Ex Libris, Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman

After searching for half an hour for this book about books in my local library, I found it in a section labelled “computers”. The label seemed quite old and it was possible that the computers category was a broad and forgotten term for books surrendered to a miscellaneous shelf. Finding this treasure on this shelf, instead of the literature or non-fiction section, in a vessel that exists for the very things it celebrates, added to the charm of the book and has made me fall in love with it a little more.

Ex Libris is a collection of personal essays written by Anne Fadiman over the course of her adult life which express her lifelong obsession with books.

If you are a self-proclaimed bibliophile, Ex Libris is your perfect starting manual.

A love of books is often a solitary, and in my experience, an entirely personal affair: bookworms are often located in quiet corners of the globe, cuddled up in armchairs, with the paraphernalia of their choice. We have habits and predilections which to the outsider may seem eccentric and baffling. We have devoted years of our lives, squares of floor space, and available furniture, to a hunger which will never be satiated. In Ex Libris Anne Fadiman documents some of our behaviours to further our knowledge of our condition.

For instance, I have often questioned my recently installed pirate shelf as a slightly mad pursuit, yet I now know shelves like mine exist in bookcases across the world - in fact Anne Fadiman reveals she has her own, in her third essay titled “My Odd Shelf”. Fadiman’s shelf, unlike mine, is devoted to polar expedition. “My interest is a lonely one” she explains, “I cannot trot it out at cocktail parties”. She does however divulge it to us here, in a perfect spiel on Scott and Norse mythology. Her husband, she also confides, is a “rainforest man himself”.

It is difficult not be in awe of Fadiman, who is now one of my fantasy dinner party guests. She grew up in a household of bibliomaniacs - her father and mother were both writers. In “The Joy of Sesquipedalians” she remembers how the Fadimans would play the US equivalent of University Challenge and actually get most of the questions right among them. Their vast knowledge of language however can never be completed. She relates how they often call each other up when they discover new words. This is the bit I relished. Bookworms like to collect and hoard words; some of us have notebooks full of gems we have plucked out of pages over the years. And the Fadimans are no different.

I feel after reading Ex Libris I want to be a better reader and love books more, if that is possible. Now thanks to Anne Fadiman, second hand bookstores have a new significance to me. I spent an hour in one in Stamford recently, pouring over handwritten inscriptions on the flyleaves of pre-loved volumes. I also know more about my condition - in a trip to Budapest, I took my copy of Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor, this I now know is termed “You are there reading”, and I only wish my bank account would allow more of it.

I wish I didn’t have to give this book back to the library and I have wrestled with the idea of buying it. However, as I look at the stamped dates, dating back to 20 Mar 2010, I am reminded that many fellow bookworms have probably gone through the same dilemma and have finally let it return to the rightful place. I will do the same, however, the next borrower may find a hidden note from a fellow bibliophile.

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

From one girl on a train amounting to an 817 page journey, to Paula Hawkins’ zippy thriller which I powered though on a weekend bender.

The Girl on the Trailer was everywhere in 2016. I managed to miss it as I wasn’t sure it would match up the psychotic brilliance of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. It was pitched as the next best thing and although I very much enjoyed the delivery, the big reveal didn’t hit me as much as I’d hoped. Partially because I had made the stupid error of watching the trailer for the Emily Blunt adaptation, which was fired out by Universal Studios before the printed pages of the paperback had time to cool.

The book is set in England in 2013 and deals with Rachel, angst-ridden 30-something divorcee who is an alcoholic. Not the cider in park kinda gal, she likes to blackout on premixed cans of G&T and couple bottles of wine a day. There is a knowingness in the copy former journalist Hawkins provides, a shout out to the reader she and Transworld have successfully reached. The reader is a female professional, who commutes to work and wants a light paperback to breeze through on the journey home to Witney, Ashbury, Norwich, or Ipswich – or any apparently London-centric train station they feel like reppin. The Mailonline is even given a big-up. Despite all of this obviously marketability that The Girl on the Train exudes, I lapped it all up.

