Because I don’t have anything intelligent to say today (yes, I know you’re hanging out for reviews of Three Weeks in December, A Discovery of Witches, Down Under and Tomorrow, When The War Began), I thought I’d point you in the direction(s) of some of my bloggy friends and have you go read what they said today/recently instead.

Verity and I chat nearly every day on Twitter. Verity blogs about cakes and life and cardigans and pink laptops and swimming and such lovely things at cardigangirlverity and about her challenge to read every Virago Modern Classic at Verity’s Virago Venture. Which is pleasantly alliterative.

Alex, Iris, Ana and Lyndsey were my lovely Advent with Austen co-hosts. They are all delightful. Please go to read what they have to say. I’d like you to note that the AWA team included two Portuguese girls living overseas, a Dutch girl studying for her Masters, a new mum with an extraordinary capacity for humour and me (you know my nationality issues). Go us for being multi-national.

I’ve only recently met Annabel and Simon but I have been following their blogs for years (as I am more of a lurker than a commenter, they may have been unaware of this!). They say clever things.

And some non-book-bloggy people who are dear to my heart (dear to me? near to my heart? I’m going to stick with my mixed phrase):

3G blogs at interblagging, mostly about tech stuff but also a bit about life and overcoming anxiety and most recently about going self-employed.

The No Longer Resident Cousin used to blog at cutoutthestars. Now she writes bits in the Australian Times. But I think she should blog more, so I’m putting some pressure on her from a blog platform (which is a bit meta. Or pseudo. Or something)

I don’t want to cause any offence by leaving people off this list! If you feel you should be on it – leave a comment linked to your URL See above re: tiredness.

Adieu, fine folk…

Have fun with the mice in the sky, Mindy; your sister and humans will miss you.

What is your favorite romantic book –or book that includes a love story? (an adult romance, young adult, kids’ story, anything)

I’m not a romance reader and I have categorically refused to read Twilight - so this is not as difficult a question for me as it will have been for others, as I have a smaller population of books from which to choose!

I think I have to say Jane Eyre - the romance is borne (born?) of a meeting of minds and ideas, rather than being based on physical appearances. Jane turns aside the romance knowing it is wrong when she learns of the mad wife in the attic, and then cannot bring herself to go to India as St John’s wife, knowing she has experienced true love. When Jane and Rochester are finally re-united, there is an element of tragedy to it, but the reader knows it is for the long haul.

And of course, one of the most romantic lines in literature:

“Reader, I married him.”

Other strong contenders include Anne of Green Gables, Persuasion, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibilility (is it any surprise that I have three Austen novels here?) and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell.

I’ve just dropped The Book Accumulator and Mini-me off at the station on their way back to Germany and hied me home in my pocket-sized car on the mean streets of London to a nice cup of tea, some brownie* and some low-brain-activity work: a peaceful Sunday night. Later there will be rugby highlights (although they will be considered lowlights at Maison RWT, as The Physicist was most dismayed to see Scotland play well but lose again), The Physicist will play bridge online and I will do a bit more work in preparation for the last quiet week before another big client engagement.

TBA and Mini-me were over for the first time in getting on for three months and I hadn’t seen them in 2 months. That may not sound like much, but we’re a pretty close family and like to catch up in person often. So it was lovely to do a spot of shopping with them, mosey about the flat, eat surprisingly good food and generally potter about east London.

However, having thus far dodged The Physicist’s lung infection (which has also laid Papa Physicist low), I seem to have picked up the winter sniffles and am fighting back with a vengeance because I can’t afford to get sick. I suffered in church this morning as the altar servers were quite liberal with the incense and I was caught without tissues, so the more I sniffed, the more incense got up my nose and irritated it further…

This week I read Bill Bryson’s Down Under and thoroughly enjoyed it. The only other Bryson I’ve read is Notes from a Small Island, so I’ve only read his writing about places I already know. I love his style of humour – it’s dry, it’s self-deprecating, it’s appropriately respectful of important things.

