The Man of Property (book 1 of the forsyte saga) by John Galsworthy

Love is no hot-house flower, but a wild plant, born of wet night, born of an hour of sunshine; sprung from wild seed, blown along the road by a wild wind. A wild plant that, when it blooms by chance in within the hedge of our gardens, we call a flower; and when it blooms outside we call a weed; but, flower or weed, whose scent and colour are always wild!  And further – the facts and figures of their own lives being against the perception of truth – it was not generally recognised by Forsytes that, where, this wild plant springs, men and women are but moths around the pale, flame-like blossom. 

Persepolis

Don't the colours look nice together? I only read books that match my decor.

Laura lent me this when she came on our little holiday in my house (about a million months ago now...bad blogger). I like to think that my devious plan, involving taking her to charity shops so she bought more books and couldn’t take ALL her books home, was the reason she lent it to me. But it might have been her plan to lend me them all along.

First of all: Persepolis is super awesome. (The second of all, I’m glad I’m writing this down so I don’t have to try and say Persepolis. I said it in my mangled way and my Archaeologist father went “It’s Persepolis” so fast that I’ve no idea how he said it.)

Persepolis is a graphic novel by Marjane Strapi about her childhood in Iran and then her return to Iran after spending some of her teens in Austria. Before reading it by knowledge about Iran was this:

1) There was some kind of Cultural/Islamic revolution in the 70s

2) Comedian Shappi Khorsandi is Iranian and her family moved to Britian in the 70s because her father wrote a satirical poem

3) Iran used to be called Persia

Have you been blown away by my knowledge?

The first awesome thing about this book is that it’s really informative. After reading this I actually have some idea of Iran’s recent history, including the part that Britain played (non-spoiler: it was not good). The history of the Middle East is SO confusing and Persepolis describes it in a way that I could understand (I sound really thick so far...).

But the best thing about Persepolis is that it is a personal story. It cuts through all the distance that news reports give and the way that they can “other” people. News never focuses on people in a way that you can relate to them. Through Marjane’s eyes, we can see her experiencing the Iranian Revolution alongside being a teenager. It reminded me of how people find the term "first world problems" offensive because people all over the world get annoyed if their wifi is down or whatever. People are just people and they still live their day-to-day lives, even if their day-to day lives involve having to wear the veil. We can all too easily look at women who live under oppressive regimes and assume we know everything about them. That there is nothing in their lives beyond their limited freedoms. We rarely seek out their voices or stories. Not only does Persepolis do this but it's really engaging and funny. 

So even if it hadn’t been so interesting and entertaining, I would have liked it just because it helped to make me less ignorant!

The Masque of Anarchy - Percy Bysshe Shelley

from the Manchester Archives Flickr photoset

This is not technically a book but a poem. It’s a long poem, though, and I’m sure someone has sold it as a little book on its own. Plus, this is my challenge and I’m cheating because I'm really behind. So there.

I wasn’t going to post this at all but then I realised that this week it was the anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre – the event which inspired the poem – and so it seemed pretty perfect.

What was the Peterloo Massacre?

*puts on Open University hat*

The country had experienced famine and high unemployment in the years following the Napoleonic Wars and the introduction of the Corn Laws. This suffering was compounded by a lack of parliamentary representation for working people, particularly in industrial areas like Manchester, where they were very few members of parliament and even fewer voters. Spurred on by their extreme poverty and lack of voice or help from the government, radical politics gained popularity.

On the 16^th August 1819, the Manchester Patriotic Union had organised a demonstration for parliamentary reform with an address by leading radical Henry Hunt. The protesters came to Peter's Field from all over Manchester and the surrounding areas – one eyewitness estimated that the crowd equalled half the population of Manchester. Because previous meetings of working people had been criticised and mocked for their shabby appearance and disorderly conduct, the Peter’s Field protesters had made efforts to be particularly well turned out and none of them were armed. Despite the peaceful nature of the demonstration, local magistrates wanted to arrest Hunt and they called on the Army to arrest him and disperse the crowd. The cavalry went in with their sabres drawn and many in the crowd were unable to get away. In the chaos that followed, 400-600 people were injured and 15 killed.

