverer than your friends', which is, of course, why one bothers to read anything these days) and I'd expect even the least savvy of you to be aware of the NotW scandal, and be shocked by it: shock would be a totally reasonable and expected moral reaction to what has happened.

Shock, however, is something that industries, not individuals, experience. As for the book trade - I'm curious to see what will come out of the scandal. Since the recession began, there have been a gazillion books published about the crisis, and generally portraying how awful city bankers are. I'm thinking especially of Geraint Anderson's book City Boys, not only because this has been very popular: in fact, he's a hack. And most of the books that have come out of the recession have also been written in a very journalistic way: I have yet to see a serious, though non-academic, response to the financial crisis. I'm not suggesting that journalism can't be serious, but by its nature it has to be speedily produced with little time for reflection.Whilst, from a trade POV, speed and topicality are vital, I think that hindsight and perspective are necessarily lacking.

Similarly, I'm curious about the possible books that might come out of this scandal. As it happens, Iain Banks was in the Guardian Books today (doing the ol' Q & A) and he rightly points out, to the question:


Q:  Given the current corruption in media and politics, ever considered returning to the themes of Complicity, The Business, Garbadale etc. ? 


A: that books are a very slow way to respond to current events. Whilst that means Publishing House Co can't enjoy a glut of ill-considered sales, it does mean that, for the right person, there's a wonderful book to be written in a few years time. After all, chuck a book out there now, when the story seems to have only just begun, and the book will be lacking, of course, and date easily, compared to a work of richer scholarship, taking into account the full story, and mixing it with a dose of perspective.



I'm of the opinion that too many books are produced too quickly these days, to the immediate short term gain of the publisher, but with little thought for anything else. Take, for example, the glut of Royal Wedding books. Sure, they sold well, but honestly - honestly?!? Too many titles were produced (hands up: I did quite enjoy How to Knit Your Own Royal Wedding) but they pretty much all lacked substance. I'd like to see a book come out in five or ten years, charting the relationship, but then of course Kate won't be so pretty, we'll have all decided we don't love her any more, and her sister's bottom will have overtaken the world in any case. I worry that the same is true of this Murdoch mess: he'll avoid prison, release another Sunday paper, and in a few years time it'll be just another one of those stories they show on the end-of-the-year run down and we'll all be saying, 'Aaah remember that?'. I think the implications will be long lasting, but like the similar journalistic exposure of the expenses scandal last year, it'll be a sounding board for jokes soon enough.

On the plus side, something like 4.5 million copies of the paper sold on Sunday. I can't decide if this is a good thing: obviously, that's [4.5 million] x [the price of the paper] going back to Murdoch, despite condemnation. These sales do illustrate, though, that nothing can really replace print media. And I'm sure that's something that all of Fleet Street can be grateful for.

A really lovely story about a bookshop

As some of you may already know, I work in a bookshop. It is not the sort of bookshop where we are encouraged to be silent and let people browse as they wish. Instead we are meant to engage with customers and talk to every single one of them. I personally think this is excessive - I really hate talking to staff when I'm shopping - but then of course working for someone else is only a temporary arrangement. The Dream is to run my own little bookshop somewhere, and I really don't think that's an impossible challenge. I'll have experience, enthusiasm, and the ability to live on very little money, which is what bookselling is really all about, right?

There I was at work, chatting to a couple of really lovely ladies. I assumed they were sisters; as it happens they are neighbours. We had a very long chat indeed - we discussed A S Byatt (this was a while ago, at least when I was still trying to plough through The Children's Book) and the merits or difficulties of historical fiction. One of the ladies recommended a book to me, and although I was interested, I really didn't think of the conversation much after they left.

How lovely then, to be at work on Sunday, engaged in a really boring task like stickering, when one of the women came back into the shop. She headed right in my direction, and we greeted each other warmly, because she recognised me. She insisted that she was in a hurry and that she could only pop in briefly. Well, if only - she had come in solely to lend me a copy of the book she had been talking about: The Sisters who would be Queen by Leanda De Lisle.

The story looks pretty interesting. I've only read a couple of pages, but it's an era of history that I'm into, so pages should be turning quite easily. As much as I'll find some delight, I'm sure, in the book itself, this little episode has made me so happy for the non-tangible side of things. How lovely that she should think of me again, that she should lend me her possessions, that she should trust me to look after it, that she should care what I think of the book, that I should be interested in talking to her again, either about this particular book or another one. After much thanks I explained that although I would start reading it quickly, as I only work on Sundays, it would be likely that I wouldn't be able to return the book soon. She said she already knew that I only worked on Sundays, as that's what I'd told her last time, when she came in with her friend. How lovely!

