Reading in 2016 so far
Sunday, 24 January 2016 02:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
byslantedlightI've been reading Pros fic this year too, mostly old favourites so far, but I have been reading book-books too. I posted about The Poisonwood Bible, and I'm determined this year to keep up with reading posts - so!
The second book I finished this year was actually Terry Pratchett's Truckers (The First Book of the Nomes, which I bought before Christmas undecided about whether my nephew would be old enough for it yet (I suspect not quite), and deciding that since I'd meant for years to read it myself anyway - well, that I should. *g*
And it's such a fun book - just as you'd expect of Pratchett! It's also lighter than the Discworld books, which is also to be expected as this is officially a "children's book" - but it's still full of very grown-up insights into life, and worth reading at any age, I reckon. It's all a sort of relativity. The faster you live, the more time stretches out. To a nome, a year lasts as long as ten years does to a human. Remember it. Don't let it concern you. They don't. They don't even know. Okay, so that's all about nomes (and why we can't see them - they move so fast! *g*), but think about how elastic time is - the way you can jam so much more into it when you're young and moving faster and just getting on and doing it. Being settled in my own place is weird like that - time rushes by and I get nothing done, even though in theory I have all the time in the world. It's cos I'm here, in one place, all slowed-down... Well, that's what I reckon - and whether it's true enough, Truckers made me think about it!
The story is about the nomes who live "Outside" moving away and discovering that there are thousands of nomes (and what the word "thousand" means...) who live "Inside" - in Arnold Bros (est. 1905). Except that Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is having a final closing down sale, and even after Masklin has managed to convince the Inside nomes that it's true, there's still the problem of working out how to save them all. Masklin and the Outside nomes, of course, hitched a ride on a lorry. But how would you get thousands of nomes on a lorry - and more importantly, how could you make the lorry go where you wanted it to...? *g* And behind everything else, we find out that the nomes aren't actually from around here at all, inside or outside. They don't quite understand it yet, but their Thing - their Flight Navigation Computer - tells them so. It's woken up...
This is just a hugely fun story that makes you think and giggle at the same time - one of my favourite kinds... *g*
My third books was Cry, the Beloved Country, assigned to me for the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
books1001 community (and reviewed over there too, so sorry if you're a member and seeing this bit twice). I'm afraid I put off reading this for a long time, partly because of life, but also partly because I was confusing it with the film Cry Freedom, also set in apartheid South Africa, but about Steve Biko. It wasn't that Cry Freedom wasn't an excellent film, it was that I knew it would be a difficult book to read, and perhaps needed easier times in which to read it. My first book read this year was The Poisonwood Bible, also set in Africa (the Congo), and when I'd finished I knew I wanted to read more African books, and so at last I picked up Cry, the Beloved Country. And of course it was a completely different book to the one I was expecting! But it begins There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. - and I was caught. Beyond any singing of it...
In many ways it was exactly what I'd been expecting from Cry Freedom - Cry, the Beloved Country is about life in South Africa under apartheid, and the truth of it, which is harsh. It was about the terrible things that human beings do to each other, even to the people they love, and the ways that this can rebound on us, and the way hope drains away to despair. But it's also about the corners of beauty that people have inside them, the little kindnesses that they do for each other that can also turn into bigger things, and this kept me reading.
The first half of this book tells the story of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo, the umfundisi (parson) of a remote rural village. He is called to Johannesburg on behalf of his sister, but takes the opportunity to search for his son at the same time. Both have lost themselves in the difficulties of the city, entangled with others who are trying to deal with life itself, and with the mess that is life under apartheid. This book is the story of what he finds, and in the way that its written, it also shows us why he finds it.
The second half of the book turns to other people involved in the story, and particularly of the white man who coincidentally lives near Kumalo's village, and seems to lose the things he holds dear, just as Kumalo has done. The second half of the books is really the what happens next part - it could be that both men withdraw into themselves and let the cycle of despair carry on around them, but in their different ways this isn't what happens. It's not a glorious-sunburst-happy-ever-after ending, it's real and perhaps best of all it's possible - and I think that's what I took from the book most of all. That good is possible too, and that it starts with the doing of it in the face of despair.
I was a little thrown by the way the story is written - no quotation marks, but dashes to show that something is spoken rather than thought. I think perhaps this is to remind us that we're reading something outside our expected this-is-how-things-are-done rules and norms. There are no quotation marks in Zulu, there is what is said. The lack of this "norm" vanishes in the rhythm and song of the writing though, which pulls you in to the minds of the characters, and the rush of the city and the dust of the village. I found myself sung to tears, at one point.
Something else that reminded me I was reading about things that are non-norms to myself, was the way that Kumalo and other characters thought of things, and thoughts, and what they had to say or do, as heavy. This wasn't just slang, in a Marty McFly way, it was something that meant something - when Kumalo, or the Chief at Ndotsheni spoke of things being heavy, they meant weight-of-the-heart, things that had to be thought about, and felt, and weighed against other things before they could be acted on - even if this was "simply" through an answer being given, or whether someone held out a hand to another, or simply nodded farewell.
And I think what makes this a book worthy of inclusion in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is that it's full of insight and wisdom and beautiful writing - but none of this gets in the way of the reading of it. It's written so that you want to keep reading, you want to know, and to find out about the people, the place, the country, the reasons for it all - and because of that, the insight and wisdom and beautiful writing sinks in until it's part of you, not "just" another book at all. It helps us understand.
Definitely well worth reading.
