Backlight

Community pharmacy can be a pretty lonely career at times. It can be a horrendously stressful and pressured environment to work in. It can also be hysterically funny, and those times often make the rest of it worthwhile. In a workplace that is ultimately centred around illness, the pinpricks of hilarity become all the more important.

There But For The Grace Of God Go I.

I very much dislike this whole Fifty Shades of Grey fashion that is going on at the moment. This is not  because I am particularly prudish, but instead because I find the whole concept of the craze rather distasteful and patronising. I do not believe that women need to be given permission to be able to admit to enjoying something written about sex, and I don't like how books like this reinforce the belief that to make sex acceptable to women, it needs to be dressed up as a second-rate romance. Furthermore, its utter crap, and in the few paragraphs I have read (out loud, in a dramatic voice, from our office communal copy which has since mysteriously gone missing) I have been driven to distraction by the poor quality, half-arsed writing style of it (denote that she is thinking by writing in italics. Finish every sentence with either Holy crap, Holy Jesus, Holy shit etc etc, because then the reader will know how very innocent she is and will be able to identify with her because we are all delicate flowers)

"And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about"

I find it really hard to construct lists of "All-time favourites". I'm too indecisive, and my tastes shift constantly depending on what mood I'm in. I can fairly confidently say though that if I had to decide on an all-time, top 5 favourite books list, this would be in it.

Two things strike me about people's reactions to this book:

Its a Marmite book. You either love it, and are consumed by it, or it leaves you totally cold and you can't understand what all the fuss is about. I know a lot of people who read it hate the characters and hate spending time with them, and really can't get into the frantic pace of it.

People who love it tend to describe reading it in the same way. When the film came out, I went to the Tyneside Cinema's book club screening of it. In the discussion afterwards, it was amazing how similarly the people who loved it described how they read it. "It hit me like a train" or "I was knocked over by it" or "it was like hitting a brick wall" or "It stopped me in my tracks" or "I read it constantly over two days and I just couldn't stop reading".  My friend Ian says in his Goodreads review: "I tore through it, unable to put it down for two days". I've heard similar things over twitter and in conversation too.

I read this book as part of a book club, but unfortunately I never made it to the book club meeting. I was looking forward to reading it- it fit in quite nicely with my current interest in learning about religions, cultures, and the effects of those of individual peoples' lives. 

It ended up in my tsundoku pile, unread and nearly forgotten about until long after that relationship ended. When I eventually got round to reading it, I was really pleasantly surprised and charmed by it.

Set in 1938, the story follows the occupants of 10 Dulcimer Street, Kennington. I found that Collins' conspiratorial writing style really drew me into the minutiae of his characters lives. It feels like you have a tour guide,  pulling you by the hand into the front rooms of families and whispering all the gossip into your ear.

In focusing on the lives of the inhabitants of just one house, Collins manages to also encompass lots of imagery and themes of the wider community of London at the time. The war hangs over this book like a character in itself, creeping slowly closer to the daily lives of our friends at 10 Dulcimer Street.

I know of Kate and her poetry from a couple of stand-up comedy gigs I have been to which she has performed at. She’s always come across as warm and funny and personable on stage.

“On the second day I was on the bus
when there was a bang and all the lights went out-
and there was a chorus,
of “Call this an Apocalypse? I felt nowt”.
and “Grimsby hasn’t looked this good since
the Germans redecorated.”
You’ve got to make the best of things,
Northerners are tough like that
nobody else compares."

I'd recommend it to anyone who maybe feels a bit intimidated by reading poetry, as I did.

Hxxx

I bought this book in a haze in the hours following my marriage breaking down. I needed distraction and to escape, and was clinging onto any activity I could find that had nothing to do with love, or loneliness, or anything similar. This is easier said than done- most of my books and music are about love in some way shape or form, and even the tiniest hint of it was too much for me in those hours and days. When you're trying to avoid love, it suddenly becomes clear that it is rare to find any sort of media that isn't about it.

So I found myself desperately downloading a whole load of books onto my kindle, and trying to desperately ignore the fact that the kindle itself was a reminder. Most of those books I still haven't read, nearly three years on.

I struck gold with this one though. A Norwegian crime novel about the survivors of a train crash who manage to get to a nearby hotel and are then cut off from the outside world by the snow, with an off-duty detective in their midst- what could possibly go wrong?

The story itself is a modern and I think successful take on the classic All-Holed-Up-Together-With-Nowhere-To-Go crime-writing device. Tensions rise, as you'd imagine they would. Although some of the characters are a little stereotypical, this is forgiven as I think the genre allows a bit of leeway and you expect such things in a mindless crime novel.

