The tyranny of book lists

The Telegraph has released a list of 100 books that defined the noughties. It's interesting. It doesn't claim these are the best books written in the past decade; just the ones that have had the most impact on the book-reading (and even non-book-reading) populace.

Top of the list is J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - fair enough. The publishing world would certainly be a different place if it weren't for the boy wizard. As the author of the piece, Brian MacArthur notes, "If you don’t know what a Muggle is by now, you’re either Rip van Winkle or enormously stubborn."

He also points out the influence of the Richard and Judy book club (the 100 titles they selected sold 30 million copies), the politics of the Blair years, and the impact of the war on terrorism and the resulting conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the decade of the rise of the non-celebrity (Jade Goody) and the runaway best-seller (Dan Brown).

Of course, there are the usual spurious splutters of indignation from the faux-literati; "Can't believe you've not included..."; "Don't make me laugh"; "I'm not being a snob, but..."; "Are these things written to reflect the vox populai?"; "A list to give any aspiring writer who still has a clean conscience a lifelong stomach ache. Filled with trivia, morbidity, and sheer horror."; "You missed..." These from people who clearly didn't get the point of the article.

And MacArthur writes well - how about this description of Speaking for Myself by Cherie Blair - "Prime Minister’s wife turns into Lady Macbeth. The rest of the country cringes." - this one of Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss - "Bossy, humorous punctuation primer that taught us to love the semicolon." - or this of The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold - "Grim, grim grim: teenage girl is raped and murdered, and watches her family from heaven. Everyone loved it."

Naturally, being a list-loving Libran, the first thing I did was see how many books on the list I have actually read (14), how many are on my bookshelves waiting to be read (14) and how many others I might actually read having seen this list (19).

I say I love lists, but actually they tyrannise me. When I see such a list, I feel compelled to somehow validate myself by measuring up to it. And I end up buying more books. Every time we move house, we cart boxes and boxes of my books from place to place and yet I still buy more and go regularly to the library. It's a serious addiction.

I realised recently that even if I never buy another book and live to an average life expectancy, I won't be able to read all the books I own. It was a sobering thought. And yet I still buy them. I blame the reviews and the lists which point out failings in my literary knowledge. I think perhaps I need help.

Susan Hill has the same problem as me, but she is famous, so she has written a book about it. In Howard's End is on the Landing she describes how she eschewed bookshops for a year and only read books from her own bookshelves. She came up with a list of 40 books that "I think I could manage with alone, for the rest of my life". I don't think I need to read this list as it would only put more pressure on me.

Also, despite assurances that the book is "charming", I'm really not sure that I could cope with the envy sure to ensue from reading descriptions of cosy farmhouse life snug around the aga in the sumptuous kitchen while her Shakespearean scholar husband (I didn't know she was married to Stanley Wells) potters about in the background. They're bound to have a big ginger cat too.

Anyway, I have my own system. It's not exactly fool-proof, but it sort of works, and I do work my way through several of my volumes. I'll tell you about it in another post. Meanwhile, I've got some books to return to the library...

Hard work doesn't pay

Last weekend we went down to Invercargill so that Him Outdoors could run the Southland Marathon. It was celebrating its one hundredth anniversary and is the oldest full distance marathon in the Southern Hemisphere.

I hobbled around the 10km on a dodgy knee, and Him Outdoors ran the marathon in a personal best time (2:52:15) – he doesn’t really ‘do’ marathons unless they are off-road and over mountains.

But this isn’t really the point. What I noticed was that he was equal 23rd overall and 14th Master (a ‘Master’ is over 35 on race day). Twelve of the top 20 males were Masters. There were 33 Open men, and 159 Masters. In the women’s category the top two women were Masters. The ratio of Open to Masters was 17:58.

In the half-marathon, Bernie Portenski ran 1:27:27, the second fastest half marathon ever by a woman over 60. She was just over a minute outside the world record. I don’t suppose you heard about it.

You probably did hear about the LG Text championships, because it was on national news. The national ‘champion’ won $10,000 and a trip to New York to represent NZ in the world championships where the winner gets USD100,000.

Despite all the talk about battling obesity and pushing play, sport is not really encouraged for young folk. Obviously the bright lights and big dollars have allure. In real sport (from which I am excluding X-games, Monopoly, poker and paintball), there isn’t any for anything other than rugby. Hopefully the fantastic All Whites victory (although they might have to change that moniker in South Africa) might change this. But I doubt it.

Apart from some nationalistic flag waving, the Olympic rowing and cycling medals had little effect on the youth psyche. Why? Because it’s hard work. It’s a hell of a lot of training for a number of years to perhaps get a medal, and you probably won’t be that good. Early morning starts, quantified nutritional intake, sacrifices of nights out drinking and partying, commitment and dedication… Why not just press a few buttons or throw a few dice instead?

