Aye Write '09

The Aye Write literary festival lineup is pretty good - and for the first time since I moved to "Glasga", I can actually go! I have booked tickets to see Jonathan Coe and Andrew Crumey in conversations with Rodge Glass and I'm rather excited. You must understand that I've been used to the Copenhagen Book Fair where we got celebrity chefs and D-list reality stars flogging their books (with the occasional AS Byatt thrown in for good measure). Aye Write! is considerably more my thing. Coe is one of my favourite contemporary authors and I'm in the process of becoming a Crumey convert.

Also, a big thank you to some of my Glasgow friends who floored me the other day with their kindness, thoughtfulness and generosity. You guys rock. You really do.

Into the Woods

Yes, I know I said stuff about knitting with grey wool. The phrases "never again", "not in the winter months" and "I need colour!!!!!" may have passed my lips. But I've changed my mind.

The pattern is Norwegian Woods by Sivia Harding. Earlier this year I knitted a few repeats of it in the gawjuss Old Maiden Aunt silk/merino yarn I have stashed away. I was flippant, made a few too many mistakes and ripped it all out. Now I'm knitting the shawl in Snældan's 1-ply wool (Faroese wool mixed with a touch of Falkland Islands wool - and spun on the Faroe Islands!). I'll blog more about the shawl as it progresses.

As you can see from the photo, it is snowing in Glasgow today. South-east England has had a couple of inches of snow and they are panicking. Silly people (sayeth this Scandinavian gal) For once I don't mind the snow so much and it made for a great photo opportunity this morning. Right now I'm still seeing ginormous snowflakes hurling towards the ground.

A couple of links (because my links folder is bursting at its seams). + I really want this t-shirt. + Is there anything Barack Obama cannot do? Well, I'm not too hot on his poetry. Dare I say it? I write better poetry than him? I do. + Great photos of London from above (thanks, Molly) + A bit more heavy-going than I usually get here: We Who Are Left Behind: Poetry as Testimony in Derrida and Celan. + Amazing Flickr photo-stream: Lars Daniel. He makes me miss Copenhagen even more. + Type as Image. It does wot it sez on teh tin.

Have a lovely day - with or without snow.

In Her Soft Wind I Will Whisper

Lady on the left? My great-grandmother. She would have been ninety-three today. The photo was taken in the early 1950s outside her cottage and she is with two of her sons, K and T.

I have several photos of her; my other favourite is from the 1930s when she was approached by a travelling salesman who wanted her to become a hair model. I presume she shot him one of her withering glances. The photo shows her with long, gorgeous hair. I was told it was chestnut-coloured.

I was lucky enough to grow up around her. She minded me when I was pre-kindergarten and I spent most of my school holidays in her cottage. Her cottage did not have running water until I was maybe seven or eight and never got central heating. I can still envision her sitting in her chair in front of the kerosene-fuelled stove. She'd knit long garter stitch strips from yarn scraps and sew them into blankets. I think she was the one who taught me to knit. She was certainly the one who taught me how to skip rope.

Happy birthday, momse. We may not always have seen eye to eye, but we loved and understood each other. And I still miss you.

Title comes from this beautiful farewell song (youtube link).

St. Teresa

See the colour of my skin? I was standing on top of a windy hill in Scotland in January wearing just a long-sleeved tee, jeans and my finally-finished grey jumper. Don't tell me that I don't suffer for my blog. I finished the jumper on Tuesday. Wednesday I wore it outside and found out my neck itched like crazy (and the collar looked silly). Friday I took the scissors to the neckline, got a little over-enthusiastic and had to fool around with lifelines and cutting out a fair chunk of the yoke. This morning I knitted the neckline and decided to nick the idea of a tied bow from St. James. I just had had enough of my own ideas at that stage.

So, we went out for a walk, shot some deeply unflattering photos and then walked past this amazing church which promptly lent its name to the project.

Note to self: get better photos (and shoot them INDOORS). And don't ever knit with grey wool during the dark, rainy winter months.

Snapshot

I'm baking a chocolate and beetroot cake; David's reading an advance copy of Mr Toppit. Later I will rip out the neckline of my now finished-but-unfinished grey jumper (the wool is tickling the upper part of my neck/chin). I feel so middle-class.

Books 2009: Julian Barnes - Flaubert's Parrot

Perhaps the real question is not why you read, but how you read. This observation was brought to you from me having finished Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot just an hour ago. I was certain I had read the book before - but I'm not sure. I recognised the opening chapter. It is entirely possible I had read the opening chapter and then put the book aside. This is one of the ways I read: I flirt with books. So, the much-fabled, oft-taught and already-classic Flaubert's Parrot which I may or may not have read previously but which I have definitely read now?

How did I read it?

Well. I felt tempted to make a check-list of post-modern fiction trademarks, so I could check them all: fragmented self (constructed out of texts); history understood and recast as fiction (as the past is inaccessible to us except through texts which by their very nature are linguistic constructs and thus unreliable); the text as bricolage (assembled by quotations and various types of texts); no such thing as Truth but only truthS; &c.

In short: it read like a lesser Pale Fire (true to his metier, Barnes does keep name-dropping Nabokov) but without Pale Fire's mania and fevour. My head placed Flaubert's Parrot next to Graham Swift's Waterland. Barnes' novel is a textbook case of post-modern fiction, just like Swift. I did not particularly care for the book - to me, it reads old in way that much older books do not. Because it is such a full-blooded second-generation English post-modern book, it feels very dated to me.

That's how I read. My head assigns books their place in the literary canon based upon their kinship with other books/authors. I measure them against similar books I have read (and often against unrelated books). How does the writing hold up? Does it surprise me anyway? Does it make me work hard or does it lead me gently through the pages? Will it make me reassess books I have already read? Does it point me towards books I need to read in order to fully appreciate the book I hold in my hands?

Next: a post on things I find in secondhand books. It was my intention to post this today, but someone has not charged the camera batteries. Boo.