Poor Anne!!!!!!
quite an account but it doesn't figure in my reckoning but I am sure there is an O.B.E. in it somewhere! I've been reading 'The Sea,' The Sea by John Banville which won the Booker in 2005. Much praised and the writing is to be admired and the insight is deep but all deeply depressing, full of Irish misery. It's unremitting and I'm struggling to make the end despite the ravings of the critics. It is good on memory and just how unfaithful to any kind of veracity it is but the existential themes running through everything are quite exhausting.
For a bit of relief I watched Ken Russell's film of 'Women in Love,' last evening. It's a fine effort to represent the subleties of the novel through film. With the nude scenes (Bates and Reed) with bits in full view and the torrid (for the time) love scenes no wonder it was controversial, typical Russell. But I loved his films on Elgar and Mahler which are classics. It did seem a bit dated and mannered but who would have a stab at it today? Definitely worth watching. I'm going to watch La Boheme with two of my favourite singers Anna Netrebko & Rolando Villazon in title roles. Magical wonderful stuff their La Traviata is a sizzler too. Glorious; why doesn't Plymouth have an opera house????????
Sunday, 24 January 2010
Sunday Sunday
It's dusk now and I have been at this keyboard since before sunrise. What have I been up to? Writing a fictional piece? Not quite ... I've been grappling with the accounts for the South Hams Theatre and Concert Club! As their newly appointed treasurer, I have until Tuesday to make sense of all the transactions over the past year and present a report to the committee.
If you enjoy theatre/concert trips and would like to be transported by coach from Kingsbridge (and other places en route) to Plymouth, Torquay and Exeter venues, let me know. The joining fee and subscription rate are minimal ... and you will meet like-minded people too.
There are 350 members already and the more we have the more variety we can have in our programme of events.
If you enjoy theatre/concert trips and would like to be transported by coach from Kingsbridge (and other places en route) to Plymouth, Torquay and Exeter venues, let me know. The joining fee and subscription rate are minimal ... and you will meet like-minded people too.
There are 350 members already and the more we have the more variety we can have in our programme of events.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Musings on a Snowy Day
Hi everyone I do hope you had a wonderful festive season and wish you and your loved ones a healthy,happy and holy 2010. We Went down to Southern France for the hols where the weather wasn't as warm or sunny as we expected but we had a great time nevrthelss with some Swedish friends. It was warm enough for a new year dip in the Med! My friend Christer is a great film buff and we watched Woody Allen's Purple Rose of Cairo which is so imaginative and funny with some incredibly witty dialogue. Grab a DVD if you can. Mia Farrow is enchanting.
Revolutionary Road directed by Sam Mendes and starring Di Caprio and Kate Winslett is much harder to watch because of tis subject matter the break up of a marriage in 1950's America. Its deep but perceptive stuff and the acting (even by Di Caprio) is superb I thinbk Winslett was Oscar nominated for her part. The camera work is detailed and revealing as well.
I read a lot of non fiction over the holiday. Richard Sheltons 'The Longshoreman,' the story of his life as a Marine Biologist is fascinating and covers much more than the fish world although that is written about in some detail. Somebody wrote about this book that 'Shelton's writing was so good it interests you in things you are not interested in,' which I found to be very accurate. I could compare him to Redmond O' Hanlon (Trawler). Both are fine writers as is Adam Nicolson
grandson of the notorious Vita Sackville West who was the lover of Virgina Wolfe and numerous others and was the builder of the gardens at Sissinghurst castle in Kent. Not quite to my taste.... the gardens I mean. But I digress. Nicolson's book 'Sea Room,' is superb and tells of his relationship with the Shiant Islands off the West Coast of Scotland. he was given them by his dad....as one does. Its so detailed and covers folk lore, sailing, anthropology, history, oceanography. I found it gripping and ending up longing for a visit and felt I knew intimately the places he described. Both Shelton and Nicolson demonstrate that there are still some fine writers around and I was also heartened that Colm Toibin won The Costa Book Award. I'm looking forward to reading Brooklyn. His novel about Henry James 'The Master,' should have won some years ago but was pipped by, in my opinion, a greatly inferior novel The Line of Beauty...not sure that is the right title. The following is from The Guardian.
Colm Tóibín is one of the most highly regarded Irish writers of his generation, loved by his readers and admired by his peers, but when it comes to major book prizes he is something of a bridesmaid. He so often nearly wins them but doesn't – until, that is, tonight when he was named winner of the Costa novel of the year award.
