The Return of The £5 Amazon E-Book Buying Game : Backlisted Edition

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

As it's the time of year when you get Amazon gift vouchers as presents. Proceed to spend what you want and then realise there's £5 less which you don't know what to deal with.

Occasionally on this blog I play a game where following all the recommendations from Amazon I see how many ebooks I can get for a fiver.

This time I'm going to play the game based on the Backlisted literary podcast. Based on books by writers or as guests in the podcast from episode one I will see how many I can download for a pound or less for a total of £5. This doesn't include books available for free or (obviously) books I already have. The other rule here is one book per author

So...

Their Finest by Lissa Evans, a guest on the first and other programmes. A novel about an ad agency in World War Two. 99p.

Coming Up for Air by George Orwell. I've read his essays, Burmese Days and of course 1984 and Animal Farm. But whilst I've got a Classic  Penguin paperback of The Clergyman's Daughter I haven't got round to reading his other fiction. So hopefully this will redress the balance. 84p

James Joyce wrote a novella? Well apparently he did. I must admit to having etons of James Joyce ebooks that I haven't yet got round to reading and this is another one. It's called The Dead. 49p

Jonathan Coe's The Rotters Club. Another contributor to the podcast. An author I've always wanted to get round to read. 99p

Ostrich Country by David Nobbs. An actual author discussed on Backlisted. I've read The Fall and Rise Of Reginald Perrin books. Novels which are far deeper than they first appear so I'm excited about this. 99p

Finally All the Sad Young Men by F Scott Fitzgerald. A sequel to The Great Gatsby. As regular readers will know I view Fitzgerald as literary Switzerland in that I don't dislike him but I don't get why he's considered great. I've never read The Great Gatsby mind. So this sequel has (once I've done so) curiosity value.

So what has this exercise achieved? No idea. Still it was fun playing it.

Until the next time.

Have I Been Persuaded By Jane Austen? Well....

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So picture the scene. I'm at the rented apartment from doing the afternoon/evening shift at work. Daughter is on her tablet. Wife, who moans when daughter or me are online, is on the laptop playing Mahjong.

I go to my normal returning from work routine. Ask loved ones how they are (incidentally never argue when you've just returned to work late at night. Your brain....well my brain anyway...is not up to it). Go to the toilet (TMI? Sorry). Change my clothes, contact my mother in Essex and ping a microwave meal (I've boiled it down to two. Beef Lasagne or Spaghetti Bolognese

And what then? It's about eleven pm. I have to stay up for about an hour before going to bed to rest my wide stomach. So what do I do? Normally I'd watch something on YouTube or Netflix and nod off on the sofa, or listen to a downloaded programme on the BBC radio iplayer and nod off. But not this day, Saturday. For my Kindle has told me that I've only half an hour left of Persuasion to read and I'm going to finish it come what may.

This task then, the reading equivalent of having a walk after dinner (it's after eleven at night I'm not walking out), is completed. From never reading Austen I've now read two of her novels in a short space of time. Things and indeed me have certainly changed recently.

Having said that, and mentally registering your round of applause, regular readers of this blog will remember my rather ambivalent view of Emma. That I did not dislike it but didn't feel as if I was reading great literature either. Thus Jane Austen was part of that group of writers such as  F Scott Fitzgerald and Anton Chekhov that I was literary Switzerland towards.

Now I have read two Austens I must be to the majority of the male population a freak. A male not in the artistic or educational worlds who has read two Austens?! Clearly to most men that and the fact I wear glasses must make me an expert on the subject.

So let me start by saying this. I much preferred Persuasion to Emma. It is a book with less of the Austen clichés. Less dances,less indeed a dance of manners.

Perhaps more importantly however it has a character (which I'm not going to spoil  by revealing here though obviously you can surmise it's a woman) that the reader can root for. Whilst there was no one I actually hated in Emma, it did thinking retrospectively lack that emotional hook.

And that central character is believable as well. There is no way that Gwnyeth Paltrow could justifiably played her without being laughed at all the way to the goop. Out of curiosity after I read the book I checked who played this person in the 1995 film adaptation. She seemed exactly the right fit to my imaginary picture.