Why should we care now?

*puts on socialist ribbon*

The Peterloo Massacre lead to the founding of the Manchester Guardian (which became the modern-day Guardian newspaper) and was a really significant moment in radical and working class politics, helping to bring about the Trades Union movement.

THE ACTUAL POEM

*puts on English Graduate garment of some description*

Shelley was in Italy at the time but when he heard about the massacre he was driven to write the Masque of Anarchy, considered by many to be one of the greatest political poems in the English language. I think it’s pretty good. Go and read it.

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you -

Ye are many - they are few..

How excellent is that? I want everyone to read it and go, “YES! WE WILL RISE LIKE LIONS! WE ARE MANY AND THEY ARE FEW! LET’S SAVE THE NHS FROM THE TORY WANKBAGS!”

*takes off weird extra garments and gets back to drawing tattoos on self in biro*

Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics - bell hooks

Feminist politics aims to end domination to free us to be who we are -- to live lives where we love justice, where we can live in peace. Feminism is for Everybody

I have finally finished this. It’s a ridiculously short book to have taken me so long but I had to read it short bursts to stop myself copying it all out into my notebook. I need everyone I know to read this so that we can discuss how wonderful it is and then make bell hooks our queen. I don’t think she’d be down with being a queen, but I’m sure we could work something out.

I think bell hooks is the only feminist author that I’ve never seen anyone criticise and bad-mouth. Now I know why. 

I don’t even know what to say about it. JUST READ IT.

I guess that won’t do.

 

Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression

 

bell hooks wrote Feminism is for Everybody because she wished she had a book she could give to people when they said things like “I’m not a feminist but....” and clearly miss the point of what feminism and the feminist movement are all about. She wanted it to be an accessible book for people outside academia, one that simply explains all of the issues around feminism, and how it intersects with race and class and religion etc. without alienating people with complicated terminology. I think she does a pretty good job of explaining all the terms that she uses and making it accessible for all readers*.

 

Where Feminism is for Everybody is different from traditional introduction to feminism books is that it’s not all about pay gaps and white girls. I've borrowed a copy of The Equality Illusion by Kat Banyard and (as far as I can tell from the back) it seems to be about pay gaps and unequal numbers of women in top jobs in the city. While this is obviously important stuff, it seems to me, and bell hooks, that this is really just tinkering with a system that is inherently wrong. The system is unfairly stacked in favour of white men, not because it is broken, but because it is working exactly as it was designed. Helping some women, inevitably privileged white women, will not further the cause of feminism for all women. This book is about how feminism is truly for, and will benefit, everybody whether they are male, female, straight, queer, working-class, middle-class, white, non-white etc. And most of all, how we need to change our society because it is built on domination and oppression. But rather than depress me about how much oppression their is in the world, this book has made me feel excited to imagine a world built on justice and love respect.

Who's coming to smash this white supremacist capitalist patriarchy with me?

Because my review made NO SENSE here are some quotes:

We do know that patriarchal masculinity encourages men to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been born male. Many men feel that their lives are being threatened if these privileges are taken away, as they have structured no meaningful core identity.

 (on feminism being associated with hatred and anger:)
In actuality we should have been spreading the word that feminism would make it possible for men and women to know love. We know that now. 

Sexually conservative feminists, gay and straight, found and continue to find consensual rituals of domination and submission inappropriate and see them as betraying feminist ideals of freedom. Their absolute judgement, their refusal to respect the rights of all women to choose the sexual practice they find most fulfilling, is in actuality the stance which most undermines the feminist movement.

If any female feels she needs anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.

When we accept that true love is rooted in recognition and acceptance, that love combines acknowledgement, care, responsibility, commitment, and knowledge, we understand that there can be no love without justice. With that awareness comes the understanding that love has the power to transform us, giving us the strength to oppose domination. To choose feminist politics, then, is the choice to love.

 

*I am a very bad judge of this because I love reading anything with words like “Diaspora” or “hegemony” and everything seems beautifully simple after trying to decipher Judith Butler. 

