Stepping lightly into twenty thirteen

When country singer Patsy Cline went out walking after midnight, we can be fairly certain she wasn’t after getting from A to B, nor was she looking to slim down and get fit. No, Patsy was after some soul searching. And walking for the soul has just hit its bookish straps. This is a soul walking blog with no mention  made of pedometers or lycra. Just strap on your metaphorical hiking boots and let’s get spiritual.

Many moons ago when I had long permed hair, listened to Woodstock Festival music and wore floaty tie-dye dresses, I read The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananada. It was all mind blowing, but I remember best the descriptions of spiritual walkers (lung-gom pa) who could take giant steps and sort of fly over the Himalayas. I wanted to do that so badly.

More recently I have stumbled on book after book where the main character just ups sticks and walks off into the wide blue yonder. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is a lovely, gentle read about a man who walks the length of England to make a long overdue apology, and in The Lighthouse, by Alison Moore, the main character, newly separated from his wife, goes on a “restorative walking holiday”. Both books made the 2012 Man Booker Prize long list. Is that a sign of the times or what?

But wait, there’s more … In The Year of the Hare  by Arto Paasilinna, a man involved in a minor car crash walks away from his career, his marriage and his friends and wanders around Finland with a hare in his pocket. All the men in these novels learn a lot about themselves, to the dismay/rage of their left-at-home wives.

Walking for the soul has a long history that shows no signs of dying out. In fact, it’s starting to look as if we are hardwired to want to do it. For example, the popularity of pilgrimages to locations such as  Santiago de Compostela has increased over time and the library has many resources to inspire pilgrim hopefuls.

How about you, have you ever wanted to walk out of the house - alone - and keep going until you can go no further? Have you wanted to slow right down and think your thinks while placing one foot in front of the other? And, most importantly, have you remembered to arrange for your significant other to come and fetch you when you have had enough?

If any of this has crossed your mind, maybe 2013 will be the year when we all seriously decide to walk the walk.

 

Seeking refuge in print this silly season?

C.S. Lewis once said that ”You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me”. Now there is a man after my own heart! But where do you start? There seems to be such a vast array of new titles and then there are those wonderful shelves of older books just waiting to be discovered. To top it all off, where are you going to find a book as good as the one you have just read? This is where we can help. Let me present:

• Books and Authors: Helps you decide what to read next by allowing searches by genre such as wagon train westerns (!)  Then there is the Who, What, When, Where function where you can  browse by character, subject, location and time period. So, if you are looking for books on a boxer in London, this is the place to start!
• NoveList Plus: a reading advisory tool suitable for all age groups. My favourite bit is using read-a-likes where you use a favourite author or series  to find others just like it.
• NoveList K8 Plus: Aimed at kids and teens, this resource will help them find new reading options using their favourite writers, books or stories as a starting point.

All of these resources and many more are at the Source. You can access them at any community library or from the comfort of home with your library card number and PIN. Let’s face it, with the roads and shops the way they are, if you can escape into a book and a cup of tea then you have found yourself a happy refuge!

 

Winning Maori reads

Stuck for something to read over the long weekend?  “Read on then!”  I say, I may have just the thing for you …

In case you missed it, I thought I would share the winners for the 2012  Ngā Kupu Ora Book Awards. According to the information on our website, these awards were established in 2009 by Massey University to mark Māori Language week and to celebrate and encourage excellence in Māori publishing.

Over the years these awards have recognised some fantastic books- many of which I have read. Some of my standouts include:

• Mau Moko: The World of Māori Tattoo by Ngahuia Te Awekotuku,
• Once upon a time in Aotearoa by Tina Makareti (who has just taken up a writers residency at The Weltkulturen Museum and is currently attending the Frankfurt Book Fair where NZ is the guest of honour)
• Ngā Tamatoa: The Price of Citizenship  (tells the story of C Company, Māori Battalion 1939-1945 by Monty Soutar
• Tōku Reo, Tōku Ohooho by Chris Winitana
• Tāhuhu Kōrero : The sayings of Tai Tokerau written by Merata Kawharu and Krzysztof Pfeiffer.

