Reading, Writing, Sauntering About in March

I’ve already admitted that I’ve not managed the TBR Double Dare this month of only reading from the books I already own. It doesn’t mean I won’t try again over the coming months, though!

So what else have I been up to this month?

1) Reading:

I’ve read 12 books this month, of which 6 may be classified as crime fiction, 5 are from the TBR pile (hurrah!), but only 2 translations (initially, I thought three of them were, but one turns out to have been written in English by a Polish author). Must try harder…

I did manage to read two books for Stu’s East European Reading Month Challenge:

Vladimir Lorchenkov: The Good Life Elsewhere (also qualifies for Global Reading Challenge – Moldova – Europe)

A.M. Bakalar: Madame Mephisto -this is the one that tricked me into believing it was a translation, set in Poland and England.

I reviewed two books for Crime Fiction Lover, as different as they could possibly be: the start of a cosy crime series set in Wales, The Case of the Dotty Dowager by Cathy Ace, and the very dark, very despairing Fatale by Jean-Patrick Manchette.

The other crime or psychological thriller type novels I read this month were: Tom Rob Smith’s The Farm (no review yet), Belinda Bauer’s The Shut Eye, Helen Fitzgerald’s Dead Lovely and Laura Kasischke’s Mind of Winter. Of this genre, the two most memorable (and, in this case, haunting) were Fatale and Mind of Winter.

I also read Maggie Hannan’s hugely influential debut volume of poetry Liar, Jones (1995). It’s very different from any poetry I’ve recently read: more muscular, more playful, more deliberately obfuscating and difficult. Not quite my type of poetry, but there was a lot of fun and exploration. There were no efforts to be ‘poetic’, pretty or lyrical. I particularly enjoyed the poems addressed to or about Jones and the Diary of Eleni Altamura (a real historical character, an amazing Greek woman who dressed as a man in order to study painting, but tragically lost her children and thenceforth gave up her art).

Finally, I also read two of the buzzed-about books of 2014: Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves (moving but over-long) and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (not reviewed yet). I wonder if the buzz did them more harm than good in my eyes, as both of them were good pieces of fiction, with passages of very beautiful and perceptive writing, yet somehow failed to wow me overall. Perhaps my expectations had been set too high or perhaps I should stop reading reviews beforehand?

2) Writing

I’ve set an ambitious goal for myself for this year: to write my second novel by September and submit it to an agent (which means it’s got to be better than first draft quality, obviously). However, considering that I only started the first page at the end of February (although I had planned most of it out in my head already, bar the ending), and given my chronic inability to find time to write, I thought I would give myself an achievable goal for the first month: one page a day (about 8000-9000 words). May sound like nothing more than  day’s writing for some of you, but to me it was a mountain to climb. I know I need to up my game, though, in terms of quality and quantity, over the months to come.

3) Flannelling around

I was going to use the term above, based on the French ‘flâneur’, someone who is walking around aimlessly on the grand boulevards, but the English word actually means something very different. Far be it from me to try and flatter or mislead you! What I mean of course is ‘sauntering’ or ‘gallivanting’ about. This means I had a great time in Lyon, at the Quais du Polar, which is the highlight of my year in crime. I’ve just written a thorough round-up of my first impressions for the Crime Fiction Lover website today, but there’ll be a few posts to follow on this blog, with further details, pictures, lessons learnt and some great quotes.

Sunday Showcase: My Not Quite So Abstinent Haul of Books

I refuse to preface each week’s post with ‘I know I said I would buy no more books but…’. No apologies! It’s my money and I’ll spend it all on books and go bankrupt if I want to. (Besides, I know where my boys’ piggy banks are…)

Bought

So yes, I did splurge on the Manchette collection of noir novels (in French). With that and the Simenon romans dur, I do believe I am sorted for reading in French until about 2020.

I also bought the first two BD in the excellent Cellule Poison series by Laurent Astier – set in the Europol centre in Lyon, so pretty much local.

I’m always keen to read more poetry and support poets by buying their books (anybody feeling sorry for authors in general should stop and consider how much money poets make from selling their books). So I bought Maggie Hannan’s debut collection ‘Liar, Jones’ – I have heard good things about her brave, experimental exploration of feminine sensibilities and experience.

Sent for Review

Also shown in the picture: I got sent a book to review by the Oxford University Press: Hester Vaizey’s ‘Born in the GDR: Living in the Shadow of the Wall’. It talks about the changes the fall of the Berlin Wall brought into the lives of eight formerly East German citizens. One of my best friends is a born and bred East Berliner, so I was curious to see how her experience compares to that of Vaizey’s interviewees. Besides, I come from a former Communist state myself and it’s fascinating to see how those vanished (and once much hated) political states are remembered (often nostalgically) 25 years after.

Library

I am so overdue on some of my library books (because more pressing reads get in the way) that I think my membership will be revoked. However, I still managed to sneak out an additional book, namely Joan Smith: What Men Say.  Smith is a writer,journalist and human rights activist. Her Loretta Lawson novels were popular in the early 1990s (when I first moved to Britain) as a crime fiction writer with a feminist bent, but they seem to have fallen into oblivion since. I look forward to reading (or rereading – I can’t remember which of the 5 books I’ve already read) and seeing if I feel the same about them now as an older (but possibly not wiser) feminist.

Addendum

I had just written all of the above, when the postman rang the doorbell and delivered another beautiful round of parcels. Is there anything better than receiving books? It’s like Christmas every week! Here is the additional haul (apologies for the poor lighting conditions):

Technically speaking, not mine at all! I just ordered them for the children, so it surely doesn’t count. Did you read any of these when you were a child, or are you reading them to your children now? Aren’t they brilliant? I sometimes think children’s literature is better than literature for adults.