Peter Snell, John Walker, Murray Halberg, Dick Quax, Arthur Lydiard, Marise Chamberlain, Alison Roe – these are legendary names and rightfully so. They earned their reputation and respect by quite literally doing the hard yards.

Times have changed and what kids want these days, according to career surveys and interviews, is money and the ‘fame’. Often they have no concept that they actually have to earn that fame.

A friend of mine who interviewed potential hosts for a radio station told me that when she asked the candidates why they wanted to be on the radio, they nearly all said because they wanted to be famous – not a good journalist, a knowledgeable presenter, a music lover, a comedian, or even (perhaps knowing that they lacked any aptitude) a personality.

With the comparable rewards that are being offered, no wonder kids would rather sit on their arses text messaging their friends than go out training for five hours a day, fitted around their ‘real’ job because they can’t get sponsorship to be an athlete. They may be lazy, but they’re not stupid.

Edward Woodward (1930-2009)

I first heard of Edward Woodward when we were living in America and The Equalizer was on television. Apart from my parents, the only English accents I heard regularly were the ones on television – you know, how Americans thought we talked in the 80s; the Joan Collins/Stephanie Beacham type – they were good for playing the cold-hearted bitch on soap operas it seemed – or the stuffy housekeeper Mr Belvedere type.

I was desperately missing tough gritty English accents and so I loved The Equalizer immediately. Edward Woodward was a British former secret agent or something who was now working for the Americans and cleaning up the stuff that they couldn’t (often involving pesky Ruskies) like a slightly more contained Michael Caine – he didn’t blow any bloody doors off that I recall. Actually, I don’t recall much about it at all apart from the voice, the fact that he wore a long gangster/football manager coat and looked like he couldn’t run to save himself. And yet, curiously, I loved it!

I later discovered that he was a very fine actor and a pretty good footballer. He apparently played for both Leyton Orient and Brentford and studied at RADA. He trod the boards as a real Shakespearean actor in Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet in the West End in the mid 1950s, before taking his talents to Broadway and Australia. It’s rare for an actor to be so well received on both side of the Atlantic so that’s a fair testament to his appeal.

Him Outdoors rates The Wicker Man (1973) as one of the scariest films ever – he says there’s atmospheric tension and a horrific final scene that makes you question human nature – I’m too scared to ever watch it. So Edward Woodward’s versatility spanned stage, film, TV and even musical comedy; High Spirits (1964-1965) won three Tony Awards.

However, I remember him most fondly because he features in one of my favourite jokes.

Q: What do you call a man with a tree on his head?
A: Edward
Q: What do you call a man with three trees on his head?
A: Edward Woodward
Q: What do you call a man with four trees on his head?
A: I don’t know either but I bet Edward Woodward would
Q: Why has Edward Woodward got so many ‘d’s in his name?
A: Because otherwise he’d be called Ewar Woowar.

Apparently this is a Morecambe & Wise joke, but I first heard it from a friend whom I ever afterwards called Ewar – that’s how he is programmed into my phone. He disappeared into the mountains for a while and I hadn’t seen him for a couple of years, until I saw someone who looked a lot like him running around the Southern Bays in the Harbour Capital Wellington Marathon.

I yelled out “Come on Ewar” and he grinned (grinned, I tell you, at about 30km into the race) and laughed, “No one’s called me that for a while!” I was riding my bike and he kept pace with me chatting for a bit. Perhaps he shouldn’t have done that. He came fourth in a time of 2:49:57 (30 seconds behind the chap in third). I wonder what Edward Woodward would have done.

Books read in May

The following are short reviews of the books that I read in May. The marks I have given them in the brackets are out of five.

Pynter Bender – Jacob Ross (4)
Pynter Bender is born sightless, two days after his twin brother, Peter. He is raised by his female relatives in Grenada, in the Caribbean who believe he is bestowed with magical powers. They love and hate with a fierce passion. When Pynter’s eyesight returns to him, he tries to illuminate their metaphoric blindness, by proving that there can be tenderness and that love and violence don’t have to go together. Women are all powerful in this novel, but they still cannot tame their men.

The men are surrounded by the tall sugar canes and they work the land, hemmed in by the sea which they fear. They feel they are still slaves to the owners of the island and they ‘walk’, leaving the women behind as they explode in violence and recrimination. Revolution or education seem to be the only ways to escape this troubled island. Pynter will not hide behind hope or optimism but wants to face things with knowledge. He has to find his own voice to tell his own story, which is not like the government or the education authorities or the politicians or the military who all speak volumes in this novel.

