Would you look at the stats counter over there —–>.

We’ve passed the big 100,000  …… Let’s celebrate!

Thank you everyone.  You’re the best!

Willkommen, bienvenu, welcome. Fremde, étranger, stranger. Glücklich zu sehen, je suis enchanté, happy to see you.  Bleibe, restez, stay …

Are you singing along yet to the opening song of Cabaret – the film I first saw when I was 15 and which I think sparked my lifelong fascination with all things Germanic.  Anyway on the 2oth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, let’s travel virtually to Berlin with Citylit Berlin and I’ve been reminded of the film because the opening section in the book is entitled “Come to the cabaret …”  However, I think we’ll move swiftly on from tales of Weimar excess to something more relevant to today – the section “And the Wall Came Tumbling Down”.

Do you remember that day, 20 years ago?  I remember my disbelief.  OK, there were chinks in the Iron Curtain when I’d left Germany 6 months previously, but the events of 9.11.1998 were simply incredible.  The extract from John Simpson’s Strange Places, Questionable People tells of its almost casual beginning.

Transcript of press conference by Günther Schabowski, East Berlin, 9.11.89.

This will be interesting for you.  Today the descision was taken to make it possible for all citizens to leave the country though the official border crossing points.  All citizens of the GDR can now be issued with visas for the purposes of travel or visiting relatives in the East.

This order is to take effect at once.

Well, I don’t remember all those thousands standing in an orderly queue for visas when the wall was breached.  And it certainly didn’t happen as per Thomas Brussig’s fantasy.  (Not telling – you’ll have to get the book!)  For some their first steps in the West were anti-climactic, while others such as the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich were inspired to make highly-symbolic gestures.

While most were celebrating their newly found freedom, there was panic in the Stasi headquarters because this was the collapse of  “the perfect spy state”. (It has been estimated that one in 6 were informers.)

They shredded the files until the shredders collapsed.  Among other shortages in the east, there was a shredder shortage, so they had to send agents out under cover to West Berlin to buy more. (Anna Funder, Stasiland)

Berlin was chosen to receive the Citylit treatment because it’s a city based not on stability but on change. From the early 19th century:

Thousands of little houses in a chaotic spawl, a settlement overflowing its banks in the swampiest spot in Europe. The first splendid buildings were beginning to go up: a cathedral, some palaces,a museum to house the finds from Humboldt’s great expedition.
In a few years, said Eugen, this would be a metropolis like Rome, Paris or St. Petersburg.
Never, said Gauss. Horrible place! (Daniel Kehlmann, Measuring the World)

to the Weltstadt it is today. Robert Harris even describes the Weltstadt it might have become had Hitler triumphed.

The change continues. Who would have thought that Ostalgie would transform the humble Trabi into the vehicle of choice for a city safari or that the Berlin wall would be sold piecemeal as souvenirs.

In the last 20 years Germany has been coming to terms with its second 20th-century dictatorship and individuals with their own actions. In her 2004 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction winning Stasiland, Anna Funder explores how both former resisters and Stasi-informers have reconciled themselves (or not) with their pasts. Tim Garton-Ash’s The File describes what happened when he read the dossier the Stasi had compiled on him and confronted his informers. If this subject is of interest to you, I have a copy of each to giveaway. Open worldwide. Just leave a comment (preferably in German!) stating which book/books you’d like to receive and the draw will take place next Monday.

Stacks of books were piled high all over the house – not just arranged in neat rows on bookshelves, the way other people kept them, oh no!  The books in Mo and Meggie’s house were stacked under tables, on chairs, in the corners of the rooms.  There were books in the kitchen and books in the lavatory.  Books on the TV set, and in the wardrobe, small piles of books, tall piles of books, books thick and thin, books, old and new. (Cornelia Funke, Inkheart)

So how does your house measure up?  I reckon I can tick about 80% of those boxes.  Although Mo and Meggie have missed a trick by not realising the value of under-bed storage space!

However, it has now reached a point where my reading couch has been invaded.  This simply cannot go on.