But.....

The other thing that I've realised having read two of her books now is that Jane Austen characters rarely go beyond second gear emotionally. No throws of passion or spasms of anger. To me as a reader this seems irritating and unrealistic.

Still, what do I know....being a boy. (an old one admittedly) ?

So Jane Austen stays for me in a state of literary Switzerland. Which as I've said before is more difficult to explain than disliking her because if you're neutral towards a writer there's more chance that you've missed something (you dislike a writer them there are weapons you have to explain why).

Now to the next book which turns out to be David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. It's been a while since I've read any Dickens ( so many books so little time) so I'm looking forward to reading it.

Now tying up the loose ends I've also finished The Golden Rules of Blogging (& When To Break Them) by Robin Houghton. To be honest all it taught me is that if your blog is not a business then the best rule is simply trial and error. Adhere to the "rules" and you will just miss the fun of creating and running it.

Until the next time.

On Enjoying Italian Crime with Camilleri, Shruggable Neutrality on Chekhov and A Little Bit Of Chopin

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Have finished The Montalbano Mysteries by Andrea Camilleri . An omnibus of the first three novels of the eponymous Sicilian detective. Well I loved it. Everything you'd want from a crime genre is here. A hero you'd root for, a sense of place, characters well drawn, a good plot. I finished the book wishing that I was a brilliant Italian detective with a love of food living near the coast who could take a swim everyday should he wish it.

And the thing about this omnibus was....I didn't get to feel it was an omnibus. There was no sense of a hard slog. I just moved from one novel to the next with ease and was only disappointed when they were all finished. Don't know when I'll next get round to reading a Camilleri novel but I do know I'll be looking forward to it.

Which is more than I can say for Anton Chekhov.

You may remember sometime back I suggested that for some writers a reader can be in literary Switzerland. In that he (or she) didn't dislike a writer but at the same time could not understand the mantle of greatness that is thrust upon them. The main author I used for this was F Scott Fitzgerald but I included Chekhov in this as well.

Having now read The Duel And Other Stories I now realise that my views on Chekhov are slightly different. I'm still neutral but I finished each story thinking "Is that all there is"?

NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS. And even when it does it seems to resolve itself quickly and for the most part quietly enough. Leaving aside the duel of the main story the only real action seems to involve people flouncing off or acting in a turn of the century huff at something or another....and that's just the men.

So clearly I just don't understand why he gets the high literary reputation that he has. There are two conclusions to this. The first is that I'm the bookish equivalent of the little boy pointing out that king has no clothes. Suddenly I'm viewed as the most perceptive reader ever. Fame at last.

The second is more simple. That I'm an idiot who has not grasped the nuances of the Russian master. Either is possible.

Which leads me to the third book I'm reading now The Awakening and other stories by Kate Chopin. When I started to read the title story was thinking "This is like Chekhov. Nothing much is happening". But what Chopin does is to lead you slowly through the issues faced by the main character. This is interesting stuff. I think the phrase is "a slow burn". Must admit am impressed.

Until the next time.

Why Do I Continue To Read D H Lawrence When I Hate Him?

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well Sea and Sardinia is finished and well to a D H Lawrence hater like me nothing, and I mean nothing has changed.

The only real pleasure it gave me was it's shortness. Otherwise it really should have given the reader a truer sense of the fate that was going to befall him/her by retitling the book Twilight In Italy2 aka you thought no one could make Italy/Italians even more boring than I did the first time.

Lawrence is a man incapable on cutting down on paragraphs. As if using so many words hides the fact that for the most part he's writing pure unadulterated twaddle. That, and his racism ( he the inglese observing these unsophisticated people living their lives as if he's in some type of experiment sets me on edge) made it for me an awful book to read.

It was one of those books that gave you a palpable sense of relief when you finished.