The winners this year do not disappoint and as the award categories are quite varied there is sure to be something to cater for all tastes.  The two I most want to read first from this year are:

Whatu Kākahu by Awhina Tamarapa.  (Te Mahi Toi/Arts, Architecture and Design category). This book looks at the art of weaving from everyday practical items such as the rourou (food basket)  through to those of immense cultural significance such as kākahu (cloaks).  The book features contributions from expert weavers and makes accessible some of the information relating to 40 of the cloaks from the Te Papa Tongarewa Māori Collection, accompanied by new images.  I am certain that reading this book will be an absolute feast for both the eyes and mind.

Ngā Waituhi o Rēhua, written by the late Dame Kāterina Te Heikōkō Mataira.  She was awarded the Te Tohu o nga kupu ora/ Lifetime Achievement Award.  A wonderful and most fitting acknowledgement for her colossal contribution to both the resurgence of Te Reo Māori and for her contribution to Māori publishing- not only did she author her own works, she also translated the work of many other authors into Te Reo Māori.  Out of curiosity I did a quick catalogue search – at CCL we have 72 items in our Collection that she either wrote or translated – a massive contribution to the body of literature available in print in the Māori Language.  I thought it was amazing.The story itself (Ngā Waituhi o Rēhua/The Chronicles of Rehua) is a YA novel written in Te Reo Māori that tells the story of four teenagers living on another planet (called Rēhua) following the destruction of Earth after global war and ecological disaster. The characters end up embarking on a quest to decipher a mysterious code. Sounds like just my cup of tea and I’m looking forward to getting into this over the weekend.  Roll on bedtime for small children I say!

If non-fiction is more your style and race relations and history interest you, you may like to try,  He kōrero: Words between us- First Māori- Pākehā Conversations on paper. This book traces Māori engagement with handwriting from 1769-1826 and explores the evolution of Māori- Pākehā relationships based around the written word However, if that sounds a little too heavy going for your long weekend or you prefer fiction you might like to try Rangatira by Paula Morris.

Have you read any of this year’s winners already?  If so what did you think?  Or do you have a stand out favourite from previous years that you would recommend as an absolute must read?

 

The book club years

A book about book clubs

After all the studying, the OE, and the child rearing – if you are anything like me, you will wake up one day and know that you want more. You want to read again. You want to talk to people about something other than breastfeeding and toilet training. It comes to you in a flash – you will join a book club.

You are not alone in this. Curious as to how many book clubs there are in Christchurch, I phoned around the local bookstores, contacted the WEA Book Discussion Scheme and, finally, sucked the left hand opposable digit. I estimate that Christchurch has at least 300 clubs, with an average of 10 members each: that’s over 3000 book clubbers. There’s even a male book club, but no mixed gender book clubs that I know of ….yet.

With so many of them around, you’d think it would be like falling off a blog to join a ready-made group. But over 30 years, in three book clubs (Cape Town, Durban and Christchurch) I’ve always had to start them from scratch. Need some help with this? Have a look at Christchurch City Libraries’ new book clubs web page which is full of useful tips.

What’s the appeal? It’s the discovery and sharing of great reads and new authors. But there is a lot more to it than that. For starters, creating your own book group means that you have a degree of event control beyond your wildest dreams. I have three non-negotiables:

• I will not bake for my book club meeting
• That said, I like a book club where all the other members are great bakers
• And this is the weird one: I will not read Jodi Picoult (the reasons for this are shrouded in the mists of time and don’t bear terribly close scrutiny)

Truth is: it’s your book club, you can do what you like. You can read prizewinning authors or trashy romances, meet in cafés or at home, eat vegan snacks, drink only red wine, have no books at all and use only e-readers. All you need is a small group of reasonably like-minded readers and you are on your way. Besides the obvious book talk, a book club can be a comfort through life’s challenging times: raising kids, divorces, marriages, career switches and ageing parents. We’re getting older ourselves – at last month’s meeting, arthritis had its little moment in the spotlight.