So 2010 will be the year when I don’t buy a single book I realise a lifelong ambition – I’m going to convert one room into a bona fide library.  Which room?  That’s subject to negotiation at the moment – my first objective is to ensure that it isn’t the smallest room in the house.

But I digress.

Bookpiles may be cluttering and dust-collecting but they are always welcome.  None more so than these.

2009 has been a bonus year for Germanophiles.  Is that due to the very special celebration that tomorrow will bring?  Or has the German Book Prize elevated interest in German literature in general?  However, there is such a flood of Germany-related / translated from German titles now available that I wonder if it is now possible to do a German-literature degree without actually reading the language.  Not that I am complaining.  As you can see I am capitalising on this bounty.

I think a short tour is called for. We begin in the Oxford corner – the pile back left.  Let’s start bottom-up because I know that you’re going to ask what The Oxford Companion to English Literature is doing in a post about the German counterpart.  It’s simply because the scope of the 7th edition has been expanded, not only to cover the contemporary English literary scene, but also much translated fiction.  So lots of illuminating entries about German literature.  I found the entry on Wertherism very helpful during my recent rereading of Goethe’s Sorrows of the Young Werther.  The scale of this book contrasts with A Very Short Introduction to German Literature at the top of the pile.  Not my favourite Oxford title to be fair.  It’s scope being literature from the pens of authors from Germany.  So no insights on my favourite Austrians, Schnitzler and Zweig,  or the Swiss Keller to name a few.  The middle of the pile is populated by a half-dozen recently-rejacketed Oxford Classics – gorgeous aren’t they?  Glad to see a healthy looking virtual German bookshelf here.  The books in my pile:  Gottfried von Eschenbach, Parzival and Titurel; Friedrich Schiller Don Carlos and Mary Stuart; E.T.A Hoffman The Golden Pot and Other Stories; and 3 titles from Kafka, The Castle, The Trial, Metamorphosis and Other Stories.  The final book in the pile is a recent historical study of Hindenburg.  It’s always fascinating to read about the conditions that led to the rise of Nazism.

The  pile back right has 3 recent publications from Pushkin Press.  Wondrak and other Stories and Confusion by bloggers-favourite Stefan Zweig.  (Needless to say I eagerly anticipate the arrival of his autobiography The World of Yesterday.) Books 3 and 4 from the top are from Haus Publishing:  Alex Capus A Matter of Time, made irresistible by comparisons with Daniel Kehlmann’s Measuring the World; Siegfried Lenz’s novella A Minute’s Silence arriving just in time for the November Novella Challenge.  Second from bottom is the latest in Dennis Jackson’s fine translations of the works of Theodor Storm.  I’ve had this for a while – saving it for a rainy day.   There’s bound to be one or two of those any day now.  Beneath that there’s another selection from the One World Classics German bookshelf, Goethe’s Elective Affinities.   Self’s Murder, the bottom book is the final thriller in Bernhard Schlink’s (yes, he of The Reader fame) trilogy.

The book standing back centre is the eagerly anticipated new translation of Günther Grass’s The Tin Drum. A seminal work, a masterpiece.  Would anyone be interested in a readalong?

We’ll discuss the front-centre bookpile tomorrow for two reasons:  1) this post is already long enough and 2) the books in it are relevant to the a city that will be partying a little more than it normally does … and Lizzy’s Literary Life may just party along.  In any event there are going to be some giveaways.

My latest business trip to London was mistimed.  A week after the clocks went back and British Summertime 2009 consigned to history, it was dark by 5:00 p.m.  Sightseeing on foot was postponed although I did manage a mini tour of London on the number 15 bus.  Through Marble Arch, down Oxford Street, Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, The Strand, Fleet Street, Tower Hill etc.  Marvellous value on an off-peak travel card, but not exactly what I had in mind. 

Perhaps books like this are meant to be read cover to cover.  But that’s not how I approach them.  Sometimes I want to read the selections by a favourite author, or by someone I’m keen to discover.  Last week I wanted to read by theme and the organisation of this book is perfect for that, divided as it is into sections.   Last week’s sections of choice “Take the Tour” and “Old Father Thames”.