It was an achievement all the more notable because Tóibín was up against the literary sensation of last year: Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning tale of Tudor intrigue, Wolf Hall. "It's just great but I'm very surprised," said Tóibín. "Wolf Hall was a wonderful book."
Brooklyn, a sparely written account of a young woman's emigration from 1950s Ireland to New York, was one of five category winners announced tonight which will now compete for the overall Costa book prize.
Other winners were Christopher Reid in the poetry category for A Scattering; Graham Farmelo in the biography section for his account of the life of quantum physicist Paul Dirac; Patrick Ness, the children's book award for The Ask and the Answer; and Raphael Selbourne, the first novel award for Beauty.
Tóibín was on the Booker longlist but to widespread surprise was not shortlisted. Previously, The Master was just pipped to the Booker by The Line of Beauty in 2004 while The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted in 1999, the year JM Coetzee won for Disgrace. Tóibín also has form in the Costas – or Whitbreads as they were formerly known – with a shortlisting in 1990 for his first novel, The South.
Tóibín said he was delighted to win and that book awards did matter. "It does make a great difference to what publishers call sales and what I call readers." He described Brooklyn as quite low key, about somebody very ordinary and not a book that would be considered as an automatic prize winner.
Brooklyn was straight away installed by William Hill as 6-4 favourite for the overall prize – odds too short for Tóibín.
"I won quite a lot of money when I bet on Hilary Mantel when she was 12-1 for the Booker. I don't think I'll be betting on me," he said.
The novelist made headlines last year when he suggested in an interview that he did not really enjoy writing and the best thing about it was the money. There was, though, probably a twinkle in his eye. Asked yesterday if he enjoyed writing he said: "Look I'm working at the moment and it has been a great Christmas and everybody has been out drinking and I've been locked in here since December 27 with these characters and sentences trying to get out. So, no. I want to finish this book."
Second favourite, at 3-1, for the overall prize is a debut biography by Farmelo – a five-year labour of love telling the story of one of the least-known yet most important scientists of the last century. "It is absolutely appalling that most people in this country have not heard of the name Paul Dirac," said Farmelo. "He was the greatest scientist Britain produced in the 20th century."
Part of the reason for the lack of knowledge is that Dirac loathed publicity. Farmelo gained access to a previously unmined family archive in Florida hopes the book will bring the genius of Dirac – and his importance to science – to a wider public. "He was a publicly educated boy from a Bristol terrace and what he achieved was immense. He conceived half the universe in his head, he conceived antimatter."
The winner of the first novel award, Selbourne's Beauty, is the story of a young Bangladeshi woman on the run from her family. "I'm very pleased. It's great to be recognised and of course it's invaluable in terms of getting the book out there and being seen by people."
Like most novelists Selbourne has had a range of jobs over the years, including as a scooter salesman, but all have been attempts to get out of teaching, he said. It was while teaching in Italy that Selbourne made the arguably unusual decision to move to Wolverhampton, attracted by a job teaching unemployed adults with basic skills needs.
The city, he said, gets a bad press. "The people for one thing are incredibly friendly. I'm from Oxford so I'm a southerner used to unfriendly people. I find Wolverhampton very stimulating."
For Reid, winning the poetry award is third time lucky – he has been nominated twice before. His winning collection is a tribute to his wife, who died in 2005.
The 6-1 outsider for the overall award is Ness for the second book in his trilogy Chaos Walking, which the judges called "a major achievement in the making."
A judging panel chaired by novelist Josephine Hart – including Marie Helvin, Caroline Quentin, Dervla Kirwan, Gary Kemp and Tom Bradby – will now decide the overall winner from the all-male list and announce it on 26 January.
Revolutionary Road directed by Sam Mendes and starring Di Caprio and Kate Winslett is much harder to watch because of tis subject matter the break up of a marriage in 1950's America. Its deep but perceptive stuff and the acting (even by Di Caprio) is superb I thinbk Winslett was Oscar nominated for her part. The camera work is detailed and revealing as well.