The protagonist, Hanne, is exactly what I needed at that time. She's an interesting spin on the usual cantankerous loner detective. She's paralysed, antisocial, and more than comfortable with her own company.Whilst there is a bit of an emotional arc to her storyline, its not obtrusive, and I was able to take comfort in Hanne. If she's okay wanting to be on her own, I thought, then I'll be okay too.

I haven't read it- or any other crime fiction, now I come to think of it, since. I'm not sure if I would be able to, as certain images are likely to remind me of how lost I was at the time I was reading it.

Hxxx

After hearing good things about this book from Jackie of this parish and others, I downloaded it yesterday.

I thought I'd have a quick scan of the first paragraph, but the next thing I knew I had finished the first chapter and was halfway through the second. I found myself surreptitiously reading snatches of it whenever no one was looking, similar to what Jackie has already described.

I've spent all of today engrossed in it, to the detriment of my flat's cleanliness. I haven't quite finished it yet but I wanted to make sure that I got some words down sooner rather than later.

I love this book. It feels like a conversation. There are moments of wry humour that made me grin, some utterly heartbreaking bits that had me in tears and as a whole it is never less than warm, compassionate and intelligent in the discussion of why someone might choose to identify themselves as an atheist and the strange feeling of freedom that comes from accepting sole responsibility for one's own happiness and fulfillment. 

You do not need to be an atheist to enjoy this book, and it would be a real shame if people of faith were put off reading this because the word "Atheist" appears in the title. You also don't need to be young, but the title makes sense in that anyone who is questioning their belief in the god they have been raised with will find understanding and reassurance in it's pages. Reassurance that it is not necessary to have faith in order to live a good life, that atheism does not make you a bad person and that following any religion should be an informed choice, made willingly and not imposed.

Jackie

I didn't want to like The Hunger Games. I wanted to be able to maintain an air of sniffy superiority and snobbishness about it. But I have to admit, it drew me in, and I ended up reading and enjoying the whole trilogy.

Its a compelling story, and one which drives you to keep turning the pages, even when- like me- you're a reluctant reader. It really did win me over. However, that's not to say that I found a few major problems with it:

I studied this book in school. Well, technically I didn't have to study it for school (I was the only person doing an English Literature AS level in my school, so I was supposed to only do half the texts, but ended up doing pretty much all of them just for fun. I know, I know.) Its funny actually, that most people end up hating the books they study at school whereas the majority of those I studied I've ended up really fond of. At the time of studying it, I had no idea of who Margaret Atwood was, or that the book caused some controversy at the time of its release. Atwood was accused of blowing wide open the concept of the sisterhood that feminism had been building its foundations on.

I loved it immediately. At least, as much as you can love such an uncomfortable read. The detail and colours in this book give it such a sense of truthfulness and realism that it left a deep impression on me. Just like the description of time as a pool of water, sentiments and lessons from it resurface in my mind on occasion. I've read and re-read it many, many times.

Author: Rachel Joyce, 2012

This book was recommended to me by a couple of folk on Twitter to fill the book-shaped gap I had after finishing Partitions. It sounded an interesting concept, so I was eager to get reading.

I am a stickler for realism in various things: when I watch action films, I wonder why the scantily clad ladies didn't think to bring a cardi with them, and why they didn't just wear comfy jeans and trainers if they knew they were going to be running about. I demand to know why superheroes seem to think capes are a good idea, when they can easily get snagged on twigs or door handles.

So I was left pretty disappointed with this book. I thought it was idealised to a fault-i wanted it to be gritty and realistic, I wanted to know the grey, grubby, mundane details of Harold's walk and his coming to terms with his friend's cancer.

I figured I should get the ball rolling, get the show on the road, and all the other cliches for being first in line, albeit with a review that I've already published on my other blog.

Which Way To The Nearest Wilderness- Tricia Springstubb 1984

“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.” -Henry David Thoreau 

I was a pretty proficient reader as a child, and I have a vague memory of winning this book for some reason or another from school. I had completely forgotten about it, then for some reason, the title just popped uninvited into my head the other night, and I knew I had to read it again. I managed to find a secondhand copy, which, when delivered, turns out to be an ex-school library copy, still nestled in its plastic cover, and with a label stuck neatly into the front declaring it a gift to the school from the P.T.A. It has that beautiful, musty smell of old books and appears to have been last taken out of the library in 1991. I can't help but wonder by who, and what they thought of it.