Roald Dahl Day

Happy Roald Dahl Day!!

Stamps

 The sixth annual Roald Dahl day falls today, on what would have been the author's 95th birthday. 

It's been quite a delight to see such an outpouring of love for Roald Dahl on twitter today. Though often a controversial and divisive character; his books seem to be near universally loved - indeed the vast number of tweets that I've seen have been from people totally unable to limit themselves to just one favourite book or fictional character. As soon as you mention one, ten more pop into you head, clamouring for attention and equal acclaim!

Part of the generation who can't recall a time before these seminal children's books, I have such fond memories of being taken by my parents to the local library on a weekly basis to seek these out. We worked our way through the set - in agony when a particular title wasn't on the shelf. In fact, I'm a little ashamed that I used to try and hide them in odd places around the children's section - determined to keep one I couldn't borrow safe until my next visit! For almost every birthday or Christmas, I was sure to have been gifted the one that I had particularly loved - though I'm pretty certain that this choice often corresponded with the one that my parents quite fancied a re-read of themselves! (My father once lent my copy of the BFG to a friend of his who never returned it. Twenty years later - often during a heated (read wine fueled) debate -  this gross betrayal is still raised!!)

While all of his works are intelligent, funny and scary; I hold a special place in my heart for his three books focusing on poetry for children - Dirty Beasts, Revolting Rhymes and Rhyme Stew. Dahl's alternative look at Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Aladdin had me in stitches. Additionally - in the copy I had of Rhyme Shew; he included some less than flattering report cards from his school days. What a relief it was to discover that he hadn't been a perfect student (either!) and still made good in the end! While I did enjoy his adult works - particularly Henry Sugar - in my mind, he will forever be linked with my mostly carefree and very happy childhood years.

For me, it's impossible to mention his works without acknowledging the wonderful partnership between Dahl and his primary illustrator Quentin Blake - who created such fantastic images that encaptured the spirit of the words so very astutely that I spent as long pouring over them as the words. For many years I was convinced that Dahl actually looked exactly like the BFG.

Roald Dahl also chartered the details of his own fascinating life in two books - Boy and Going Solo - which are as entertaining as any of his fictional works. Never an author to shy away from terrifying his audience - his stories frequently make use of sadistic elders, absent guardians and the trials that children must tackle alone in order to grow - he uncompromisingly recorded his difficult school years and the often brutal punishments doled out by adults and older children. 

His books were adapted onto the silver screen. I am still incapable of flicking past Willy Wonka at Christmas or Matilda at any time of the year (despite the quintessentially English story being made American!), managing a slightly less affection for James and the Giant Peach, Fantastic Mr Fox and the more recent Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While the casting of the Witches was perfect; I never quite forgave them for changing the story so much! He even wrote a James Bond film!! 


As I mentioned earlier, Dahl often seemed to be embroiled in polemic issues. In public he has often been criticised for the break up of his first marriage; his closing down emotionally after the death of his daughter and his criticisms of Israel (which he always insisted was distinct and separate from anti-semetism, of which he was accused). 
To be honest, I'm not entirely au fay with these arguments. I tend to allow creative works to stand for themselves, usually avoiding learning too much about the private lives of the creators. Just look at how Enid Byton's works have been publicly slammed as her private life has been explored, despite no reduction in their popularity. 
In this case however, I'm prepared to make an exception. After all, Dahl did write two auto-biography's himself. I will be reading a biography of the man behind the laughter this week. I'll let you know how it goes!

Poems for Children

Cinderella - Roald Dahl
Roald Dahl Day 

Hello Old Friends

• The Magician's Nephew - C.S. Lewis
  
• Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf - Roald Dahl
• You Are Old Father William - Lewis Carroll
• On the Ning Nang Nong - Spike Milligan
  
• The Vulture - Hilaire Belloc

Best Loved? Have Words.

This is what I think. Not what everyone in Leeds Book Club thinks. It's also not supposed to be serious, I don't actually think anyone's an idiot. If you never want to be friends with me again, fair enough. Contains SWEARS. Soz

Britain, have a word with yourself. You've had a chance to vote for the best loved books, the books that you've enjoyed more than anything else ever in the world ever, and you've come up with this.