Blood Sisters by Melanie Clegg

I haven’t forgotten how to read! I just keep watching Game of Thrones.

Last week I finished Blood Sisters by Melanie Clegg (known as Madame Guillotine on twitter and her blog). I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to write this review. Book reviews are hard because I just want to go I LIKED IT! READ IT! This one is definitely more of a record than a review... 

Blood Sisters is about 3 sisters during the French revolution: twins Lucrèce and Cassandre, and their more rebellious younger sister Adélaïde. The book moves from sister to sister as they marry other aristocrats and experience the Reign of Terror first hand. The book is basically romance and gore... and a fair amount of guillotining. I read Blood Sisters in 2 days, thinking “I’ll just read a litttttle bit more and then I’ll do something useful.” It is so readable and engaging and thankfully free of the glaringly obvious historical inaccuracies! You can tell that the author has spent years researching this topic and it really makes a difference.

I’m now off to read lots and lots of short books to make up for being about 10 behind on this challenge... oops.

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeannette Winterson

When I was a pretentious teenager who had just stolen the spare tv to watch inappropriate tv secretly in her room I used to watch a lot of Newsnight Review. I really don’t know why because I’d never read the books or seen the films they were talking about. I just liked it because it made me feel clever. The main things I remember about it are Miranda Sawyer’s hair (I drew diagrams in my diary) and Jeanette Winterson.

The Jeanette Winterson I saw on that programme was the Jeanette Winterson that stayed in my imagination for a long time. She was intense and argumentative and she seemed like a twitchy little squirrel. I was a little scared of her. Then I read Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit as a teenager (like everyone does) and I can’t say I remember much about it except for the foreword in my edition where she talked about being poor and glad the coloured knickers were the fashion because she couldn’t afford a separate whites wash at the laundrette. This didn’t tally at all with my idea of her as scary and twitching and severe. For a long time I left it there. Jeannette Winterson was the embodiment of scary and serious feminism that I didn't understand and found intimidating and severe. 

I thought of Winterson as very severe and intimidating (aka. someone who would definitely think I was an idiot) for a long time. It faded a bit once I'd learned more about feminism but I never really lost the idea that she was serious and would hate me! But then I watched this tv programme she did about 

Shall I talk about the book now?

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Is the best title. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit was pretty good but this is better. How could anyone resist a book with that title and a cute child with a beach ball on the cover? The title is like a self-help book gone-wrong and it feels like a magical self-help book, a book that demands to be re-read regularly. I want to get it back from my mother (who demanded to read it as soon as possible) and underline huge sections. 

I still haven't talked about what's actually IN the book. It's a book about loving books and being adopted and being gay and mental illness. Jeanette lives in a house where "HE WILL MELT THY BOWELS LIKE WAX" is on the back of the loo door and her mother's church starves her when she has a relationship with another girls. So much of what happens to Jeanette, at least at the start of the book, is awful and yet I mostly remember laughing. 

Go and read it. 

p.s. I am totally mentally adding it to my teenage girl pack

Shadows Of The Workhouse by Jennifer Worth

As everyone knows, I am obsessed with nuns and midwives. Are there two more awesome types of people than nuns and midwives? The answer is no. I am addicted to the tv series Call the Midwife and I basically inhaled the book  last year. 

If Call the Midwife is a massive love letter to the NHS, then Shadows of the Workhouse reminds us how much we owe to the Welfare State as a whole. The book is in 3 parts and the first and third are about the effect of the workhouse on the lives of working class people in the first half of the 20^th century.It’s so shocking to me that the workhouse existed so recently that my great-grandparents must have lived in fear of the workhouse, that my grandparents could have been taken there as children. We are so lucky that this could never happen to us. 

I don’t know if people outside the UK know about the Workhouse (although everyone has seen Oliver so I guess they know what it is?). The workhouse was pretty much the only safety net for the elderly, orphaned, disabled, ill and unemployed in Victorian and early 20^th century Britain. The workhouse was tough – the inmates had to do tough physical labour and the conditions were so crowded that disease spread quickly and easily, killing huge numbers with each outbreak. The great tragedy of the workhouse was that families would be broken up as soon as they arrived: adults were separated from children, male inmates from female. Once they had entered the workhouse, families knew they were unlikely to see each other again. The fear of the workhouse and the shame of having to enter it led people to take their own lives rather than go and the fear continued long after the last workhouses closed. 

