FRAMLEY PARSONAGE by Anthony Trollope


Oh yes we are back on the Trollope. Book 4 or something or the Barchester series. I woke up at 2.30am the other day, and it was not a good night, so I decided to read and it kept me going till 4.30.

This parson agrees to provide security for an apparently wealthy man he wants to impress and ends up deep in debt and shame. This parson’s sister loses her father and comes to live with the parson. The parson’s good friend, a peer, falls in love with her. He then rescues the parson from his debt. Happy ending!

Fabulous, sweet little book. Everything you need to know about the style is encapsulated in the title of the last chapter ‘How they all got married and had two children and lived happily ever after’

AND you get characters from other books popping up in minor roles. Love it.

THE BOTTOM BILLION by Paul Collier


Subtitled: Why the Poorest Counties are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

Basically, this guy thinks that most peoples’ lives in the developing world are getting better (eg Brazil etc). However, there are about a billion people in the poorest countries whose lives are not improving at all and show no signs of improving. He thinks aid etc should be focused almost entirely on this relatively small group of countries, and its a matter of habit/culture that development assistance is not focused that way.

He argues that these countries are stuck in poverty because of one of more of these traps: conflict, massive natural resources, being landlocked with bad neighbours, and bad governance. He suggests various measures which include assisting elites in these countries to turn things around (by for example producing model charters that can be easily adapted), military intervention (eg Sierra Leone, which was a huge success for British military intervention – saved many lives – and never gets talked about), and removing trade barriers.

He has some amusing things to say about the current state of aid work, pointing out that one reason for the focus outside the bottom billion is that everyone would rather be posted to Rio than Bangui. He spends quite a lot of time bashing on Bangui (extra points if you know where that’s the capital of?). Apparently the World Bank doesn’t have a single person stationed there, though it’s one of the poorest countries in Africa (little clue there for you).

His arguments seem to have plenty of merit, but it’s hard to tell, as I know very little about eg. international trade law, and he doesnt really present the other side of the question at all. Which makes one a little dubious. One feels even more dubious when he declares that the economics department of one university is either niave or ‘has been infiltrated by Marxists.’ What the hell does that mean? ‘Infiltrate’ is quite sort of emotionally laden and Cold War, but it’s better than Marxist! Who even uses that word any more? Why doesn’t he just say . . . has a generally leftist view’ or something.

He tells some sad stories. In 2004, a study was done to see how money was spent in rural clinics in Chad. What the study found was, don’t worry about how it’s spent, less than 1% of it even gets to the clinics in Chad – the rest is pilfered by various officials as it leaves central government. Nice.

DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON by George Orwell

I read this book in part I admit because I have always thought it had a cool title. And I guess George Orwell has a track record, 1984, ANIMAL FARM, etc.

What I really admired about this book was it’s clarity. It was just in such good taste, so clearly and unpretentiously written. I have been reading a lot of development research at the moment (votes: should I blog about this? I know this blog is supposed to be about everything I read in 2010, but are you really tough enough for posts on such gems as IMPLEMENTING THE SADC PROTOCOL AGAINST CORRUPTION: RECOMMENDATIONS AND DRAFT RULES OF PROCEDURE? Suspect not) and this research is just so jargon laden, and overwritten as shit. I suspect it’s because they’ve nothing real to say and need to cover that up.

The bio is hilarious, wait, let me quote: “He served in Burma, an experience that inspired his first novel BURMESE DAYS. Several years of poverty followed.” I don’t know if they mean it to be funny, but it is. Ah, the arts and how they don’t pay anything. So this book follows those years of poverty in Paris and London, where Orwell is homeless and near homeless. This must have been an experience and a half for an old Etonian, but we don’t learn much about him – it’s not autobiographical in that sense – it’s more about the people and places he ecountered, and the difficulties of living on little money and food.

At one point, when he hasn’t eaten in three days, he gets a job as a plongeur, which is I guess some kind of dishwasher at fancy Parisien hotels. This is a dreadful job, apparently, with 17 hour days being quite routine. Unsurprisingly, he is pretty big on the subject of how fancy hotels are useless, and has a lot to say on what’s wrong with a world in which people can be enslaved for the useless purpose of fanciness.

He ends with what he’s learnt: “I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning”

It’s an interesting picture of poverty in any period, and an interesting picture of its time in particular – for example, men with shell shock are a routine problem, as they keep people awake in the paupers’ dorms with their screaming. It’s also of its time in being rather anti-semitic, misogynist, and homophobic. But there you go, you can’t have everything.

THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

This is a famous book that one keeps meaning to read, so one has decided to read it. I bought it on Amazon, where the customer reviews are the sort of mouth-frothingly eager ones that make one feel all the more required to read it. Check it out. Charmingly, it comes to me in Zimbabwe as a discarded book from a library in small town Arkansas, complete with index card sleeve.

It’s not really the sort of book that one can call ‘good,’ because that seems sort of disrespectful. Quality terms don’t really apply to this sort of book.

Basically, Solzhenitsyn spent eight years in a hard labour camp under Stalin. He actually got off lightly, as typical setences were ten to twenty five years. He was jailed for being a literary person, but you needn’t think you actually needed to be guilty to go to the Gulag. Essentially, areas had quotas, both for jailings and executions, so anyone and everyone could be arrested quite randomly, and thousands and thousands of people were. They really wanted ‘confessions’ and lists of ‘co-conspirators’ (ie, your acquaintances, to make arrests less effort). So there was a lot of torture, stomach-churningly described. Incredibly, to me, lots of individuals refused to sign anything, or give up any names, and so as Sozhenitsyn puts it about one case, ‘died a victor in his cell.’

It actually boggles the mind. You can’t believe it really happened. They also sent whole groups – like millions of people – to exile in Siberia, where many died. Just twelve years after the Russian Revolution had divided up the land fairly, some people were already doing slightly better than their neighbours, presumably through hard work as they had no material advantages. These ‘kulaks’ were viewed as class enemies and sent into exile – millions of them – which immediately caused a three year famine, in which millions more died.

Being in Zim at the moment, I’m especially struck by two things: one, how angry the author is, and two, how madly brave he is. He is naming names and ripping shit up. Like, he tells us who informed on who simply to get his girlfriend, and then tells us where he currently lives in comfort in Moscow. Madly brave.

Here’s the rest of the review.

THE SAVAGE GARDEN by Mark Mills

Well, this is one of those books that makes me feel like I better become an author. Seriously, can any old crap become a bestseller? If so, let me start writing. That’s a bit mean, but DUDE. It was a bit rubbish.

It tells the story of a young man who as a university project goes to study a Renaissance garden in Italy. It’s written in the past, and opens with him in university, and the narrator says of his past self: “Try as he might, he couldn’t penetrate the workings of that stranger’s mind, let alone say with any certainty how he would have dealt with the news that murder lay in wait for him, right around the corner.” I mean, seriously. Murder . . . right around the corner. Hurl.

So it’s quite charmingly evocative of an Italian summer, but then it goes down a sort of de Vinci style what secret was hidden in the garden 400 years ago type route, which is distinctly borderline as a plot. We discover a 400 year old murder and also a contemporary one, and also have a love interest and some distinctly dodgy sex scenes.

I got it at a short story reading event I went to quite randomly, where there were cupcakes with labels saying ‘Eat Me’ (as in Alice in Wonderland) and books saying ‘Take Me’ – of which this was one – and so though I didn’t enjoy the book I enjoyed the rather sweet way I came by it.

I just have to tell you that the first line of the author’s bio is “Mark Mills graduated from Cambridge University in 1986.” I guess that’s the beginning and end of his life and everthing we need to know about him. Hurl.

ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY by David Sedaris

Now as I’ve told you before, I almost never buy books. Partly because I’m too cheap, and partly because I only really like owning books I really like. But I’m off to Zimbabwe for three months, where good books are hard to come by, so I gave in and spent some serious money on Amazon. Oh yes. So this is one of the first from that batch. I blogged about WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES by David Sedaris as I read it earlier this year, and really enjoyed it. ME TALK PRETTY was a bit of a let down, really. In the previous book, I enjoyed the way Sedaris was so open about his somewhat messed up life, but in this way rather than being pleasingly open and honest, it started to seem like a gimmick. And I didn’t really find it that funny. Hmmm. Is it because that it’s not as good a book, or is it because it’s the second of his books I’ve read, so I’m wise to his shtick? A pressing question for the ages.

Since I last wrote I’ve flown to Africa – 20 hours, FOUR stop overs – let’s not talk about it – so I’ve read a lot of books, but not been in a bloggable state. Much more to follow. After I get back from a four day holiday, far from internet. Laterz!

