I was pleasantly surprised to find I’d read four books this month. It’s been a long four weeks and I’d forgotten a couple of them… actually I thought the Ramaswamy might have been it. With everything that’s going on at the festival, home fixing, and my own events, I didn’t expect to have much to list here, but here it is. I’ve one more review deadline to make and then I’ll be moving on to reading A J Waines’ backlist for my Conversation, so next month may look a bit samey but with good reason. I’m already planning December – on Saturday I bought my first Woolf, and I’ll likely be reading The Essex Serpent and the new Philip Pullman (finally!)

The Books

Non-Fiction

Chitra Ramaswamy: Expecting – The author chronicles the nine months of her pregnancy, filling the pages with details, commentary, and bookish references. A book about pregnancy that’s interesting to both parents and those who don’t plan to have children.

Fiction

Fanny Blake: Our Summer Together – Separated from her husband and watching him get with a much younger woman, Caro realises it’s time to live her own life and when a younger man from a different country enters, she throws caution to the wind. Sweet, but it’s got a slight sheen of patronisation to it.

Lesley Glaister: The Squeeze – Romanian Marta goes to meet the man at the hotel against her intuition; she’s trafficked to Scotland; meanwhile Norwegian Mats travels to Scotland for work and decides against his better judgement to join a coworker at a brothel. Quite good, but full of editing problems.

Orlando Ortega-Medina: Jerusalem Ablaze – A collection of short stories about the darkness inside of us. An awesome book that’s a fulfilling but easy read (for good reason – the author says himself the stories are to entertain rather than send messages).

Two favourites – the Ortega-Medina and the Ramaswamy. In terms of reviewing, the first wins, but I enjoyed them both a lot.

Quotation Report

None this time.

As busy as it’s going to be, I’m looking forward to this next month. Though there will also be relief when it’s over, perhaps best shown in the way I originally accidentally titled this post ‘October’ reading round up.

What are you currently reading?

This photograph was taken by Clarence.

I once bought a book I’d never seen before by an author I knew nothing about – so begins many happy stories. But this one is quite different. Having studied the cover I came to the conclusion that the author was somewhat known and, liking the story set in historic Britain, bought it. It arrived battered. I was peeved – if anyone should ruin a book it should be the owner; in that vein I’ve now flipped through it enough I’ve added to the ruin.

It was a defining moment; one day some months after I’d finished it, my mother entered the room, speaking to someone on the phone about family history. I didn’t listen in… until she said the surname of the factually-based characters in my book. She had a book in her hands, a different one, with one of the surnames in her family tree on it. I commandeered it when she put the phone down.

I’ll say now, there’s no awesome end to this story. When you’re dealing with family trees and a book that follows only one line, trying to find out whether your own ancestors are in the muddle can prove impossible – it did this time. But my subsequent research led to experiences I’ll remember for a long while. After the author of the historical novel replied to my excited questions, sadly unable to answer them as they didn’t know of the people I’d quoted, I realised it was best to abandon my initial port of call – the start of the chronology in my mother’s book – and study the last pages instead, try and see if I could find a link to my family there.

To that end I contacted a historic house. This is a daunting thing to do when your query is valid but you know you’re likely to appear a gold digger. Nevertheless I got a reply from the archivist. I got the phone number of the owner of the estate. I got an invitation to talk about a possible link and my mother’s book; whilst my mother had her misgivings about my taking it, I had to point out that we hadn’t been able to work out if it concerned our family in particular but that it most certainly concerned the estate’s.

In the end I didn’t learn anything and having found nothing since have not been in contact with the estate, but I did have a lovely day. My meeting was scheduled along with that of the staff of another house. We had wine and made conversation in the library, followed by a wonderful lunch in the dining room. I got to see areas tourists couldn’t access and gained knowledge of periods I love, as well as history about the house. Yes, the content of my day did match my worry – it was a bit touristy and made me wonder if I was indeed thought a gold digger.

Still, it’s not every day a book results in such an experience. Sometimes it’s the people you meet only fleetingly that leave an impression on you. They can create a spark that leads to further adventures as the things the owner told me led to – it was a conversation with him that got me thinking about university. And I went back to the first pages of my mother’s book, researching simply out of interest, going a few generations beyond the information in the introductory pages. I’ve made a couple of trips to visit places of interest but I also find myself in places I’ve visited for other reasons, that turn out to be connected, which can be quite fun as well as a bit too uncanny. Not so fun are the times I wanted to see a sight for unrelated reasons, couldn’t, and learned there was a potential familial connection only once I was back home, too far away to return.

And yes, I’m still reading the author of the historical novel, finding a whole new meaning in their books.

Have you ever tried (or indeed succeeded!) to trace your family history?

Firstly, thank you all for your messages about Tabby. I’m not able to respond individually at the moment but I did read them all. Thank you.

My reading life has been different lately; I’m still figuring out reading times in regards to my job – I’ve been doing some content marketing for the SO: To Speak festival of Southampton and it’s been a lot of fun, finding out connections between Jane Austen and the city, and Southampton composers and Charles Dickens.

I am a bit behind on my reviews so I’ll be scaling back during November and December. The biggest thing will be reading for my event with A J Waines. Waines is a psychological thriller writer with two interesting stories. One is fair – she is a hybrid author, self-published in Britain and traditionally published in Europe. The second is pretty awesome – in 2013 she published a book called Girl On A Train. You can probably guess the rest – two years later sales of her book increased and, a fact we’re using verbatim in the promotional material, The Wall Street Journal said that she started getting lots of reviews saying it wasn’t what people expected.

Many readers have said they liked it a lot more than the other one.

I’ve retitled the event this time; instead of ‘in conversation with’, we’re calling the evening The Original Girl On A Train, neatly sidestepping any issues over using Hawkins’ title but being obvious about what we’re talking about. I’m looking forward to it, it’s in conjunction with the festival so there’s more support and advertising opportunities.

But, and admittedly more to the point in the context of these posts, Waines’ has quite a backlist, so I’ve lots of reading ahead of me.

In terms of other titles, I’m in the midst of Nicholas Royle’s Ornithology, a short story collection based around the theme of birds that has similarities to other books – Max Porter’s Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, for one. More importantly, in terms of similarities, you may remember a few months ago I reviewed An English Guide To Birdwatching by Nicholas Royle. Excellent book – only it wasn’t written by the Nicholas Royle whose short story collection I’m reading now. However, An English Guide To Birdwatching references the short story collection – I believe it is in part why the title of the novel includes birds. The two authors met a few years ago – they didn’t know about each other until they both submitted work to the same literary magazine and the editor of that magazine sent the replies to both stories to a solo Nicholas.

It’s confusing, yes. But having first read In Camera (‘Salt’ Nicholas, as I’ll likely refer to him from now on – he works at Salt Publishing), and then Birdwatching, reading Ornithology is a particular experience I’d never have had in another situation. It’s this weird situation wherein there’s added context to the book that in a way shouldn’t be there.

I’ll stop there.

Moving on, I’ve just finished Fanny Blake’s Our Summer Together – a contemporary romance about a 60-something British women who has a relationship with a younger Bosnian immigrant. Not bad, just a bit repetitive and with two highly different characters. I’m a fair way through Lesley Glaister’s The Squeeze – a difficult read but well written. Next up is Chitra Ramaswathy’s Expecting – a memoir that’s up for the Polari Prize – and after that I may read a bit of Dorthe Nors. I’m going for shorter books at the moment.

I’m considering making a start on Virginia Woolf’s oeuvre before Christmas but we’ll see – previously I didn’t know much about her and so was surprised not to find her books on Project Gutenberg. I now know a lot more, including the new fact that I want to go and visit Monk’s House, and so will work on the idea that if I get all the reading that needs to be done before Christmas… done… I’ll go purchase Orlando.

What are you reading at the moment, what did you read previously, and what will you read next?

On Wednesday morning we lost my cat, Tabitha or Tabby, who had just turned 20. She was a trooper – she survived the shock of the death of her mother earlier this year, made it through two moves in quick succession, made a valiant effort pretending to hate the dog, and in her final days pushed back against the progression of a year-long illness.

Born to our half-wild/half-domestic cat, her ancestry was apparent. She was off the wall and always had to explore every nook and cranny no matter how many times she’d done it before. She could often be found sitting in the empty bath. She’d get locked in the shed by accident. She’d never sit on your lap, she hated being picked up, and would let everyone but me touch her belly. But she was incredibly loyal; she could often be found sitting on the very edge of my desk trying to find a way down from a place she really shouldn’t have jumped to or would sit on the top of the back of the chair I was sitting on, knocking her head against mine. One of the most Tabby-like photos I have is of her lying on her back; she loved rolling around outside and would do it more if she knew you were there.

It would be fair to say this human has lost her mistress; frequently, instead of spending time with me, she preferred to spend time trying to usher away from us the dog (and my parents… and friends…).

Tabby was the last remaining cat of four in our family; Badge, a classic black and white; Dusty, the grey half wild cat, Harry, Tabby’s litter mate who died long ago (another lives with a friend). It’s going to take some getting used to – I loved her to bits, as I know many of you will relate to – but there are plenty of wonderful memories.

I have always suffered from travel sickness, something I expect a lot of you can relate to. It’s a major hassle when you like to read a lot, and more so when you’ve a review deadline looming. I think in my case it has something to do with the fact my parents didn’t have a car until a good number of years into my life; my journeys in cars were infrequent, they were all different (a few very old cars, too, with the requisite vintage smells which to this day I can’t stand) and it was generally the case that if we were in a car, we were going a long way, to a place without a train station or bus route. I believe my nephew’s the first person not to suffer from travel sickness at all; he’s been used to cars since he was born.

I can read on planes and on trains – the only aspect to contend with there is chatter – and I’ve tried on many occassions to read on buses and in cars but it’s always come with a sense of borrowed time. A 30 second glance at a text message? Sure, but it might affect the rest of the trip.

Recently I tried once again, on a long bus trip, and found something that worked. In researching travel sickness previously, I learned some tips, such as don’t look out the windows, and read in moments here and there, but they didn’t work. I experimented a bit and found a solution:

I sat on my seat, facing towards the aisle. I’d picked a window seat, and this is a good idea particularly as facing inwards mean you’d be intentionally blocking yourself from anyone sitting next to you were they in the window seat. (It’s also more comfortable; I’m not sure what I would’ve done if there was no choice of seat.) I made sure not to look away from my book unless the bus was stationary. When the bus jolted, I stopped reading until it was travelling steady again.

With time I think it will be possible to look up briefly whilst the bus is moving. I don’t know the effect a different direction would have – I sat in the direction of travel. I also don’t know whether format would have an impact – I experimented when I was reading an ebook so I didn’t have to worry about the slight difference in the context of left and right pages or holding a book open.

If you suffer like me, I recommend giving the above a go and seeing if you can work something out. Get that time back.

Next goal: reading when a passenger in the car.

Have you any tips for travel sickness and reading?