Coming up on the blog this week, assuming I get around to writing them, will be reviews of A Discovery of Witches, Three Weeks in December and Down Under.

*Brownies: Jamie Oliver’s recipe is the stuff of legend. Try it. Except bake it for 45 minutes at 160 deg C instead.

A few nights ago, alone in my creaky little London flat* and a little morose due to the absence of The Physicist on physics-ing duties, I wandered about newly UK-resident film streaming site Netflix. We’re already subscribers of LoveFilm but Netflix sounded good and although its catalogue is a bit limited, it has a marvellous iPad interface. West Wing was not to be had, nor was Friends, and I quickly tired of Saturday Night Live, but then I happened across one of my favourite movies from when I was about 13 years old: the 1982 version of The Man from Snowy River.

The Man from Snowy River is possibly Australia’s most famous poem (not counting Waltzing Matilda, which as it has two popular musical settings, definitely counts as a song rather than a poem), and I memorised the whole thing in my horse-mad early teenage years. I’ve not replicated it here, as it’s just a bit long for a blog post, but you can read the text in its entirety here.

You can also here a recording of the poem being read, set to images from the film here:

The film spends the first hour and ten minutes setting the scene for the ride immortalised in the poem, and even the start of the ride is pretty slow going, but then we come to the absolutely breathtaking daring feats of the Man himself (this time without the poem being read over the top):

I still have my doubts about how on earth the pony (for so he is called in the poem) stayed on his feet after clearing the log on the descent, but I like to have a little belief and say that the ride is real. Also I’m going to keep the faith and say that Tom Burlinson did all that riding himself, in his trusty dusty Akubra hat, but I’m willing to concede that it’s unlikely.

I don’t really know why I’m posting about this poem, I don’t have any great literary criticism to give, it’s just something that’s close to my heart. The theme music from the film was actually featured at the opening ceremony to the Sydney Olympics, which I was lucky enough not only to attend but also to have a relative performing in the ceremony, so it brings back some amazing memories.

*Why oh why did the builders of my apartment block in 2003 not manage to lay the floors properly? I’ve learned not to let it bother me – except when I’m alone at night, when it freaks me out rather thoroughly and consistently!

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

I’m sure you all know the story, but just in case I didn’t give enough away in my spoiler-tastic Part 1 and Part 2, here goes (TRULY SPOILER-TASTIC): Nick (not very rich) moves into a house in West Egg, discovers he has unhappily married friends Tom and Daisy in East Egg and glamorous neighbour Gatsby. Gatsby loves Daisy and has built up a sham fortune and persona to win her back. Tom is dabbling on the side with the garage owner’s wife so you’d think that Daisy would have no problem leaving him. But no, the big showdown arrives and the men descend into “she loves me more” without really consulting Daisy. Daisy kills Tom’s bit on the side on the way home (we think by accident), and Tom manages to convince the BOTS’s husband that Gatsby did it, so BOTS’s husband goes mental and shoots Gatsby and himself. And Tom and Daisy move away to fight another day.

(END OF SPOILERS)

The writing at the start of this book was so beautiful, so pin-point precise about characters with such economy of words, and then it all just descends into a pit of ridiculousness. To quote the Physicist:

“It’s just one of those Great American Novels that isn’t about anything, just everybody running around being ridiculous”

which is a little harsh, but on reflection quite true.

The first 3/4 is all about the characters and their flaws; Nick is ambivalent and has no courage, Gatsby has built a fantasy world in which Daisy will run into his arms, Tom’s just a *insert expletive here* (he’s really not a nice man!). I had such high hopes for Daisy – there was such potential for a dramatic suicide and a denouement in which the men realised their failings and resolved to do better.

The car accident and all that followed – it felt to me like FSF didn’t know how to finish his novel, like he’d crafted this masterpiece with exquisite character development, and then suddenly the publishers rang up and asked “hey, where’s my book?” and he had to quickly finish it and send it off. TNLRC tells me that this is unforgivable criticism of Mr FSF and that the sudden pointless ending is the grief of the Twenties in stunning writing*.