Boys mysteriously disappear, picked up by the soldiers and the men seek revenge, but Pynter refuses to yield to aggression. He is almost a Christ-like figure in the face of Leninist views. Although drawn into the civil war, Pynter knows that anger and hatred only destroy a person from within. Do you nurture the hatred and the hurts, or do you allow yourself to move on? Is it weakness or maturity not to seek retribution?

Jacob Ross writes with a beautiful, descriptive, lyrical mixture of poetry and politics. When Pynter hears chicken hawks, “Their cries reminded him of bright sharp things – knives and nails and needles.” This novel is full of bright sharp things but introduces the prospect of something softer that can smooth off the rough edges and produce a pearl from the grit in the oyster.

Ill Met By Moonlight – Sarah A. Hoyt (3.8)
This is a preposterous but rather fun Elizabethan fantasy weaving elements of elfish legends and Shakespearean sonnets and plays into a finely crafted folklore. The background is earthy and real, full of details of bread making and ale brewing, although the fanciful speech and Shakespearean quotes sprinkled throughout seem to work because we accept that fairies or elves speak in an ethereal way.

The forest is established as the seat of myth where the young Will Shakespeare encounters strange creatures, magical worlds and – straight from the realm of fantasy – a knife inscribed with ancient designs that glows with a bright blue/white fire when elves are near. He naturally explains such things away as a midsummer madness or a wild dream.

Much of the novel is simply a story of a young man growing up in a repressive society and learning to be a man. He considers going to London but he has no trade and knows intelligence is no substitute. His imagination is stirred by a royal pageant where he is seduced by the dancers, the plays and the tableaux – in fact, the wonderful world of theatre. Real life is full of debts and hard work, but this fantasy world offers irresistible riches.

Hoyt fashions a novel explanation for the bewitching dark lady; she is an elf who changes from male (Quicksilver) to female (lady Silver) form and has ‘glamoury’, a power that humans are largely unable to resist. Shakespeare is a mere mortal and of course falls for him/her, which allows the author to hint at the homosexual content of some of the bard’s great works. She incorporates aspects of much of the cannon – of course Midsummer Night’s Dream with the magical and otherworldly aspects, but also Hamlet with revenge for the unnatural death of the parents and the spurned advances of a young beauty (Ariel). She alludes to Romeo and Juliet with the feuding fairies resulting in death of friends in fatal duels, and even MacBeth with equivocating creatures and over-reaching ambition.

If nothing else, her interpretation is original. Academics have puzzled endlessly over how a provincial boy became the world’s greatest playwright. This is certainly not a scholarly explanation but is an entertaining one.

Shakespeare’s Wife – Germaine Greer (4.4)
The prospect of rampant feminist Germain Greer taking on one of the least known and most derided of literary anti-heroines is an intriguing one and it doesn’t disappoint. It is no surprise that Greer launches a spirited defence of Ann Shakespeare, née Hathaway. More than merely defending a much-maligned woman, she also attacks the (male) fanciers of William who despise his wife without knowing anything about her. “The Shakespeare wallahs have succeeded in creating a bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women, and have then vilified the woman who remained true to him all his life, in order to exonerate him.”

Greer debunks all the theories against Shakespeare’s wife – she was too old; she was ugly; she trapped him into marriage; there are no records of affection between them; he spent a lot of his time away in London; he wrote the sonnets clearly pining for some other lover, etc. Shakespearean scholars generally accept that Ann had nothing to do with the publication of her husband’s work and certainly didn’t inspire any of it. Greer discounts both of these assumptions. She suggests that Ann was actually quite a catch, and explores some of the occupations that she might have done, including brewing, farming or some involvement in textiles.

As well as a defence of Ann, Greer also questions the commonly held theory that the Shakespeare family were Catholic and afraid of persecution. The biography also contains a lot of interesting background information and social setting. There is lots of information about marriage, domestic arrangements, employment prospects, medical practices of the day, the treatment of syphilis and the brewing of ale. There are also some fascinating anecdotes about land enclosures and protests that may or may not have involved Ann Shakespeare.

Greer is happy to admit that most of the positive things she has to say about Ann are based on conjecture and speculation, but are “probably neither truer nor less true than the accepted prejudice.” Her spirited defence of Shakespeare’s wife is no more or less than I would have expected from one of the world’s leading feminists.

Little Michael

I bought a car a couple of weeks ago, which made me feel terribly grown up. I took it for a test drive with the dealer and had to make knowledgable conversation about revs and miles per gallon (except he called it kilometres per litre, which was a totally different figure, but I nodded sagely nonetheless as though I knew what he meant).