“Take the Tour” perhaps an obvious choice given the limited daylight hours.  There are 19 selections in this selection, 38 pages in total.  Reallife experiences include a young Margaret Atwood searching for budget accommodation, and Iqbal Ahmed never quite feeling at home in Hampstead.  Although the atmosphere is entirely different during Virginia Woolf’s stroll through Hampstead Heath.  And as for the London in which all the statues come to life, well I may one day find myself reading Will Self’s The Book of Dave!  For the virtual tourist, this was a satisfying section as I visited Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, The National Gallery, The British Museum … and not an aching foot in sight! 

I chose to read the section of “Old Father Thames”  because a) the offices I visited were located in the immediate vicinity of the river and b) the river is a central to many a London novel (e.g Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend and, indeed, William Boyd’s latest Ordinary Thunderstorms).  Of the 14 selections in this section I was fascinated by the two extracts from Clare Clark’s The Great Stink – a reminder that the Thames was once an enormous cesspit, responsible for more than one cholera epidemic.  From this section came the blog’s photo opportunity.

Of London Bridge:  When we reach the middle of the bridge, and discover the north bank spread there before us, the Thames seems hardly more than a country stream, a pleasure pond, beside the gleaming vulgarity, the harshness, the concentration of the new City of London, the square mile that is the financial heart of the capital and its true core of constancy.  (Extracted from A Writer’s World by Jan Morris)

I didn’t make it to the centre of London Bridge, but I did manage an early morning stroll to the centre of Tower Bridge.  And here’s the view back to the City.

If there’s any downside to this book, it’s that it is such a dangerous temptation to bookaholics.  Remember I only read two sections – I’m saving the rest for my next trip.  Even so I added 4 books to the wishlist: Tom Quinn, London’s Strangest Tales; Catherine Arnold, Necropolis; Clare Clark, The Great Stink; Stella Duffy, The Room of Lost Things.

Who knows what will happen when I read the remaining 8 sections!

So how did my two travelling companions fare on their recent trip to London – more to the point what kind of company were they for the solo business traveller?

Let’s start with a character analysis of Miss Pettigrew.  A fun-loving kind of lady, needing a slight push in the direction of enjoying herself.  But once the fun begins, she knows how to capitalise. And so it was that in the very mild autumn evenings of October 2009, Miss Pettigrew was great company whilst wining and dining outdoors at Covent Garden.

However, as those of you who have read her story will know,  a little vino makes the lady assertive.  She absolutely insisted that Lizzy visit her relatives in the Persephone Book Shop. A mad rush hour dash from Tower Hill to Notting Hill Gate ensued, arriving at the shop with 4 minutes to closing time.  The lovely-but-camera-shy Laura allowed us to take my time and browse to our heart’s content.

Clever girl, instead of making just one purchase, I made three. (Manja/On the Other Side/Goodnight, Mrs Craven)

Miss Hargreaves is a different kettle of fish altogether.  A crochety old dame, imperious at times.  A bit lot of a nightmare.  Beware of what you think.  It may just come true.  She’s not one to dash around London in a mad rush at all.   She may abominate fuss but, following her promotion to the aristocracy, she does insist on class.  Lady Hargreaves chose to visit the oldest bookshop in London, Hatchards, est 1797.  A distinguished shop in Piccadilly, booksupplier to the Queen.  A bibliophile’s dream with coves and enclaves and many bookish treasures to unearth.  Thankfully Lady Hargreaves is more disciplined than fun-loving Miss Pettigrew.  She kept her hands firmly on my purse strings and allowed only one souvenir purchase.  (Something special – a signed first edition of Louis de Bernieres, Notwithstanding, complete with Hatchards bookmark.)

Beautiful wooden banistered staircases entice visitors higher and higher. (There are 5 storeys.)  Fortunately there are idiosyncratic reading chairs, strategically placed, for those needing to catch their breathe on the way.   Lady Hargreaves chose to rest on a Rennie Mackintosh replica – even if it was a little past its heyday.  A chair fraying at the seams, dependent on the goodwill of others for its survival, like the lady herself, although I don’t think the chair will share the tragic demise of its fictional visitor.