The short and snappy writing tapped out a compelling story about addiction and obsession which whizzed by in two afternoons. I personally wouldn’t say the trip was too twisty turny – if you have read Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson you will be able to spot the play on memory loss a mile off. Nevertheless the figuring out whodunit before the reveal gives the knowitall reader a little treat and doesn’t make the read less rewarding. 

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

The only notes I made during reading Leo Tolstoy’s 800 page epic was a quote from Anna Karenina’s servant “What dress shall I prepare?”  This is the end of a chapter where Anna is wrestling with a dilemma: to leave her husband and her son for her lover, or, to remain with her son and live a lie with her unsympathetic husband. She resolves she will visit her society friend- a princess – and after that her next concern is what to wear.

This is what I wanted from my first reading of this important classic. I wanted the dresses, the lace, the chokers, the pearls, the coiffures, the ruffles and all the romance. On this front, Anna Karenina delivers a beautiful and vivid portrayal of the Russian nineteenth aristocracy and the love story is set up perfectly. My favourite scene is the moment Anna’s train stops on her way home, when she steps outside in the wintry landscape for some fresh air, wrapped up, I can imagine, in the finest furs, and she finds out Vronsky is following her. The dialogue between them is sublime and continues the link between their relationship and the newly established train service.

However, if you are wanting a simple historical romance you may be unsatisfied. Anna Karenina is so much more than its namesake; for starters there are other characters and other plotlines.

There’s Levin, a conflicted philosopher, and the object of his affection, the sweet naive Kitty; Anna’s playboy brother Stefan and his long suffering wife Darya, Anna’s husband Count Alexei and Levin’s fallen brother Nikolai. All of these characters lives continue, despite the cavorting of Anna and Vronsky, and each add another dimension to Tolstoy’s world. A long list of subjects are also discussed, alongside the affair: the cultivation of crops and the training of the peasantry, the education and rights of women, the Balkan War, a freer press, religion and mysticism. All of them are contemporary issues of the day, and all of them would have been discussed by the book’s first readership.

 I feel the use of the words “novel” or “depiction” and “portrayal” do not apply to Tolstoy’s realist extravaganza. Rather than a piece of prose, Anna Karenina lets the reader glimpse into the lives of a group of Russian nobility. It lets them been seen exactly as they are, or how Tolstoy saw them.

It is no wonder people revisit the text several times in their lives, as it would be impossible to take it all in, in one reading. Plus, considering there are so many different translations available, you can take your pick on what words or turns of phrase you would prefer to read. I went for the Peaver and Volokhonsky translation, simply because I liked the cover of woman holding the flowers, presumably waiting anxiously for her lover to call. The striped corset and the rings, promised me an escape into a world more lavish and romantic than my own, while I didn’t discover the love story I wanted, I found something far more real. 

Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly

Last year I achieved one of my lifelong dreams – I now have a shelf on my bookcase purely devoted to pirates.

I’ve had a fascination with pirates ever since I first read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Still to this day I can remember how petrified I was when, in the early hours of a morning, twenty years ago, I first read the chapter where Blind Pew first appears and the tapping of his wooden stick echoes along the roads of the English coast.

With such rich and violent imagery to work with it would be quite an achievement to write a dull history of piracy, and in Under the Black Flag, David Cordingly expertly acknowledges the importance of Treasure Island, Peter Pan and Errol Fynn’s swashbuckling adventure pictures. Pirates due to the popularity of these works have now become a franchise, he explains, there are rides in DisneyLand devoted to pirates, you can dress up as a pirate for Halloween and there are even toys/lunchboxes/stationery available at all local retail outlets (although they are mainly aimed for young boys). Yet, Cordingly points out, the real life pirates are actually more interesting than the fictional ones.

Long John looks like a tame pantomime villain next to China’s Mrs Cheng, a ferocious warlord who terrorised the South China coast with her stepson turned lover and a fleet of hundred ships. She also had a particularly nasty way of dealing with any of her crew who disobeyed her.* Cordingly repeatedly reveals the brutish realities of pirate life, and if you really want to know about the blood, guts and gore, Chapter 7 will satisfy your curiosity, if you have the stomach for it.