(A quick aside. The next book I'm reading is Can Anyone Hear Me? by Peter Baxter. It's essentially anecdotes about doing the Test Match Special BBC radio cricket broadcasts abroad. In all the housemoving stuff I'd completely forgotten that the cricket season had started and that the quiet pleasure of listening to the sport on the radio has returned. I will listen to that tomorrow, whilst continuing to box or crate our lives away. It'll be either that or cutting the grass for what I intend to be the last time before we leave......all depends on the weather)

So then a writer that in this blog has a status of regular villain. And yet I still read him and will probably continue to do so in the future. The question came into my head. "Why"?

(A question that could also be asked of my attitude towards writers that I don't hate but am neutral towards such as F Scott Fitzgerald or Jane Austen)

So then is it peer pressure? Yes and no. If you are the person who is in the minority with regard to an author then you do as a reader want to plough on and think is this next book going to be different? Well remember in all the times I've criticised Lawrence I've always stressed that it's based on the books that I've read. It's not impossible that you can dislike a work by a writer but love the next book you read from him/her. In the course of this blog I've had that experience with Michael Palin and, probably more pertinently, outside of this blog Kingsley Amis.

But that I'm willing to read further books by someone with a reputation does not mean that I will necessary change my mind. It's just that as a reader I'm willing to change my opinion to some extent if the right book comes along. Call it literary blind date. In the case of D H Lawrence though the right book hasn't come thus far so to me he just should be grateful for Lady Chatterley's Lover or else he'd be forgotten aside from people using his books as a cheaper form of Valium.

Until the next time.

In Which I Chat About Jane Austen,Rugby, RLS' Wife, Houses And The Disappearance Of Barry Town FC

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I woke up on Saturday, unwillingly you understand, at quarter to four in the morning. And after making a cup of tea did what I tend to do often now. Read. so Emma by Jane Austen was finished.

Speaking as I can now do,with the vast experience of having reading one of her novels, is that Jane Austen moves in with F Scott Fitzgerald and Anton Chekhov as a writer with whom I'm in literary Switzerland about. She is certainly readable. But I don't understand how she can be considered "great".

As I explained previously being neutral on a writer is a difficult position to be in. If only because not disliking one means that you can't shake off the feeling that you might be missing something. What I especially don't understand is why she's stood the test of time especially when compared to writers like the Brontes or George Eliot. But then again what do I know being a man?

The next book on the great ebook unread was Rugby Union Basics For Dummies in a day by Nick Cain and Greg Growden. It was free and to be honest after reading it was probably the best thing about it. I learnt very little about a sport whose rules I've only gleaned through osmosis. Anyway it was finished. Two books done in a day.

Did you know that Robert Louis Stevenson's wife was American? I didn't. But it's the first thing I've learnt in the latest book I'm reading The Life of Mrs Robert Louis Stevenson by his wife's sister Nellie Van De Grift Sanchez. So far so good.

On the house searching front went to see two today. Both seem genuine contenders. Wife and I are going to spend the weekend thinking this one through. We might offer on Monday. More then.

After that was done we went to see a friend who lives in Barry. She and the wife I knew would spend the afternoon chatting about the houses we've seen and the general moving situation. Knew I'd be bored.What to do?

But then a solution occurred to me. Our friend lived near Jenner Park, home of the Welsh league side Barry Town FC. As there were no more houses to watch I'd get daughter to go online, check and if they were playing at home and go off to the game.

This was done. The internet was clear. Barry Town FC would be playing Goytre United FC at two thirty. I'd be a little late, but I'd not been able to watch football for a while so it would give me a little break from everything that's swirling my beleaguered brain with regard to moving house and finding one to live in.

It wouldn't have been the first time I've been to Jenner Park. When I was courting my wife and I did crosscountry courting with my wife between South Wales and Essex (A real Gavin Stacey moment) her uncle (even more Gavin/Stacey like), a good man now sadly passed away took me to a match there between Barry Town and Flint Town FC.

I'd learnt two things from that game. One that Welsh football went far beyond Cardiff,Swansea Wrexham and Newport and the other was that Flint Town taught me that dependent on exactly where you are the North Walian accent could have a trace of Scouse on it.

