Alex In Leeds

(Alex Wolf's Book Reviews and Adventures)


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Review: The Pre-War House and Other Stories by Alison Moore

The Pre-War House by Alison Moore

Category: Fiction/Short Stories – Paperback: 160 pages – Publisher: Salt Publishing – Source: New Books Magazine
First Published: May 2013

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When Moore’s debut novel, The Lighthouse, made it to the Booker Prize shortlist in 2012 many summaries of her work spoke of her impressive short stories. Here then, newly published last week, is a portfolio of her stories to startle readers and build her reputation further.

Beginning a collection with a story of a young woman being trapped in a foreign country with a family of bullies who refuse to return her passport and trying to care for a baby nobody seems to want, Moore gives the reader fair warning that she has never dealt in happy endings and there’s few to be found here.

Her stories instead focus on the moments in our lives where the wrong choice is made, trust is given when it shouldn’t be or people concede defeat and give way to dark desires. The characters are all to often helpless to find ways out of the cages they’ve managed to trap themselves in and the reader is left unsettled, wary and claustrophobic.I’d classify most of them as psychological horror but all of them have a sense of creeping realisation that something has gone wrong and many involve a betrayal of some kind – affairs and broken promises are scattered throughout.

In some cases the stories do seem to suffer from being gathered together, knowing there is little hope or redemption in Moore’s imaginary world left me feeling stifled at times but also impacted the next story when I could guess where the story was likely to go. If the roulette wheel always lands on black you soon stop betting on red. Despite that you can’t help admire the careful menace she happily inflicts with just a sentence or two.

Horror, conflict and regret lurk behind every chipped glass, every illicit polaroid, every middle-of-the-night conversation. Nightmares rather than bedtime stories, but realistic, skilfully-written ones that get under your skin.

There’s three completely new stories in the collection but since the others date from 2000-2013 and come from a wide range of magazines, anthologies and even a couple of chapbooks the chances are that most of these will be completely unknown to readers. For those who are curious though it includes:

When the Door Closed, It Was Dark | Humming and Pinging | The Egg | Overnight Stop | Glory Hole | Nurture | Seclusion | Sleeping Under The Stars | Jetsam | Monsoon Puddles | It Has Happened Before | The Yacht Man | The Machines | Wink Wink | If There’s Anything Left | Static | Sometimes You Think You Are Alone | A Small Window | The Smell of the Slaughterhouse | Helicopter Jean | Small Animals | Trees in the Tarmac | Late | The Pre-War House

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Further Reading: Dinah Birch’s review for The Guardian

Buy the book: Book Depository

List of books read in 2013 / Index of Fiction


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Review: Dot by Araminta Hall

Dot by Araminta Hall

Category: Fiction/Coming of Age – Paperback: 288 pages – Publisher: HarperCollins – Source: We Love This Book
First Published: May 2013

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Dot is a very unusual novel and I’m sure those who love I Capture The Castle will be swept off their feet by it. I originally read it back in March for We Love This Book but wanted to briefly mention it here as it goes on sale tomorrow and I suspect it’ll be perfect summer reading for some of you. :)

Set in the mid-2000s, the story begins in Druith, a Welsh village, and centres around a higgledy-piggledy house there (complete with turrets!) and the three very different women who call it home.

Dot is a young teenager who, abandoned by her father as a very small child, has grown up with a very peculiar world view. Her mother Alice, always a beautiful but remarkably fragile woman, has been lost and confused ever since Dot’s father abandoned them and her life has almost ground to a halt. Meanwhile Dot’s grandmother Clarice has hidden behind rules and the grandeur of the house to conceal her grief after losing her own husband years before.

These three women, all fractured in some way by the loss of a man, remain tied together by love and the huge, castle-like house they live (or exist) in. The book follows them all making the first tentative steps to recover from their losses and find out exactly who they are on their own.

