My Bookshelf

Monday, 21 April 2014

Small World Books at Venice Beach


Most people I've found have been horrified on my behalf at the thought of going home to London after four days in idyllic Fiji. But I'm not horrified. I love London - it's buzzy, it's ever-changing, ever-moving, and there's always something new to do. There are also a lot of great bookshops. So landing in Los Angeles, as much as I was dreading it, I felt so happy to be back into the swing. Even more happy when I found Small World Books tucked away on the Venice Beach boardwalk.

I miss the way Waterstones in the UK used to have the individually written reviews from the booksellers there. People who loved books sharing their favourite reads with other people who love books. That last sentence, or even paragraph, probably wouldn't look out of place on a list of
Gwyneth Paltrow's Top 20 most pretentious comments (worth a read by the way)... but it's true. And this bookshop does that! It's so exciting! You walk in and you can't help but pick up books because they have their little white cards popping out of them.

There's not all that much to say about this shop, it's just a lovely place to be, a sanctuary away from the madness of Easter Weekend on Venice Beach. Oh and they have a cat! Love. It.


Small World Books
1407 Ocean Front Walk
Venice, CA 90291

310-399-2360

Saturday, 19 April 2014

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld. As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.


The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power. Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.

If there's ever a good time to read a 900+ page novel, it's when you're on a beach on Fiji with literally nothing else to do. I don't mean to brag, sorry. The sea is all pretty and blue. Oops. Sorry. And there are palm tr.. ok. That was both mean and an awful awful joke. I will continue with the book review now.


The Secret History by Donna Tartt is one of my favourite books, as it is for many people. So it's always going to be tough when she brings out a new novel - you can't help but compare. Well it's certainly longer. An 'odyssey' is about right. And really that's my main problem with it. It sounds like a pathetic focal point for such a brilliant writer but it was just too endulgent; it didn't need to be that long.


Right, with that aside, I can go on to more positive stuff. Donna Tartt is an amazing writer. One moment you're introduced to a brand new character and somehow you're a few pages further ahead and you know this person as if they were real, standing in front of you. How does she do that without you noticing?


I was also pleasantly surprised to find myself falling for the world of antiques, something I've always unfairly turned my nose up at. Think I must have subconsciously grown resentful from countless evenings waiting for some woman to find out how much her lavender vase is worth when all I wanted was for whatever was on at 9 o'clock to start...Sorry, I deviate. Basically Hobie is my new favourite person who you get to meet reasonably early on in the book, and through him you get another side of antiques that isn't all old posh people. The kind of guy you want to buy a crumbling old desk from him just to make him feel good.


It's not all old furniture, though; it's a drama, almost a thriller in places. The opening haunted me for days. It's wonderfully powerful and it's so immediate - this is modern day New York, but it could be London or Paris or Hong Kong. It's like you're getting a 'behind the scenes' look at this huge news story, and it kind of put me in a weird state of mind - not dissimilar to what Theo Decker is feeling I guess: shocked and yet sort of weirdly calm, fuzzy and gentle. (I realise I'm pulling out some difficult literary jargon here, I hope you can keep up).


While I stand by my view that this book was too long, Tartt does cover a lot of ground: quite literally, taking us from New York to Arizona to Europe, but also thematically. One moment you're aww-ing at childhood romance, the next minute you're racing through Dutch streets with the art world's criminal underbelly. Tartt keeps you on your toes; the moment everything's lost pace and you're losing interest is when everything gets turned on its head again.


Is it better than
The Secret History? No. Is it worth reading? Definitely. If you have time. And a strong wrist to carry the book. Otherwise, dare I say it, this might be one for Kindle... the ultimate technological advancement for the weak-wristed.

7/10

Tuesday, 15 April 2014

The Godwits Fly - Robin Hyde


Robin Hyde's wistful and engaging novel, first published in 1938, has now become a New Zealand classic. Strongly autobiographical, it vividly conveys the intensely felt worlds of the adolescent - love, poetry and England - and the enthralling but sometimes painful experience of growing up female; and its picture of family life in early-twentieth-century Wellington, in all its physical details, emotional tensions, muddle and variety, lingers in the mind.