I suppose to some people, this might just read as an anecdote about a girl getting excited because someone lent her a book. On the most superficial level, that reading might work. This exchange is important to me though, because it illustrates so much more. It shows books can, and should. bring people together - it shows that sometimes we take the lessons that we learn from books, and do try to become better, nicer people.

Work was also exciting because I had a chat with a chap who's just published his first book. Hopefully I'll be able to arrange an event for him to promote that, which'll be ideal for the both of us. More on that as it happens; I'll plug it here, of course!

Today has been a great day: I've been thinking about this lovely lady lots. I also saw a tutor today, who told me I should do a PhD as my ideas for my dissertation have been so interesting; he said it would definitely be a great topic for a book. How lovely of him! I'll probably do a post about that soon, just to see how it goes down (this means that you have to give me some feedback). I'm super excited about writing it, so I hope that comes across when I summarise it for y'all.

Much love xxx

Ali Smith

Argh! I just cannot believe it has been this long – again! Very naughty.

Part of my excuse can be assigned to my having read lots recently. I went through a mini-crisis and realised I hadn’t truly enjoyed a book for months. I could not be bothered to finish A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book (really nothing special, smug, gratuitous, overly euphemistic), J G Ballard’s Crash (I won’t describe this as it makes me incredibly angry, but suffice to say it is bland, boring, repeititve, and pathetically infantile in its repeated attempts to shock – which of course it doesn’t because I lost interest on page two. Vaughan this, Vaughan bloody that, pubis this, pubis bloody that) and a few other titles.

Finally, having been so impressed by the rave reviews of her new novels, There but for The, I decided to read The Accidental by Ali Smith. This is an amazing book: if you want something that is everything and nothing in one, I urge you to read this. It is funny, sad, wistful, shocking, wry, affectionate, mysterious, challenging and wonderful. It is Joycean at times, which if course I rather like, and she does a wonderful line in pop culture references too (you may need to google a couple of late 2003 film references). There is almost no plot of which to speak (Amber, a mysterious, beautiful woman, interrupts the family holiday in Norfolk, and we witness the fallout) but that really doesn’t matter. I loved the gentle mockery of Dr Michael Smart, replacement dad who finally gets caught up for sleeping with his students, and of duahgter Astrid, with her impressionable, early-teenage ways. Magnus, teenage son, has partly contributed to a local tragedy, and mother Eve is a workshy, deadline-missing, writer (tautologies?) with maternal guilt. Looking for family more fucked up than your own? Definitely something for you here. Smith really is remarkable in her technique: sentences that begin as haunting and eiree finish with wry ironic observation that will have you nodding in agreement, and sympathising with how hard we make things for ourselves. The novel starts in a really distancing way – until you work out – not without persistence – who’s (fucked up) head you’re in, when. Also on technique, I liked Smith’s rejection of traditional beginnings and endings – but I’ll leave that for you. If I told you that it doesn’t end at all, I’d be telling the absolute truth...

Thoughts on editing a blog....which lead to a rant about cover designs

*Note: I actually drafted this ages - yonks - ago, but general ineptitude delayed me from putting it up until now*

Writing this blog has exposed to me how aesthetically inept some people are. I'm not the most visually gifted girl ever, which is why I haven't strayed too much from blogspot's set-piece suggestions. With more time and confidence on my hands, I might do at a later date. But for now, for all its other faults, at least 'generic' can mean 'safe'. Some of the more adventurous desgins suggested have made me vomit. Despite the user functionality of blogspot - somewhere between helpfully patronising and humourously encouraging - the design team clearly think that we're all still in love with tacky '90s design shots.  I'd like to show you an example of what I mean, but that would mean I'd have to go so far as to actually use one of the suggested backgrounds.

Anyway, these thoughts lead me to think about book designs. So, what better a post than something about cover designs of books. (Dear marketing or design departments: this is not something I want to go into, though if you ask me questions about it at interview, I will give - only moderately - more sophisticated responses than the above paragraph.) Since working in a well known bookshop, I have sold *I don't know how many bloody copies* of David Nicholls' One Day.

Only when a friend handed her copy to me a while back did I finally twig that the weird, off colour, funny shape was actually the silhouette of the faces of the characters. God, I should never work in cover design! The image isn't a great one, nonetheless. Orange - yes, so it's attention seeking, but we all know that really just means 'headache-inducing', don't we? I find the 'quirky' angle of the title just a little irritating too. I am sick of this cover: clearly very little thought was put into it (relying instead on the strength of the author's name for book sales - of course, I'd like that to be the case for every book ever sold, but that just isn't, nor will it ever be, the case) and someone thought: 'well, I can't remember the last time I saw an orange book!'. Might there be a reason for that?