There are even books  about book clubs:

• The Jane Austen Book Club (Karen Fowler)
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer)
• The Book Club (Mary Alice Monroe)
•  Or No! I Don’t Want to Join a Bookclub by Virginia Ironside.

Even though we don’t always agree on a book (and passions can run high), my book club is my Happy Place and my book club ladies, world-wide, are my friends. You can’t say better than that now, can you?

 

Writing from the heart: An hour with Chris Cleave

What has been the best day of your life?

What has been the worst day of your life?

What do you hope for?

What do you fear?

These are the questions Chris Cleave poses hapless interviewees during the exhaustive formal research he conducts for each of his novels.

His informal research he characterises as “quite creepy” and involves stalking innocent members of the populace foolish enough to have heartfelt conversations on public transport.

Like any great hunter, Chris uses disguise and cunning, he sits behind his targets wearing unconnected ear buds, nods his head in time to the imaginary beats and captures their vocabulary, grammar and idiom. You have been warned. Stay alert for insanely grinning Englishmen, they want to pinch your charming Kiwi-isms.

Host Kate de Goldi, who described Chris’s books as “politicised, moral and completely readable”, asked Chris about his debut novel Incendiary. Written as an open letter to Osama Bin Laden from a grieving mother whose child died in an imagined London terror attack, it was due for release on 7/7/2005. Two thousand pre-publication posters depicting a smoking London city-scape and the words “What if?” were plastered all over the London Underground. Then that same day, the real London attacks kicked off, and Cleave, with his publishers, had the novel pulled from the shelves. This was for him a “fraught, frantic and complicated decision” but he still believes it was the right one.

The Geodome audience then paused for a few minutes while a bumble-bee drunk on the aroma from some onstage freesia was corralled and dealt to by festival organiser Morrin “No8 wire” Rout.

Chris next talked about the influence of parenthood on his work. Incendiary was written to mark the occasion of the birth of his first child and engaged with themes that previously had been purely abstract: grief at the loss of a child, injustice and the task of keeping loved ones safe in a potentially volatile and dangerous world.

Chris now dislikes his pre-fatherhood writing and characterised it as smug, self-reverential, full of ridiculous pyrotechnics and hubris. His youthful writing was in the pursuit of glory and was as a result terrible.

This self-analysis prompted New Zealand product design writer Michael Smythe to ask whether this was exclusively auto-critique on Chris’s part or whether another party had nudged him towards this realisation?

Cleave gleefully admitted that yes, several rejection letters for at least two full length manuscripts had eventually caused him to reconsider the direction of his writing. The fate of these rejected masterpieces, The Roadkill Cookbook and Tequilla Mockingbird, was not alluded to but the “rather charming” publishers’ rejection letters are filed in Chris’s big envelope of bitterness.

This was a delightfully wise and witty session from an author of compassion and curiosity, and from a man who isn’t afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve. I’m going to ask myself some of Chris’s questions but I suspect they will, rather like his novels, make my heart hurt.

 

In breaking news – Neil Cross wins the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel

It’s 9.39pm and I have just returned from The Great New Zealand Crime Debate, which acted, as was stated tonight, as either precursor or foreplay to the presentation of the Ngaio Marsh Award for Best Crime Novel 2012.  Tonight was another one of those events that you really should have gone to. Ms Scotland and I laughed till we cried, applauded loudly at many places, were vastly entertained and occasionally startled, and on one memorable occasion somewhat shocked by the proceedings.  Joycie will no doubt give a full run-down of the evening’s entertainment soon, but in the interests of getting the news out in a timely manner, I would now like to announce that the winner of the third annual Ngaio Marsh Award was Neil Cross, for his book Luther: the Calling.