1) Seriously, dudes, To Kill a Mockingbird is an amazing book, I'm not going to fault it, but every single person in the world ever has done it for GCSE at some point in their lives, and I know for a fact that no-one enjoys the books they read for GCSE apart from absolute saddos, or lucky sods like me who got to do Lord of the Flies.

2) Pride and Prejudice, your number two, is obviously brilliant. But just cos its the only Austen you've ever read. Have you not seen my constant plugging of Persuasion *points at the podcast where I blather on about how good Persuasion is for a good 45 minutes*? Its a billion and one times better! The characters are funnier, the plot is more well structured, and the hero is, you know, not a dickhead.

3) The Book Thief. The Shitting Book Thief. Words actually fail me. I know you like your device-strewn toss, but couldn't you have chosen something that doesn't make you want to empty out your brain with a ice cream scoop afterwards? Where the chuff is Neil Chuffing Gaimen on this list! Number TWELVE?? What is WRONG with you people?

4) Jane Eyre. That's better, Britain, well done.

5) The Time Traveler's Wife. Oh for fucks sake. It's not a bad book. But it's not I Capture the Castle, is it?

6) Lord of The Rings IS MORE THAN ONE BOOK AND THEREFORE SHOULDN'T COUNT. Also if you've read all three books all the way through without dieing you should get some sort of voucher, or a key ring in the style of a Poppina's Mega Breakfast, or a Blue Peter badge or something.

7) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is actual genius and should be in the top five. Made me nearly choke with laughter when I was 12 and still found the bottom jokes in Blackadder funny (now I'm 26 and suddenly farting is funny again. Am I now an adult, or have I massively regressed?).

8) Wuthering Shites. Three hundred and nine people seriously think this is the best book they've ever read. That's the entire population of Haworth, and they have to say that otherwise the Yorkshire tourist board will flood the Worth and vanquish the evil that stems from the valley forever. Seriously, its the only way my bit of the world gets any money.

9) Rebecca. Brilliant book. If this comes out of World Book Night I am HAVING that (unless Cold Comfort Farm does in which case I'm going to be boring a lot of people with my insistence on there being something narsty in the woodshed). Again, should have been earlier in the list.

10) The Kite Runner. Not as good as a Thousand Splendid Suns, not even by an inch. Pity.

What narks me off the most is that these are the books that World Book Night are more that likely going to be giving out for free. When they could be giving out books that will actually engage and inspire emerging readers, every single one of these books, apart from possibly The Book Thief, which is still being marketed as children's when its stretching it a bit at YA, is of reading level 4 or above. Books that readers can read, given out by readers, to readers. Another successful self-serving system. Or is that me being extra cynical this morning?

Then again, at least Twishite didn't get a look in. Every cloud etc etc.

World Book Night - The Long List for 2012

2012 World Book Night - The Long List 

The selection for next year will be taken from the list below (like d'uh right?). 

I've read 85 of these so far - feel free to let us know in the comments how you're doing!!! 