SO, the actual book!

Part one : The Children of the Workhouse.

This part is the most upsetting part of the book. I read the first few chapters late one night and I felt physically sick and cried so much I had to spend ages cheering myself up before I could sleep. This bit tells us the story of three people she knew who had been in the workhouse together: Fred and Peggy (who were brother and sister) and their friend Jane. This section is pretty tough going. I find it incredible that this type of thing happened less than 100 years ago. 

Warning: there is incest and a very graphic description of a child being whipped.

This bit is what I imagine those misery lit/true life stories are like.

Part Two: The Trial of Sister Monica Joan.

Everyone’s favourite crazy old nun has been caught shoplifting and goes on trial. Do I need to say more? This section also tells us about Sister Monica Joan’s background and how she left her rich and privileged family to become a nurse and then a nun. 

“Were you a suffragette?”I asked. 

“Bah! Suffragettes. I’ve no time for suffragettes. They made the biggest mistake in history. They went for equality. They should have gone for power!”

well?

Part Three: The Old Soldier

This section is about an old man that Jenny befriends and he tells her stories about his life and his time as a soldier. Pretty straightforward. 

How do I sum up? I can't sum it up without making it sound really horrific! It's pretty downbeat and depressing in places and there is no midwifery(!). But the book is incredibly moving and it shows us just how lucky we are to live now, even if we do have a government of EVIL. 

p.s. still bad at the review thing a waaay behind. oh well. 

A Treacherous Likeness

I take all pictures on my bed

The very first thing to say about this book is just how gorgeous it is. My dreadful picture does not do justice at all to the gorgeous cover, but the background is like beautiful wallpaper and the ornate frame is all embossed. And just look at the endpapers:

I've been reading quite a lot on kindle recently and it's great when you can get a book for 20p* or if you MUST READ IT NOW but you don't get endpapers. Lovely endpapers. 

A Treacherous Likeness is the third of Lynn Shepherd’s novels where she weaves a mystery story through an existing novel or novels. The first of these is Murder and Mansfield Park, obviously inspired by Austen’s novel, and the second Tom-All-Alone’s, which uses Bleak House as its starting point.  For A Treacherous Likeness, Lynn Shepherd has taken her inspiration from the life of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the mysteries of his life, which include the suicide of his first wife and an incident when he claimed someone tried to kill him. 

A Treacherous Likeness begins in 1850, immediately after Tom-All-Alone's when young detective Charles Maddox is employed by Sir Percy Shelley, the only surviving child of the Shelleys, to investigate a case of blackmail. This blackmail case leads Charles to uncover long buried secrets of the Shelleys and challenges the romanticised view of Shelley that Sir Percy and Lady Shelley have been carefully cultivating.  

Lynn Shepherd has filled the gaps in Shelley's life, offering explanations for some of the mysteries and using existing letters and facts to build up this fiction. This book is so well researched that nothing you read about Shelley will directly contradict the events of the novel.  So often books with continue or engage with other works, or with provide fictionalised accounts of real people, feel trashy and are often very badly written (I'm looking at you, Mr Darcy Takes A Wife) but Lynn Shepherd's books are the opposite of that. Lynn Shepherd's books are joyful book-nerdery rather than tragic fanfiction. 

As with Tom-All-Alone's, you don't need to know anything about the source material for this to be interesting, but it is more fun when you know the references and can compare the novel with the original. If you are familiar with the lives of the Shelleys, Claire Clairmont, and WIlliam  Godwin you must be prepared for them to be portrayed in ways that you may not like, for people that you admire to be portrayed as selfish, unhinged and possibly evil. For this reason I am very happy that Mary Wollstonecraft does not figure in this novel at all because I really couldn't deal with her looking evil! It is incredible to think how young all these people were -- Shelley died when he was only 29 and Mary Shelley was 17 when she had Shelley's first child. And how they could have lived easy and unremarkable lives now, when all the things that they held as radical views are now pretty mainstream - Shelley was expelled from Oxford for being an Atheist and he was vegetarian who believed in free love. 