I feel like I used up all my happy, clever, articulate points on this book in the first two posts for the read-along, so… go read those.

I’m glad I’ve read it, but I doubt I’ll be re-reading it.

*she didn’t use exactly those words but that was the general idea

Additional info:

This  copy was a free eBook from Project Gutenberg Australia.

Order The Great Gatsby (Penguin Modern Classics) from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards give-aways and site hosting costs.

This week’s BTT is:

If you had to pick only 5 books to read ever again, what would they be and why?

That is a very unfair paradigm in which to live. 5 books? for the rest of my life?

The Classic: Jane Austen – Mansfield Park or Pride and Prejudice - I’m cheating a little bit here in not specifying which of my favourite Austen novels I’d take, but frankly either would do. The writing is so delicious that I’m sure I could get years of enjoyment out of it. In fact I could cheat and take her collected works, but I don’t think that’s the aim of this question.

The Challenge: J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (come on, I can have a trilogy, can’t I?). I’ve never tried to read this because I feel like I should read The Hobbit first, and that’s just too dull to waste time on. Hence I constantly fall at the zeroth hurdle. But so many people love these books that I should probably read them.

The Fun One: I’m going to be outrageously clichéd here and say one (any one) of the Harry Potter series, because I loved to read them when I was a bit younger, it’s time I re-read them, and it would be really interesting to go back through them.

The Favourite: L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables (again, I want the whole series, but I don’t think I’m allowed). How could I go through the rest of my life, growing up, having a family etc. without my favourite Anne-with-an-e? Besides, it’s high time I re-read it.

The Gamble: Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. I haven’t actually read this (although I meant to join in with Iris’ readalong but didn’t quite get around to it) but it’s one that I really want to read, and so many people love it that I think this is a fairly safe bet.

What about you?

“Probably that sliver of doubt was always with her, lodged inside her, as it was inside everyone, about everybody else”

One-time prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet Nina Revskaya, now wheelchair-bound in Boston, decides to sell her impressive jewellery collection for the benefit of the Boston Ballet Foundation. As she looks at the treasures of her past,  she recalls her life on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Drew Brooks, in charge of the auction, pries deep into Nina’s life with the help of the obsessive Professor Solodin to try to add some historical colour to Nina’s precious jewels.

I write this review having just finished the book this morning and mostly read it solidly, straight through. I’m left with a feeling of enduring, beautiful sadness. Kalotay has crafted a mystery of sorts (why did Nina leave? Why is the professor so convinced that he has a connection to her? Why is she selling the jewellery?) and maintains it with the suspense of the threat of arrest for political dissent in Stalinist Russia. Yet it is the personal tragedies that are most haunting: the tragedy of Nina’s friend Vera, her parents shipped off to who knows where. Of Viktor, forced to compromise his artistic ideals in order to survive. Of Gersh, forced to the same, but refusing. Of Zoya and her unrequited love. The ending packs the biggest punch, as the true tragedy of Nina’s escape from Russia is revealed, both to Nina herself and to the reader.

I was surprised to see that Kalotay does not have a background in ballet; she has clearly done her research well and has some good contacts. Similarly, her research on gemstones and auctions is clearly displayed but fortunately not in depth, or the story could quickly get bogged down. I was also rather pleased that the connection between Grigori and Nina has a serious twist in it – for it to be what the reader easily assumes during the main part of the book would have been saccharine.

Nina is an excellent lead character; one empathises and acknowledges her struggles, but her flaws are also clear. Her pride and stubbornness are occasionally frustrating when the reader knows what is going to happen anyway, but she is a well-crafted and consistent protagonist. Solodin’s story had a few too many loose threads, or rather, Kalotay tries a little too hard to make him interesting. Recently deceased wife, potential for a scandalous love affair, unclear parentage, evidently interesting up-bringing; it feels like the novel was supposed to be more balanced towards Solodin and the editorial red pen was uneven in its application, leaving the Solodin storyline rather bare and Nina’s over-developed by comparison.