I read a lot of non fiction over the holiday. Richard Sheltons 'The Longshoreman,' the story of his life as a Marine Biologist is fascinating and covers much more than the fish world although that is written about in some detail. Somebody wrote about this book that 'Shelton's writing was so good it interests you in things you are not interested in,' which I found to be very accurate. I could compare him to Redmond O' Hanlon (Trawler). Both are fine writers as is Adam Nicolson
grandson of the notorious Vita Sackville West who was the lover of Virgina Wolfe and numerous others and was the builder of the gardens at Sissinghurst castle in Kent. Not quite to my taste.... the gardens I mean. But I digress. Nicolson's book 'Sea Room,' is superb and tells of his relationship with the Shiant Islands off the West Coast of Scotland. he was given them by his dad....as one does. Its so detailed and covers folk lore, sailing, anthropology, history, oceanography. I found it gripping and ending up longing for a visit and felt I knew intimately the places he described. Both Shelton and Nicolson demonstrate that there are still some fine writers around and I was also heartened that Colm Toibin won The Costa Book Award. I'm looking forward to reading Brooklyn. His novel about Henry James 'The Master,' should have won some years ago but was pipped by, in my opinion, a greatly inferior novel The Line of Beauty...not sure that is the right title. The following is from The Guardian.
Colm Tóibín is one of the most highly regarded Irish writers of his generation, loved by his readers and admired by his peers, but when it comes to major book prizes he is something of a bridesmaid. He so often nearly wins them but doesn't – until, that is, tonight when he was named winner of the Costa novel of the year award.
It was an achievement all the more notable because Tóibín was up against the literary sensation of last year: Hilary Mantel's Booker prize-winning tale of Tudor intrigue, Wolf Hall. "It's just great but I'm very surprised," said Tóibín. "Wolf Hall was a wonderful book."
Brooklyn, a sparely written account of a young woman's emigration from 1950s Ireland to New York, was one of five category winners announced tonight which will now compete for the overall Costa book prize.
Other winners were Christopher Reid in the poetry category for A Scattering; Graham Farmelo in the biography section for his account of the life of quantum physicist Paul Dirac; Patrick Ness, the children's book award for The Ask and the Answer; and Raphael Selbourne, the first novel award for Beauty.
Tóibín was on the Booker longlist but to widespread surprise was not shortlisted. Previously, The Master was just pipped to the Booker by The Line of Beauty in 2004 while The Blackwater Lightship was shortlisted in 1999, the year JM Coetzee won for Disgrace. Tóibín also has form in the Costas – or Whitbreads as they were formerly known – with a shortlisting in 1990 for his first novel, The South.
Tóibín said he was delighted to win and that book awards did matter. "It does make a great difference to what publishers call sales and what I call readers." He described Brooklyn as quite low key, about somebody very ordinary and not a book that would be considered as an automatic prize winner.
Brooklyn was straight away installed by William Hill as 6-4 favourite for the overall prize – odds too short for Tóibín.
"I won quite a lot of money when I bet on Hilary Mantel when she was 12-1 for the Booker. I don't think I'll be betting on me," he said.
The novelist made headlines last year when he suggested in an interview that he did not really enjoy writing and the best thing about it was the money. There was, though, probably a twinkle in his eye. Asked yesterday if he enjoyed writing he said: "Look I'm working at the moment and it has been a great Christmas and everybody has been out drinking and I've been locked in here since December 27 with these characters and sentences trying to get out. So, no. I want to finish this book."
Second favourite, at 3-1, for the overall prize is a debut biography by Farmelo – a five-year labour of love telling the story of one of the least-known yet most important scientists of the last century. "It is absolutely appalling that most people in this country have not heard of the name Paul Dirac," said Farmelo. "He was the greatest scientist Britain produced in the 20th century."
Part of the reason for the lack of knowledge is that Dirac loathed publicity. Farmelo gained access to a previously unmined family archive in Florida hopes the book will bring the genius of Dirac – and his importance to science – to a wider public. "He was a publicly educated boy from a Bristol terrace and what he achieved was immense. He conceived half the universe in his head, he conceived antimatter."
The winner of the first novel award, Selbourne's Beauty, is the story of a young Bangladeshi woman on the run from her family. "I'm very pleased. It's great to be recognised and of course it's invaluable in terms of getting the book out there and being seen by people."
Like most novelists Selbourne has had a range of jobs over the years, including as a scooter salesman, but all have been attempts to get out of teaching, he said. It was while teaching in Italy that Selbourne made the arguably unusual decision to move to Wolverhampton, attracted by a job teaching unemployed adults with basic skills needs.
