Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Category: Books

  • An Embarrassment of Riches

    An embarrassment of riches in today’s Review section of the Guardian. First up, the lead article explores the writing of Angela Carter, in particular, The Bloody Chamber. First published in 1979, it "remains as shocking today as when it was first published". Carter is one of my favourite authors – there are currently 17 of her books in my library. I think it is her sly, subversive take on the traditional fairy story that first attracted me to her writing.
     
    Next up, the book of the week is England in Particular. The review has made me add this book to my "want" list, although at thirty quid it’s not cheap. While reviewing the details on Amazon, I saw that people interested in the book have also been buying The Lore of the Land – a guide to England’s legends and folklore. Oh dear, that’s another book that has gone on to my "want" list. I see that it’s dedicated to Katherine Briggs – I already have her Dictionary of Fairies in my library – a terrific compendium of British hobgoblins, brownies, bogies and other supernatural creatures.
     
    Lastly, a light-hearted article by Patrick Ness on passages to pick for gay weddings and civil partnerships. I agree with him 100% about the bamboo shoots… Me too.

  • Poems on Affairs of State

    Mention of John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, sent me to look up the oldest book in my library. That’s a book, published in 1697, entitled POEMS on Affairs of State. No ISBN, for obvious reasons!

    It contains a number of poems by the Earl of Rochester, including the one that got him banished from the court of King Charles II. In my book, the poem is introduced as follows:

    On King CHARLES, by the Earl of Rochester, For which he was banish’d the Court and turn’d Mountebank.

    Reading the poem itself, it’s hardly surprising that Charles was not amused. This is it, as it appears in the book, censored words and all (I’ve replaced the old “f” with “s”, e.g. “beft” is “best”) – look away now if you’re easily offended:

    In the Isle of Great Britain long since famous known,
    For breeding the best C—- in Christendom;
    There reigns, and long may he reign and thrive,
    The easiest Prince and best bred Man alive:
    Him no ambition moves to seek renown,
    Like the French Fool, to wander up and down,
    Starving his Subjects, hazarding his Crown.
    Nor are his high desires above his strength,
    His Scepter and his P—- are of a length,
    And she that plays with one may sway the other,
    And make him little wiser than his Brother,
    I hate all Monarchs and the Thrones that they sit on,
    From the Hector of France to the Cully of Britain.
    Poor Prince, thy P—- like the buffoons at Court,
    It governs thee, because it makes thee sport;
    Tho’ Safety, Law, Religion, Life lay on’t,
    ‘Twill break through all to make it’s way to C—.
    Restless he rolls about from Whore to Whore,
    A merry Monarch, scandalous and poor.
    To Carewell the Most Dear of all thy Dears,
    The sure relief of thy declining Years;
    Oft he bewails his fortune and her fate,
    To love so well, and to be lov’d so late;
    For when in her he settles well his T—-,
    Yet his dull graceless Buttocks hang an Arse.
    This you’d believe, had I but time to tell you,
    The pain it costs to poor laborious Nelly,
    While she employs Hands, Fingers, Lips and thighs,
    E’er she can raise the Member she enjoys.

    Apparently, it’s difficult to establish the definitive version of this poem. Here’s another, slightly different, version – uncensored this time. More on John Wilmot at the same web site.

    The book was in my parent’s library – quite how it arrived there I will never know, but I find it intriguing that they would own such a book…

  • The Man Who Knew Too Much

    That’s the title of a new biography of Alan Turing written by David Leavitt. The combination of those two names in itself is enough to send me dashing off to Amazon’s web page. The definitive biography of Turing for me has always been Andrew Hodge’s masterwork: Alan Turing: The Enigma, but I definitely want to read how Leavitt has tackled the subject.
     
    There’s a good review of Leavitt’s book by Peter Conrad in today’s Observer. Conrad’s opening paragraph delivered practically a hammer-blow to me when I read it. It’s an audacious link between computers and the manner of Turing’s death. Of course, it’s obvious once you see it, but kudos to Conrad for setting my mind reeling for a moment or two.

  • Singing My Sister Down

    What can I say? This is one of the most powerful short stories that I have read in years. It’s the opening story in Margo Lanagan’s collection entitled Black Juice. Just go and buy it, OK? I’m working my way through the book in constant wonderment. For example, Red Nose Day is the perfect story for all those who suffer from coulrophobia.  

  • The Line of Beauty

    Tomorrow night, the BBC screens the first episode of a three-part adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, the Booker Prize-winning novel that evokes the spirit of fast living in London in the years of Thatcher.
     
    It promises to be riveting television. There’s even a leader in The Guardian today praising the adaptation (but, he said pedantically, haven’t they got the hyphen in the wrong place in the phrase "Booker Prize-winning"?).

  • And The Big Gay Read Winner Is…

    … Armistead Maupin for Tales of the City. While it’s understandable that Maupin has won – the books are good and deservedly popular – part of me thinks that, for a competition seeking to find the favourite books of British gays and lesbians, it’s a pity that a British author didn’t make it into first place. Sarah Waters and Jeanette Winterson figure prominently, of course, and I see Alan Hollinghurst and Patrick Gale are also in the top ten, so British voices weren’t entirely drowned out by our transatlantic cousins. Personally, I would have liked to have seen the work of the late Tom Wakefield also in the list.

  • How Animals Have Sex

    I have mentioned this book by Gideon Defoe before. But that was before I had read it. I am here to report that the reviews were completely on target. This is one of the funniest books I have read in recent years. As the blurb on the book cover says: from panda porn to snail love-darts, this is a guide to the reproductive habits of creatures great and small. It is a simply wonderful book.
     
