How to Build a Girl
Caitlin Moran
I had almost neglected to write this review, seeing as it has been so over-reviewed already, but when I saw a friend reading it and laughing all the way through, I felt the need to offer my thoughts.
All those who know Caitlin Moran know her story by now - a clever girl raised on a council estate who lands a teenage writing prize and goes on to blag a column in The Times. Moran insists that How to Build a Girl is fiction, but it is hard to distance this novel from her own reality.
But it is not the plot of this novel that I want to celebrate, rather the little snippets of hilarity that are simultaneously completely familiar and obsurely unique. The teenage self-consiousness that convinces Johanna Morrigan she is singularly responsible for her family's poverty. The misreading of social convention that makes dressing solely in black seem like the best idea, and her mother's concern that she is acting like a dark crow that has decended upon the household. The naivety that allows her to have so much sex and so few orgasims.
Whether or not you like that fact that Moran seems to only write about one thing, you cannot deny the fact that she is honest, realistic and frankly hilarious.
The Adventures of Superhero Girl
Faith Erin Hicks
This unexpected treat I found in the children's section of Cardiff Central Libraries, during a day I spent "researching" the resources there. (I was finding materials for story time and got distracted in the graphic section.)
Superhero Girl is a completely terrible superhero, especially compared to her brother, who takes on the world and handles the fame of his status with ease and composure.
And yet it is Superhero Girl that I would like to be - terrible with romance, impoverished by lack of income, and pretty useless at maintaining her secret identity. Her missions are somewhat mediocre - rescuing cats from trees, placating her overzealous mother, etc. - but that makes it all the more brilliant when her arch-nemesis finds himself chosing between continuing in a career of evil and a more conventional profession.
This comic stemmed from a blog, which you can find here: http://superherogirladventures.blogspot.co.uk/; and author Faith Erin Hicks is very vocal and entertaining on social media. She is definitely worth following.
The Hare with the Amber Eyes
Edmund de Waal
I am not much of a reader of biographies - only those of specific individuals I admire. But in order to see how Cardiff librarians run their book clubs, I thought I would read this and attend the meeting at Cathays.
Edmund de Waal has a fascinating family history, spanning many nations, and measured in this book by the presence of netsuke, small Japanese figures collected by his ancestors. They are initially collected by Charles Ephrussi, a Russian immigrant in Paris, at the height of their popularity. The figures move from here, to Vienna, to England and finally back to Japan with de Waal's uncle, Iggy.
I really enjoyed reading through the context of the journey - learning the details of the Ephrussi's attempts at assimilation into Vienna between the wars, and their eventual exclusion from the city during the Nazi reign. They were an incredibly adaptable family, spreading themselves through Europe and later into South America and the far East. And yet, despite their best efforts, anti-Semitism was too ripe to bring the family peace.
Some elements of the story seemed too good to be true - many of the family's fortunes came thanks to their wealth, but the survival of the netsuke was incredible. During the Nazi occupation, the Ephrussi household was taken over by the Nazi bureaucracy, and their property was scattered amongst the Ayrian elite. But the netsuke escaped attention, and were smuggled to safety in the folds of the apron of the family maid.
I would have liked to have learned more about de Waal's grandmother, Elisabeth. She was the daughter of the glamorous Baroness Emmy, a fashionable, sophisticated woman - but unlike her mother, Elisabeth had little fashion sense and was a determined, academic young woman. She fought for her education, and later fought to get her family out of Vienna during the Second World War. And after the war, she fought to regain possession of all the art and property her family lost during the Nazi occupation. I admired Elisabeth, a woman who seemed completely ahead of her time.
The end of the novel left me wondering what might happen next to the netsuke and to the Ephrussi family, now diluted by marriage and spread across the world.
Howl, Kaddish, and other poems
Allen Ginsberg
Andrew McMillan is the reason for me reading Allen Ginsberg - I am just ashamed that it has taken me so long!
Reading this so soon after finishing Kerouac has slightly messed with my brain - I am starting to feel like part of the Beat Generation, like a young, disillusioned man, endlessly searching for truth and honesty and beauty.
Even now, Ginsberg's style seems unconventional - it must have shocked and awed when first published - with it's long, winding sentences, peculiar line breaks, and complete disregard for standard meter.
But all this adds to Ginsberg's power. He is angry and passionate and contemporary, though some of his words resonate with society today.
