Category: Book Lust To Go
A Tuesday round-up
Wee reader sure has a knack for detecting when I’m blogging. It’s 720am and he’s stirring, the baby monitor picking up his kicks and little noises. So I guess this will have to wait till later.
And I’m back! For a few quick mini reviews. Because these are deserving books, which deserve to be blogged about and read. And unfortunately all I can manage right now are these short bits (among other fun things, feeding an unhappy baby oral antibiotics).
Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror
I was definitely in a sort of seasonal/winter-y mood (perhaps because it hardly feels like winter here?) and read the latest Flavia de Luce novel, I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, which obviously is Christmas-themed. This time, the de Luce manor is being taken over by a film crew and as usual, Flavia comes across a dead body and starts her own investigation. As always, a delight to read. Best with a mug of hot chocolate (I love Trader Joe’s Sipping Chocolate!).
‘Richard Castle’s' Heat Wave
Read in August 2011
I never manage to review even half of what I read. But not because they’re not worth reviewing! But just, you know, circumstances. So perhaps this end-of-the-month summaries should include a mini mini review of the ones I didn’t get to. Here’s an attempt.
Fiction (9)
Wanting – Richard Flanagan
The City of Your Final Destination – Peter Cameron
Everything beautiful began after - Simon Van Booy
On Stranger Tides – Tim Powers
An ok read. A bit rambly. Made me curious about how they adapted it for the Pirates series though.
The Longshot – Katie Kitamura
A book about mixed martial arts? Never would have expected to pick it up let alone finish it. But there was something about it that made me want to read on. Who knows, might intrigue you too. Will be interested to read more by Kitamura.
North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
Watched the miniseries first. But loved the book a bit more (although of course Richard Armitage = Mr Thornton for me now). I now have to go read everything else by Gaskell.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick
ADORED this one. Am considering getting a copy for myself wee reader.
One Day – David Nicholls
This one gets a BAH! But then, it’s not all that bad. I just hated how it ended. And Dex. Oh I don’t know. I just know that I constantly wondered why I was reading this, and then somewhere nearish the end, I understood why I was reading it.
Helpless - Barbara Gowdy
I’ve only read two of her books but there’s always something rather disturbing and sad about them. Is it then disturbing and sad that I kind of loved this story about a kidnapping and feel the need to go read all of her books?
Non-fiction (2)
Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations – Georgina Howell
Book Lust To Go - Nancy Pearl
Oh Nancy Pearl, this is your best book yet.
There, that wasn’t so bad was it?
Total: 11
bios ‘life’ + -graphia ‘writing’
I’ve been thinking about the last two books I finished. Usually I would hardly consider a fiction and a non-fiction book together but they had something in common – aside from being featured in Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust To Go that is. 
The fiction: Peter Cameron’s The City of Your Final Destination and the non-fiction: Georgina Howell’s Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations
The City of Your Final Destination is set in Uruguay, although it won’t satisfy the armchair traveler as it is mostly takes place within a big house in Uruguay
“Here I am in Uruguay, but I could be anywhere. I could be in Kansas. Although the air smelled different: there was some sort of warm, dusty scent that seemed vaguely exotic.”
That’s Omar thinking out loud. He’s a scholar trying to get authorisation to write a biography about the writer Jules Gund. Omar’s kind of a strange one, or at least his girlfriend Deirdre makes him out to be a strange one. He doesn’t seem to really push himself to do things, instead she does the pushing – she tells him to go to Uruguay to get the authorisation. And he does.
The story didn’t quite jell with me for a while, until Omar meets Caroline, Jules’ wife (who lives in the same estate as Jules’ mistress and brother – yeah it is complicated):
“She turned away from the window. ‘Of who I would seem to be if a biography were written of Jules. If, let us say, you were to write a biography of Jules. Who would I be? A mad Frenchwoman, who had been married to Jules Gund, painting in an attic.’”
And then I realised what this book was about. This biography of a man who is no longer alive would change them all, perhaps especially Omar:
“Suddenly it seemed exhausting, impossible: How do you write a biography? he wondered, when there is so much, when there is everything, an infinity, to know. It seemed impossible. It was like compiling a telephone book from scratch.”
And that then is my reason for connecting this review with that of Gertrude Bell’s biography. For indeed, how do you begin a biography? Especially with a woman who has lived such a life? A woman who once used to be more famous than T.E. Lawrence (who was a good friend actually), who travelled the Middle East, at a time when women rode side saddle (she had an apron sort of garment made to cover her pants), who climbed mountains (taking off her skirt to do so!), who was daring and brave and adventurous – at a time when women tended to keep to the home.
“Constrained and compartmentalised at home, in the East Gertrude became her own person.”
Howell does a great job piecing together her life, from letters, from other accounts of her, from the many works Bell wrote, essentially to figure out:
“By what evolution did a female descendent of Cumbrian sheep farmers become, in her time, the most influential figure in the Middle East?”
A gung-ho spirit, a fierce determination, wit and charm helps. As does knowing the right people! If you’re in the mood for a biography, may I suggest this one. Gertrude Bell, she astounds me.
Alright, to finish off this post, here’s a little music to think of biographies by (or to listen to with your favourite biography?). Richard Julian‘s A Short Biography