Told through the voices of the women, their friends and Dot’s missing father this is a tender and warm tale of losing and rebuilding yourself when the world hands you unexpected lemons. Its humour and observations on grief and loss are a delight throughout and left me feeling like I had read a coming of age tale for grown ups. Its unusual ending might surprise some readers but it illustrates just how thick the barriers the women put up have become and how much energy is needed to break them down once and for all.

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Further Reading: Naomi’s review at The Writes of Woman, the author is on Twitter: @AramintaHall

Buy the book: Book Depository

List of books read in 2013 / Index of Fiction


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Coursera: Wibbles, Enabling and Dirty Little Secrets

Today's latte, Coursera.org by yukop

Today’s latte, Coursera.org by yukop

So I mentioned the other day that four weeks into my first online course on the Coursera platform I’m having a few doubts. That’s not the whole story though, I’ve been exploring other possible courses, helped signed up my housemate onto a very different course to the one I’m doing and I’ve really changed my mind about just which subjects I’d be interested in studying with them…

First, the doubts.

My course, Greek and Roman Mythology, started on a real high. New translations of works I knew already and some new-to-me texts meant new books landing on my doormat, a new notebook being cracked open and lots of enthusiasm was flowing. There was no reading assigned in Week 1 but the groundwork for the course was being laid down very well and you can see how interesting I was finding it.

So, what’s gone wrong? Mostly it’s the pace and the (surprisingly) old fashioned format of the course.

Later in the course we have just one week to read a mishmash of important chapters from the Roman classic, The Aeneid. In a couple of weeks we’re due to read four Greek plays in a fortnight.

I’m at a bit of loss therefore to explain why we’ve spent nearly a month on the less than 400 pages of The Odyssey. And over 6 hours of video lectures. And 2 hours of Google+ hangouts broadcast on YouTube. And 4 weekly quizzes of 20 questions each parroting back the tutor’s ‘Universal Laws’.

Most of these video lectures have actually been nothing more than summaries of particular chapters of the text rather than any kind of analysis and I feel like I am wading through reams of background when really, I want what the course promised: a discussion on themes in the mythology in these two historic cultures.

I can see that in later weeks we’re going to be cramming other texts in because we’ve been spoon-fed this one so slowly and it’s incredibly frustrating. Each week’s videos are ‘released’ on a given day so I can’t move on ahead or read sideways around topics we’re going to cover. Likewise the forums currently show areas for discussion of Week 1, 2, 3 and 4 but not Week 5 etc. I know we’re going to cover a chunk of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a later week for example but not the angle we’ll be looking at so I can’t really go digging for background materials and none of us can discuss the texts from later weeks except in general threads. Ironically this slow, micro-managed pace has left me feeling rather disconnected from what should be a very interactive course!

I was going to start a discussion thread on the forum asking for thoughts on pace (to see if I am just wildly out of sync) but noticed that the tutor has jumped in on several threads in the supposedly ‘students only’ area, including one about his website which was a bit awkward. I’m not sure how other courses handle this but his presence in both the ‘course specific’ and ‘students only’ area has made our forums feel falsely jolly/polite/monitored as a result. I suspect that people are disappearing rather than discussing potential issues.

Right now, I’d give my mythology course a 6/10 overall. It’s a great opportunity but I don’t feel it’s the best use of the platform. The teacher’s pet in me is horrified but to hang onto my enthusiasm I’m skipping the remaining weekly quizzes and ignoring the two 500 word essays. Instead I’ll be reading some additional books from the library on mythology, Greek history etc and will be reading all the texts on the course in full even if we’re only allocated certain chapters.

Onto the positive.

Re-assessing this particular course has opened my eyes a bit. I *love* the possibilities of Coursera but I think it’s a very intensive thing for a teaching team to put together such a detailed package of materials, engage with students but not stifle them, get feedback but not force them to jump through excessive hoops. A lot of good humour is needed to pitch it as infotainment to some and introduction to further study for others. Seeing how hard it is to spin so many plates has made me realise that I probably won’t find a 100% fit in this model. I want more to read than the average student, I prefer debate to basic ‘Did-You-Pay-Attention?’ style fact-checking and I don’t like a truly linear course that never has fascinating digressions. ;)

There is still lots to enjoy about access to these tutors, these materials and these conversations and watching a new format work out the details though.