The images in Ginsberg's poetry are vivid and mesmerising. I can picture him sitting in a coach station on "great wooden shelves and stanchions posts and beams assembled floor to roof jumbled with baggage"; I see Ginsberg bent over his typewriter, wondering if his audience of the future "will [...] eat my poems or read them".
As I read 'Kaddish', I was gripped by Ginsberg's depth, his love for his mother and his battle between the guilt and the responsibility he feels. My heart broke for his strength through such adversity.
But the poem I loved most was 'Sunflower Sutra', an account of a day spent with his friend, Jack Kerouac, mulling over the beauty of the tiny details in the world around them; finishing in a loud, uplifting call to arms:
"we're all beautiful golden sunflowers inside."
Yes Please
Amy Poehler
My sister and I share a love for Amy Poehler like no other shared love (except maybe that felt towards our parents and brother... maybe).
I stumbled upon Parks and Recreations as 30 Rock neared it's final series, as I searched for a surrogate for my nerdy affections. Somehow, I managed to convince my sister to watch it, and now we constantly quote lines and recall clips at each other.
Yes Please is Amy Poehler's biography. She recounts the giggliness of her youth, the excitement of her early career, and the complexity of trying to have it all.
I have known for some time that I like the way Poehler writes, but this engages with a different literary form. In her biography, Poehler is honest and witty and generous towards her reader. Her style is that of a reluctant talker - she clearly prefers to make believe as Leslie Knope than to open up about herself. Every sentence raises more questions than it answers, revealing little snippets of her life but masking her darkest secrets.
Throughout the book, she discusses how difficult she found the process of writing, praising her friends who have helped her along the way. She also jumps between trains of thought - you embark on a chapter about her school days only to be led on a tangent towards an incident involving her beloved improvisation troupe, the Upright Citizen's Brigade.
Leslie Knope and Amy Poehler are both completely inspiring and amazing individuals, but this biography reveals just how talented an actor Poehler is - she is not as similar to Knope as I had expected, and I love that about her. I find myself reassured by the fact that she suffers from anxiety, and inspired by her attempts to be the best version of herself.
If you find yourself looking for something to read, read this.
On the Road
Jack Kerouac
London, Vintage
Oh the irony of this being the first book I am reading in my new life. This was meant to be the last book I read in my Staff Book Club, but due to life being mad over the holidays, I finished it a little later than usual.
In the late forties, Sal Paradise (what a name!) sets off from his aunt's home in New York on a series of national adventures. Dean Moriarty is the cause of each - an eccentric, energetic young man who inspires Sal to cross America to Denver, San Francisco and finally into Mexico. Their trips are fuelled with drugs, drink, and sex, and are enabled by hitch-hiking and borrowed cars.
Along the way, the men tell share everything with each other, from childhood memories to lose change to women. The novel explores masculinity in a time and place where the future seemed uncertain and the past haunted your every step. Young men were better educated than past generations; the threat of nuclear war hung over their heads, but they were not sent to Europe to fight on the front lines like their fathers. Equally, the American dream thrived in post-war success; and Sal and his friends push the boundaries of this ideal to the very limit.
On the Road is written in Kerouac's well-known stream of consciousness style (not that I would actually know, having never read his work before). Great paragraphs flow through the pages, describing scenes of marijuana-filled ecstasy or beer-crazed jazz clubs.
I didn't particularly like the characters in this book - the men were all selfish and the women were uninspiring - but I loved the way the story was told. Each part contained a new trip, with new faces and new towns. And each journey felt like a struggle - a battle with long, dull roads, against broken down cars and jobsworthy policemen, with limited money and no end goal.
But every time they returned to their normal lives, they found themselves bored of the mundane nature of the every day; so unable to stay still for long, Sal and Dean would set off again for another journey.
All it makes me want to do is book some flights. Somewhere. Anywhere.
Dear beloved reader,
In this new year, I am massively overhauling my life. I have a new job in a new home and a new car (something deemed not particularly exciting for some, but a highlight for me).
As such, the format of this blog will be changing a little. I will still write reviews, because I love to do it, but I will not write about every book I read - I will just offer you some of the highlights.
This is because the changes in my life mean I will have a little less time for reading and blogging, and I will be reading more of what I want to read, as opposed to reading to keep up to date for my job in a school.
However, I still want to be part of this vibrant community of writers and bloggers that I have seen flourish in the last few years.
So please let me continue.
Kind regards,
Katherine x
