The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles

I picked this up without knowing much about it other than that it was "a classic" with a famous film based on it. I think I enjoyed it all the more for not even knowing when it was written, as it took me a while to understand that the all-knowing Victorian narrator was not what he seemed. In fact this read as a swinging sixties take on Tess of the D'Urbervilles, with an unsettlingly uncertain ending. Fascinating stuff, with a lot of good material about Victorian ideas on science, progress, Darwinism, religion, sex, class, & the role of women - I found it impossible to put down, and read it in a day.

St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell

This is one I borrowed from the library solely on the basis of the intriguing title. I didn't have particularly high hopes of it, as I thought I might find the magical aspects a little alienating. However, in most cases the fantastic touches (such as the children of werewolves sent away to be rehabilitated in the title story, or the determined minotaur bravely pulling his family's wagon westward) lived up to the suggestion of the review on the back that they would "jog something in the childhood memory department" - in fact the mythical elements served as helpful metaphors making the characters easier to relate to (rather than harder, as I often find with magic realism). In the stories that worked best for me, I think this was because although the scenarios and characters described drew on an altered reality, once the situations had been introduced they played out entirely according to the rules of our own world.

I also liked one or two of the tales that were entirely unmagical - a lonely old man encouraging his (community service) "buddy" to visit by leaving out medication for her to steal, and a young astronomer drawn into stealing baby turtles by his desire for social status (a story which did a great job of capturing the destructive momentum of a joke gone sour). The fragment that sticks with me is the horrifically plausible story of a boy whose adoptive father boasts proudly that the first thing they ever did together as father and son was to bury the bear cub that was the boy's only friend (which had of course been shot the day he was collected from the children's home).

Eating - Peter Singer & Jim Mason

Subtitled "what we eat and why it matters", this book focuses on three US families - one whose food choices are based largely on cost & convenience, one family of "conscientious omnivores", and one of vegans - and investigates the impact of their food choices on animal welfare, the people involved in its production, and the environment. Having read Singer's earlier "Animal Liberation", I did not expect to be shocked by any of this, but was almost reduced to tears by one passage describing the casual cruelty of slaughterhouse workers observed jumping up and down on live chickens or ripping them apart for entertainment. The authors attribute this sort of behaviour to the desensitizing effects of fast-paced, monotonous, bloody work, in environments where supervisors routinely refuse to stop the processing line when mechanical failures lead to conscious animals being killed in slow and painful ways. Many large companies - bizarrely, led by McDonalds - have introduced audits to improve this situation, but critics claim that there is evidence from some slaughterhouses that the lines are simply run slower when an auditor is on site. Although the information about regulations and production practices in the US was interesting - for example the disturbing fact that most states' anti-cruelty laws contain exemptions for "common farming practices" - and the general principles were obviously universal, I would be interested in a UK-specific version of this book that went into more depth about UK suppliers.

As well as focusing on animal welfare, the book also includes a lot of material about environmental impacts, such as the vast quantities of feces and urine produced by large pig farms. In one incident in 1995, 25 million gallons of liquid waste were released into a river in North Carolina when a "lagoon" burst due to heavy rain, and even under normal conditions these farms can have such an impact on human health that the American Public Health Association passed a resolution in 2003 calling for a moratorium on the construction of new factory farms ("CAFOs"). The book also describes the inefficiency of meat production in terms of land use and water consumption - concluding, for example, that it takes 13 pounds of grain to produce a single pound of boneless beef.

The chapter on "the ethics of eating meat" includes my own reason for becoming vegetarian rather than attempting to apply welfare standards when purchasing meat - that "since we are all often tempted to take the easy way out, drawing a clear line against eating animal products may be the best way to ensure that one eats ethically - and sticks to it". (Although whenever I read anything like this I realise that my own position is inconsistent, and veganism would be a more rational place to draw that line, given the number of male chicks & calves that are killed by the egg & dairy industries...) It applies a similar argument to producers, pointing out that "as long as animals are commodities, raised for sale on a large scale in a competitive market situation, there will be conflicts between their interests and the economic interests of the producer" - and corners will be cut. I was particularly struck by the inclusion of a quote from Roger Scruton - the philosopher whose opposition to the concept of "animal rights" led him to name a pig "Singer" and then personally turn it into sausages: his assessment of modern large-scale factory farming is that "a true morality of animal welfare ought to begin from the premise that this way of treating animals is wrong".