1      To Kill a Mockingbird    Harper Lee   
2      Pride and Prejudice    Jane Austen  
3      The Book Thief    Markus Zusak  
4      Jane Eyre    Charlotte Bronte  
5      The Time Traveler's Wife    Audrey Niffenegger  
6      The Lord of the Rings    J. R. R. Tolkien  
7      The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy    Douglas Adams  
8      Wuthering Heights    Emily Bronte   
9      Rebecca    Daphne Du Maurier  
10     The Kite Runner    Khaled Hosseini  
11     American Gods    Neil Gaiman  
12     A Thousand Splendid Suns    Khaled Hosseini  
13     Harry Potter Adult Hardback Boxed Set    J. K. Rowling 
14     The Shadow of the Wind    Carlos Ruiz Zafon  
15     The Hobbit    J. R. R. Tolkien  
16     One Day    David Nicholls   
17     Birdsong    Sebastian Faulks   
18     The Help    Kathryn Stockett   
19     Nineteen Eighty-Four    George Orwell  
20     Good Omens    Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman   
21     The Notebook    Nicholas Sparks  
22     The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo    Stieg Larsson 
23     The Handmaid's Tale    Margaret Atwood  
24     The Great Gatsby    F. Scott Fitzgerald   
25     Little Women    Louisa M. Alcott   
26     Memoirs of a Geisha    Arthur Golden   
27     The Lovely Bones    Alice Sebold   
28     Atonement    Ian McEwan   
29     Room    Emma Donoghue  
30     Catch-22    Joseph Heller 
31     We Need to Talk About Kevin    Lionel Shriver  
32     His Dark Materials    Philip Pullman  
33     Captain Corelli's Mandolin    Louis De Bernieres 
34     The Island    Victoria Hislop  
35     Neverwhere    Neil Gaiman 
36     The Poisonwood Bible    Barbara Kingsolver   
37     The Catcher in the Rye    J. D. Salinger 
38     Chocolat    Joanne Harris  
39     Never Let Me Go    Kazuo Ishiguro  
40     The Five People You Meet in Heaven    Mitch Albom   
41     One Hundred Years of Solitude    Gabriel Garcia Marquez   
42     Animal Farm    George Orwell   
43     The Pillars of the Earth    Ken Follett  
44     The Eyre Affair    Jasper Fforde   
45     Tess of the D'Urbervilles    Thomas Hardy 
46     Charlie and the Chocolate Factory    Roald Dahl   
47     I Capture the Castle    Dodie Smith   
48     The Wasp Factory    Iain Banks   
49     Life of Pi    Yann Martel  
50     The Road    Cormac McCarthy   
51     Great Expectations    Charles Dickens   
52     Dracula    Bram Stoker   
53     The Secret History    Donna Tartt  
54     Small Island    Andrea Levy   
55     The Secret Garden    Frances Hodgson Burnett  
56     Lord of the Flies    William Golding  
57     Persuasion    Jane Austen  
58     A Prayer for Owen Meany    John Irving   
59     Notes from a Small Island    Bill Bryson  
60     Watership Down    Richard Adams   
61     Night Watch    Terry Pratchett  
62     Brave New World    Aldous Huxley   
63     The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time    Mark Haddon   
64     Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell    Susanna Clarke   
65     The Color Purple    Alice Walker   
66     My Sister's Keeper    Jodi Picoult   
67     The Stand    Stephen King  
68     Cloud Atlas    David Mitchell   
69     The Master and Margarita    Mikhail Bulgakov   
70     Anna Karenina    Leo Tolstoy  
71     Cold Comfort Farm    Stella Gibbons  
72     Frankenstein    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley   
73     The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society    Mary Ann Shaffer   
74    The Picture of Dorian Gray    Oscar Wilde 
75     Gone with the Wind    Margaret Mitchell   
76     The Graveyard Book    Neil Gaiman   
77     The Woman in White    Wilkie Collins   
78     The Princess Bride    William Goldman  
79     A Suitable Boy    Vikram Seth
80     Perfume    Patrick Suskind   
81     The Count of Monte Cristo    Alexandre Dumas   
82     The God of Small Things    Arundhati Roy  
83     Middlemarch    George Eliot   
84     Dune    Frank Herbert   
85     Wolf Hall    Hilary Mantel   
86     Stardust    Neil Gaiman   
87     Lolita    Vladimir Nabokov   
88     Midnight's Children    Salman Rushdie   
89     Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone   J. K. Rowling   
90     Shantaram    Gregory David Roberts  
91     The Remains of the Day    Kazuo Ishiguro   
92     Possession: A Romance    A. S. Byatt   
93     Tales of the City    Armistead Maupin   
94     Kafka on the Shore    Haruki Murakami   
95     The Magus    John Fowles   
96     The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas    John Boyne   
97     A Fine Balance    Rohinton Mistry  
98     Alias Grace    Margaret Atwood 
99     Norwegian Wood    Haruki Murakami   
100    The Wind-up Bird Chronicle    Haruki Murakami

Canongate Challenge!

Having enjoyed the Penelopiad so much, I've decided to read the rest of the modern myth Canongate series. 

Launched in October 2005, this project co-ordinates simultaneous worldwide publication of each book in the series. 


From the website:

Myths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives — they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.The Myths series brings together some of the world's finest writers, each of whom has retold a myth in a contemporary and memorable way.