As I was closer to the ground heard no sounds of a match or saw supporters moving in. Noticed ticket offices being boarded up, Eventually from a small gap I'd noticed....no football...indeed not even passing birds on the pitch. As I said on my return to our friends' house wherever Barry Town were playing it was not Jenner Park.

Further investigations by daughter revealed the phrase "venue to be decided" on the internet. I found out later that they'd played Goytre United at Goytre's ground. The opposite fixture will be next Saturday, useless to me as I'll be working.

Ah well...

Until the next time,

F Scott Fitzgerald and An Ordinary Reader Becoming Literary Switzerland

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

I am an ordinary man with an ordinary not special job but I do like to read which has been one of the most consistent things in my life. But I've never been involved in the book industry in anyway. Not even working in that rarest of places now a bookshop. And what I mean by all of that is that whilst I have opinions on writers and books I cannot claim that it's complete. Other things (ie life) interferes. So what's going to be said is on the understanding that with the writers I'm going to chat about my opinion is based on the books I've read so far.

That being said when faced with reading a book by a "great" writer then liking it is obviously fine. You are in tune with accepted opinion. Funnily enough hating it is equally ok. For you disliked it for a reason and can passionately argue your case. As I've mentioned before of the books I've read nothing has wavered from my view that D H Lawrence is a writer of pretentious tosh and would not be remembered today if it wasn't for Lady Chatterley's Lover. There is also John Galsworthy, author of The Forsythe Saga series of books ..well words fail me...as they do him.

But F Scott Fitzgerald is in a special category. I've finished The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories. That makes two novels (not Gatsby) and a collection of short stories that has been read so far and my position on him that I mentioned when I started the book has not changed. For like The Simpsons and Star Wars with Fitzgerald I am neutral,I am literary Switzerland.

And neutrality is a very difficult position to explain when discussing a writer deemed to be "great". Because being neutral makes you feel you've missed something whereas hating it makes you think everyone else is wrong.

If we take the title story of a person who ages backwards physically and mentally well it was all entertaining enough but then again so was Under Siege with Steven Seagal. When you let your brain go beyond first gear then holes in the story begins to show.

Other stories in the collection were contrived pieces of machinery where you almost felt as if you were reading a literary service manual. But, (and it's a big but) all of the stories were readable. The trouble is at no time did I feel I was in the presence of greatness

So the new Penguin from the great unread is:

Barbara Greene - Too Late To Turn Back

Barbara Greene was a cousin of Graham Greene. This is an account of a trip they made together to Liberia. This is from the Penguin Travel Library Series of the early eighties. Worth a read I think.

Until the next time.

I'm Fifty Two......But Not Immune To Flattery

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well on Wednesday I went to have my hair cut. I'd not been for a while and it was looking a bit wild.

The hairdresser is the lady I've mentioned before in this blog,the fellow reader.

Everything seems to be going as normal. She still has never been to Maesteg despite it being only half an hour away and on seeing that the book I'm reading is Benjamin Button (and other stories) by F Scott Fitzgerald says that although not having read the book she saw the film and thought it was good. (I've not seen the film but suspect it's better than the source material,having the advantage of time and special effects).

But then something odd happened. Despite the fact that she's been my hairdresser for a few years, that she knows my instructions are as specific as "just a trim" she suddenly got a razor and went for my hair as if in an Australian sheep shearing competition.

Silver tufts fell to the ground. The floor looked as if a community of aged hedgehogs decided to congregate in Bridgend. Thankfully she stopped leaving me a look best described as just short (or should I say long) of US marine.

A bit dazed I pay what I owe and leave. When the wife sees it she says she likes it. Well OK, but of course she married me so well there we are then.

We now move (or should I say cut) to yesterday (Thursday). I'm at work. I'm chatting to a pretty blonde lady in her late twenties. Out of the blue she remarks that she likes my hair. I'm stunned at this. Later in answer to her question I say I don't feel the cold round my head.

