Many books

Ach it has been a while since last I posted: life has been a bit mental of late so I have been neglecting my blogging. However, I have had many hours of travelling time so have done lots of reading, Hurrah! So here is a bit of an update on my literary journeys.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I bought this on a bit of a whim in a second-hand bookshop in York, it was a beautiful two volume set which cried out to be purchased! Read the first volume over about a month and it was fantastic - the prose is quite dense so does require a fair bit of mental commitment, but the characters are so well drawn that you get lost in it very quickly. Tolstoy's grasp of human nature is extraordinary - each of his Russian aristocrats have their emotions, desires and fears sketched out masterfully, and the reader gradually realises that the one thing they have in common is a dissatisfaction with their own lives. Only one man, Levin, begins to grasp where he might find fulfilment and this occurs when he takes to the fields with his peasant employees and works alongside them in their labours - this brings home to him the complete emptiness of the lives of his wealthy friends. What Tolstoy conveys brilliantly is the inevitability of each character's destiny, as a result of their actions - Chapter 22 of Part 2 has a very sobering paragraph when two of the main characters (who are having an affair) come to realise where this course of events will take them, signified by the their awkwardness around the woman's son: The sensation he aroused [in them both] might be compared to that of a seafarer who can see by the compass that his vessel is drifting away in the wrong direction and that he is powerless to stop it. Every moment sees him getting farther and farther, with nothing but ruin before him. The child was the compass that showed them what they knew only too well, but refused to recognise. Am anxious to get stuck into the second volume but I will leave it a while.

Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith - This author is, of course, best known for his books about Precious Ramotswe, the No. 1 Ladies Detective - I do love those books, but prefer his lesser-known series about Isabel Dalhousie, professional philosopher and part-time sleuth, who lives in Edinburgh. This particular book is the second in the series, and it is simply marvellous - Isabel is a brilliant viewpoint character, meditating wittily on every event of life, and the ingenious plots rattle along at an excellent pace, making the books impossible to put down.

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf - This is my current one, I'm only about thirty pages in but am already enchanted. Woolf's style of writing is incredible - basically one long stream of consciousness containing all of Clarissa Dalloway's thoughts on one particular day - and you emerge from the book feeling like you've inhaled some sort of heady incense. More on this once I've finished it...

The Pleasures of God by John Piper - I've been reading this for a while, in partnership with my friend Sam; again, it requires a lot of concentration but I'm trying hard to really engage with what the author says, and evaluate his points. The basic premise is to expound upon the things in which God takes delight, as shown by the Bible: chapter one deals with God's pleasure in His Son, while chapter two considers His pleasure in His works. It's all very thought-provoking, the margins are slowly filling up with my pencil annotations!

That's it for now! Lots of good stuff, although a little bit tiring to read...I think I need a reliable murder mystery to be the next novel!

Come cangia in un punto il tuo destino

Life is pleasingly unpredictable when you can only afford to buy discounted produce in Sainsbury's. Tonight, for example, I popped in on my way home from work, intending to buy a loaf of bread, some cheese and a couple of mushrooms...instead, I left the store with one peach yoghurt, a carton of chilli vegetable soup and a bag of brioche.

Previous post continued; or, "Love is paying attention."

So, Jonah and Otto...I was quite disarmed, really, as I was expecting some Pinter/Beckett-esque modern theatre piece, with the slightly elusive quality that characterises both those playwrights. It wasn't anything like that, really: yes, the dialogue was a bit heightened (in a poetic way) but ultimately this play was a very straightforward portrayal of a developing relationship between two very different men who begin as strangers and leave as, well, not exactly friends, but something close to that. What was remarkable, however, about this play was the way in which it made you realise that people are not straightforward - we always make assumptions about the people we meet, but there are extraordinary depths to them that need uncovering. Here, we initially saw Otto as a straitlaced and slightly peculiar old man; Jonah as an unstable, smart-mouthed hoodlum. Both of these assumptions were proved to be totally wrong. We watched, captivated, as the two men uncovered their own and each other's insecurities, secrets, longings and fears; as the balance of power shifted between them; as they both were changed by their encounter. The final (and briefest) scene is absolutely beautiful - the two men part, and virtually nothing is said to each other, but we know and they know just how much they have connected and just how long they will stay in each other's mind and heart.