 1. 2005 A Short History of Myth - Karen Armstrong
 2. 2005 The Penelopiad - Margaret Atwood
 3. 2005 Weight - Jeanette Winterson
 4. 2006 The Helmet of Horror - Victor Pelevin (trans.)
 5. 2006 Lion's Honey - David Grossman (trans.)
 6. 2006 Dream Angus - Alexander McCall-Smith
 7. 2006 Anna In w grobowcach świata - Olga Tokarczuk
 8. 2007 Girl meets Boy - Ali Smith
 9. 2007 Binu and the Great Wall - Su Tong (trans.)
10. 2007 Where three roads meet - Salley Vickers
11. 2008 Baba Yaga laid an egg - Dubravka Ugrešić
12. 2008 The Fire Gospel - Michel Faber
13. 2009 The Myth of Izanagi and Izanami - Natsuo Kirino
14. 2009 Orphans of Eldorado - Milton Hatoum
15. 2009 The Hurricane Party - Klas Ostergren
16. 2010 The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - Phillip Pullman
17. 2011 The End of the Gods - A.S. Byatt

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Ongoing Challenges - Table of Contents

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Full Table of Contents 

Ya-Ya!

N will probably kill me for writing this, as I know these are 'her' books, but over the summer one of the things that stood between me and madness was the Ya-Ya sisterhood, so I'm going to write it anyway.



Little Altars Everywhere was published in 1992 by a very small publishing house and with an even smaller marketing budget. The book, written using the style of several POV characters, told the story of a family and community living in Louisiana from the 1930s through to the present day. Focusing on the Walker Clan, the book explored the things that nice Southern families aren't supposed to talk about-alcoholism, abuse, the impact of religious extremism on a family, race, and class. It was followed in 1996 by Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, which was told both in third and first person, and examined the relationship between Vivi Abbott Walker and her eldest child, Siddalee. This book was phenomenally successful, a New York Times Bestseller, and was made into a film staring everybody. The third book in the series, Ya-Yas In Bloom, was published in 2005, again with Vivi, the Walker clan, and the power of female friendship, as the focus.

If you ask Wikipedia, it will tell you Little Altars was Divine Secrets prequel, as it was re-published after Divine Secrets' success. This is a shame, as, in my opinion, Little Altars is the better book. The writing is fresher, the characters more vivid and less sentimental, and the world created is more 'real' to me than the almost fairytale nature of the Deep South presented in Divine Secrets, and more so in Ya-Yas in Bloom.

What I love these books for is their completeness. The entire history of a family that often nears collapse but manages to pull itself together due to the close nature of the friendship of four women, the Ya-Yas, is there in front of the reader. Because every member of the family receives a good going over, either in Little Alters or in Divine Secrets, their motivations are clear. We understand why Vivi abuses her children, though we do not condone it, through seeing how she was treated by her father. This is the premise for the Divine Secrets film; only by knowing people's history can you understand them.

Vivi, the matriarch and social focus around whom the action rotates, is one of the most complex characters in fiction. But, and I know I'm going to have someone intaking breathe at this point, I don't like her. I understand her, but I didn't like her. I don't like Siddalee either, which is probably even more a disgusting thing to say.

These books aren't about liking the characters though. Like Amber, or Scarlett, we see women living lives with the constraints put upon them because of their gender, the social circumstance of the time, but still rebelling against them with the result that they are 'Othered' by society around them. The women who do conform, such as Mytis is the Ya-Yas in Bloom, on of the only really good bits in what was otherwise a overtly sentimental book that came across, sadly, as a money-spinner, are never the less unhappy with their lot. This shows it is the social constraints and norms that are at fault, not the rebels. Wells' portrayal as Catholicism is particularly harsh; the good parts such as the feeling of lightness after confession and community feeling of Church are far outweighed by the attitude of religious radicals and Orthodox practices of those that practice it in extremes. Nuns in particular are demonised.

What the books show, for me, most of all, is how rubbish a world without stigma free choice is, and how a good, understanding, and patient friendship without demands can sustain a damaged life.

I love the books, especially the first two. If you've read Divine Secrets but have missed out of Little Alters, please, bed borrow or steal (don't steal) as you are missing out!

Happy Reading
BookElf xxx