Roadside Picnic

Hearing of the death of Stanislaw Lem reminded me of another book-I-haven’t-read-yet, although it’s not one of his. Lem was most famous for writing Solaris which was made into a classic Russian science-fiction film in 1971, and a not-so classic American science-fiction film, starring George Clooney, in 2002. I haven’t seen the Clooney version, and the only thing I remember about the Russian film was a sleep-inducing sequence in which someone was driving along a motorway at night for ages and ages. However, another film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky made a haunting impression on me, and that film – Stalker – was based on a book I haven’t read yet because it’s so rare that I’ve never come across a copy:

Roadside Picnic

by

Arkady & Boris Strugatsky

Ragged Trousered Pessimist

I made the mistake of browsing round another charity shop today, but it was an Oxfam shop so there was no danger of me buying anything: the prices they charge you would have thought poverty was history already! One book that caught my eye was The Perpetual Pessimist (An Everlasting Calendar of Gloom and Almanac of Woe) by Sagittarius? and Daniel George. Just my kind of thing – a book full of miserable, fatalistic, quotations. Anyway I decided to try and find out more about The Perpetual Pessimist tonight, and a bit of googling led me to the fascinating alphaDictionary.com. Nothing to do with the book though – it just so happens that in their list of the 100 Funniest Words in English, at number 87, is the fabulous word smellfungus which they define as “a perpetual pessimist”. Apparently Smellfungus was a character created by Tristram Shandy author Laurence Sterne in A Sentimental Journey (another book I haven’t read) as a satirical parody of Tobias Smollett.

alphaDictionary’s list also includes abibliophobia: the fear of running out of reading material – something I certainly don’t suffer from, and never will: my shelves already have more than enough books to see me out.

Meanwhile, Oxfam also had a copy of another book I haven’t read yet but really should have…

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

by Robert Tressell

…a realistic depiction of working class life a hundred years ago, an indictment of capitalism, a socialist classic, and a book that has changed lives. But not mine because I still haven’t read it yet.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Unread books creep up and bite me whatever I do and wherever I look. It’s not even safe to watch dumb TV. I caught some of Through The Keyhole on BBC2 this afternoon, and there in Lisa I’Anson’s pad was a copy of a book-I-haven’t-read-yet which has been waiting patiently on my shelf for so many years that I’d forgotten all about it.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Sogyal Rinpoche

It came recommended by the John Cleese, who called it one of the most helpful books he’d ever read, and The Observer, who said it was for “readers of all religions and readers of none” – but is that a reader of no religion, or a reader of no books? I suppose I qualify either way. Just my luck if I get reincarnated as a bookworm. Instant karma’s gonna get ya…

Thank You For Not Reading

I was in the library today – looking for 1001 Books – and one title caught my eye, it said:

Thank You for Not Reading

Essays on literary trivia

by Dubravka Ugresic

I picked it up, had a quick shufty, and then put it back on the shelf, unread.

You’re welcome, Dubravka.

Julian Evans in The Guardian calls it a book to be treasured, and it is “enjoyable, biting and funny” according to Mark Thwaite on readysteadybook.com, who also recommends The Uses of Slime Mould by Nicholas Mosley. Tch, so that’s two more books to feel guilty about not-reading…

The Voyage That Never Ends

Charity shops are a major source of books I haven’t read yet and while I was out wandering this afternoon (avoiding some upheavals at home in my usual cowardly way) I found a book I had never heard of, but whose title pierced my heart and had to be borne home…Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laidby Malcolm Lowry

Lowry was already familiar to me as the author of Under The Volcano – another book I haven’t read yet. I almost started it a few years ago, then decided it wasn’t my kind of thing: I don’t identify with drunks. Lowry, whose characters were largely based on himself, suffered from alcoholism and depression, but wasn’t without humour. For his own epitaph he wrote:

Malcolm Lowry
Late of the Bowery
His prose was flowery
And often glowery
He lived, nightly, and drank, daily,
And died playing the ukelele.