When I was at university, one of my favourite modules was one I did on Australian and New Zealand fiction. Having at that point never visited either country, those books were really my first introduction.


The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde has become credited as an example of classic New Zealand fiction, which is odd given Robin Hyde isn't strictly speaking a Kiwi... but considering she was born in Cape Town in 1906, but living in Wellington before the year was out, I think we can overlook that. With me being the authority on these kind of things, naturally.

A godwit, by the way, is a migratory bird, not for use as an derogatory term for someone pretty hopeless, apparently that's a halfwit - who knew? Anyway, as you might have worked out by now, the title of the book is a metaphor for the nomadic nature of the antipodeans; the origins of the pakeha (the Maori term meaning white people, foreigners) are far away in Europe. So in The Godwits Fly, which is largely autobiographical, Robin Hyde tries to get across the sense of 'lostness', which was only exacerbated by being a teenager...
Later she thought, most of us here are human godwits; our north is mostly England. Our youth, our best, our intelligent, brave and beautiful, must make the long migration, under a compulsion they hardly understand; or else be dissatisfied all their lives long. They are the godwits. The light bones of the mother knew it before the chick was hatched from the eggshell.


Against the backdrop of the Boer War and World War One, Hyde fills the book with small details from the books being read, to the food being eaten, to the fears being felt. I wonder if this book has become a 'classic' because of the way it captures and teaches the history and culture of New Zealand at a time when the whole world was looking to Europe, sending the message 'we fought in those wars too'. By saying that last bit I don't mean that that is the book's central message, but it's important to be reminded of it nevertheless.

Having read this novel, it was not surprising to me when I found out that Hyde was, first and foremost, a poet because the book is so lyrical and beautifully drawn. It's far from being a flat historical account, this is a touching story.

Looking back, I think I was unfairly bored reading parts of the book. Maybe it's a literal geographical thing - how could I get fully involved with a set of characters living somewhere I've never been on the other side of the world? I wonder if I went back and read it, (which I know I won't but I like to entertain these ideas sometimes...) having now been to New Zealand, if I could access the book on a deeper level.

6/10

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

Tolkien Tourism


Did you know 'Tolkien Tourism' has its own Wikipedia page? Mm, yup - Tolkien Tourism.

It's basically the term used to describe the pilgrimage fans of Peter Jackson's
Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film franchises take to the locations that stand in for places described in Tolkien's original novels in the films.

As the films were filmed almost entirely in New Zealand, that's pretty much where these 'Ringers' (as I've just learned they're called) want to go. Now I wouldn't call myself a Ringer, not even close, and I didn't make it to Hobbiton sadly, but even I knew that leaving New Zealand without seeing Mount Doom would be 'literarily' (the red wiggly line tells me this is not a word?) blasphemous.


I would have loved to do the Tongariro Crossing where you trek between the two volcanoes and climb Mount Doom itself, but time was not on my side sadly.



I'm sure New Zealand has a weird relationship with Lord of the Rings. On the one side, you don't exactly want your distinguishing feature to be your use as a film set, but on the other side I'm pretty sure half the planet didn't know New Zealand was a place you could actually go, let alone that it was as beautiful as it is. I mean what else would let you get away with hanging a huge model of Gollum over the departure lounge at Wellington Airport?





With horses grazing on the lush green mountains, turquoise lakes, milky glacier rivers, the clear blue ocean of the Coromandel Penninsula and the dramatic jet black rocks and moody waters of the South Island, Peter Jackson probably couldn't have found a more perfect Middle Earth.





I was lucky to walk in the shadows of Mount Doom, took some hobbits horses to Isengard and through the Dead Marshes, cycle through Rohan and go through the forests of Rivendell, Dimrill Dale and Chetwood Forest.


Embarrassingly, it was actually the latest adaptation of CS Lewis's Prince Caspian that first made me want to go to New Zealand. Using Cathedral Cove, the film captured a very different side to New Zealand but no less beautiful - I mean seriously? This place exists? This planet is awesome.