I kept the car overnight and drove it along some winding back roads with hills and single lane bridges. I thought this might help me experiment with the acceleration, the suspension, and the torque (thanks Top Gear). It's a manual so I get to change gears when I choose, not when the engine feels like it, and the brakes are solid and secure without being either too spongy or sensitive.

It's got a good stereo and the CD player works. I tuned to Radio New Zealand National and popped in a Minuit album. When I turn the music and voices off the car is quiet -there are no rattles and knocks or other noises to pretend to ignore. It fits nicely in my garage. It's not white or silver and it's not a Subaru Legacy (these were definite no-nos on my anti-wish list).

So I took it down the lake, where I experimented with some Top Gear style photography - these are the results. I realise I still have a long way to go, but I think we can agree that it looks pretty damn stylish on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, can we not?

As we all know, every car needs a name, so I've called this little beauty Michael. It's small and perfectly formed with great acceleration and a tight turning circle, but it's the wrong red. Am I still grown up?

You Don't Bring Me Flowers...

Him Outdoors doesn’t buy me flowers. I complain about this but it makes no difference. He thinks they’re frivolous and he simply can’t see the point in them. He says ‘If I suddenly bought you flowers, you’d think that something was wrong.’ I wonder how many men use that lame excuse – trust me; we wouldn’t. I love flowers and I like to have them in the house, so I buy my own.

But he buys me other presents – usually what he considers to be practical gifts. He bought me some new headphones because I have to transcribe recorded interviews and the headphones I had pressed too hard against my ears and made them hurt. He bought me a polariser for my camera because he knows I love the vivid colours of Central Otago and am always trying to capture them in photographs.

He buys me beer and wine (also frivolous I know, but he can see the point in that), particularly beverages with names relating to things and places I like. He buys me winter cycling gloves because he knows how much I hate being cold. Once he bought me the boxed set of the Clash singles on vinyl – no special occasion; he just knows they’re one of my favourite ever bands.

He doesn’t really ‘do’ birthdays, anniversaries or what he calls commercial holidays – we’ll go out for a meal and a drink on each other’s birthday, but there are generally no gifts involved. The gifts are thoughtful little touches, and they come throughout the year, when he thinks of them. He’s not the sort of person to buy something and save it for three months until the official celebration is at hand – he would only have lost it or forgotten where he put it by then.

I remember the first Christmas present he ever bought me; it was a blender. We didn’t spend Christmas Day together and I unwrapped it in front of my family. My mother cast a dubious glance at it – to her it was as offensive as an iron or a hoover. ‘He bought you a what?’ But I was a student and living off home-made potato and leek soup. I really needed a blender and he knew it would save me time and effort, rather than having to mash and mix all the vegetables by hand. It was incredibly touching and the sign that I had found a kind and thoughtful man.

So I don’t mind if I have to buy my own flowers. It’s a small price to pay.

Eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

Today is Armistice Day. Lest we forget. In all the football matches I have watched over the previous days, the minute’s silence has been impeccably observed by home and away fans alike. It is an opportunity to remember and give thanks to all the men and women of past and current wars who have given their lives to defend our shores and our freedom. Whatever your thoughts on war, you cannot but honour those who have died or suffered injuries on your behalf.

Once the whistle blows, the rivalries are intense; passions are ignited and tempers flare. My dad says he remembers watching games at Highbury as a young lad where 60,000 men stood shoulder to shoulder and there was no animosity – they’d seen enough of fighting. The war claimed the lives of nine Arsenal first team players, the most of any top flight club. Children were passed carefully over the heads of the crowd down to the front where they could get a better view of the match. No doubt they were collected by their parents later.

This is one of the reasons it disgusts me when media advertising refers to sport as war and tries to drum up jingoistic comparisons with battle. It’s a whole different ball-game. The day is not really marked in New Zealand – they commemorate Anzac Day instead. However, the poppies blooming on the breasts of the BBC newsreaders and the English football managers, and many of the crowd are the reminders on this distant shore, brought to us by the media, so they perhaps they are on the same side after all.

When I was about 12 and a member of the Red Cross, I participated in a march down the high street to commemorate the war heroes. As we stood in frozen silence at the cenotaph, I fainted (I have since learned to wiggle my toes which keeps the circulation flowing while feigned immobility). I felt shamed – they gave their lives for me and I couldn’t even stand still for a minute!

There was a Penguin book club at the time where you could send off 50p for the latest titles. I took my 50p to school and dropped it in the collection box. When mum asked me where my book was and I told her I had bought a poppy instead she was bemused – ‘But you could have got both for that money!’ I burst into tears and sobbed, ‘But that was all I had to sacrifice.’ There was nothing mum could say to that, but I can still feel the fierce love in the hug she gave me.