Read it (and be grateful for access to free and effective birth control (as long as you live somewhere you can get free and effective birth control)) 

Mary Shelley portrait from the Harry Potter Studio tour. DUH, Mary Shelley was a witch.  

Lynn Shepherd's website (has great videos for all her books) 
Shelley's Ghost Website (amazing virtual exhibition about the Shelleys with suicide notes and all sorts)

*You can get John Lanchester's book Capital for TWENTY PEEEE here

Stitch 'n Bitch by Debbie Stoller

(this is a slightly cheaty review for my 50 Books thing but I made up the challenge so I get to decide what counts) (also, this is really boring... but I wanted it to get up before I got anymore behind on the book thing)

This week I finally got a copy of Stitch ‘N Bitch: The Knitter’s Handbook by Debbie Stoller. This book by Bust editor Debbie Stoller, must be one of the few knitting books that has a discussion about feminism and craft in the introduction. Thanks to things like Bust (and their Craftaculars) I think of craft as a feminist thing, I honestly don't see how learning to make stuff could ever be considered unfeminist and this is Debbie Stoller's view as well. 

I got this book for the jumper patterns and techniques because I can do all the basics and I’ve made hats and stuff now, but I want to take the next step towards becoming a super knitter. The book has all the basics – knit, purl, cast on, bind off and explains both English and continental knitting but then it also has instructions on knitting with colour and how to fix mistakes. 

I have another knitting book – Knitty Gritty by Aneeta Patel which is intended for absolute beginners, and it is a useful book although I found most of the patterns aren’t things I actually want to make – who on earth would want to wear a knitted tie? But I chose Knitty Gritty initially because it’s by a British author and there would be no need to translate measurements or need sizes and because it has a lot of good reviews. Over all Knitty Gritty is good a good guide to getting started, and the instructions and pictures are helpful, but I think Stitch ‘n Bitch is the more useful book because it's designed more like a reference book than a course to work your way through.  Despite being much older than Knitty Gritty (the mobile phone in one picture even has a little aerial), the patterns in SnB are much more wearable, if a little dated, whereas most of the patterns in KG are for baby clothes which I have absolutely no interest in making. I know that they are quick and a good way of testing out techniques, but I know no one with a baby and it seems a bit jinxy to knit for a baby that doesn’t exist. And it’s a massive waste of time. Having said all this, I do want to get Aneeta’s next book Knitty Gritty: the next steps because the reviews are pretty promising and the book is probably more my level anyway. 

Stitch ‘n Bitch is great for beginnerish knitters who don’t want to be patronised and I like that Debbie Stoller has included sections about social knitting, online communities and how to set up a stitch and bitch group and the book also includes patterns for knitting accessories to sew. Stitch ‘n Bitch is really useful and I can’t imagine that I would give it away anytime soon whereas I could happily be parted from my copy of Knitty Gritty.

Next review will be of a proper book! Lynn Shepherd’s A Treacherous Likeness, sequel(ish) to Tom-All-Alone’s

You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Yet again I have failed to read something high-brow or literary! But I started Delusions of Gender today so next week I will be talking about gender and sexism and neurology and all sorts! This week I’m talking about a girly girly romance book.

The tagline is: What happens when the one that got away comes back? And that is pretty much the essence of the story: Ben and Rachel meet at uni in Manchester and become incredibly close, both harbouring secret feelings for each other, but Rachel isn’t single so they are never more than friends. Ten years after graduation Rachel is newly single and Ben is back. But why haven’t they spoken for ten years, and will they get together now? It’s fairly standard romance stuff but I really enjoyed it – despite the line: “the kettle boils windily,” which made me feel a little queasy.

You Had Me At Hello is the comfort food of books because it plays out exactly how you want it to, taking you on a familiar journey to the heart-warming ending. Yes, it’s predictable, but that’s what you want. You know how the book will end before you open it; you just want to enjoy the journey there. I am very concerned about the Amazon reviewer who abandoned it when they found it too confusing... 