I was already signed up to an English Literature course called The Fiction of Relationships that starts in June but the lack of information on its introduction page has made me wonder just what its reading schedule will be and how interactive it’s likely to be. I still want to gamble on it because I like it’s brief Intro video (just 1:43 but it makes it sounds so good!)  but I’ve decided not to miss out on the Archaeology’s Dirty Little Secrets course that starts the same day and sounds much quirkier in teaching style. Perhaps I’ll end up with an intense summer of non-stop study but more likely I will find the two very different courses ebbing and flowing around me.

I’ve also got three courses on what’s called a ‘watchlist’ to start them later in the year – city design, architecture and English law – and I was so enthusiastic about the syllabus for the city design one that my housemate signed up for it too. :)

Coursera is not perfect but it is still strangely addictive…


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Five Books I Am Currently Reading…

Sorting Books by Anne Helmand
Sorting Books by Anne Helmand

I am currently reading five books at the same time, a rare state of affairs for me. I’m usually a one-book-at-a-time type reader so it’s slightly disorientating to have this choice and juggle the different themes in my head when I reach for the next installment of whichever book is top of the pile. I confess I have no idea how people do this on a regular basis and enjoy it!

Perhaps it’s something to do with the fact that all five books I am juggling are rather episodic that led to this situation but I’ll be glad to return to one book alone once I finish this little assortment. Full reviews to come but here’s what I’ve got a bookmark in currently:

The Kitchen Diaries II by Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater – The Kitchen Diaries II

In 2005 Slater published The Kitchen Diaries, guiding the reader through a year’s worth of memories and recipes from his kitchen. KDII was published in 2012 and offers another set of diary entries and recipes. Though the format is the same it’s actually a rather different book and more interesting to me as a vegan, Slater’s attitude to cooking has relaxed, he’s using more veggies and his use of spicing is more interesting than before. I’m enjoying reading his thoughts on his garden, his adventures hunting out ingredients and there’s some ideas in here I am looking forward to borrowing and adapting. I love the seasonality and generosity of his cooking style.

Widow Barnaby by Frances Trollope

Frances Trollope – Widow Barnaby

Anthony Trollope’s mother was the author of over forty books but they’re largely out of print now. I found this Nonsuch Books reprint of Widow Barnaby in the library while waiting in a queue that ran past a bookshelf (such a hazardous thing to do to those in the queue!) and couldn’t resist giving it a try. So far it is very entertaining but I’m not entirely sure where the plot is going. There’s an Austen-ish edge to it and sly humour that I hope runs throughout.

The Pre-War House by Alison Moore

Alison Moore – The Pre-War House and Other Stories

I’m struggling with this a bit to be honest. I liked The Lighthouse last year but the imagery of venus fly traps and lighthouses throughout bordered on heavy-handed. I was hoping a short stories collection would reveal a more experimental side of Moore’s writing with less obvious metaphors but so far these stories all seem a little too ‘neat’ to me. I still have half the stories to go though so perhaps I’ll find a tale that clicks for me.

The Greek Myths by Robert Graves [2 Vol Set] - Folio Society

Robert Graves – The Greek Myths I

I’m having a few doubts about my Coursera course and the professor’s stance on mythology so I’ve retreated to reading Graves’ wonderful renderings of classical Greek myths at bedtime. :) I’ve borrowed these two gorgeously illustrated Folio Society volumes from my subscription library and they’re great for dipping into at night.