Charmingly, he had made no preparations for winning, and had no speech prepared.  We therefore got an off-the-cuff acceptance speech about his wife’s hate mail, the time he nearly got killed (note: the word ‘killed’ here is a substitute for another word I hesitate to use on a family-friendly blog) and eaten on the way to a literary festival, and how much in love with New Zealand he still is.

A big congratulations to all the short-listed finalists, and especially to Neil Cross, as well as a really big thank you to The Pres Christchurch Writers Festival organisers, who once again provided a fantastic evening’s entertainment.  Well done all, and THANKS – we love you!

 

Jeffrey Eugenides: the interview

On the day that I was down to chat to Jeffrey Eugenides, he had already been interviewed by Kim Hill early that morning, been a participant in the session The Future of the Novel, signed about a gazillion copies of his book and somehow lost his assistant.

Even though I bet all he wanted by that stage was a beer and a burger, he was easy to chat to – forthcoming and attentive, the perfect gentleman. But it does go some way toward explaining why (in the photograph that was taken when we’d finally worked out where he was next expected to be), the poor man looks quite curdled by it all!

In fact, he looked a lot like the Talking Heads quote in the front of his book The Marriage Plot:

And you may ask yourself, Well how did I get here?
And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful house.
And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful wife

On with the interview:

Christchurch Library users love your books! One of the questions I have been asked recently is: “If I loved Middlesex, will I like The Marriage Plot?” Do you think this new book will appeal to your existing fans or will it attract a whole new readership?

Well, my books tend to be not very like each other. So each time I write a book, sometimes I change my style – the way I write the book – so if someone is looking for Middlesex 2 they might be disappointed. But if they like my writing and my sensibility, the reading experience my books have provided them, I would think that they will also like this book. In some ways I think it is my best book, so I hope that they would like it, but sometimes people have a huge affection for Middlesex and it might be more difficult for them to love this book.

One of the differences between the two books is that Middlesex has a huge cast of characters and The Marriage Plot has a focus on only three main characters. Did that change your writing a lot?

This book is very much about character and it is the first time I have gone deeply, deeply into the psychology of people. The canvas in Middlesex is broader – it’s more populated but the characterisation is not as searching. Whereas in The Marriage Plot, I’ve dug quite deeply into what these characters think and feel, the verisimilitude of those characters in other words.

Perhaps that’s why I ended up being able to identify with all the main female characters in the book in one way or another. Madeleine when I was younger, her mother now and even her sister, Allie, who appears about three quarters of the way through the book.

Well, I hope that means that it will be a relatively easy book for people to find some points of connection with – certainly that was one of my intentions.

Are you a re-reader of books?

If I have a book that I love, I read it many times so I can find out more about how it is put together. When I first read a book I’m just figuring out what the story is, taking in the book but when I read it the third and fourth time I start to see the architecture of it. This is very helpful for me as a writer.

I’m not normally a re-reader of books, there is just so much other stuff out there that I want to get stuck into. But I did re-read parts of The Marriage Plot because I struggled to synthesize the literary aspects of the book (Madeleine’s research and readings) and the plot line at the same time. Have other people had a similar difficulty?

Well, I think there are two ways of reading the book. A certain kind of reader likes to read just for the story and another one can read it for the dual levels, the literary metatextual structure of the book, that the book is commenting in some ways on the traditional marriage plot. There is no right or wrong way to read a book, in my opinion.

Would my reading of The Marriage Plot been enhanced had I more knowledge of the writers that Madeleine was studying in her Semiotics course?

I don’t think so. I know that some readers become somewhat intimidated in so-called Books About Books. In the case of The Marriage Plot, the reference to the books Madeleine is studying is really there to help the reader enter into that world. They are like the props in that world. You don’t have to know how the props are made or where they come from, you just need to use the props to help position yourself, as the reader, in a certain time and place. So I would say, do not worry about any of that. The books are just the furniture of the novel.

It took nine years to write this book. Madeleine must feel like a part of your family. Do you ever wonder what would happen to her next?