Of course Lowry didn’t die playing the ukelele: according to The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction – another depository of books-I-haven’t-read-yet, he died of an overdose of sleeping pills on June 27th, 1957 – the birthday of his friend Paul Fitte, who committed suicide while they were both students at Cambridge – possibly with Lowry’s assistance. There’s a sad novel in there somewhere. Suddenly I can empathise with Lowry, because my closest friend killed himself in 1990.

So, the Aged – amongst whose number my friend Graham will never be – are 50p better off, and my shelves creak under the weight of another book I haven’t read…yet. Lowry died leaving ‘Dark as the Grave wherein my Friend is Laid’ unfinished. The title is taken from this poem:

On The Death of Mr. William Hervey
Abraham Cowley (1618-1667)

It was a dismal, and a fearful night,
Scarce could the morn drive on th’unwilling Light,
When sleep, death’s image, left my troubled breast,
By something liker death possest.
My eyes with tears did uncommanded flow,
And on my soul hung the dull weight
Of some intolerable fate.
What bell was that? ah me! too much I know.
My sweet companion, and my gentle peer,
Why hast thou left me thus unkindly here,

Thy end for ever, and my life, to moan?
O, thou hast left me all alone!
Thy soul and body when death’s agony
Besieg’d around thy noble heart,
Did not with more reluctance part
Than I, my dearest friend, do part from thee.
My dearest friend, would I had dy’d for thee!
Life and this world henceforth will tedious be.
Nor shall I know hereafter what to do
If once my griefs prove tedious too.

Silent and sad I walk about all day,
As sullen Ghosts stalk speechless by
Where their hid treasures lie;
Alas, my treasure’s gone! why do I stay?
He was my friend, the truest friend on earth;
A strong and mighty influence join’d our birth;
Nor did we envy the most sounding name
By friendship giv’n of old to fame.
None but his brethren he and sisters knew,
Whom the kind youth preferr’d to me;

And ev’n in that we did agree,
For much above my self I lov’d them too.
Say, for you saw us, ye immortal lights,
How oft unweari’d have we spent the nights,
Till the Ledoean stars so fam’d for love,
Wondred at us from above!
We spent them not in toys, in lusts, or wine;
But search of deep philosophy,
Wit, Eloquence, and Poetry,
Arts which I lov’d, for they, my friend, were thine.
Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say,

Have ye not seen us walking every day?
Was there a tree about which did not know
The love betwixt us two?
Henceforth, ye gentle trees, for ever fade;
Or your sad branches thicker join,
And into darksome shades combine,
Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid!
Henceforth no learned Youths beneath you sing,
Till all the tuneful birds to’your boughs they bring;
No tuneful birds play with their wonted chear,

And call the learned youths to hear,
No whistling winds through the glad branches fly,
But all with sad solemnity,
Mute and unmoved be,
Mute as the grave wherein my friend does lie.
To him my Muse made haste with every strain
Whilst it was new and warm yet from the brain:
He lov’d my worthless rhymes and, like, a friend,
Would find out something to commend.
Hence now, my Muse! thou canst not me delight;

Be this my latest verse,
With which I now adorn his hearse,
And this my grief, without thy help, shall write.
Had I a wreath of bays about my brow,
I should contemn that flourishing honor now:
Condemn it to the Fire, and joy to hear
It rage and crackle there.
Instead of bays, crown with sad cypress me;
Cypress which tombs does beautify:
Not Phoebus griev’d so much as I

For him, who first was made that mournful tree.
Large was his soul; as large a soul as ere
Submitted to inform a body here.
High as the place ’twas shortly’in heaven to have,
But low, and humble as his grave.
So high that all the Virtues there did come
As to their chiefest seat
Conspicuous, and great;
So low, that for me too it made a room.
He scorn’d this busy world below, and all
That we, mistaken mortals, pleasure call;

Was fill’d with inn’ocent gallantry and truth,
Triumphant ore the sins of youth.
He like the Stars, to which he now is gone,
That shine with beams like flame,
Yet burn not with the same,
Had all the light of youth, of the fire none.
Knowledge he only sought, and so soon caught,
As if for him Knowledge had rather sought.
Nor did more Learning ever crowded lie
In such a short mortality.