Now let me be clear here. Neither of us was flirting and even if I was intending to have an affair I'm under no illusions that a young woman would consider a relationship with a fifty two year old man with an occasional back problem. Still, I was flattered.

And then it happened again.

I will admit that I was more disconcerted than the first time. Nonetheless I thanked..... him for the complement.

So I'm now in the position that after fifty two years on this planet the hairstyle on my head that is attractive to others is that of near skinhead. I'm not sure what it all means except perhaps I should look forward to going bald.

Until the next time.

Man vs Beast,When Biographies Should Be Recategorised,Cookery Books And When You're Out Of Step

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Hunting for pleasure can in my view never be justified. However yesterday I felt a visceral primeval gratification when I killed an animal.

That animal being a house fly.

Not just any house fly. A house fly that has been taunting me with its presence for days.A house fly that buzzed me in the face whilst I was asleep in front of the football. A house fly that mocked me a few days ago when I thought I'd killed it only to hover around a few hours afterwards.

It was it or me. It was war.

And so high noon. Or rather grey morning around ten came on Thursday. I walked into the kitchen and there it was.....on the window.

With a move my caveman ancestors would have been proud of I grabbed a tea towel and flicked it at the beast. Next time it was seen it was on the ledge. Legs up. Dead.

I gave it a watery send off down the sink.

I am man...hear me domestically roar.

Well I've finished Higher than Hope. The authorised biography of Nelson Mandela by Fatima Meer. As a biography it's flawed simply because of it's out of date almost from it's publication. The edition I read was first published in 1988 but this print was published in 1990. So since the book was published he was released from jail, divorces Winnie Mandela ,remarries and becomes President of his country.

So as a biography then it has it's problems. However don't forget that it was an authorised piece of work (authorised don't forget whilst Mandela was still in prison). Also as a chronicle of the political process in the fight against apartheid I haven't read a better book. It also details the pressures from the white security services that his family especially Winnie Mandela was put under. Something that needs to be borne in mind when people feel like judging her from the comfort of their living rooms.

It also prints extracts from Nelson Mandela's letters from prison. It hints at the generosity of spirit that we all learnt he had when he was released. Speaking personally if I was incarerated for decades whilst fighting for the freedom of an oppressed majority I doubt I would have this. Which is probably why he is such a great figure for us all.

Perhaps then this book should be recategorised. Perhaps then as it's not a cut and paste job it should be considered as a history book with a central character. Because it's a book that deserves to be read.

So then it's time to pick out a book from the great unread. This was the first that came up.

Elizabeth David - Italian Food

Now I must be honest and say that there are a number of cookery books in the house where the only thing that touches them once it's put on the bookshelf is dust. I will also admit that if this book did not have a white coloured spine it would not have been bought famous writer though  Elizabeth David is. Still it's here and I have it so I'll need to do something.

Well...you probably have guessed this by now...I'm going to go through every recipe. It's not going to be quick (won't be able to start this till at least two weeks for various reasons and it will be haphazard in its frequency). Also as this is Bridgend and not Bologna I'm quite happy to compromise where necessary. So if a recipe demands a mushroom that can only be obtained on a remote mountain in Tuscany well forget that. It's the supermarket mushrooms I'll go to instead. And you know what, as much as is possible that supermarket is going to be Aldi or Lidl. Just to see whether without going through specialist shops you could reproduce something close to the recipe (not saying exactly mind, but as long as it's tasty that's success enough for me).

Of course what this means is that I need another Penguin book to read. From the great unread comes this.

F Scott Fitzgerald - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Six Other Stories

You know there are some writers where as a reader you're out of step with most other people judged on the books you have read knowing that you haven't read everything. So if we take D H Lawrence for example based on the books I have read I'm firmly of the view that if it wasn't for the notoriety of Lady Chatterly's Lover he wouldn't be remembered today. The last book I read of his. Kangaroo, was just aimless tosh.

With F Scott Fitzgerald I've read two books and with both I feel I'm in a position which is more out of step than just dislike. It's neutrality. He just doesn't do it for me either way. Cannot explain why. Let's see if this makes any difference.

Until the next time.