————————–

Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day   (Full Review at Reading Matters)

Miss Hargreaves (Full review at Stuck-In-A-Book)

When Bibliofreak launched her latest challenge, I’m sure she was unaware of  Lizzy’s love of alliteration. Short story September is now a permanent fixture in my reading calendar.  Novella November is likely to become as irresistible.

I find novellas intensely satisfying.  Long enough to lose yourself in but short enough not to get repetitive. I’m still trying to discover at what point a short story transmutes into a novella and whether that is the same as a long short story.  But for the purposes of this challenge I’m going to define novella as a story that is between 60 and 140 pages long.

I read novellas all the time and I’ve read a few this year that I have yet to blog about.  It’s time to play catchup.

 Starting in Scotland with the King of Crime, Ian Rankin.  A Cool Head is what it proclaims on the cover – a quick read.  I picked it up for reading on the bus  and it served its purpose.  A fast paced thriller but the prose is much simpler than that used in the Rebus novels.  Possibly deliberately so.  Looking at the Quick Reads website, it appears that the raison d’etre of this series is to encourage those with reading difficulties to improve their literacy skills.  New titles are published annually on World Books Day offering a menu of short sharp entertainment and in the first four years of the project, 1.25 million copies have been sold. That’s no mean feat. Come to think of it, I read Minette Walter’s Chickenfeed a few years ago. Based on a true murder case, I remember it as a rivetting read.  One I would happily revisit.

Alice Thompson, who also chooses to write in spare prose,  has created an altogether more complex read in her creepy Pharos.  Well, it is subtitled A Ghost Story.  A shipwrecked woman is found on the beach and for some reason, the lighthousekeeper and his assistant choose not to return her to the mainland.  She has no idea why as she is suffering from amnesia.  Eventually the trio are joined by the lighthousekeeper’s sister … and a fifth being, a wild girl child who appears in strange places at strange times.  Why though does no-one wish the shipwrecked one to recover her memory and how much of what she tells can we believe?  What is certain, however, is that nothing good can come of her being on the island, setting herself against the established pattern of things.  It’s testament to Thompson’s skill with language that she has all the time in the world to rachet up the tension, notch by notch, until …. well, that would be telling! (Note: at 179 pages this is probably better classified as a short novel rather than a novella.  But who’s counting?)

And finally not one but three novellas in one Premio Cocito Monta d’Alba prizewinning volume.  Pietro Grossi’s Fists concerns itself with the transition to adulthood – the painful moment in a young man’s life when a future-determining choice must be made.  The first story is set in the world of amateur boxing and it is the most autobiographical of the three.  The second set in the countryside concerns two brothers who are given horses by their father.  The lessons they learn from caring for the animals and the decisions they ultimately make show the differences that personality can make on outcomes.  The third story is surreal with Kafkaesque undertones.  What would you do if your best friend decided to become a monkey?  Really – to act and behave like a monkey and completely renege on the responsibilities of being a human.  It may sound funny but this story has profound meanings locked within the superficial comedy of the premise.   Even though the masculine focus is necessarily predominant in these tales, they remain very readable.  Smoothly translated by Howard Curtis, I was absorbed, reading them one after the other without pausing.   Kudos to Pushkin Press for bringing another gem of European literature to our shores and a few more kudos for packaging them in such a lovely dustjacket.

A Cool Head  / Pharos  1/2 / Fists  1/2

Politics can be incomprehensible and situations in some parts of the world more so than most. For example – the conflicts in the Middle East. Matt Rees spent ten years covering the complexities in this part of the world only to walk away as a disaffected journalist, frustrated with interviewing people for hours, only to reduce them to a quote in a finished piece of writing. Objectivity, it seems, has its limitations. So he conceived a series of crime novels designed to portray the global Palestinian experience. The Bethlehem Murders is the first of this series. While it won the 2008 John Creasey Memorial Award, there are no prizes for guessing its location.

