Banned Books

Over in the States it's Banned Books Week. I am completely anti-censorship. I think that books should be accessible to anyone. I was lucky, my parents never policed my reading, and I went to a fairly liberal church school, where nothing was banned. Here are a few other bloggers and interesting links about this.

I had no idea Francesca Lia Block's books were ever banned

 The Story Siren has an interesting article on the subject

Author Tamora Pierce also provides her opinion on the list

The Guardian has a list of the top 10 banned books (and there are a few surprises, certainly for me)

So what have you read from any of these lists of banned books?

"There where one burns books, one in the end burns men" -Heinrich Heine

In the "To Be Read" Pile

* The Fry Chronicles - Stephen Fry

* One Day - David Nicholls

* The Snowman - Jo Nesbo

* A Room Swept White - Sophie Hannah

* The Bolter - Frances Osbourne

* A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

* Alone in Berlin - Hans Fallada

* Candy Girl - Diablo Cody

* Paint it Black - Janet Fitch

* Peyton Place - Grace Metalious

* The Glass Room - Simon Mawer

* The Last Concubine - Lesley Downer

* Kraken - China Mieville

* The Remedy - Michelle Lovric

A good mix there, should keep me going for a while. Anyone read any of these? Thoughts ?

Stories - Edited by Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio

This anthology of short stories by acclaimed authors is not something to be read in one sitting, but rather something to be dipped in and out of. I've only read a few of the stories so far, and been delighted by all. As is the tradition in short story telling, each is a self-contained tale of the Other. From the twisted revenge in Neil Gaiman's The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains, to the curious twin bond in Joyce Carol Oates' Fossil-Figures, and the vampirism of Walter Mosley's Juvenal Nyx, and the meta-fictive twists in Michael Swanwick's Goblin Lake, to name but a few, each story explores an aspect of the weird, sometimes frightening Other that preoccupies humanity.
Of what I've read so far, it's all rather brilliant. But then asking world-renowned, prize winning, authors to write a short story was bound to turn up some corkers. It's currently a hardback, so it might be out of some readers price range, but I highly recommend borrowing a copy from your local library, or just waiting for it to be a paperback.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz

Oscar de Leon is one of life's losers. He's the ultimate nerd, living in a world populated by characters out of the sci-fi and fantasy novels he loves. All he wants to do is lose weight and find love. His family are living under a curse that's blighted it for generations, so how can Oscar ever get what he wants.

I liked this book, it speeds along at a nice pace, jumping between Oscar's story as narrated by his best friend Yunior, and the stories of his mother, sister and grandparents, explaining all that's gone before.
Set in both New Jersey and the Dominican Republic the family hails from, it explores what it is to be young and misunderstood, and seemingly doomed.

Stone's Fall - Iain Pears

Industrialist John Stone, Lord Ravenscliff dies after falling out of his window, his death is kept from the papers for several days. After it is finally reported, his wife, Elizabeth, hires a journalist ostensibly to write a biography of her husband, but really to solve a mystery left in his will. What that journalist, Matthew Braddock uncovers, is more shocking and more far-reaching than either of them expected.
Like An Instance of the Fingerpost, his previous novel, this is a story wrapped in another story, itself containing another narrative. What starts as Braddock's account of his investigation in London in 1909, flows backwards through history into Henry Cort's account of his involvement with Stone in Paris 1890 and finally into Stone's own memoirs of Venice in 1867, unravelling until the shocking, unexpected and utterly brilliant (in a dark kind of way) final page.
The ending has a real sting in the tale, so even if you find the first section slightly dull and heavy going as I did, stick with it, Cort's section and then Stone's (which fills in a few gaps in Cort's account, as his does for Braddock's) picks up pace and really throws the reader into a mystery that will stun.

Poetry, better than you remember from school

A lot of people run poetry down. It's the ugly stepsister of fiction. Stories told in verse, seem to make some people nervous. This may be because of learning poetry at school, always being made to read aloud, trying to ignore the giggles, and you didn't even write it. I blame English teachers and the National Curriculum!! Stop picking rubbish poems, there are some great, funny for the right reasons, brilliant, beautiful poetry out there.

Our Poet Laureate is a good place to start, Carol Ann Duffy, first woman to hold the post, her collection, The World's Wife, is one of my favourite and as good a place as any to start with her work.
Other great female poets include Wendy Cope (who is hilarious, try Serious Concerns or Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis), Jenny Joseph (most famous for Warning, which starts "When I am an old woman/ I shall wear purple/With a read hat that doesn't go and doesn't suit me"), Fleur Adcock, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (rescue these ladies from being condemned by students everywhere!) and on it goes. A good series of anthologies to start you of are published by Bloodaxe Books, Modern Women Poets (ed. by Deryn Rees-Jones), Eliza's Babes (ed. Roby Bolam) and anything Virago do.

Then there's the gents. Many a student has come across William Wordsworth (not the bloody daffodils again, I hear you cry) and his contemporaries, Blake, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley and Byron. That's right, the Romantics. I have a soft spot for Coleridge's Kubla Khan, we were told not to write about it for our A Level as it's a complex piece that can't be compared with anything else. It's also incredibly vivid.
Blake's apocalyptic visions (check out the artwork he created to accompany his poems, most good editions should be illustrated), are fascinating, and anyone with a passing interest in surrealism should check them out.
Even Wordsworth isn't beyond redemption. His Lyrical Ballads (written with Coleridge) are interesting too, he was a country lad, and it shows in the Prelude, he's clearly not comfortable with the sprawling city, despite his initial impression (Composed Upon Westminster Bridge).
I like Roald Dahl's funny, slightly bizarre verse, and also the more surreal elements of a good but of nonsense verse (try Lewis Carroll or Edward Lear). I also like Andrew Marvell, Matthew Arnold (the imagery in his Dover Beach is wonderful, and tragic), some of the modern comic poets are good for a giggle (I suggest getting hold of a copy of The Nation's Favourite Comic Poems for a nice selection of funny poets of both genders). I also think Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair is beautiful, moving and tender. I'm also partial to a spot of Rilke, a light dusting of Larkin, and a dash of T.S Eliot with a smidgen of E.E Cummings to go!

There are some fantastic poets out there, and some great poems. So go, explore the oft neglected poetry section of your local bookshop and pick a new favourite or two to roll around in your head and on your tongue (it's meant to be read aloud you know!!)

A Conspiracy of Violence - Susanna Gregory

Set in Restoration era London, this follows spy Thomas Chaloner as he attempts to unravel a series of mysteries dating back to the English Civil War and the execution of Charles I. Having returned from Holland, Chaloner is looking for employment, Oliver Cromwell's former spymaster suggests he try the Lord Chancellor, who asks him to look for some missing gold. While undertaking this mission, he becomes involved with the Brotherhood, a group of men claiming to be seeking tolerance and understanding in the political and religious tinderbox that is England at this time, or are they all following their own agendas?
A good, well-paced, historical mystery, that cleverly comes together as Chaloner resolves his many investigations, with explosive consequences.