The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit

Niki Segnit – The Flavour Thesaurus

I am in love with this book! It’s a beautiful physical object as well as one of the most useful books I have in my kitchen. It lists 99 flavours, grouped by similiar tastes, and for each one it gives possible combinations, some ideas for recipes, examples from famous restaurants and humorous anecdotes. The ‘Roasted’ flavour group for example covers coffee, chocolate and peanut and offers ‘chocolate and thyme’ and ‘peanut and vanilla’ as combinations alongside many others. I love the fact it’s meant as a jumping off point rather than a bible and oh, I can’t wait to write more about it and start actually tinkering with ideas this week!


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A Springtime Interlude

Fluffy by BaboMike

Fluffy by BaboMike

Life has been good and busy but mostly, I’ve not been here on the blog because I’ve been busy in my newly organised kitchen. Sorry.

The backstory: I love cooking but in the last couple of years the kitchen had turned into a bit of a battleground because I was forced to share it with my ex – the most disorganised, messy and I’ll-do-it-later cook I have ever met. Now that the kitchen is all spangly, has better storage and is separated up though I can’t help grinning from ear to ear and just messing about making chocolate and kirsch cakes and digging out all my cookbooks…

I’m working longer hours and have spent more time than usual outdoors, sniffing magnolia trees and checking out the progress of my roses, but it’s the kitchen that seduced me away from the blog rather than the garden this year. I’d say I’m sorry but with a mouthful of chocolate cake it probably wouldn’t sound very sincere. ;)

I am still reading though and I am back with book reviews and bookish thoughts as of tomorrow along with an update on how the Coursera experience is working out for me. I just might start sharing recipes again too though, once I’ve practiced my food photography a bit more.

Hope you’re enjoying spring as much as I am this year!


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Review: Queens of the Circulating Library ed. by Alan Walbank

Queens of the Circulating Library ed. by Alan Walbank

Category: Non-Fiction/Books About Books – Hardback: 328 pages – Publisher: Evans Brothers – Source: Independent subscription library
First Published: 1950

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The ‘Queens of the Circulating Libraries‘ is a wonderful phrase used to group together the (actually rather diverse bunch) of female authors who dominated the lending libraries of Victorian Britain and whose fans adored them. Beginning with the morally sound (and very safe) Charlotte M Yonge writing in the 1850s and continuing all the way up to the shockingly scandalous works of Marie Corelli and Ouida in the 1890s, the collection offers an introduction to each of the nine authors and then three or four snippets from each one’s works to show changing attitudes to love, sex, family and issues like female education.

It’s a fascinating set of contrasts, both stylistically and culturally and it’s worth checking the dates on the snippets to compare exactly how wide the range of books available in the libraries was – in 1862 for example you could either read The Channings by Mrs Henry Wood which includes a sickeningly saccharine snippet about a little girl getting up late in the morning and being taught ‘A Moral Lesson’ or you could borrow Lady Audley’s Secret by M E Braddon and read about our devious, wicked Lady A deliberately setting a house fire in the middle of the night hoping to kill someone.

Some authors set out their moral position in their first book and remained stuck to it like glue, Charlotte M Yonge for instance only allowed herself to write if all her profits went to missionary work and her books are full of horrendously well-behaved, fainting lovers who care deeply about the souls of everyone around them. Other authors developed with their audience and gradually followed the trend towards ‘shilling shocker’ style sensation fiction, slowly adding in secret romances and dying family members into their stories like Mrs Henry Wood. And then there are those who grew up and rebelled against the family-centered drama of books like these to write mystical, tormented works about passionate love affairs and fantasies about high society balls and went by names like ‘Ouida’ (a childish mispronunciation of Louise) and ‘The Duchess’.