When ere the skilful youth discours’d or writ,
Still did the notions throng
About his eloquent tongue,
Nor could his ink flow faster than his wit.
So strong a wit did Nature to him frame,
As all things but his judgement overcame;
His judgement like the heav’nly moon did show,
Temp’ring that mighty sea below.
Oh had he liv’d in Learning’s world, what bound
Would have been able to control

His over-powering soul?
We’ave lost in him arts that not yet are found.
His mirth was the pure spirits of various wit,
Yet never did his God or friends forget.
And when deep talk and wisdom came in view,
Retir’d, and gave to them their due:
For the rich help of books he always took,
Though his own searching mind before
Was so with notions written ore
As if wise Nature had made that her book.

So many Virtues join’d in him, as we
Can scarce pick here and there in History.
More then old writer’s practice ere could reach,
As much as they could ever teach.
These did Religion, Queen of Virtues’ sway,
And all their sacred motions steer,
Just like the first and highest sphere
Which wheels about, and turns all Heaven one way.
With as much zeal, devotion, piety,
He always liv’d, as other Saints do die.

Still with his soul severe account he kept,
Weeping all debts out ere he slept;
Then down in peace and innocence he lay,
Like the sun’s laborious light,
Which still in water sets at night,
Unsullied with his journey of the day.
Wondrous young man! why wert thou made so good,
To be snatch’d hence ere better understood?
Snatch’d before half of thee enough was seen!
Thou ripe, and yet thy life but green!

Nor could thy friends take their last sad farewell,
But danger and infectious death
Malitiously seiz’d on that breath
Where life, spirit, pleasure always us’d to dwell.
But happy thou, ta’ne from this frantick age,
Where igno’rance and hypocrisy does rage!
A fitter time for heaven no soul ere chose,
The place now only free from those.
There ‘mong the blest thou dost for ever shine,
And wheresoe’re thou casts thy view

Upon that white and radiant crew,
See’st not a soul cloath’d with more light than thine.
And if the glorious saints cease not to know
Their wretched friends who fight with life below;
Thy flame to me does still the same abide,
Only more pure and rarifi’d.
There whilst immortal hymns thou dost reherse,
Thou dost with holy pity see
Our dull and earthly Poesy,
Where grief and misery can be join’d with verse.

Debatable Land

The judges for the 2006 Man Booker Prize were announced today – they include Hermione and Aunt Petunia. That’s Hermione Lee, a biographer and academic who will chair the panel, and actress Fiona Shaw who plays Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter films (amongst many, perhaps more impressive roles). They will be joined by The Independent’s film critic Anthony Quinn, poet-turned-novelist Simon Armitage, and award-winning novelist Candia McWilliam. Ahhhh, I suppose that would be the Candia McWilliam who won the 1994 Guardian Fiction Prize with…

Debatable Land

…another one of those books I haven’t read yet. It has been sitting patiently on one shelf or another since August 22nd, 1997 – I know because I’ve just found the receipt bookmarking page one! Oh dear.

Orange Prize 2006

The longlist for the 2006 Orange Prize was announced today,
which reminds me – I still haven’t read last year’s winner…

We Need To Talk About Kevin

by Lionel Shriver

Not that I needed any more reminding: Lionel Shriver was the guest on yesterday’s Bookclub on BBC Radio 4, and the discussion convinced me that maybe I should give it another try. “…convinced me that maybe…”? You see how I’m backsliding already? I started reading it last year but didn’t get very far – I found Eva Khatchadourian’s convoluted sentences rather clunky. Who speaks, or rather writes letters, using phrases like: “flimsy pressboard cabinetry”, “impervious for codswallop” or “cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions”?

The Orange Prize is open to “any full length novel, written in English by a woman of any nationality“. As a matter of balance I feel there ought to be a Lemon Prize for the worst full-length novel written in English by a man – although I suppose it would be difficult for anyone to beat Jeffrey Archer.