This was a highly enjoyable debut novel, “intelligent chick lit”, and I look forward to reading more of Kalotay’s work.

I read this book as part of a blog tour organised by TLC Book Tours; watch out for others’ thoughts on Russian Winter.

Monday, February 6th: She Reads Novels
Thursday, February 9th: Fleur Fisher in her world
Tuesday, February 14th: DizzyC’s Little Book Blog
Wednesday, February 15th: Pining for the West
Thursday, February 16th: Chuck’s Miscellany
Monday, February 20th: one more page
Tuesday, February 21th: I hug my books
Wednesday, February 22th: The Sweet Bookshelf
Thursday, February 23rd: A Book Sanctuary

Additional info:

This  copy was provided through TLC book tours in return for an honest review.

Publisher: Arrow Books (Random House), 459 pages

Order Russian Winter from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards giveaways.

“His action had been unphilosophical, self-indulgent and inartistic: in other words, wrong.”

This review is completely impossible to write. Nevertheless, I shall try. It’s partly my own fault – I read the book in October or November and it’s been lying around waiting to be reviewed ever since.

I don’t want to rate this highly, but I sort of have to. It is so smooth, so readable, and yet so cleverly worded and framed and constructed, that despite the narrator’s almost repulsive self-justification, you HAVE to keep reading.

Tony Webster is an ordinary sort of man, reminiscing now about his time at school and university and the group of friends he had at that time. He drops tiny hints along the way that his account might not be an entirely objective truth, but the scale of his unreliability as a narrator comes as a shock.

Some of my favourite quotes:

“We live in time – it holds us and moulds us – but I’ve never felt I understood it very well.”

“In the meantime, we were book-hungry, sex-hungry, meritocratic, anarchistic.”

“Yes, of course we were pretentious – what else is youth for?”

“But wasn’t this the Sixties? Yes, but only for some people, in certain parts of the country.”

“One of those suburbs which had stopped concreting over nature at the very last minute and had ever since smugly claimed rural status.”

Fortunately, I have a get out of jail free card on this review, namely – I convinced The Book Accumulator that he must buy and read it, which he duly did in short order, and this is what he had to say about it:

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending, which I read slowly – it was almost meditative – but could not put down. It was justifiably short-listed for the Booker prize; it won, so I suspect the judges were all sixty-year-old men. The narrator recounts his school and student days, and then forty years later has cause to look back at it – as well as at what has happened in the intervening time. I enjoyed the introspective and retrospective view of this life and the narrator’s ruminations as he tries to make sense of one part of his life, until the surprise ending. His hero claims he is average, but it is interesting to judge him as not only above but also below the mean, a limited and not always attractive individual whose memory lapses can be both useful and hurtful. A pleasantly surprisingly short novel about memories and memory and how we view our own history, about changing with age while settling into an ever more ordered and ordinary life, and yet about how life can surprise us, because we just don’t see things as we should.

See? Clever thoughts, articulately arranged. Thanks Dad

Additional info:

This  copy was borrowed from my magnificent local library.

Publisher: Vintage Books, 150 pages

Order The Sense of an Ending from Amazon*

* this is an affiliate link – I will be paid a small percentage of your purchase price if you use this link, which goes towards giveaways.

Did you do any reading in lieu of watching the football game, yesterday, or were you foregoing reading to watch the game? If you read a book (or books) what did you choose?

What football game? While I’ve heard of Super Bowl* I couldn’t tell you for certain what sport it is (I’m guessing American football, rather than soccer?) and I certainly had no intention of staying up until whatever o’clock here in the UK to watch it.

I did start Bill Bryson’s Down Under before bed last night and was chortling away to myself (as expected after my experience reading Notes from a Small Island) merrily. I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into it this evening.

*I just typed that as Super Bowel, repeatedly. Clearly my subconscious has strong opinions on American football.