All the big names in the pirate community make an appearance in Under the Black Flag; Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Calico Jack, Mary Read and Anne Bonny have pages devoted to them, and Cordingly smoothly provides a run through of their misdemeanours in wild and exotic lands such as Cuba, Haiti, Madagascar and Jamaica, and their not so glamorous demises.  

Cordingly also aims to dispel the myths that are commonly associated with pirates, for instance, they were too busy whoring and gambling to invest in a shovel and treasure map, while the pirate havens often fell apart from bankruptcy or disease; Port Royal was hit by an earthquake in 1692, and the raiding of ships did occasionally result in some large sums of dosh (British privateer Francis Drake pinched around £68 million from the Spanish fleet), but often pirates simply saw food provisions and skilled workers such as carpenters as a good haul.

I hate to produce a review which is in fact a list of everything described in the book, as you might as well read the book, however this book is packed full of such interesting facts that after reading you’ll be itching to tell anyone who will listen the difference between a buccaneer and a privateer.

Definitely worth a read, and, if you don’t have room in your bookcase for a whole shelf of pirate history books, I would recommend just buying this one.

*if you want to read more about the brutish pirates of the South China coast, Cordingly recommends a book by Dian H. Murray, which unfortunately comes with a £100 price tag!

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

After the madness of 2016 I wanted some escapism over Christmas. A much-loved children’s book felt like the right move - perhaps something innocent, fanciful and set far away from the politics of the day.

I tried to finish Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials about four years ago, and maybe another four before that. The obstacle I always encounter is that I savour each book in the trilogy a little too much - similar to how I savour a box of quality Christmas chocolate. In particular the first book, Northern Lights, is the perfect companion during a cold December, where all you want to do is cuddle up next to the lights of the tree and a hot cup of cocoa.

The storytelling is dreamy. Lyra Belacqua plays in the rooftops and spires of her Oxford, travels in a gyptian barge to the Fens, and then on past Norroway and off to the lands of frozen lakes, polar bear kings and witches. In a set of perfect moments attuned to the Christmas spirit, she rides a sledge pulled by reindeers, wrapped up in a “hood lined with wolverine fur” and looks up at the fragile pinks and greens of the aurora.

Pullman even plucks out from our world of romanticised technology for his creations – zeppelins, tram-carts, air balloons and steam trains are the chosen methods of transport in Lyra’s world - a world running on anbaric (electricity) which seems so similar to our world, yet so different.

The Oxford-based author is lucky to have his home setting so rich with material to use in his writing. I can imagine him walking around the Pitts Rivers museum when he was conceiving the world of His Dark Materials. The museum is a writer’s dream, an archive of treasures, including displays of Arctic furs, which no doubt were the inspiration behind Lyra and her friend’s wintry attire, while the “Bodley Library” is an endorsement of the Bodleian Library which I’m sure Pullman visited often to select the passages of John Milton and William Blake to introduce his chapters.

And this is where the escapism stops. Clearly, the world of His Dark Materials is an allegory for every religious and political war that scars our history. Lyra’s fall into adulthood is likened to Eve’s original sin. The childlike appeal of Northern Lights and the fairytale creatures that walk its world are part of the Blake inspired “Innocent” stage of the trilogy, but as they move around the worlds of the second two instalments, they become tainted by “Experience”. The machines Pullman writes about may be considered idyllic by today’s standards, but these are the “burning tiger” mechanisms of Blake’s Industrial Revolution.

After finishing the pages of the third novel, finally in early January, the Christmas tree had come down and I could see that Philip Pullman has spoken to the media about the causes of Brexit and the disasters of 2016.