If you’re at all interested in Victorian authors, female reading experience and female authors, this is an interesting source book to take a look at as it includes snippets from:

Charlotte M Yonge – The Heir of Radcliffe, Heartsease, The Daisy Chain, Modern Broods
Mrs Henry Wood – The Channings, The Shadows of Ashlydyat, East Lynne, Roland Yorke
Margaret Oliphant – Salem Chapel, Carlita, The Primrose Path, Within The Precincts
M E Braddon – Lady Audley’s Secret, Gerard, Weavers and Weft, Wyllard’s Weird
Ouida – Under Two Flags, Puck, Ariadne, Friendship
Rhoda Broughton – Not Wisely But Too Well, Nancy, Red as a Rose is She, The Game and the Candle
‘The Duchess’ (Mrs Hungerford) – Molly Brown, Faith and Unfaith, Rossmoyne, A Mental Struggle
Mrs Humphry Ward – Miss Bretherton, Robert Elsmere, Sir George Tressady, Helbeck of Bannisdale
Marie Corelli – The Sorrows of Satan, The Mighty Atom, Jane and Boy

Many of those titles can actually be tricky to track down and this one volume would give you enough of a taste of these nine authors to see who you might like to read more of in future.

For example, I can now say that I’ve confirmed my good opinion of Oliphant. I already found her work interesting and well-written, I’ll be buying any of her books I see after sampling the works featured in this and liking what I read of them too. I’ve tried Wood and Braddon in the past and already knew they could be uneven writers for quality but the selections here were interesting enough that I’ll bump the other new-to-me books of theirs I already own up the To Be Read pile. I couldn’t make up my mind about Broughton or Ward but have books by them on my shelves too to check out over the summer. I really struggled with the breathy melodrama of Corelli, Ouida and ‘The Duchess’ though. Ugh, it was so tiring to read about fabulous clothes and brooding baronets and sumptuous balls at breakneck, dizzying pace with exclamation marks every second sentence. No, no, no. I don’t want any more of that thank you!

There is one note of caution to be made though, the author the author was an English teacher at an East Anglian grammar school rather than a researcher and was writing in 1950 according to personal interest. The titles he chose to share extracts from are not necessarily the best works by the authors, they’re the most interesting and complete scenes that he could cut out to compare and contrast, in his opinion. The mini-bios meanwhile are a little basic simply because much of the research into these women wouldn’t be done until the 1970s and 1980s long after the book was written.

I don’t say this to put anyone off, I think this would be a fine starting point and I can’t think of a modern anthology or book that gives the reader such a wide range of pieces to sample from these lesser known authors. I wish there was one though…

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Further Reading: There is a very trippy song also called Queens of the Circulating Library by Coil which I discovered while writing this review. :)

Buy the book: Amazon (or ebay might have a copy)

List of books read in 2013 /  Index of Non-Fiction


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Reading Review: April 2013

Journal by Curt Fleenor Photography

April has been an eye-opening month for reading in so many ways. Perhaps I should start with the coolest thing:

Book Jar Videos

I’m seeing book jar making videos popping up all over YouTube now which is, OH MY WORD AWESOME. Ahem, I am so delighted to see the idea spread and give pleasure to so many more readers. I’m going to be adding links to the videos I find on my page for The Book Jar. I’m almost tempted to make one myself as a way of playing with the idea of book vlogging…

The April 2013 Edition of Dewey’s Readathon

I abandoned as many books at the 50 page mark this month as I finished so I sure was glad when the 24 hour readathon rolled up at the end of the month. I managed to finish 5 books and a couple of short stories which I am pretty proud of, though they were all fairly short books of about 250-300 pages. I had a nice mix of armchair travel, quirky fiction and politics to keep my pages turning through the night. A note on the timing though, I tried doing mid-day to mid-day again and nope, it’s really not for me. I’ll be back to 00:01-23:59 for the October event, they’ve just announced the date. I do love the readathon something fierce so I’ve already penned it in the diary. :)

The Abandoned Books

I wasn’t willfully abandoning books willy-nilly but I did try a whole stack of books drawn from the longlists of a couple of prizes and since these are effectively blind picks, with nothing more than the blurb to guide me, they have a higher abandon rate. I wasn’t overly impressed with either the Women’s Prize for Fiction or Independent Foreign Fiction Prize titles I tried but to be honest, I think by the time the lists were announced I’d already tried the three or four titles on both lists that best fit me as a reader. So, if I was being fair (and I try hard to be), I’d say I wasn’t impressed by my 6th, 7th, 8th and even 9th choices from the lists. It was a bit like going back for more chocolates after your favourites in the box are gone. :)

I also tried a copy of Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London which was fun for a bout of insomnia but very throwaway when morning rolled around.