The book is very straightforward and sweet and perfect if you need a bit of comfort... or need to read a book quickly because you’re behind on your book a week challenge. 

Tom-All-Alone's by Lynn Shepherd

This week I finished Tom-All-Alone’s! It took me nearly 2 weeks to read the first half (I spent too much time singing Les Mis*) and then read the second half in 24 hours. It’s really really good and you should read it.

The main thing I’ve learned from this book-a-week challenge is that I can’t write book reviews.  I want to go, READ IT BECAUSE I THINK IT’S GOOD! Or just give away massive spoilers. Perhaps this is a sign that I need to join a book club and just discuss books everyone has read?

Tom-All-Alone's is a detective story that takes place between Bleak House by Charles Dickens and The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, with inspiration from Henry Mayhew and a bit of Jack the Ripper thrown in. I can see a lot of purists getting their knickers in a twist about the whole thing but really it's like like jazz or some kind of literary mash up.  This is Shepherd on how the novel is situated within these works:

Tom-All-Alone’s really came to life for me when I realised that the time-scheme of Bleak House could be made to run parallel with Collin’s very precise chronology for The Woman in White...This allowed me to create a ‘space between’ these two great novels, where I could locate a new and independent story of my own, and explore some of the same nineteenth-century themes of secrecy, madness, power, and abuse, though with the benefit of twenty-first-century hindsight. 

The independent story that shepherd has created between her re-imagined Bleak House and The Woman In White, is the story of private detective and ex-police officer, Charles Maddox. Maddox has a legendary detective as an uncle (He features in Lynn Shepherd’s re-writing of Mansfield Park – Murder at Mansfield Park) and the story begins when he is employed by the lawyer Edward Tulkinghorn  on behalf of some clients. Some characters from Bleak House are simply transplanted – Tulkinghorn, Inspector Bucket and Jo the crossing-sweeper – whereas others are renamed and altered – Esther becomes Hester; Ada, Clara; Mr Jarndyce, Mr Jarvis.

At first I wondered why Lynn Shepherd didn’t just take characters like Tulkinghorn and Bucket and explore the other things they get up to, the things that we aren’t shown by Dickens, and uses them as an interesting way into the Victorian underworld. In some ways this is what she does, at first Charles Maddox’s work seems to be very separate from Bleak House and the Woman in White, and we hear about some very dark things that would never appear in a book like bleak house. But Hester’s Narrative, where there is no Jarndyce versus Jarndyce and the house in which they live is not called Bleak House, but Solitary House, is inserted every few chapters giving us tiny clues.  Having finished the book I am glad that she chose to rename the characters, I’m glad that they are altered, because it hasn’t permanently changed them for me. The end of the novel, where The Woman in White part really kicks in, feels like one of those horrible theories – like the one that Harry Potter never went to Hogwarts, but remained in the cupboard under the stairs in his own fantasy world.

In Tom-All-Alone's there all the fascinating squalor of Victorian London, the rookeries, the gin houses and whores roaming the streets, Jack the Ripper as well as Asylums and extreme poverty – all the things we know are horrible but find endlessly fascinating all the same – plus some darker things we are used to reading about in more modern novels. 

It doesn’t matter if you’ve never read Bleak House or The Woman in White because you won’t miss anything, and the books won’t be ruined for you if you read them later. If you have read one of these books, you will recognise little bits and it will be fun to compare it with the original. If you know all the sources she has been inspired by and drawn on, you will feel really clever as you recognise her allusions.

 READ IT!

*I am listening to it again RIGHT NOW because I'm seeing it again tomorrow!

The Bees by Carol Anne Duffy

This weeks books - the book I was supposed to finish, the book I actually finished and my newest book

This week I started Tom-All-Alone’s by Lynn Shepherd, and it is really good, but I haven’t finished it because of Les Misérables. Last Sunday I went to see Les Mis and I haven’t been able to stop singing and thinking about it long enough to finish Tom-All-Alone’s. Instead I took the cheat’s route and finished a book of poetry that I’ve had for ages (since last Christmas at least): The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy.

