My Week in Books 1

Not that I want to turn this into a dusty, stuffy book blog, or any sort of book blog, but I thought I'd start keeping some sort of small record of what I've had my big nose in recently. So each week, or roughly each week, or whenever I get a moment, I'll jot down the titles of the books I've read, and give a sentence or two on what I enjoyed (or didn't enjoy) about it. Because I'll only include books which I've read in their entirety, a lot of skim-reading and odd-story-reading will have to be consigned to a postscript, or else the dustbin of the blog world (if we're not already in it). I should
also point out that, although it may be a controversial point, I take 'book' here to mean any work which has been published by itself as a novel, short-story volume, play, volume of poetry, or work of non-fiction. Many may disagree that The Waste Land, for instance, is a book; but because its title is rendered in italics rather than quotation marks, and because it carries with it - like many of Eliot's major poems - the depth, breadth, and general stamp of a book, I'm going to include that. As I say, controversial. So anyway, here we go: what have I read, or finished reading, over the last week?

William Hope Hodgson, The Night Land (1912)

This was hard-going, but ultimately rewarding: if I were feeling flippant (and I usually am) I'd call it a sort of Pilgrim's Progress of the future, or else the horror-fantasy version of Ulysses, or maybe H. G. Wells after too many wine gums. None of this quite captures what it's about though: it's written in a rather laboured seventeenth-century style which the reader soon tires of, there is virtually no dialogue (in fact, there may be absolutely none, but I'd have to read it again, and bugger that), and not a lot happens, besides some telepathy and kinky sex stuff. Yet even this doesn't comprehensively impart what's going on in this bizarre work: it's a real tester, described as 'unreadable' by many, and yet you do feel you're a richer person for having read it. It's long, at nearly 600 pages, and it feels long. Interesting trivia: it was, along with Hodgson's tales of his 'ghost-finder', Carnacki, the book which introduced the term 'ab-human' into the language, and thus into horror fiction. Oh, and it is one of the earliest works to describe an arcology (a portmanteau of 'architectural' and 'ecology', defining essentially a huge metal pyramid in which whole civilisations can live). Heartily recommended, though maybe warm yourself up with the shorter, and more readable (though still difficult) The House on the Borderland.


P. G. Wodehouse, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974)

I reached for this Jeeves and Wooster outing as an antidote to the above-mentioned book: I needed something far lighter, and funnier, to cool my brain down after the experience of The Night Land. Wodehouse is, like Terry Pratchett, one of those writers worth reaching for when you want to escape to a world that is familiar in all senses and yet soothed with an (on the whole) reliable dose of humour (albeit with a glorious satirical edge in more recent Pratchett). I'm not sure what's inherently funny about cats, but whatever it is, it works here, and this was a fine book, though I sense there are better Wodehouse books out there (which I'll come to). Trivia: it was published in the US under the title The Cat-Nappers.


T. S. Eliot, Prufrock and Other Observations (1917)

These twelve poems contain some early gems - the even earlier stuff was collected in the Inventions of the March Hare book. 'Morning at the Window', a single Spenserian stanza given a modern (and modernist) twist, is a subtle but glorious example of what was to come, while the title poem, complete with its ingenious title, is of course one of the landmarks of modernist poetry. One of the most cryptic and resonant lines in all modernist poetry, 'And I wonder how they should have been together', is included in the closing poem. I'm not sure if anyone has yet performed a study on bits of paper in Eliot's poetry (they probably have), but they seem to crop up a fair bit. As with all of Eliot's poetic oeuvre, this comes recommended as essential reading for any poetry buff. Trivia: Faber and Faber, Eliot's publishing house, was run by just one Faber; it was formerly Faber and Gwyer, and a second Faber brother was dreamt up because it was felt that 'Faber' by itself wouldn't carry the same weight.


Rudyard Kipling, Strange Tales

These tales were of varying quality, but some, like 'My Own True Ghost Story', were hugely enjoyable. Others ramble on a bit, but on the whole they're rather readable. 'The Mark of the Beast', a tale of lycanthropy that caused shock horror when it first appeared in the 1880s, has lost some of its beastliness; but they're still well worth a look. It's probably a mistake to try to read too many in one go, as I did, because they become rather samey. Trivia? Kipling's dog was called Malachi, a name inspired by a line from Sir Thomas More: 'When Malachi wore a collar of gold' (I think that's the quotation anyway).


Arthur Machen, The Novel of the White Powder and Other Stories

This volume contains three novellas/tales by the Welsh master of weird writing: 'The Novel of the White Powder' (a short Jekyll and Hyde-inspired episode taken from the larger Stevenson-inspired work, The Three Impostors), the novella 'A Fragment of Life', and one of Machen's most famous works, The Great God Pan. When he's on form, as he often is here, Machen is very good, although we never fully escape the shadow of Robert Louis. While The Hill of Dreams is far superior to these more famous tales, these are still essential reading for anyone interested in fiction dealing with the occult. Interesting trivia: Machen is credited with originating the idea of the Holy Grail surviving into modern times. (So arguably, without him, we wouldn't have had The Da Vinci Code.)

So there we are. That's what I've been reading over the last seven days. I've embarked on a new reading odyssey already, and I'll write up that, and other excursions, some time next week. Happy reading to you all, kind blog-visitors.