No, she does not live outside of the book for me and when I finish a story about any character, it is because their story is finished. I am not a writer of sequels.

Madeleine is a very reactive character. Almost all her decisions are made for her by the men in her life. I worry about her, I really do.

Yes this is a woman who thinks she can save a troubled man by loving him, she is in a way ensnared by her feelings to be good and helpful. But I do think she gets some degree of clarity about herself by the end of the novel.

The Marriage Plot is a great read and, I think, it has the best ending ever. Tell us a little bit more about how you got to this perfect ending.

I certainly didn’t build up to it, it really came to me right at the end. And I must say I am very pleased with it as well.

What’s the main difference, in your opinion between The Pulitzer Prize and The Man Booker Prize?

That’s easy, the Booker Prize we care about in America but the Pulitzer Prize is not particularly cared about in Britain.

If you could go back to university now, and study anything that you liked, what would it be?

Can I be young?

Yes I’ll let you be young!

Science and history – I would broaden my education.

How important have libraries been in your life?

We had a bookish home in my childhood. We had lots of books on our shelves and this had a fairly profound effect on me. But we did use the public libraries as well.

What’s Princeton Public Library like?

My daughter’s there all the time. It’s a beautiful place but libraries are not as quiet as they used to be. I miss that, I remember when they were church quiet, there was a sense of sanctity about them. That said, in Princeton, the library is the anchor of the community – people of all ages are going there all the time. I believe you can borrow e-books from libraries now, I am worried about that, how e-book use in the future will affect writers’ incomes and hence their ability to write.

Then out of the blue Jeffrey Eugenides asked me a question. He said:

Have you ever fasted?

A girl can only take this one of two ways: you look as if you need to (fast that is) or: I’m getting really hungry now. Time to end the interview methinks!

 

Chatting with Andrew Miller about Snowdrops and life

Andrew Miller is the author of Snowdrops (his first novel) which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2011. He is also the only author – correction – the only person in Auckland who asked me:

How are things in Christchurch?

Congratulations Andrew on your Booker shortlisting! How has this recognition changed your writing and your life?

Well, it changed my life in a very concrete way. Because of the Booker thing, my book got lots more attention than it otherwise would have. As a result of that I’ve kind of rejigged my life a bit. I only work part time now, the rest of the time I’m trying to write another novel. When I was writing Snowdrops, I wasn’t at all sure that it would even be published, so to have it noted by the Booker people was beyond my expectations. My confidence has grown as a result.

Do you read reviews of your books?

The literary world is a new one for me and I must confess it is not always a very collegial one. I do read them though, I’m not strong enough not to I’m afraid. It’s a bit like looking at road carnage, even when you try not to.

I take it from what you’ve said that you want to continue with writing fiction

I like being a journalist. I think it has lots of overlaps with fiction. But in terms of writing books I am going to concentrate on fiction. I want to have another crack at fiction – it is very challenging but very rewarding. There are a few parts of my book which I did to the best of my abilities and of which I am proud.

Which parts would those be?

Interestingly enough (as I like to think of myself as a nice guy), they are the dark parts of the novel which expose the nastiness, the psychological torture the people in the book are capable of.

Snowdrops is one of those books that has polarised my bookclub into those readers who love it and those who are disappointed in it because they define it by what it is not – it’s not a murder mystery, it’s not a love story, it’s not a travel book, so they have thwarted expectations. What sort of book is it?

The title Snowdrops is supposed to symbolise psychological things rather than criminal acts. I think the narrator thinks it is a love story, but I hope the reader can see that it is not. What is it then? I guess it’s a character study, it is a portrait of moral decline.

How often do people confuse you and Nick, the book’s narrator?

Often. In fact I thought of having a disclaimer in the front for my mother-in -law, so that she didn’t get herself all wound up about the really racy bits!

One of the aspects of the book that I loved was that the narrator was writing this story to his fiancee who remains resolutely off stage. I hated at the end when he says: now I’ve told you all of this “it’s up to you what you do with it”. I felt that was a cop-out on his part and just absolved him from responsibility.