However, I did not finish the series on a sombre note. His Dark Materials is foremost an adventure story about a young child and her friends and it was the perfect read to start 2017.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill

It’s traditional to read a scary book on Christmas Eve and I would like to say for the purposes of the opening sentence of this review, that, on the 24^th December I snuggled up in front of my Christmas tree and read the opening line of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black: “It was nine-thirty on Christmas Eve”.

However, I didn’t want to tempt the ghosts of Christmas past this year.

There is something about this story, I feel, that I will always find uncomfortable. So much so I won’t dedicate too much time describing the figure that haunts the unfortunate Arthur Kipps in the lonely house that sits among the marshes.

I had watched the 2012 film before seeing the play at the West End, and after seeing the play I slept all night with the bedside lamp on. So when I came to the book I was sufficiently freaked out enough to decide I would not read it at home on my own. When I did start reading, however, I noticed a theme that had been brushed over in the film and was developed in the play. This was the theme, most obvious given the title, of women.

The story of the woman in black, Kipps explains, is “not particularly unfamiliar”. A woman, unmarried, gives birth to a baby to the shame of her family and she is later pressurised to give him up for adoption. The book was published in 1983 and is described as a traditional English ghost story - quite possibly set in the Edwardian period, with flashbacks to the Victorian era. Sadly, stories of forced adoption span right across these time spans. In Victorian England unmarried mothers were forced to give up their children to foundling hospitals, while Hill was writing her horror novella in the wake of the adoptions of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, as orchestrated by the Catholic Church.

Once the theme of women and motherhood is established, this frighteningly little tale takes on a new form. Arthur Kipps reads by candlelight, alone in the creaky Eel Marsh House, Walter Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian, a classic novel that deals with infanticide and the pressures the state place on young females. The ghost tales of Crythin Gifford are dismissed as “women’s tales” and the gender of Arthur Kipps canine companion takes on a little more significance.

It seems just, almost, that the people who suffer under the vengeance of the fearful phantom are Kipps and Jerome, both men who practise the law - the same framework which takes away the moral rights of a young mother.

While this feminist undercurrent helped to distract me from some disturbing passages, it didn’t mean I decided against reading this book in the company of others at all times, in clear view of what was behind me, or that I spent more than 5 seconds looking at the front cover. I would say if you are looking for a true horror story look no further than this one.

The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott

On the evening of the 7^th September 2016, I was smuggled up in bed getting to the “good bit” of The Heart of the Midlothian by Sir Walter Scott. A horde of angry Scots were rushing Tolbooth Prison in Edinburgh, seeking out the incarcerated Captain John Porteous, while the frantic man was trying to escape up the chimney of his prison cell. I turned to the page where a suspended figure can be seen “wavering and struggling” by “the red and dusky light of torches” in Cowgate and thought that would be enough for the evening.

The following day I looked up the Porteous Riots and discovered that, unbeknown to me, I was reading about the execution of the Captain of the Guard on the exact night it happened, 280 years ago.

A charming coincidence, or perhaps a spooky souvenir from one of the UK’s most haunted cities, I will never be sure, yet The Heart of the Midlothian continues to top any list for books about Edinburgh. Although I struggled again with the thick dialects for the characters – trying to do a Scottish accent in my head for 507 pages was a challenge –I still enjoyed walking the streets of the city in the eighteenth century and the book helped to stifle any holiday blues.

The Oxford University Press edition also comes with notes, from Sir Walter Scott and the editor, which expand the folklore and myths hinted at throughout the story. I now know that I did a “Silent Disco Walking Tour” during the Fringe around Grassmarket, once a place of public execution equipped with its own hanging tree, and fun fact, The Maggie Dickson pub in the square is devoted to a woman tried for infanticide who was also the inspiration behind one of the main characters in the novel.

Unfortunately, the long journey by the heroine Jeanie Deans is speckled with the coincidences often found in classic literature I find tedious (Jane Eyre conveniently turning up at her long lost cousin’s house is a prime example), yet the freaky concurrence of the opening pages, the notes on Edinburgh’s past was good payment for my long reading hours and made the book a better keepsake than any pricey Scottish yarn.