And this means that I've also read 2/24 books from my Mount TBR Challenge, where I said I'd try for Mount Blanc - 24 books. Here's the mountain - two down!
The second book I finished this year was actually Terry Pratchett's Truckers (The First Book of the Nomes, which I bought before Christmas undecided about whether my nephew would be old enough for it yet (I suspect not quite), and deciding that since I'd meant for years to read it myself anyway - well, that I should. *g*And it's such a fun book - just as you'd expect of Pratchett! It's also lighter than the Discworld books, which is also to be expected as this is officially a "children's book" - but it's still full of very grown-up insights into life, and worth reading at any age, I reckon. It's all a sort of relativity. The faster you live, the more time stretches out. To a nome, a year lasts as long as ten years does to a human. Remember it. Don't let it concern you. They don't. They don't even know. Okay, so that's all about nomes (and why we can't see them - they move so fast! *g*), but think about how elastic time is - the way you can jam so much more into it when you're young and moving faster and just getting on and doing it. Being settled in my own place is weird like that - time rushes by and I get nothing done, even though in theory I have all the time in the world. It's cos I'm here, in one place, all slowed-down... Well, that's what I reckon - and whether it's true enough, Truckers made me think about it!
The story is about the nomes who live "Outside" moving away and discovering that there are thousands of nomes (and what the word "thousand" means...) who live "Inside" - in Arnold Bros (est. 1905). Except that Arnold Bros (est. 1905) is having a final closing down sale, and even after Masklin has managed to convince the Inside nomes that it's true, there's still the problem of working out how to save them all. Masklin and the Outside nomes, of course, hitched a ride on a lorry. But how would you get thousands of nomes on a lorry - and more importantly, how could you make the lorry go where you wanted it to...? *g* And behind everything else, we find out that the nomes aren't actually from around here at all, inside or outside. They don't quite understand it yet, but their Thing - their Flight Navigation Computer - tells them so. It's woken up...
This is just a hugely fun story that makes you think and giggle at the same time - one of my favourite kinds... *g*
My third books was Cry, the Beloved Country, assigned to me for the books1001 community (and reviewed over there too, so sorry if you're a member and seeing this bit twice). I'm afraid I put off reading this for a long time, partly because of life, but also partly because I was confusing it with the film Cry Freedom, also set in apartheid South Africa, but about Steve Biko. It wasn't that Cry Freedom wasn't an excellent film, it was that I knew it would be a difficult book to read, and perhaps needed easier times in which to read it. My first book read this year was The Poisonwood Bible, also set in Africa (the Congo), and when I'd finished I knew I wanted to read more African books, and so at last I picked up Cry, the Beloved Country. And of course it was a completely different book to the one I was expecting! But it begins There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it. - and I was caught. Beyond any singing of it...In many ways it was exactly what I'd been expecting from Cry Freedom - Cry, the Beloved Country is about life in South Africa under apartheid, and the truth of it, which is harsh. It was about the terrible things that human beings do to each other, even to the people they love, and the ways that this can rebound on us, and the way hope drains away to despair. But it's also about the corners of beauty that people have inside them, the little kindnesses that they do for each other that can also turn into bigger things, and this kept me reading.
The first half of this book tells the story of the Reverend Stephen Kumalo, the umfundisi (parson) of a remote rural village. He is called to Johannesburg on behalf of his sister, but takes the opportunity to search for his son at the same time. Both have lost themselves in the difficulties of the city, entangled with others who are trying to deal with life itself, and with the mess that is life under apartheid. This book is the story of what he finds, and in the way that its written, it also shows us why he finds it.
The second half of the book turns to other people involved in the story, and particularly of the white man who coincidentally lives near Kumalo's village, and seems to lose the things he holds dear, just as Kumalo has done. The second half of the books is really the what happens next part - it could be that both men withdraw into themselves and let the cycle of despair carry on around them, but in their different ways this isn't what happens. It's not a glorious-sunburst-happy-ever-after ending, it's real and perhaps best of all it's possible - and I think that's what I took from the book most of all. That good is possible too, and that it starts with the doing of it in the face of despair.
I was a little thrown by the way the story is written - no quotation marks, but dashes to show that something is spoken rather than thought. I think perhaps this is to remind us that we're reading something outside our expected this-is-how-things-are-done rules and norms. There are no quotation marks in Zulu, there is what is said. The lack of this "norm" vanishes in the rhythm and song of the writing though, which pulls you in to the minds of the characters, and the rush of the city and the dust of the village. I found myself sung to tears, at one point.
Something else that reminded me I was reading about things that are non-norms to myself, was the way that Kumalo and other characters thought of things, and thoughts, and what they had to say or do, as heavy. This wasn't just slang, in a Marty McFly way, it was something that meant something - when Kumalo, or the Chief at Ndotsheni spoke of things being heavy, they meant weight-of-the-heart, things that had to be thought about, and felt, and weighed against other things before they could be acted on - even if this was "simply" through an answer being given, or whether someone held out a hand to another, or simply nodded farewell.
And I think what makes this a book worthy of inclusion in the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die is that it's full of insight and wisdom and beautiful writing - but none of this gets in the way of the reading of it. It's written so that you want to keep reading, you want to know, and to find out about the people, the place, the country, the reasons for it all - and because of that, the insight and wisdom and beautiful writing sinks in until it's part of you, not "just" another book at all. It helps us understand.
Definitely well worth reading.
And this means that I've also read 2/24 books from my Mount TBR Challenge, where I said I'd try for Mount Blanc - 24 books. Here's the mountain - two down!