We view Palestine through the eyes of Omar Yussef, a teacher in a school for refugees. A non-conformist, he seeks to see and teach the truth in all instances, regardless of political or religious bias. When one of his ex-pupils is falsely accused of collaboration with the Israelis, he begins to investigate. When a second pupil of his is found murdered, the stakes are raised even higher. The world that Yussef inhabits constantly shifts. Who or what – and that would include his own judgement – can he trust? While his investigation leads him and his own into ever more dangerous territory, his allegiance to his ex-pupils never wavers. Neither does his courage.

But can he prevail?

Depicting reality in all its murky ingloriousness, Rees raises difficult questions. Where is Palestine’s worst enemy located? Over the border or within the heart of the Palestinian townships? Are there any winners? While the crimes are satisfyingly resolved, is justice served? Indeed should the reader expect comfortable answers from a novel with the following epigraph?

All the crimes in this book are based on real events in Bethlehem. Though identities and some circumstances have been changed, the killers really killed this way, and those who died are dead just the same.

I’ll wager there’s no finer introduction to the political morass of the Middle East.

(First published as part of Canongate’s World Literature Tour)

A quick post today as I’m preparing for a week long business trip.  In true bibliophile style the only thing ready is my destination-compatible reading list! I’m heading for ….

CityLit London

With the aid of that and the other truly amazing resource below …..

Lived In London (Blue Plaques and the Stories Behind Them)

I have planned a few evening walkabouts – weather and gammy ankle permitting!  I think I will have to be content with blue plaque hunting as I have become quite frustrated with the number of literary attractions that close at 5:00 p.m – the Dickens House Museum and the Folio Society Reading Room, to name but two! (Don’t the powers that be understand that business tourists can only tour in the evenings?)

Fortunately the Persephone bookshop is open until 6:00 pm, so cue one mad dash across London to get there before the doors close.  Hopefully it will be dry that evening so that I can have a good old wander around Bloomsbury.  Apparently my literary girlfriends both have publishing friends there ….

Misses Pettigrew and Hargreaves

.

Quite possibly the most – er – alluring of titles published in 2008,  this dinky little number from Pushkin Press has been calling to me from the shelves ever since the author was mentioned by name in Gilbert Adair’s The Death of the Author and a little girly fun now and again doesn’t go amiss.

Shortly after the Second World War, Paul Morand was living in exile in Switzerland (in disgrace for collaborating with the Vichy regime).  Chanel was there also.  (She had been far too cozy with a Nazi officer.)   She gave Morand a series of interviews about her early life and career, the notes of which he stored for decades in a desk drawer.  Shortly before his death in 1976 he finally published the transcripts.  Pushkin Press published the English translation in 2008.

Apart from the introduction there is no authorial voice, just a series of monologues.  Direct access to Chanel, if you will.  The picture that emerges is of a feisty young woman, determined not to be disadvantaged by her humble beginnings.   A difficult woman to live with, although many men tried!  Not always likeable but then icons have their ways and means of becoming icons, don’t they?  And from the tone of her narrative you’d believe she was a straight-talking person ….

A little post-reading research reveals the lies and omissions in her story that emerges from these interviews.  But then Chanel didn’t like the reality of her early life and went about creating her own legend.  Like she said:

Reality is sad, and that handsome parasite that is the imagination will always be preferred to it. May my legend gain ground, I wish it a long and happy life.

It’s the self-created legend that is presented in these pages. Which makes her an unreliable narrator, par excellence, n’est-ce pas? Not knowing anything about her prior to reading, I enjoyed her story and that enjoyment has not diminished now that I know the truth!

Morand was pre-World-War-II one of the most celebrated French authors of his day and his skill is evident here. The French title “L’allure of Chanel” with double-meanings not apparent in the English. Alluring, seductive, entrancing yes but “l’allure” also means speed and Chanel certainly ran on the hot track to success, taking the fashion world by storm with her modernist designs and expensive elegance. Her inspirations are discussed – sometimes spawned by her genius – at other times by nothing other than practicality. For example- she created the shoulder bag simply because she was fed up forgetting (and thereby losing) her expensive handbags.