WIZARD OF THE CROW by Ngugi wa Thiong’o


Oh god. This didn’t go well. It was given to me as a very kind gift. The back cover, a review, calls it a “remarkable book that will be widely read . . a sprawling analogy.” Hmmm. Remarkable how? Remarkably bad?

And sprawling? This clearly means: needs editing.

I tried for 70 pages or so, but I just couldn’t do it. I could just tell he was settling in for a long one, and I couldn’t handle it. I feel bad, because they’ve even dressed the crow up on the front in Zimbabwean colours, because it’s about a dictator, so I give them props for that, but I just couldn’t handle it.

DR THORNE by Anthony Trollope


Honestly, massive props to gutenberg.net. I don’t know how anyone gets through their workday without it. DR THORNE has been keeping me company many a long day. Here’s where I first blogged about it ages ago, and I’ve finally finished it. I ran out of stuff to read on the train, so I finished it on the tiny screen of my mobile, to the not very Victorian, but very tinny, music coming from some moron’s i-pod.

The props go direct to the guy in the picture, who dreamed Gutenberg up in 1971.

DR THORNE tells the story of a young lady, neice of Dr Thorne, who is illegitimate and poor. A young man of good family falls in love with her, but obviously his whole family opposes the romance, as his estate is in debt because of his father’s extravagance, and he ought to marry money. Surprise, surprise, Mary is found to be a heiress and all ends happily.

This sounds thoroughly lame, but the charm of the book lies not in its plot. It’s the warmth of the narrator’s voice – if you’ve lived in England, you can’t help but love “Let no man boast himself that he has got through the perils of winter till at least the seventh of May.” It’s also the loving way the characters are presented. Note that the book is called Dr Thorne, but not because the story if about him, or because he’s the narrator, but just because Trollope likes him. That’s the kind of book it is.

Here it is. I recommend beginning immediately.

I am off to Zimbabwe for three months, so I’ve ordered a ton of books. DR THORNE is the third of the Barchester novels (I’ve also read the first two) and please don’t doubt I’ve ordered the remaining three. It will be very Victorian, as Zim has non-stop power cuts at the minute so I am sure I will read a lot of them by candlelight . . .

THE KINDLY ONES by Jonathan Littell


I actually read this last year, but I found out at the great blog Reading Matters that it’s been nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, which is for translated literature.

It’s an epic (very epic, like 900 pages of epic) story of a bureaucrat’s involvement in the Holocaust. I think the author (an American writing in French, impressively) intended to show how we are all potential Nazis, and he succeeds sort of. He definitely succeeds in writing an interesting, revealing, well researched novel of WWII. I learnt, which I thought was very interesting, that far more people died through mass shootings in the area of the old Soviet Union than died in the camps.

You probably don’t need to be warned that some parts are a bit grim.

There’s some interesting things going on narratively, because as the novel goes on it becomes increasingly clear that he’s not quite sure what it is he’s telling us. For example, he goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, his parents have been murdered and are covered in blood. He’s naked and the clothing he was wearing has been washed. Hmmm. There’s also some very unfortunate sexual self-abuse incidents. These I skipped.

Totally recommend it though

(The Observer’s review here is interesting)

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STARLINGS LAUGHING by June Vendall Clark – Cont’d


Well, I’ve finished it. And I’m quite thoroughly confused.

This husband, who was apparently so horrible to her, she divorced him and then when he asked her to, and not very nicely either, she remarried him. What? Then they got divorced again. Also, none of her three children seem to speak to her. What? How did we get there? I really can’t figure this lady’s personal life out. Suffice to say, it is wild. Almost as wild as the wildlife.

But the parts about the African landscape are very interesting, as are her attempts to set up a game reserve. She reads like an old colonial, but her reserve was apparently incredibly forward thinking – not just for its time, but for our time too, as it involved the local community; see here

After the acrimoious divorce, she keeps bleating about wanting to go back home to England. Bizarre, as this was a place that by my calculations she’d maybe spent 6 months in her whole life in. I guess as all the cultural life came from there, she felt that – despite it having nothing to do with her actual real life – that was home. Interesting that culture is actually a stronger predictor of ‘home’ than mere circumstance. ANYWAY. I just want to say, she moved to Norwich. This is a woman who used to chew up and spit up ground up doves for her orphan civet cat. Whole doves. With their feathers on. Yup. Her pet lion once mauled her son and she cheerily pumped him with the vet’s antibiotics. NORWICH.