(Having just typed that, I've just been on to google to check. Typing 'books with orange covers' leads me to this little gem: I don't think any of the covers are especially strong - with the possible exception of the Elmore Leonard title - but I think it's so cute that in a time of recession, wars, and stonking great budget changes, we - us ridiculous bibliophiles - find the time to sit around and write about the colour of books.)

Something else that can put me off - or equally, make me purchase - a book is the choice of media quotations on the front. Said friend is, like every buddy of mine, hyper astute and intelligent, and I hadn't really thought in depth about this issue before we then had a conversation about the choice of quotations on the front. Something that might appeal to readers of both Marian Keyes and The Times? Well, I can only assume that the book must be pretty generic then. And hardly the most insightful commentators. Why not name the particular journo from the paper? Nick Hornby.... excuse me if I don't cover my thoughts on him. Anyway, this publisher's choice of media snippets doesn't exactly scream 'stop what you're doing and buy this now'. More 'Hello? Anyone? Anyone? We're facing really tough times in the finance department so we're sacrificing any integrity we ever had by prostituting ourselves to the whim of a bunch of faceless reviewers. Please buy'. 'A wonderful, wonderful book' is hardly earth-shattering. In its most literal sense, of course it says something about the book: it also reveals something more disconcerting about the priorities and concerns of the publisher. That is, a total unwillingness to not produce crap. (Not that's he's a crap writer, per se. He just needs to stick to films, not novels. And my point throughout has referred to the cover, not the contents.)

You might be able to tell that I'm getting annoyed. Of course, the covers for Chick Lit are just awful. See here, a Catherine Alliot:

If you'd like to go to her website, you'll see there's been no shame on the part of the designers for keeping things formulaic. Now, I'm all for the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' approach - until it prevents innovation and encourages stagnation. Which I think it does here. I see why the publishers have done this - after all, isn't chick lit aimed at women who can barely read as it is, and need the help of pictures to even pick the book off the shelf - but really....I mean, really?!?!?

Anyway. One mustn't get too angry. So let me leave you with something beautiful:

Apparently, Fitzgerald absolutely fell in love with this on first seeing it, and can't one see why!

What exactly I've been up to recently.

Shucks, nearly a month has gone past since my last entry. Whoopsy! I think I can be forgiven though - essays call, plus I moved out of my SE1 loveshack, and at one point I was juggling three jobs. I've been busy.  I also have a few draft entries which, if I am a very good girl, should go up over the next few days. Nonetheless, I have found some reading time at least. In no particular order:

1.     Graham Swift's Shuttlecock. A good friend gave me a copy of Waterland last summer, with only 'Simply Brilliant' written on the inside cover. Possibly the most concise review ever. It really is wonderful. Since then, I've read Out of this World too, which I thought was excellent too - lots of the same issues (war, personal pain, intergenerational conflict) cropping up in both. Unfortunately, despite the 'Excellent. Profound. Odd.' review from the LRB on the front cover, I wasn't so enamoured with Shuttlecock. I must point out here that I'm working within a frame of reference. Swift is, of course, excellent. When I say I was disappointed, I mean it was 'less excellent' than the previous two I've read. The same general terrain is covered, always in that hyper self-conscious way of his, and I finished the whole book (to be fair, it comes in at just over 200 pages; not a huge amount for me these days) in a day and a half (another qualifier: Sunday train services are perhaps a blessing after all). I’d recommend it to a friend, but only after gushing at length about Waterland. I’ve got Last Orders waiting for me on the shelf at home; having lived nearby, I’m hoping that might have some personal resonance for me. I think that – the personal element – is what was missing from this one. Sure, he is, critically speaking, a fine novelist. But there was nothing  - and no one - in this one that took me and shook me like in some of his other works (I’m thinking of Harry from Out of this World, mainly).  Read it, but I’ll understand if you prioritise something else over this. (I realise that I haven’t included much – anything – about what actually happens in the novel. I know. I find reviews that bang on about plot rather tedious. Can’t you just be told it’s good, and be done with it?) (Something else of note: the amazon I've just linked you to has a picture of a shuttlecock on the front:

This is significant, given that the book within the book is called 'Shuttlecock' too, and has a picture of a man parachuting - with the intention for it to look like a shuttlecock too. Geddit? Alas my copy is old and a bit naff, so just has some weird blue print pattern.) 

