Monday, March 03, 2008
Page Turners.
I like lots of kinds of books, but in the past few years I have struggled to find the heady days when one year I went back to back (or so I recall) with amazing books like The Corrections, Middlesex, The Crimson Petal & the Red and Small Island. I really wonder sometimes that they spoilt me. I struggled for a year or so afterwards to find anything that had the same impact, anything that was such a joy to read and to this day I am finding my choices erratic and inconsistent. It's a little like my film watching in fact. I know what I like, I know with certainty that if I am going to take myself off to see a film, I will fairly certainly enjoy it. I temper my moods with the film and the results are usually very satisfactory. That is until I started going out of my comfort zone. Now there is something to be said for doing just that, you'll discover new genres, artists and have new experiences but you will, by definition, get more rubbish. Life is too short.
I realised recently I like futuristic books and films. Not in a 'sci-fi' or fantasy way, but a snapshot of a world gone wrong. A world we recognise but one that is perhaps post-apocalyptic, a society beyond our current one, struggling, fighting, enduring. They're horrific really, abject misery and suffering but what I like is that underneath, embedded within it all, is humanity. Our over-riding sense of us, the thing that keeps us fighting, keeps us alive, keeps us living. Somewhere in these bleak landscapes hope emerges and one reads and senses that no matter how horrid it might one day get, it will be okay. It will be different, it will be un-recogniseable almost but it will be okay.
You'll be curious to know what I'm reading? I'm not finished yet and it has changed tack quite significantly from the beginning so my enjoyment might too. The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter. I adore Angela Carter's books. I don't always understand them, I certainly don't get half the references or the literature within but they are the most beautifully crafted, evocative and draining things I have ever read. Although reading that back, I think I've drained the bottom of the superlative barrel. I'm ecstatic it's short, but it's taking me a while, you can't skim read them, you can't drop in and out but you also can't read them for long. Least not I can't.
My favourite still remains Nights at the Circus. I thought it was brilliant. And it introduced me to the Kneehigh Theatre Company who have produced some of the best theatre adaptations I have ever seen culminating in this years Brief Encounter at the Haymarket Theatre (recently converted back from a cinema). It was beautiful, truly engrossing, emotional, funny and warm. And sad, how can it not be with a doomed love affair? Kneehigh did a stage adaptation of Nights at the Circus, which brings me nicely back to the book and reading. Which is what I'm going to take myself off to do now.
I realised recently I like futuristic books and films. Not in a 'sci-fi' or fantasy way, but a snapshot of a world gone wrong. A world we recognise but one that is perhaps post-apocalyptic, a society beyond our current one, struggling, fighting, enduring. They're horrific really, abject misery and suffering but what I like is that underneath, embedded within it all, is humanity. Our over-riding sense of us, the thing that keeps us fighting, keeps us alive, keeps us living. Somewhere in these bleak landscapes hope emerges and one reads and senses that no matter how horrid it might one day get, it will be okay. It will be different, it will be un-recogniseable almost but it will be okay.
You'll be curious to know what I'm reading? I'm not finished yet and it has changed tack quite significantly from the beginning so my enjoyment might too. The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter. I adore Angela Carter's books. I don't always understand them, I certainly don't get half the references or the literature within but they are the most beautifully crafted, evocative and draining things I have ever read. Although reading that back, I think I've drained the bottom of the superlative barrel. I'm ecstatic it's short, but it's taking me a while, you can't skim read them, you can't drop in and out but you also can't read them for long. Least not I can't.
My favourite still remains Nights at the Circus. I thought it was brilliant. And it introduced me to the Kneehigh Theatre Company who have produced some of the best theatre adaptations I have ever seen culminating in this years Brief Encounter at the Haymarket Theatre (recently converted back from a cinema). It was beautiful, truly engrossing, emotional, funny and warm. And sad, how can it not be with a doomed love affair? Kneehigh did a stage adaptation of Nights at the Circus, which brings me nicely back to the book and reading. Which is what I'm going to take myself off to do now.
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