Time to be in Earnest - P. D. James

This "fragment of autobiography" caught my attention for several reasons, and lived up to expectations on all counts. P.D. James herself has interested me since I saw her give an excellent talk on detective fiction as social history last year, and since then I have read several of her novels and found them much more complex (and a lot darker!) than the "genre fiction" I had previously dismissed them as. This was not a conventional autobiography, as it explicitly excludes detailed discussion of painful subjects such as her husband's long-term mental illness, choosing instead to take the form of a diary which mingles records of current doings with reminiscences from a lifetime and more general reflections. One of its main strengths is the insights it gives into the experiences of her generation - for example her memories of working in the NHS in its early years, at a time when MPs were assuming that the annual costs of the service would decrease as long-standing conditions were treated and the health of the nation gradually increased as a result!

One rather self-indulgent reason for my interest in this book was that there are several points of overlap between her life and mine in terms of locations, and I find it oddly satisfying to read about familiar places through unfamiliar eyes, particularly casual mentions to obscure train stations and pubs that I haven't thought about for years. I found that this had the strange effect of making it feel rather shocking whenever she expressed strong opinions that I do not share, as she occasionally did - for example her vehement outrage at the "injustice" of the intrusion into the lives of those persuaded to take part in family therapy sessions.

However, my main reason for picking this up was to see what she had to say about the writing process and about crime fiction. For her, the fascination of detective fiction lies in

"the exploration of character under the revealing trauma of a murder enquiry. Murder is the unique crime, the only one for which we can never make reparation to the victim. Murder destroys privacy, both of the living and of the dead. If forces us to confront what we are and what we are capable of being."

I was also struck by her observation, in a discussion of the contrasts between modern detective novels and their 1930s counterparts, that although they have become so much more realistic in many ways, they still contain an element of fantasy in that so many modern fictional detectives are curiously childless and able to devote their lives to their work...

On the writing process itself, she offers four pieces of advice: read widely; practise writing ("the craft is learned by practising it, not by talking about it"); increase your vocabulary; and finally, welcome experience:

"This means going through life with all senses open: observing, feeling, relating to other people. Nothing that happens to a writer need ever be lost."

The Poem and the Journey - Ruth Padel

This book is in two parts - a very interesting introductory section on the composition and reading of poetry in general, and a selection of 60 poems along with notes on their construction and how they might be read. I bought it after hearing the author speak at the Oxford Literary Festival - although I must confess to having briefly dozed off at one point, since I was sitting near the back and could not see her at all, so found it difficult to keep my eyes open... What I did hear of the talk was interesting enough to persuade me to buy the book (despite the fact that the audience size vastly exceeded the number of handouts prepared, and it was difficult to follow the examples without seeing the texts of the featured poems).

This feels like a book I will return to repeatedly - it impressed me but I don't think that I got as much out of it on a first reading as I could do if I gave it more time and attention. I enjoyed reading many of the poems, but I skimmed over some of the notes on structure and the effects of repeated sounds in the poems - I am sure these must play a large part in generating the reader's response to a poem, but I don't tend to be consciously aware of them. I intend to read this again at some point, taking the time to follow the explanations more closely and explore the mechanics of the poems rather than just their surface meanings.

Arthur & George - Julian Barnes

I found this fictional account of the lives of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji, the falsely accused man whose real-life case Conan Doyle investigated (leading to the formation of the Court of Criminal Appeal), both intriguing and convincing.

Both characters are presented as fascinatingly flawed, and the young George's complete lack of awareness of any racial hostility towards himself or his father is particularly compelling. Conan Doyle's relationships with the women in his life are equally complex and believable: he adores and is dominated by the "Mam", feels chivalrous towards his "timid, tractable" - and chastely consumptive - wife, and falls deeply in love with Jean Leckie, who he struggles to maintain a platonic relationship with for the sake of "honour".

The novel works very well as an evocation of the period and an exploration of the nature of identity and the shaping of adult lives by narratives learned in childhood. However, I found this book less emotionally engaging than some of Barnes' other work - perhaps because of the knowing detachment with which the main characters are described.

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami

The plot revolves around a lonely young man trying to come to terms with the disappearance of his wife, and the increasingly bizarre events that he is swept up in by the strange characters he encounters as he tries to find her and save their marriage. Another strand of the book tells some powerfully brutal stories about an old soldier's experiences in WWII and as a prisoner of war afterwards.