2.     Jonathon Safran Foer’s Eating Animals. Argh – publishing houses – why do you insist on sensationalist quotations on the front of books? Is it so that suckers like me buy them......too cruel. This excellent book has a snippet from HFW  (love love love) on the front (in fact, you could read my little summary about the book from a couple of months ago – yes, it really has taken me this long). I’ve finally finished it. Yes, it made me think about meat production and I think that having read this is the final thing that has made me want to turn vegetarian (note: not that I have already. Gross as many parts of this book are, I ate meat throughout reading it. Does that say more about me or the book?). Unfortunately, most of what JSF has to say is about the American meat industry, but I’m sure some of his points might be salient in a discussion about the meat industry here (to come back – again, I know – to the issue of the cover. How popular are HFW and Joanna Lumley in America? I imagine there must have been different covers for different sides of the Atlantic.). I don’t think, though, that he spends enough time anticipating and covering counter arguments: at once point, for example, he bemoans that most chicken is covered in salmonella. But is this a problem if you cook your chicken? I don’t think so; he didn’t cover the topic. Though a huge amount of research clearly went into this, his best writing is at the very start, when he lovingly recalls his grandmother, and when he brings the issue back to his son, and concerns for his diet. Overall, this was a disappointing book: not enough depth of argument, and I’m left unconvinced.

3.     Sons and Lovers. (I haven't bothered to link this one, because I'm sure you're all capable of going to Oxfam. Better yet, a proper bookseller!) Yes, this was excellent. I was told to read this as I’m currently writing an essay on maternality/sexuality in Lady Chatterley’s Lover (no, I know there are no *real* mothers, but Connie sort of is one, and there’s a ‘mothering as erotic activity’ thing going on, which is what I’m discussing in the essay I’m currently writing) and was told it was the work through which to consider motherhood in Lawrence. It’s excellent. I don’t really understand the feminist issues with DHL. His best writing in this novel, as in Lady Chatterley's Lover, tend to be when he’s discussing something other than sex. Please can we not cloud our judgement of his entire oeuvre just because he got into a bit of trouble in 1928? Thanks. Great. You must read this. I even managed to look over the fact that it’s partly autobiographical; this works as a novel in its own right.

4.     I started C by Tom McCarthy yesterday. Thus far it is creepy and eerie and different to anything I have ever read before, and for these reasons I shall keep on going with it, even though it is rather a struggle (a busy train perhaps wasn’t the best place to start it).

Erm, ho hum. What else? Well, I saw Frankenstein at the National a couple of weeks ago, and would love to re-read that; as usual I just haven’t got round to it.  For my courses, which have now finished, I read a bunch of obscure things – though to make up for it, we had a class in which we watched Mildred Pierce:

. What a wonderful woman, and a marvellous film!

5.     I’ve just remembered – Vile Bodies. Really wonderful, even if the superficiality of the tone starts to get a bit grating after a while. But what a pleasure it is to read a genuinely funny book once in a while. (Nina on sex: ‘For physical pleasure I’d sooner got to my dentist’.) A friend gave a great presentation on infantile sexuality in the novel, which is an interesting way to read it, but even if you read it for the candelabras and costumes and canapés alone, you’ll have picked a good one.

Bookshops/Homelessness

(Disclaimer: nothing I write here could possibly come up to the standard of Orwell's essay on working in a second hand bookshop, which is a really excellent essay. You can find it in his collection 'Books and Cigarettes' which also has an excellent essay about the price of books relative to smokes. However, his is a light hearted, amusing spiel; this is a bit more self-righteous and upsetting.)


I work in West London, in a desirable, trendy expensive area (needless to say, I don't live there as well. Oh no.) The sort of area where the poor people wear Boden and the rich people are international ambassadors. I really didn't think it was the sort of area to attract tramps.


Nonetheless, last week we had a homeless chap in the shop. He was apparently here for most of the day, with a suspicious carton of drink next to him and snoring continuously. He didn't buy a book, of course, although he offered to, on the basis that he could stay a little longer. A colleague had to threaten him with a visit from the police before he would, in that horrible Dickensian way, 'move on'. (I'm not a huge Dickens fan, but do look up that chapter in Bleak House where Jo has nowhere to go after being turfed out from Blackfriars Bridge. Dickens at his best and truly affecting.) His presence irritated, upset and angered other customers.