    Message to Chris and Ed – this is definitely one for your collection. Well done Gideon!
     
    Look, just order it from Amazon, will you? I promise you, you won’t regret it.

  • A Book Review

    This review of this book has instantly made me put it on my "books I must read" list. Clearly, anything that shows what a weird and wonderful world we live in courtesy of millions of years of evolution will get my vote. There ain’t nothing intelligent about these designs. Rube Goldberg and W. Heath Robinson would be proud.

  • Memories and Movies

    That old word wizard JG Ballard has a fascinating article in today’s Guardian. In it, he muses over where his memory ends and where the interpretation of those memories by other people begins. He uses the events, both original and subsequent, that powered his novel Empire of the Sun. I’ve a soft spot for Ballard’s dystopic novels, where alien things ripple under a surface normality. Once the library gets upacked and installed in the new house, I must re-read Empire of the Sun again.

  • Moral Choices

    They’re tricky at times. Suppose you were Andrew Clemens. What would you do?
     

  • Turning The Pages

    If you have a broadband connection to the Internet, then check out the British Library’s Turning the Pages online gallery. I hope that the content of more books is made available over the web in this way.

  • Falling Behind…

    Damn, I’m no longer in the top 50 largest libraries catalogued in LibraryThing. I’m currently at joint 51st with junglemom (waves). I wish Amazon would hurry up and deliver the books I ordered before Christmas, then I might have a chance of clawing my way back into the top 50 again…

  • Another Book Review

    But clearly, not a recommendation. Just to be sure, I used Amazon’s nifty "Look Inside" feature to read an excerpt. Yep, it’s every bit as bad as the recommendation says. Thanks for the tip, I won’t be adding Moral Armor to the reading list.

  • Service Interruption

    Sorry about the slow blogging – we’re moving up a gear ready for the house move. I’m currently dismantling the library. All the books are in boxes, and now the bookshelves are coming down ready for the movers. So the library no longer looks like the picture below, but is an empty shell.
     

    Library

     

  • Philip Pullman

  • Odd Books

    Courtesy of the Improbable Research blog, I have been pointed to OddBooks – a web site devoted to odd books. I look forward to many happy hours of browsing.

  • The Algebraist…

    …is the title of a science fiction book by Iain M. Banks. I’ve just managed to get around to reading it and finished it today. Banks did not disappoint.
     
    This is big, glorious space opera – hard SF that nonetheless is written by someone who understands human foibles only too well. So it’s not just flashy machines and mind-blowing ideas, it’s also about the things that we do that have impact on others; about power that corrupts, societies that revolve around the most pointless of things, and about religion that dulls the mind (the "Truth"). It’s also full of memorable characters – mostly non-human. And it’s about a journey taken by one human – a complete circle from a quiet conversation in a garden to a similar, and yet utterly different, conversation in the same garden between the same two characters – but between these conversations, the universe has changed, and a new set of possibilities have arisen. In his control of the science, and his command of truly outrageous ideas and visions (an alien society living in the atmosphere of a gas-giant planet similar to Jupiter), Banks reminds me of John Varley. Where I think he goes beyond Varley is the fact that he is a political writer. The political voice of his alter ego, which is given full reign in novels set in our world, such as Dead Air and Complicity, is present in this SF book. Gas-giant planets or Margaret Thatcher, Banks’ voice is very much one that deals with politics, and its impact on people. His voice is the stronger for it.

  • When It Changed

    Here I am, mentioning the ED SF Project yet again in less than 24 hours. But I feel I have to, because Kameron Hurley has just published her appreciation of Joanna Russ’ story: When It Changed.
     
    I remember reading the story back in 1977, in the paperback of Harlan Ellison’s collection: Again Dangerous Visions. It had a powerful effect on me then, and on re-reading it, I find that the effect is only slightly diminished. It speaks of a very different society from what we experience, and yet one that I (and I think, Kameron) can empathise with. And at the core of the story is the recognition by the narrator that the known world is on a cusp – and from that moment on, because of a meeting, the world is irrevocably changed.
     
    Imagine the meeting between Cortes and the Aztecs as a some sort of two-dimensional object – say a square. Now turn that 2D object into three dimensions – a cube. That extra dimension is what Russ paces out in the nature of the meeting that occurs in this story. You’ll have to read it to understand what I mean. If you’ve read Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, you’ll have an inkling of what Russ is going to do, except in her story there are no aliens in the sense of being non-human. There are aliens of another form, though, and equally as deadly as invaders from Mars. 

  • Refugees From Nulongwe

    I mentioned the ED SF Project earlier this month. It’s a collection of appreciations of SF short stories that were published by Ellen Datlow. I’ve been reading the appreciations published by contributors. Many of them make me want to read the original story immediately. Once such came in today – Rhonda S. Garcia’s appreciation of "Refugees from Nulongwe" by M. Shayne Bell. The story does not disappoint. It’s a terrific little story – a perfect example of the "what if" of good SF where it explores humanity and what it means to be human. The footnote to the story gives the clue to how the story came to be written – the situation explored in the story is close to our reality. And the picture of the two strong old women – one human, one not – is striking.  

  • Ursula K. Le Guin

    There’s a good article by Maya Jaggi in today’s Guardian profiling the writer Ursula K. Le Guin. Le Guin is one of my favourite writers (at the last count I had 28 of her books in my library). Good to know that, at the age of 76, she’s still writing.