There’s a down-to-earth quality about the rebel who was to become the diva. Busy but lonely. A woman who needed men even though not prepared to sacrifice her freedoms. A contradictory genius, then. Fascinating.

Looking at my collection of unread and ignored volumes the other week made me feel guilty.  All that talent going to waste.  So I decided to meet the colour reading challenge head-on by taking an afternoon to digest some short stories (or novellas) with colours in the titles. 

This is what I pulled from the shelves: 

From bottom to top:  Anton Chekhov – Anthology published by the Folio Society, Fighting It – Regi Claire, published by Two Raven’s Press; Collected Stories – Somerset Maugham, Everyman’s Library Edition; The Girl with the Golden Eyes – Honoré de Balzac, part of the Art of the Novella series published by Melville House Publishing.  

1835 – The Girl With The Golden Eyes - Honoré de Balzac.  (118 pages) I was left bemused by my first and (possibly my last) Balzac.  Lush, extravagant language almost baroque in its flourishes.  Savage biting criticism of  “the fierce impulses of the proletariat … the depraved interests that crush the lower and middle classes ..the cruelties of the artist’s thoughts … the excesses of pleasure constantly sought by the upper class – all these explain the normal ugliness of Parisian physiogomy”.    The story told is an ugly one too.  From the dust jacket:  “the story of a rich and ruthless young man caught up in an amorous entanglement with a mysterious beauty.  His control slipping, incest, homosexuality, sexual slavery and violence combine in what was then, and still remains, a shocking and taboo-breaking work”.  Had I read that before buying the book (which was purchased as I’m collecting the series), there’s no way it would have made it to my shelves.  In any event the story is by no means as explicit as the synopsis suggests to a modern audience, resulting in a  novella that manages to be seedy, surreal, melodramatic and boring at the same time and  I certainly don’t see myself diving further into the depths of Balzac’s 100-volume Human Comedy any time soon.

1894 The Black Monk - Anton Chekhov (29 pages)  Genius and madness are but a hair’s breadth from each other and that is certainly true in this story which charts the final two years in the life of artist Andrei Kovrin, a man blessed (plagued?) by the vision of a black monk  who tells Kovrin that he is one of God’s elect and warns him that the accompanying traits of “exaltation, enthusiasm, ecstasy” will not benefit his health.   The truth of those words unquestionable when Kovrin dies of a massive hemorrhage.  Tuberculosis or madness?  And the monk – is he a figment of an overactive imagination or an apparition with a 1000 year history.  It’s significant that the monk first appears after Kovrin has been walking through an orchard in whihc “a thick, black, acrid smoke was creeping over the ground and, curling round the trees” saving them from the frost.     I loved Chekhov’s control : the language, crisp and precise; the action vivid, three-dimensional; the meaning remaining ambiguous. 

Clever, clever, clever man.  I just had to read more. 

As everyone who has spoken to me of Chekhov has mentioned The Lady with the Dog (1899) (15 pages) and there was a such  beautiful illustration of such in my Folio Society volume, how could I not?  And yes, I endorse all the recommendations made – this is a wonderful story, the first half of which reminded me strongly of Stefan Zweig’s Burning Secret (even if this was written some 15 years after Chekhov’s original).  The second half, though, surprising in the change of heart of the aging lothario and displaying once more an ambiguity of meaning and interpretation.  This is obviously a Chekhovian trademark and one I suspect that ensures the re-readability of his tales as does his use of language.  I particularly enjoyed the use of colour to show  both the changing spirits and feelings of the characters. The aging Dmitri’s hair is described as graying, and he often wears gray suits. Whereas the sea at Yalta,  the resort where the lovers meet,  is suffused with color as “the water was of a soft warm lilac hue, and there was a golden streak from the moon upon it.”  Life is about to veer away from the mundane.  There’s the promise of hope, optimism and enjoyment.

Got to say there’s a soft warm lilac hue in my heart when I contemplate reading the other 34 stories in this anthology.  What’s your advice – should I just dive in and lose myself or save them as treasures to be stored safely and brought out only on special occasions?

(Colourful stories – Part Two to follow)