As with all Duffy’s poetry, there is a strong feminist tone to the poems in this collection, which is something I always enjoy, and a lot of the poems are about women  – her mother, her daughter, the woman in the moon. Unsurprisingly there are also a lot of bees in this collection, sometimes at the centre of the poem other times they just a minor detail. The blurb tells me that this is because: “the bee symbolises what we have left of grace in the world, and what is most precious and necessary to protect.” This reminded me of that quote about how we are all stuffed once the bees start disappearing (which they are) and there is definitely a strong environmental message in this collection as well. I don’t know how to talk about poetry without turning it into an essay so I will stop here.

In a nutshell : Poetry is good and this collection has a very pretty cover. 

Next week: Probably Tom-All-Alone’s. 

Lace by Shirley Conran

Now let me ruin the improving and clever part of my resolution by telling you about the first book I read this year...

I chose Lace as my first read because I kept hearing about how it was a cult classic and the kind of book teenage girls passed around at school, reading the dirty bits out to each other, and I didn't want to miss out on that kind of action. It's also been referred to as the original 50 Shades of Grey -- but more because of the popularity of a book for women that was full of sex than the worrying abusive relationship as romance undertone. 

The book opens with prologue describing, in wince-inducingly graphic detail, a backstreet abortion performed upon 13 yr-old girl -- not a typical sexy saga opening. But the action quickly moves twenty years on from that to a hotel room in New York where LIli, international movie star, has gathered four school friends to ask them the wonderful question: "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" And that is pretty much what the story is about.The book follows the lives of Lili and her possible mothers, Judy, Pagan, Maxine and Kate, starting in the 1940s in a swiss boarding school right up to the 80s where they all finally meet Lili again. I can't really begin to explain all the things that happen in the book but it includes: lots of sex, a story about goldfish as a sex aid, war, divorce, rape, and possible accidental incest. That looks bad written out in a list... In short, Lace is the type of book you hope to come across as a teenage girl and the perfect holiday book. 

Next week: something very worthy and high brow (or not...)

Resolutions: 50 Books in 2013

Part of my MASSIVE and eclectic TBR pile

My New Year’s resolution this year is an improving one (in theory anyway, once you’ve read some of the trash I read you may question exactly how improving it really is). I don't read enough books and the success of NaNoWriMo has made me believe in setting myself goals so here we go. 

I aim to finish a book a week – I have some very long books on my TBR pile (e.g. Claire Tomalin’s huge biography of Dickens) that I would never manage to read in a week – hence finishing, rather than reading. Hopefully I will have read at least 50 books by the end of the year (obviously there are 52 weeks in a year but 50 sounds better than 52 and it gives me a little leeway). Doesn’t this sound improving and clever? 

Books I think I might read atm. I will add books and cross off books etc. as I acquire/read them. 

Tea with Mr Rochester - Frances Towers 

The Killing Handbook - Emma Kennedy

Tom-All-Alone's - Lynn Shepherd

The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present - Joanna Bourke

My Animals and Other Family - Clare Balding

Shapely Ankle Preferr'd: A History of the Lonely Hearts Ad (I got this for £1 from poundland)

Backstory - David Mitchell

Lace - Shirley Conran 

Capital - Jon Lanchester

Bright Young Things - Scarlett Thomas

You Hand Me At Hello - Mhairi McFarlene

Burning Your Boats - Jeanette Winterson

Murder at Mansfield Park - Lynn Shepherd

The Greatest Love Story of All Time - Lucy Robinson
The Man of Property - John Galsworthy

Blood Sisters - Melanie Clegg

A Treacherous Likeness - Lynn Shepherd 

At My Mother's Knee and Other Low Joints - Paul O'Grady

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

The Bees - Carol Ann Duffy

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal - Jeanette Winterson

Charles Dickens - Claire Tomalin

Stitch 'n Bitch - Debbie Stoller 
Shadows of The Workhouse - Jennifer Worth
Feminism is for Everybody - bell hooks
Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
Fifth Avenue 5am. Audrey Hepburn and Breakfast at Tiffany's - Sam Wasson
The Masque of Anarchy  - Percy Bysshe Shelley