The supernatural elements of the story - a pair of psychic sisters, a magic well or two, a mother and son with strange healing powers - become more all-pervasive as the book goes on, leading to the final mythic show-down with the evil brother-in-law. I found this book compelling and intriguing, but ultimately too surreal and disturbing for my taste, and a little bleak.

Watching the English - Kate Fox

This attempt to describe the rules of English social behaviour was an easy but informative read, with some laugh-out-loud funny passages such as the description of the author's "bumping experiments", where she was able to elicit a "reflex apology" from about 80% of the innocent passers-by that she deliberately stumbled into - but only after learning to suppress her own apologies by biting her lip...

I particularly liked the chapter on work - from the "polite procrastination" rule that demands an appropriate period of meaningless and increasingly awkward small-talk before doing anything so crass as actually getting down to business, to the stimulating impact of the "modesty rule" on our advertising industry. Months after reading this, I still find myself constantly reminded of it by everyday conversations that fit her description of "ritual moaning":

"... there is a tacit understanding that nothing can or will be done about the problems we are moaning about. We complain to each other, rather than tackling the real source of our discontent, and we neither expect nor want to find a solution to our problems - we just want to enjoy moaning about them."

The observations on class-indicators were excellent (the section on "the M&S test" was hilarious, and her exploration of the dangerous terrain of choosing a brand of car made me cringe as I realised to my shame that it did actually matter to me if people thought my choice "vulgar"). However, the only slight limitation that I perceived in this book was that Kate Fox herself is perhaps a little too "refined" to describe the full range of English behaviour with the same insider knowledge that she can pick apart the niceties of eating peas on the back of one's fork. I was a little amused by her distinction between "big flashy, show-off cufflinks" (lower-class) and "small, simple, unobtrusive ones" (higher) - perhaps the possibility of a shirt with buttoned cuffs was too shameful to consider?

Throughout the book she identifies peculiarly English clusters of values (fair play, courtesy, modesty), outlooks (down-to earth pragmatic empiricism, Eyoreishness, class-consciousness), and compensating reflexes (humour, moderation, self-deceiving hypocrisy) and links them all to an underlying "social dis-ease". Although no firm conclusions are drawn about the cause of all this, some interesting parallels are made with the Japanese, another culture from a small island that values "negative politeness", i.e. puts more value on privacy and avoiding intrusion than on friendliness and social inclusion.

A Keeper of Sheep - William Carpenter

I picked this one up in the Oxfam bookshop because of the intriguing title, and didn't put it down again because of the even more intriguing name of the main character: "Penguin Solstice".

This is a gentle book about harsh subjects, which is largely a coming-of-age story about a radical know-it-all young woman learning to relate to other people as she becomes drawn into the life of a composer dying of AIDS. She starts the story with a strong belief in following her conscience at all costs, which initially leads her to attempt to burn down a frat house where a woman was raped. To some extent her later experiences strengthen her convictions - she finds herself once again struggling against those in a position of power as she defends her neighbour's right to stay within their small community and fights to prevent the environmental destruction threatened by calls to spray pesticide on the local marshland. However, she is also forced to appreciate that there can be more than one side to a story, and that often there is no clear-cut "right" choice that can be made without painful consequences.

I liked this book - I liked the calm clarity of the writing and the nuanced characterisation, and I liked the value it put on humanity, truth, and art. Somehow I didn't quite love it though, although I'm not entirely sure why - perhaps because so many of the relationships described in the book are tentative or incomplete in some way.

Why Concealed Beauties?

So what is this supposed to be exactly? To be honest I'm not sure - I haven't even decided yet whether I want other people to read what I'm writing or whether this is just an electronic addition to my pile of personal notebooks... I have kept notes for a few years now on library books and books borrowed from friends, as a way of remembering what I've read. While checking the name of a book recently, I stumbled across Outside of a Dog and it made me realise that a book log was a natural fit for this medium, so I decided to give it a go myself. Having decided to create a blog I first had to name it, and although I was aware I'd never find a title as apt as that one, I was determined to find something more inspiring than just calling it by my name... After a quick search I came up with this quote by Joseph Addison:

"A true critic ought to dwell rather upon excellencies than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation."

... and although I do not aspire to "literary criticism", this does accurately reflect my initial intention of keeping notes to remind myself of writing that had made an impression on me.

Since then I've also discovered another quote by Addison along similar lines:

"It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are, the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others."

So with that in mind I have created this as a place to record my impressions of what I read (and probably also of things I watch, hear & experience generally!)