The Read Books

36) Melissa Harrison – Clay (Fic)
37) Anne Fadiman – Ex Libris (Non-Fic)
38) Claire Keegan – Walk The Blue Fields (Fic)
39) Karl Ove Knausgaard – A Death In The Family (Fic)
40) Émile Zola – The Fortune of the Rougons (Fic)
41) J V Luce – Homer’s Landscapes: Troy and Ithaca Revisited (Non-Fic)
42) Natasha Solomons – The Gallery of Vanished Husbands (Fic)
43) Frank Westerman – Engineers of the Soul (Non-Fic)
44) Mary Wollstonecraft – A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Non-Fic)
45) Paula Lichtarowicz – The First Book of Calamity Leek (Fic)

I am so surprised to see that I read so little this month, it felt like a book in my hands almost every day. I guess it’s a combination of the books I was taste-testing 50 pages of and the books I currently have a bookmark in but haven’t finished. I definitely have to wrap up some of these long term reads in May.

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Books read: 10 /Books ‘Surfed’: 5 / Books marked Did Not Finish: 0
Fiction: 6 / Non-Fiction: 4
Female authors: 6 / Male authors: 4 /Multiple authors: 0

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April’s Highlights: The pleasures of the 24 hour readathon, the delights of reading Mary Wollstonecraft’s words for the first time since high school and getting far more out of the experience. There was also the Zoladdiction event which celebrated Emile Zola’s works and I started my first Coursera course. Oh yes and I offered the book choice for the Slaves of Golconda this month too – they picked The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa so we’re off to sunny Sicily for some political feuding. :)

April’s Low Points: Realising how few credible female characters there were in the IFFP line up this year.

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Other Reviews Posted In February

Kathleen Jamie – Findings
Judy Fairbairns – Island Wife
Afsaneh Knight – The Sunshine Years
Vita Sackville-West – In Your Garden
W. Somerset Maugham – On Literature

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Reading Challenges

Century of Books – 47/100 – No more years completed this month but I did start doing 10% round ups of books read. I will get the next three of these up in May and plan to have a C0B reading week at the end of the month too.

Essay Reading Challenge – I still have a bunch of books with bookmarks in but I did review two essay collections this month (Findings and On Literature) and I’ve got a couple more collections that I am nearly finished with too.

Claire Tomalin Challenge – I did start my first Tomalin book, on Mary Wollstonecraft, but set it aside to read some of Wollstonecraft’s original work. I’ll be reading the Tomalin this week and reviewing it soon after.

Classics Club – 11/52 – I will finish Swann’s Way this week (I know it’s taken me ages but I am savouring every page) and I’ll try to include a CC title or two when I do the CoB reading week at the end of the month.

Plans for May

I’ve got two main focuses in May – my Coursera course and a Century of Books reading week.

The Greek and Roman Mythology course started last week and the reading for it began yesterday, the course syllabus includes The Odyssey, Homeric hymns, various Greek plays, The Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses over the next 10 weeks. In a way I’m glad for the readathon giving me a couple of reviews in reserve so you won’t all be swamped with classics! In amongst the regular book reviews though those who are following my ‘Everything’ RSS feed will see some more thoughts on the pros and cons of studying online and the texts we’re covering in this class.

For the Century of Books reading week I am planning at the end of the month I’m going to be looking through my shelves, hunting out books that will count for my quest to read one book for every year between 1900-2000. I’ve got a couple of books on my Classics Club list that could also count for this challenge too…

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