I doubt a tramp would last that long in a coffee shop, or food shop, or clothes shop, or frankly, any other sort of shop. Why did he seek out the bookshop (it is along a high street; he could have gone anywhere)? Why did he associate the bookshop with sanctuary? Why did he think he wouldn't be moved on? Bookshops do, notoriously, attract the 'oddballs'. Because they are quiet, safe, and you're able to spend a comparatively long time in them without buying anything: a bookshop is one of the few places you can get away with consuming the product without actually buying it (you don't wear Topshop's clothes, or eat a Starbucks pastry without paying, after all). I guess in that sense, they are extremely appealing to the average homeless guy. Also, let's make some suppositions about your average book buyer. Quiet, meek, unwilling to cause a fuss. Likely to stick nose further into the book he's reading than to kick up.


In some sort of way, I don't really mind the presence of the tramp. I object to chucking a tramp out of a warm, safe place, just because he smells. It offends my sense of what it is to be human (call me self-righteous, but this is important stuff). We have a duty to treat the poorest with the same level of respect as we would the richest. If we let a rich person read Murakami's Norwegian Wood all day (as happened a few weeks ago; darn, she damaged that spine) then we have to let poor people do it too.


On the other hand, I can totally see the perspective of the other customers. Say I'd wanted to sit for ten minutes and flick through the first chapter of my potential purchase. Would I be distracted by a smelly homeless guy next to me? Yes. I'd try to find elsewhere to read the book, and if I couldn't find that space, I'd  move on myself, and Bookshop PLC would lose a sale. Bookshops aren't charities or soup kitchens either. Like any other capitalistic enterprise on the high street, they have a duty (sure, a self-imposed and ethically questionable one) to make money. If this means excluding some customers to ensure the continued fiscal support of others, so be it. However, I've said that I can 'see' this perspective; I don't agree with it at all. I think it's pretty awful.


What saddens me the most is that the situation has come to be in the first place. What chain of events led him to fall into a drunken snooze on a Sunday afternoon? Why was no-one looking after him? Homelessness is the social issue that I care about the most - we are all so perilously close to it ourselves. The chain of events that lead to it (lose job - lose family - lose home) is such a familiar narrative that I think at times we (accommodation-safe) types become desensitised to it. It's infuriatingly easy to accuse the homeless guy of letting himself get into 'that situation'. The accusation that homeless people are 'weak' in some way is painfully untrue; the association between homelessness and poor mental health is one we need to look at again. Plenty of insane people have houses; very few homeless people are mentally healthy. Tramps stand out in a bookshop partly because they smell/dress bad, but mostly because, on sight, we make the assumption that they don't have the mental capacity to cope with reading. Intelligence and mental health are totally different things, guys!


So sure, those few lines above are an invitation for a longer argument about the causes and effects of homelessness. Let's come back down to the micro level: the one guy I saw. He still matters. He's an individual, and probably spent Sunday night curled up in a doorway (my dad made the very good point that tramps might be attracted to that part of London precisely because the doorways are so generous and make good sleeping places). The bookshop was a haven for him, and it embarrasses me that the other customers felt it appropriate to complain loudly about his presence. Hell, I'll say it again: he's still a human. Please can we not  be so offended by those who expose exactly how fragile out comfortable, financially secure, home-inhabiting, book buying lives are? Can we please do something constructive about the situation. He was threatened by a police call: was this really the best approach? He didn't do anything illegal, or offensive (in the sense of harassment, rather than sensibilities), and eventually left. 


I think a revealing irony lies in the location of the episode, the bookshop. Why do we read? To expand our minds, and to think about the world around us, and to try and be better people (at least, this is what your average Joe would say). None of these processes were evident in anything I saw last week - it seems that we're all very good at talking the mantra. But when it comes to doing it? I didn't see anyone actually being the change they wanted to see. No-one offered to take him to a shelter, or to walk him to a bus stop (he offered to buy a book, so possibly had some change on him), or to even direct him to somewhere that might have been of use. This collective failure, from a bunch of people who have the time, money and facilities to help, happens on a daily basis in London, but that doesn't stop this one example I've discussed being painful to watch.




A note on language: yes, I've written this from the point of 'us' and 'them' whilst at the same time acknowledging how close the two are. An error perhaps. I've also used the word 'tramp' pretty freely. Is that a problem? I don't think so. Everyone knows what I mean, and I don't want to use a word or phrase ('accommodation negative citizen' to make up a ridiculous example) that totally desanitises the problem for 'us'. I think 'tramp' is a good word because it shocks and makes people uncomfortable, and that's exactly what we need to do on this issue.