The city, he said, gets a bad press. "The people for one thing are incredibly friendly. I'm from Oxford so I'm a southerner used to unfriendly people. I find Wolverhampton very stimulating."
For Reid, winning the poetry award is third time lucky – he has been nominated twice before. His winning collection is a tribute to his wife, who died in 2005.
The 6-1 outsider for the overall award is Ness for the second book in his trilogy Chaos Walking, which the judges called "a major achievement in the making."
A judging panel chaired by novelist Josephine Hart – including Marie Helvin, Caroline Quentin, Dervla Kirwan, Gary Kemp and Tom Bradby – will now decide the overall winner from the all-male list and announce it on 26 January.
Saturday, 2 January 2010
Here's to 2010!!
Happy New Year to the 'Left Bank' Bloggers and I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I enjoyed several breaks with routine, including some wobbly health, but I'm fine now - in fact much better than before - and raring to go! I managed to get a lot of writing and reading done in between socialising, walking and sleeping. Books to recommend are: The Other Elizabeth Taylor a biography of the writer ET by Nicola Beauman, who is quite wonderful about the actual process of writing and rather contentious in what she reveals. The biography sent me back to ET's stories, which I love, and they kindled some story ideas which must have been lurking in my unconscious. Also, Esther Waters (1894) by the Irish novelist George Moore - he's not in the same writing league as Dickens, Eliot, Trollope etc, and the novel is skimmable in parts if you are not interested in horse racing and betting, but a fascinating story of being poor, pregnant and trapped by conventions in late 19thC London - I imagine it caused quite a scandal, at the time, with its accounts of baby farming.
Look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting. Carole
Look forward to seeing you all at our next meeting. Carole
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Happy Christmas
Good Afternoon to all the Left Bank Bloggers
I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a successful New Year. I am looking forward to 2010 and hoping that Left Bank continues to be as inspirational as it was in 2009 with many new blog post and ideas.
Sww you all soon
Paula
I hope you all have a lovely Christmas and a successful New Year. I am looking forward to 2010 and hoping that Left Bank continues to be as inspirational as it was in 2009 with many new blog post and ideas.
Sww you all soon
Paula
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
'First books' blank
Gosh, that was quite a shock to my system Paula - the realisation that if I have read any 'first novels' recently, I either cannot remember or I don't actually know if they were first novels or not. All I can suggest for the moment is Wuthering Heights or Adam Bede. Too much living in the 19thC! Give me time, I'm sure I'll remember more - and more recent ones.
I want to offer the following blog as a good place to check for anyone who is interested in keeping up on world literature, fiction in translation and almost anything else to do with reading and writing:
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/index.htm
Also, I don't usually follow dovegreyreader, but there's a discussion there about crtics, criticism and bloggers which seems interesting.
Finally, my Poetry Group is going to watch 'Bright Star' at the Reel on Weds 16th Dec - the early showing, which is (apparently, tho' they are ususally earlier, so do check) 5.30. I'll be there for a second viewing, so if anyone could not make the Dartington trip, and wants to join us, we will be there at 5.00 (or earlier) to ensure ticket purchase, and then maybe the cafe until film time
I want to offer the following blog as a good place to check for anyone who is interested in keeping up on world literature, fiction in translation and almost anything else to do with reading and writing:
http://www.complete-review.com/saloon/index.htm
Also, I don't usually follow dovegreyreader, but there's a discussion there about crtics, criticism and bloggers which seems interesting.
Finally, my Poetry Group is going to watch 'Bright Star' at the Reel on Weds 16th Dec - the early showing, which is (apparently, tho' they are ususally earlier, so do check) 5.30. I'll be there for a second viewing, so if anyone could not make the Dartington trip, and wants to join us, we will be there at 5.00 (or earlier) to ensure ticket purchase, and then maybe the cafe until film time
Tuesday, 8 December 2009
Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje and first novels
I have just finished this book which I would thoroughly recomend for its writing quality and poetic qualities but the subject - Sri Lankan civil war is most disturbing and provides an insight into the way that people live in such dangerous places. By contract I am now reading Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson which although still a story of human divisions in society is a much easier read. Its been on my list for a while as I have a pile of first novels - for inspiration. To me this one is very accomplished and you would never know it was his first! Would anyone else like to share first novels you have been impressed with?
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