Anyway this year’s Orange longlist includes two titles from last year’s Booker Prize shortlist: the only one that I haven’t read yet – On Beauty by Zadie Smith; and The Accidental by Ali Smith which won the Whitbread Novel Award in January. Of course The Booker Prize is restricted to citizens of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland, whereas the Orange Prize is open to the rest of the world: so Marilynne Robinson has to regarded as a strong contender with Gilead which has already won the 2006 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion (worth $200,000 – almost four times as much as the Orange Prize), the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Melcher Book Award, the US National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction no less!

The twenty books in the running for the £30,000 Orange Prize are:

Pratt

Libraries are, of course, an Aladdin’s cave of unread books, to which I am drawn like a sex-addict to an orgy; and here in Nottinghamshire the libraries produce a monthly leaflet called Your Next Good Read for the benefit of people who struggle to find anything to read. Who are these people? Can’t they see we are all surrounded by books and that they breed like rabbits?

While scanning through the list for March, I was alarmed to see that Jeffrey Archer has a new book out – surely peddling fiction should constitute a breach of his parole? And apparently one of his ‘characters’ escapes from the World Trade Centre, so it sounds like he hasn’t lost any of his subtlety. It reminds me of something that happens in First Among Equals – not the book, I’ve never read any of his books, obviously, but the ITV adaptation: you see a toddler playing football in a garden, you see an open gate, you hear a truck…

Anyway, further down the list is the new book by David Nobbs: Pratt à Manger which, to be honest, sounds a bit too similar to Adrian Mole’s (disappointing) Cappuccino Years.

I won’t be adding Pratt à Manger to my To-Be-Read list because, much as I love David Nobbs‘ work, I have never read any of his books – I’ve only ever seen the TV adaptions. There are two of his books on my shelves waiting to be read, one being the original book about Henry Pratt:

Second From Last In The Sack Race

I enjoyed the ITV series The Life and Times of Henry Pratt, starring Jack Deam (pictured on the cover above) and Bryan Dick as Pratt, who have both gone on to become familiar faces on our TV screens. Dick went on to appear in Bonjour la Classe and many other things including Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World and Bleak House; while Deam now plays Marty in the outrageously titwank brilliant Shameless. Like many of ITV’s old shows – Shine On Harvey Moon also springs to mind – The Life and Times of Henry Pratt isn’t available on DVD, proving that the ‘I’ in ‘ITV’ stands for Idiots.

The other unread David Nobbs book I own is…

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

It is, of course, obligatory at this point to say that I didn’t get where I am today without knowing that The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin was the greatest sit-com of all-time and up yer cunge to anyone who says otherwise. I would read it, but the trouble is it smells like a Bolivian unicyclist’s jockstrap – something which you can probably buy from eBay, the real-life manifestation of Reggie Perrin’s rubbish-selling shop Grot. According to wikipedia, the first item sold on eBay was the founder’s broken laser pointer (for $14.83). When asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken, the winning bidder replied: “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.”

Mumbo Jumbo

Because of all the controversy about that cartoon of He-who-must-not-be-mocked-unless-you-want-to-be-the-target-of-a-violent-mob-(peace-be-upon-him); and Tony Blair suggesting to Parky he expected to be judged by God over the Iraq war; I decided that my next book-I-haven’t-read-yet ought to be…

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World

by Francis Wheen

I really am itching to read this one. I am increasingly dismayed (to put it very mildly) at the way the world seems to be sleepwalking back to the dark ages. The widespread bad attitude towards science and the embracement of superstition and mysticism is just lazy-mindedness – so many people just seem to love wallowing in their own ignorance. The majority of the American public, for example, seem determined to reject any presidential candidate who can be labelled with that most insulting of all c-words: clever. No-one likes, let alone trusts, anyone who is cleverer than them. The Republican Party have grasped this and for several decades now have put forward the dumbest schmuck they can find as their candidate. Indeed, if Clinton hadn’t had the advantage of appearing too stupid to keep his dick in his pants and Jimmy Carter hadn’t seemed like a dumb peanut-farmer, the right-wing would have been in power over there for more than thirty years. Meanwhile, here in Britain, Tony Blair is happy with the teaching of Creationism in schools, leaving me to wonder if he’s secretly a religious fruitcake, and why filling children’s head full of c(lapt)rap isn’t classed as child abuse. …However, when I picked Francis Wheen’s book up, I saw this on the cover: ‘HILARIOUS’ JEREMY PAXMAN – and that reminded me of another book I meant to read several years ago but didn’t, and which caught my eye in the library recently:

The English

by Jeremy Paxman

See? That’s the most dangerous thing about books you haven’t read: they gang up on you and multiply until one day you find yourself hopelessly outnumbered by them. You realise they are looking down on you from the full-to-bursting shelves (and up from the piles on the floor) eating up more and more space and leaving less and less room for air – slowly suffocating you in revenge for your neglect. I think religions use a similar technique: they spread themselves insidiously through society until suddenly you realise that they are in power – by which time you find they have taken you to war against some other bunch of religious nutters.

The trouble is it’s much easier to be lazy-minded than to get to grips with evolutionary biology. I’m making one last attempt to read Evolution in Four DImensions by Eva Jablonka and
Marion J. Lamb this weekend, but it’s heavy going. While another book nearing the top of my to-be-read list is…

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (Evolution and the Meaning of Life)

by Daniel C. Dennett

…and there is an interview with Daniel Dennett in The Observer today. It seems his new book Breaking The Spell is all about religion – the institutionalized superstition that wrecks so many lives – and how it evolved. Brilliant. All we need now is for Michael Moore to write a biography of Cowboy No.1. Carrying the ‘fight’ to the ‘enemy’ is imperative – because there’s no doubt that the Christians are mobilizing: the copy of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea I have on loan from the library had a pretty postcard inserted into it, courtesy NPN, describing evolution as a “theory-tale” and ‘explaining’ how “only an intelligent creator could design a complete system of co-dependent life forms, none of which could survive without the other.”

It’s enough to make you wonder sometimes if you’re on the right planet.

World Book Day

I thought to myself: I must mark World Book Day with a blog entry – something relevant – but what? I decided to read some of my emails for a change: especially those from all the book sites’ mailing lists I’ve signed up to over the years. I never have to venture far into the world of literature before an unread book jumps out at me, and that’s just what happened when I read today’s email from lovereading.co.uk.

It puts the spotlight on Quick Reads – described as “short, fast-paced new books designed to encourage reluctant readers to get hooked on books.” There are twelve of them on sale (for £2.99) and another twelve coming out in May; and they are only about 100 pages long which is a good thing – there are too many long books in the world already. If authors keep writing such long books shelf-space could be extinct within ten years. I blame computers…or Proust…or Caxton.

Anyway, I made the fatal mistake of browsing through these Quick Reads (a deceptive title, like all those three-for-the-price-of-two offers that lure you into spending twice as much as you intended: however quick they are to read it still means more books I haven’t read yet) and one name poked me in the eye: Tom Holt.

Someone Like Me is Tom Holt’s contribution to Quick Reads: a fantasy-thriller with a sting in the tail which sounds darkly mysterious and therefore tempting. But here I have to confess: I have no idea what his books are like because I haven’t read any of them yet, including…

The Portable Door

by Tom Holt

…which was one of a set of books I won in a competition in the local evening paper. He does come highly recommended – but then don’t they all? Time Out magazine described his books as “Dazzling”, and New Scientist called them “wildly imaginative”. New Scientist?

According to his profile at lovereading.co.uk, Tom Holt studied bar billiards at Oxford, as well as “ancient Greek agriculture and the care and feeding of small, temperamental Japanese motorcycle engines“. As someone who briefly studied snooker at Bristol University I feel a definite affinity for him, so I’m moving The Portable Door and Someone Like Me quite a few places up my immense mental To-Be-Read list. It’s the least I can do. Sorry, Tom.

But you know what? Turns out it’s not really World Book Day at all – only in the UK & Ireland. The rest of the world celebrate World Book Day on April 23rd: Shakespeare’s birthday. Apparently, ours is brought forward so that it falls during term-time, which means we get two World Book Days every year. Bloody kids!

The first twelve Quick Reads are: