Unlike Terry Pratchett’s Death, ours on earth has no fondness for cats. We lost relatives of both the human and feline kind this month. One thing I am glad for: I trusted my intuition when it told me to use the free day I had to draft and schedule posts for the rest of the month. Knowing my blog has been continuing in my absence, that something is working to routine, has helped a lot.

All books are works of fiction.

The Books

Amanda Craig: The Other Side Of You – Finding his aunt dead in the flat, Will runs away, discovering an abandoned garden in the middle of a nice square where he can live and take care of the plants. I’ve read a lot about Quick Reads books – short and easy stories to aid literacy – but never read one; this particular story is somewhat based on Beauty And The Beast so it’s an interesting mix of reality and fantasy.

Evie Wyld: All The Birds, Singing – Running away from problems at home, Jake ends up on a remote British island looking after a sheep farm where someone is reducing her flock. Didn’t like this much at all – few answers, the dual narrative was written far too vaguely, and there’s neither plot nor development.

Josephine Johnson: Now In November – As the Great Depression looms over America, Marget and her family take up residence at a farm that will leave them constantly in debt. Originally published in 1934, this is a semi-forgotten Pulitzer Prize winner and whilst very good – not unlike, in atmosphere, to the Brontës and their moors – it’s definitely one to keep for a slow afternoon.

Margaret Laurence: The Stone Angel – A ninety-year-old looks back on her life as she fights off attempts to put her in a home. This is a Canadian classic from the 1960s so whilst it fits the trend we have going at the moment, the younger years of the woman are Victorian; a good book if difficult to read (due to the character).

Nicola Cornick: The Phantom Tree – When Alison runs away from those she is staying with as an unwelcome guest, she finds herself in the future and sees a way out of the restricted life she’s living. A good Tudor time travel book.

It would be difficult to pick a favourite this month. The two older books, the Laurence and the Johnson, were ironic, for me, in their subjects. I enjoyed the Cornick but it wasn’t as good as her previous. Considering what I said earlier this month I should point out that I’ve Marlon James’ prize winner and Tom Connelly’s Men Like Air on the go. I decided it was finally time for me to read James on the evening of the inauguration – on a day when I was constantly expecting the media to say ‘fooled you!’ suddenly the idea of starting such a daunting and long book didn’t seem so unrealistic after all. I’m finding the accenting difficult in that way that when an accent is written out some words will be hard to decipher and require some thought – I think I’ll enjoy it best by making it a long-term read. The Connelly I picked up in a moment of reading enthusiasm and it gripped me from the first page.

Quotation Report

None this time.

There are still things to come but I’m hopeful that February will be a little better. One thing that has been very good is that the post-Christmas reading slump I thought might persist has gone.

What was the last book you finished and did you enjoy it?

It has been quite some time since I last wrote one of these posts. I think I got so caught up in ‘topic’ posts and using an editorial calendar that it got pushed to the wayside. Writing about your current reading doesn’t really fit the idea of planning ahead.

My reading so far this year has been minimal. I’m finding that January is a hit-or-miss month – some years I’ll read a lot, others not much at all (if I finish a few books it’s usually down to a last-week-before-February ‘rush’ wherein that last week is sufficiently far enough from the holidays to feel detached from them). Thinking back to years I read a lot in January, it was mostly down to Long-Awaited Reads Month. I considered doing it again this year, just me, but found I wasn’t in the mood.

So I’ve been in a slump but it’s coming to an end. It got to the stage where I had to read because of the books I’d taken on for review. The books have been good. The Stone Angel has a horrible heroine but the book otherwise has been a fair read. I identified with it, having known people like Hagar Shipley, and that made it easier to work out what was happening, what was really going on. The book I’m currently reading, Nicola Cornick’s The Phantom Tree, was one I’d been looking forward to in that way of a reader who loved the author’s previous book and doesn’t care what the next will be, they just want to read it. It’s in a similar vein to House Of Shadows but different enough – there’s a lovely difference between the narrative voices in the two books wherein Cornick has stuck to her writing style whilst delivering a new voice. Hopefully that makes sense!

I’m also slowly getting through Evie Wyld’s All The Birds, Singing. I’m not keen on it, mostly because there is no suggestion, other than name usage, as to when the narrative has moved back and forth in time. The effect is huge – what could have been an interesting, pacey, book, is rendered confusing because you often don’t know where you are until a couple of pages into each chapter. Wyld is, I believe, the fourth ‘Granta best novelist’ I have read and I’m finding it intriguing that three of the four authors have something confusing in their narratives, as though to be a Granta Best Novelist one must be very vague. Xiaolu Guo. Helen Oyeyemi. Evie Wyld. Even Zadie Smith, who isn’t confusing as such, can be rather experimental. I’m wondering if I should keep a look out for the Granta line on covers so that I’m prepared and can plan my reading accordingly; I wouldn’t want to give them up but they’re best left for those times you’re particularly motivated.

Lastly, I’ve encountered my first erroneous blank page in a book. I read about this happening and it feels almost like a rite of passage. It was an early print so I doubt many will find it, though I believe at least one of you will know which book it was…

How is your reading going, and have you ever encountered a blank page?

When Samantha Sotto emailed to ask if I’d review her latest book, Love & Gravity, I said yes without a thought and asked if I could add an interview to the arrangement. Sotto’s début, Before Ever After, a road trip novel in the fantasy genre, remains one of my favourite books and having looked over her second I thought it an idea to follow up the interview we did four years ago. (My review will be posted next week.)

Where did the idea for Before Ever After come from?

Before Ever After was inspired by the time I spent living, studying and travelling through Europe as we all as a huge dose of Dr. Who Season 3. I’m a certified Whovian and you will see a lot of The Doctor in Max, the main character of Before Ever After.

The book is full of travel and history. What did your research for it involve?

I didn’t have an outline when I was working on it. I just knew that it was going to begin in London and end in Italy. I mapped out the countries between those places and chose the countries I had travelled to. From there, I went through the list of locations and – this will sound EXTREMELY strange for those who haven’t read the book – I googled “strange chicken facts.” This served as my inspiration for the historical stories I wrote about in each stop.

Your upcoming book, a time slip/travel, features Issac Newton and a fictional heroine. Why did you decide to write about Issac Newton, particularly in this context?

Believe it or not, Love & Gravity was inspired by an axe-wielding, vampire-hunting American President. My hubby and I had watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer and I left the theater with an itch to create my own alternative history tale. It made me wonder about other historical icons and think about the “secret” lives they might have led. I wanted to challenge myself by selecting the most unlikely romantic protagonist and creating a book that would completely change the way readers viewed and felt about him. I came up with a list of historical figures and decided on going with Isaac Newton after I had researched about his life and accomplishments. Isaac explained how and why the apple fell. I wanted to write about the woman who dropped it.

Where does your love of time travel-esque stories stem from?

Time is something we have absolutely no control of in real life. It marches on whether we want it to or not. We cannot stop it, reverse it, or make it go faster. I like to write about and play with time because fiction is the only place I have power over time and can make it do what I want.

What books do you like to read; which are your favourites?

I like any book that has a good mystery box that keeps me turning the pages. Neil Gaiman is my favorite author, but the books I most recently enjoyed are The Magician’s Lie by Greer Macallister and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr.

My thanks to Samantha!

Over to you, my readers: I have both Nicola Cornick’s and Barbara Erskine’s latest time-slip books to read – any others you’d recommend?

For the past two years I’ve not paid much attention to the idea of reading goals where it concerns myself. In 2015 I listed all the ways I’d failed the goals I’d set the previous year and threw the whole concept away – I decided reading as much as I comfortably could was best. Last year I hoped to improve my male to female ratio and read more translated fiction.

I was going to do similarly this time but around November I started creating goals without really thinking about it. Shaking my head to myself and thinking ‘I really should read more of X next year’. I’m wondering if that’s a sign of sorts that it’s time I tried goals again. So I’m making some but keeping them vague, a bit wishy-washy. I’m thinking that being non-committal might mean I have more success.

I want to read more books by authors who aren’t white – Having read so much Asian literature pre-blogging I got into the habit of thinking all was well – it’s taken me a spell of looking through my reading lists to see that I’m not reading at all as I used to. And whilst some of that is to be expected, such a complete change of this type doesn’t suit my personality. More on this when I post about my reading statistics.

I want to read more classics – I say this a lot but without considering how I might achieve it, and without any sort of plan those daunting tomes I’m interested in are going to remain on my shelves. So I’m going to try and see if I can read at least one classic every couple of months, starting February. I’m giving myself a pass this month because I’m in a slump and have a lot of books to read. I’m under no illusions – I most likely will not achieve 6 books this year – but as long as I read something classical, that will be good.

I want to read more books published in recent years that I haven’t yet got to – This goal ties in with the first (I’ve a lot of translated fiction – that Murakami I still haven’t read and the Hiromi Kawakami I got for Christmas) as well as the rest of the Man Booker 2015 shortlist and some Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that I’m wanting to read. It seems everyone has read her work and I feel out of the loop.

And one goal that’s not about books but is related to my blogging:

I want to visit some historical sites – I didn’t visit any castles last year except Old Sarum which I’d already visited before.

In typing these out, phrasing them, it’s occurred to me that my goals, sans the last, can be summed up in one bigger goal: I want to read more widely. I’ve been reading fairly widely already, but I want to improve on that.

Have you made any reading goals for this year? What was your reasoning behind choosing to make goals/not make goals?

There was a good piece posted on Book Riot last month in which the author said:

“I worry that the books aren’t as good as I remember, or that there’s something horrible and problematic that I missed when I was younger.”

I feel this and I reckon it’s part and parcel of the concept of re-reading when you’re considering books you read years ago. No matter if it’s something that occurs to you as an all-powerful may-make-or-break-your-decision-to-re-read or just on the periphery, it’s natural for it to be there.

And I think especially when those years in between have seen you grow up a lot, mature. Any age can see this but it’s especially apparent when you’re looking at a book you read at, say, ten years old, a decade later. If the book in question was one you read at the appropriate age or older, it’s likely you understood it correctly. Unless we’re talking adult books and possibly missed cultural references, it’s almost a forgone conclusion, I reckon, that you’ve not much to worry about.

But if you read a book that is or was considered a little too mature for you, having missed something becomes quite likely and this likelihood increases the larger the gap between you and the book’s recommended age. Sometimes you may have realised at the time of reading that you were missing parts and in those cases that awareness will have carried over into the times you considered talking about the book – you may not have recommended a book you loved, for example, because you knew you may have missed something significant. Other times you won’t have been aware of it.

And that can cause a problem – in re-reading this book, am I likely to notice something I didn’t before and thus feel stupid or embarrassed? I recommended this book, lauded it – am I going to find something in it that’s wretched? Am I going to make the discovery that I possibly looked very bad/ignorant when I recommended it to X friend X years ago, or discussed it with X who, older than me, knew it wasn’t as good as I was saying?

Most of the books I’ve re-read were YA and I’ve not had too many experiences of feeling embarrassed – Northern Lights will always be good, for example, and most of what I missed on other occasions turned out to be very minor points – it’s actually more the case that I recognise a few of the books I read just as I was starting to become an avid reader again, in adulthood after leaving school, were likely a lot better than I thought. Does literary fiction seem lifeless and plodding when you don’t ‘get it’? In my experience, yes, it does.

Those times you didn’t like the book but you find on a re-read that it’s good, you just weren’t mature or knowledgeable or in the zone – that’s better. I think in many ways it’s easier to go from ranting about a book to saying ‘okay, it’s not so bad, I messed up’ than ‘oh my goodness this book is amazing… okay, actually the characters are horrible and I feel ashamed’. I think I’d have hated Heathcliff at any age, but I am still glad I only read that book a few years ago.

Away from any embarrassment, does this ‘worry’ that a book will be different point to the importance of re-reading? If an important element of re-reading is to see how your opinions have changed, then worry is as good a reason as any. Re-reading means we learn more. It’s linked to the concept of a book still having something to say, just that it’s on a personal level rather than societal, and not limited to the classics.

But what does this difference in maturity and so forth have on our ability to form an opinion, in terms of reviews and recommendations? Can we trust our opinion? Does it resonant a little too uncomfortably with that idea that some opinions are worthless? (Or does it simply match the idea that all opinions are worthwhile and should be matched with people who will appreciate them?) I know many people delete old reviews – I can’t see myself doing that but I do wonder if an update is in order.

What are your thoughts when considering re-reading a book you read a while ago?