"a single tear falls from his eye"

Tonight, a bunch of us are going to see a play called Jonah and Otto by Robert Holman; I am very excited, mainly because I know next to nothing about it. Holman is not a playwright whose work I know at all - the only things I know about him are taken from an article written by another playwright, Simon Stephens. The article seems to suggest that Holman plays are always incredibly thought-provoking, beautifully written and have an emphasis on strong visual imagery. Sounds good to me. The article ends: "If you are new to his plays, I envy you. You're about to embark, in my opinion, on something rather extraordinary."

More of this later...

Meeow

Last night a group of us went to the Royal Northern College of Music to watch a double bill of Ravel operas, L'heure espagnole and L'enfant et les sortileges - both were fantastic (the first one is a hilariously stupid farce with gorgeous music) but it was the second one that really dazzled us all. It's a much-neglected opera, mainly because it's so hard to stage: the story revolves around a little boy who misbehaves, and is punished by the household objects he has mistreated, so the director must somehow come up with ingenious ways of making chairs, crockery and a fire (!) come to life and start singing! This production was fantastic, both visually and musically - particular highlights were:

• The Princess suddenly rising up out of the boy's storybook - audible gasps from me, and everyone else
• The wallpaper coming to life, and the beautiful quasi-pastoral music that followed
• The terrifying sequence with Mr Arithmetic and the numbers
  
• The spine-tingling moment when the set opened out to change from the living room into the garden outside - many more audible gasps!

Fantastic stuff.

10 Days to War

Since Monday, there have been a series of 10-minute dramas, one broadcast each day, to mark the anniversary of Britain's commitment to the war in Iraq. If you haven't seen them, I really would urge you to go onto BBC iPlayer and watch the ones that have been on so far - they're all a portrayal of a real event that happened in the ten days leading up to the start of the war (Monday's, for example, entitled A Simple Private Matter, is about Elizabeth Wilmshurt, a senior civil servant who resigned on the basis that the country could not legally justify going to war) and are incredibly well-acted and though-provoking.

"I thought one was enough; it's not true."

I don't read much non-fiction, aside from Christian books - there's just so much amazing fiction around that I get a bit distracted...but, just occasionally, I read a true story that takes my breath away. One such book (which I've just finished reading) is The Two of Us by the actress Sheila Hancock, about her life with John Thaw (of Inspector Morse fame). Thaw died of cancer in 2002, and the book is mainly about Hancock dealing with the death of her husband - her diary extracts from 2001-3 are interspersed throughoutt the biographical stuff.

It's a beautiful, beautiful book, but two things struck me in particular. Hancock relates some of the letters that helped her most after Thaw's death, including this quote: "Time does not heal, nor any belief, but our own common sense, determination and courage will get us through". As I read it, I realised the truthfulness of it - there's often a lot of feeling among Christians that, when a believer whom you love dies, we should use the knowledge that we'll see them again one day as a kind of antidote to grief. I discovered, when my Grandad died last year, that it doesn't work like that - while I know it is utterly true that he's in heaven, and that I will see him again, that truth in itself does not help me deal with his absence here on earth. It's at times like this that I realise how incredibly wrong people are when they dismiss the Christian faith as an "emotional crutch" to help one through the bad times; I miss Grandad hugely, irrespective of the fact that I know he's in a better place where, one day, we'll be reunited. "Time does not heal, nor any belief", you see. What my faith does provide, however, is not an emotional crutch to take away pain, but rather the knowledge of a loving God who watches over me; it can only be through His strength that "common sense, determination and courage will get [me] through".

The other very touching section comes in the Prologue, where Hancock relates this story:
"Walking in our field. A soft mist of rain. The sun shining behind the drizzle. A rainbow forms across the sky behind me. It reflects in the raindrops on grass and trees. Millions of multicoloured baubles, iridescent, extraordinary.
John, quick, come and look.
Racing back over the wooden bridge, into the conservatory, I toss aside his script, grab his hand and pull him, limping and protesting, to my magic vision.
It's gone.
Oh, great. Miserable wet trees, driving rain and soaking wet trouser legs - thanks a bunch.
But it was beautiful.
Well, you daft thing, why didn't you stay and enjoy it?
I couldn't enjoy it properly without you."
That's why relationships (whether that be friends, lovers or family) are so fundamental to life - having someone to share things with makes everything so much more beautiful.