Wuthering Low

Seduced by the very cool cover on this new edition I tried to read this again. I still don't like it. Maybe my list of things I will not tolerate in fiction (narrative written in dialect and dream sequences) was born out of this very book. Because after opening with the wild dream sequence with the ghost of Cathy clawing at the windows we get to Joseph speaking the immortal words "Und hah isn't that nowt comed in frough th'field, be this time? What is he abaht? girt eedle seeght!"

Why is this book romantic? Heathcliff is a brutal lout and Cathy is a selfish spoiled snob. OK so it's modern but what is the romance abaht? I could care less about any of them. Girt eedle shite to them!

Why? I Ask

Hmmm. I don't know why I thought this would be any good. It's not.  It's billed as Harry Potter for adults. It plays on the same story of some kid (college age this time) being whisked away into a parallel universe to a wizard school. Every mention or review says 'not for children'. Mostly because there's sex and drugs but I think any self respecting child would put this down for the sheer boredom of it all. He's not a bad writer, just a bad storyteller and if J.K. Rowling is anything, she's a great storyteller. Harry Potter is light on any substance or subtlety other than the traditional Battle between Good and Evil but it's still a great ride. In the future if I want Harry Potter I'll read Harry Potter, if I want HP with subtlety and adult themes I'd read Philip Pullman. If I want Lev Grossman...wait...that does not fit anywhere...not even in any parallel universe.

Grenville and Muriel Spark Fall Down

Finally a stinker from Kate Grenville, although it actually doesn't qualify as a true stinker, more the vaguely unpleasant odor of boredom, I finally put it down and thought as a cleanse I would read the very slim and enticing Aiding and Abetting by Muriel Spark. Alas, I was meant for more dissappointment (I was avoiding using this word since I never can spell it and rely on spell check to always fix it for me but rather alarmingly for all of us the spellcheck function in Blogger has dissap....wait, can't spell that one either.... vanished.) Anyway dese buks verry baad! Dont reed.

Comic Madame Bovary

After reading Madame Bovary I remembered I had a graphic novel retelling called Gemma Bovery so I pulled that out. I had heard about the writer/illustrator on a Clive James podcast where he sits on a couch with the interviewee smoking and drinking wine. Posy Simmonds was one of his many interviewees. They didn't get as down and dirty and wreathed in smoke clouds as he did with Martin Amis but I still looked up her books after.

The book is still set in France but in modern day with a bored, restless Gemma married to a weak furniture restorer Charles Bovery. She is endlessly recreating their house and her look, she obsessed with her weight. It's all told through the eyes of a local baker and manages to get in quite a few digs at the brits who come and buy cheap places in Normandy but never learn French or integrate into village life. Fun to read after the real stuff.

Nobel Prize for Literature

Herta Müller wins Nobel Prize in Literature. Herta Müller, the Romanian-born German novelist and essayist who writes of the oppression of dictatorship in her native country and the unmoored existence of the political exile, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday. Is this her?  I've never heard of her so am not 100% sure. Is that the Nobel Prize? It looks oddly like an Emmy. The outfit seems a little glitzy for the Nobels but hey---Doris Lessing can't win every year. Which gives us the perfect entre into viewing the video on YouTube of Doris Lessing's winning of the Nobel again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBODHFBZ8k&feature=youtube_gdata

So much more adorable than Herta Müller and I believe the plaid shirted man behind her is holding not a Nobel/Emmy but an artichoke. She should win every year.