Well, he’s that kind of guy – always avoiding responsibility. There is a note of passive aggression towards the fiancee which crescendos at the end. What are his feelings towards her? What indeed is his motivation for telling her the story in the first place? I think she’d be mad to marry him after all of this.

Has the book been well received in Russia?

The Russian translation hasn’t come out yet. I have had some criticism from some people about how it’s an overly bleak portrait of Moscow, but those people haven’t been Russians.

Did you visit libraries in Russia?

I didn’t use the libraries a lot but I lived quite close to Lenin Library. They tend to be very disciplined places, presided over by formidable women.

Are libraries important in your life now, back in England?

Well, as you probably know, libraries are under enormous pressure in England at the moment. Certainly my children use them all the time. Libraries play different roles in our lives at different times, and that is perhaps their real strength. We never outgrow them.

 

Goldilocks and the three blogs

My favourite festival cover this year.

It had to happen eventually – Goldilocks got tired of bears, their furniture and yucky porridge and took up blogging instead. Her first blog was too hard – she sweated bullets over that one, she really did. Her second blog was too long – she’d got life story and blogging all mussed up. But her third blog was just about right and Goldilocks really got into the swing of it and settled into a steady blogging rhythm.

Then she got sent to Auckland Writers and Readers Festival and that was when Goldilocks realised that there’s blogging and then there’s FESTIVAL BLOGGING. Four days of frantic reading, writing, interviewing and panicking. Colours seem brighter, ideas come faster and she never once thought of porridge. As for beds – that was where you collapsed at 2am, all blogged out. Turns out that festival blogging is like blogging on steroids. And Goldilocks found that she liked steroids!

Youth, hair and flouncing dresses way off to one side here, I’m the Goldilocks in this story. And after much deliberation, here are some of the authors that I am really looking forward to hearing,  meeting and definitely blogging on at AWRF this year.

• Jeffrey Eugenides – The Marriage Plot (better known for his Pulitzer prizewinner Middlesex)
• A.D. Miller – Snowdrops ( a first novel shortlisted for the 2011 Booker prize)
• Roddy Doyle – Bullfighting ( Winner of the 1993 Booker Prize with Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha)
• Kathy Lette – The Boy Who Fell to earth (Kathy must be the queen of the witty one-liner)

But first there’s the technology to master. So I took my new laptop to a wifi cafe for a trial run and prevailed on my waitperson to photograph me for this festival blog. In the first photo my nose looked too big. In the second my nose looked too…., you get where I am going with this. After the third shot, my waitron put the camera firmly back on the table and said:

You’re really excited about this festival thing aren’t you?

However did she guess?

 

Small but perfectly formed

Even if I stood on my head (especially if  I stood on my head), I have to face up to the fact that I am never going to carve a netsuke. Most of us came to know of these intricate little Japanese carvings from Edmund de Waal’s  family history The hare with amber eyes – winner of the 2010 Costa Biography Award.

So taken was I with the story of de Waal’s family and their netsuke , that I recently visited the netsuke collection at the Jewish Museum in Cape Town. There you will find two hundred beautifully presented little carvings, most no bigger than 3 centimetres in height.

Looking isn’t enough – my fingers itched to palm them. They are so perfectly tactile.

Imagine then my joy at discovering that we have several netsuke books in Christchurch Libraries. The latest offering is Carving Japanese netsuke for beginners by Robert Jubb. Let’s just say that until a netsuke book is written that starts at some subterranean level well below Beginners, I am going to have to love these little objects from the standpoint of an observer.

There are things I am never going to do that I never wanted to do: bowling, abseiling, yodelling. And then there are things I am never going to do because I can’t, carving netsuke for one. This should depress me, instead I feel uplifted that netsuke exist - so small and perfectly formed.

How about you? What’s your netsuke moment, the thing you’d love to do but never will because you know you can’t?