books – Muggins Here

The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

March 4, 2018March 4, 2018by mugginshere3 Comments

This book is one of my favourites. I’ve read it repeatedly since first being introduced to it at school. It is beautifully written and Plath’s prose is as poetic as her poems. She has a knack for capturing the essence of anything in just a few lyrical words; from a thought or feeling to a whole situation or personality. It is one of the few books I have read that portrays someone with serious mental health issues and manages to emphasise the severity of their experience alongside their humanity, or ‘normality’ if you will. Esther Greenwood may be increasingly detached, depressed, delusional and struggling to engage with the world around her, but she is still just a girl who loves a bath.

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure but I don’t know many of them.

I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath

And just try to tell me you have never stood somewhere beautiful, looked around and felt this..

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, “This is what it is to be happy.”

Plath shows you someone who is incredibly vulnerable and almost naive about life, but she is also intelligent and has had to make her own deductions about what is going on and what is expected of her. She also shows you other people’s reactions to mental health, and while some of the treatments have moved on since this was written in 1963 not all attitudes have. Continue reading “The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath” →

book review - fiction

The Island of Sheep – John Buchan

November 19, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshereLeave a Comment

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This was a great romp of an adventure story, with a bit of falconry, a trip to Scotland and a remote island thrown in. I loved it but I know that’s mainly because it is a mix of all my favourite things so I’m not recommending you rush out and track this down!

Reading the notes on the author, John Buchan not only wrote the 39 steps but published FIVE books while at university. This man came from a family that was not at all wealthy, attended grammar school in Glasgow and was awarded scholarships to the University of Glasgow (which is beautiful) and then to Oxford where he couldn’t even afford to dine in college – and yet he ended up Governor-general of Canada. From the way this man describes grand landscapes and being outdoors, I bet that country suited him just fine!

Found: Oxfam bookshop

Read: on the train

Felt: swept up into a good old fashioned adventure story

Would recommend: to people who like a bit of early 1900s escapism

book review - fiction

The Plague – Albert Camus

July 19, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshere2 Comments

I’ve not even finished the book yet, and I’ve filled multiple pages with incredible, insightful quotes. I’ve found it fascinating to read about an epidemic now that so many people I know work with infectious diseases, although this book is less about a town dealing with an outbreak and much more about humans dealing with each other. Camus examines how people and their relationships respond to pressure, hardship, fear and hope. In places, the book reads almost like a sermon. There is one haunting paragraph that rings so clear and true; the writing is raw and powerful and, even in translation, it still sounds like poetry. This quote:

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn’t the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness.

book review - fiction

Mere Anarchy – Woody Allen

June 13, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshere3 Comments

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In all honesty, I don’t know that much about Woody Allen other than some people find him funny. I love a funny book and so picked this up as an antidote to the excellent but sad book I was reading at the time. While I did find this book amusing, in a wry smile kind of way, it was also hard work. Allen’s writing is pretty laboured, full of long convoluted sentences that are very clever but in a ‘look at me I’m writing something wonderfully clever and wildly amusing’ style. I prefer the understated sort of humour that sneaks up on you and makes you laugh out loud. Thank goodness this is a short story collection because I could only muster the required energy to wade through it in short stints. The stories were interesting, neat little jibes at the weird world we live in – often based on short news clippings. And they were really quite clever, I just wish they didn’t have to make such a laborious display of it.

Continue reading “Mere Anarchy – Woody Allen” →

book review - non-fiction

A Traveller’s Life – Eric Newby

May 16, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshereLeave a Comment

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I am ridiculously fond of this book. It reads as if a very exciting and slightly eccentric uncle has come to stay and is sat in a battered leather armchair telling tales – each story as unexpected as the last. It is the best kind of travel writing; stuffed full of character, carting you off to places that may not even exist anymore, and never being quite sure what’s around the next bend.

Newby had a fantastic life and treats all of it as an adventure. The domestic details of growing up in London in the early 1900s are spun out with as much energy and colour as his travels abroad. It is nothing short of bizarre to find the man best known for ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ spent a good few years of his life working in Ladies’ Fashion, and for John Lewis at that. As my own grandfather worked in a similar role in London in the 50s and 60s, it was rather touching to see this section of his life written with the same humour and energy as the more naturally exhilarating setting of crewing a tall ship across the ocean.

Continue reading “A Traveller’s Life – Eric Newby” →

book review - fiction

Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates

January 16, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshereLeave a Comment

As per usual, I had all sorts of preconcieved ideas about this book that proved to be completely wrong – if only there was a suitable book-related idiom about not judging things on appearances…

Frank and April are a married couple in 1950s America. He was meant to be ‘something’ but now works in a mundane office job he hates. She is beautiful, a trained actress and now playing the suburban wife and mother. No-one is happy. To begin with, I thought this was going to be well written but dry – from the first page I was writing down quotes in my little green book of nicely made phrases but I wasn’t really emotionally involved.

Things like:

The trouble was that from the very beginning they had been afraid they would end by making fools of themselves and they compounded that fear by being afraid to admit it.

Continue reading “Revolutionary Road – Richard Yates “ →

book review - fiction

Infinite sky – C.F. Flood

January 11, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshereLeave a Comment

From: A little Bristol bookshop called Bloom and Curll that ticks all the good independent bookseller boxes – I picked this book up for the cover but was pleased to be told the author is a local!

Read: On a Sunday morning before getting out of bed – as in, I refused to get up until I’d finished it.

Felt: impressed. This had neatly avoided the standard pitfalls that can make young adult fiction hard to get into – kids were credited with enough intelligence and individuality to make them and the plot interesting. The story was told from a young girl’s view point and felt new and interesting. There was no ‘good and bad’ divide – which I really liked. Everyone felt very real.

Would recommend: as a quick read – I probably won’t re-read this book but I would definitely pick up anything else she wrote.

observation

Loan Shark

January 2, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshere1 Comment

Gallery in the lobby

the top of the marble staircase

The lobby

The reading room

As much as I love bookshops and well stocked bookshelves, this year I am going to try to make the most of my local library. Public libraries are under threat with swathes of local library buildings and services being closed over the last few years and library jobs being lost or replaced with volunteers .

So here are just a few reasons to love your library:

Continue reading “Loan Shark” →

book review - fiction

The year of living Danishly – Helen Russell

January 1, 2017March 4, 2018by mugginshereLeave a Comment

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This is my favourite kind of non-fiction. Armchair tourism at its best with a really funny guide who knows her stuff (mainly because she went and found the experts on said stuff). It reads as easily as fiction and has lots of personality woven through what is a pretty informative guide to the Danish lifestyle. The recurring theme of happiness matched quite nicely with my own ethos and has too many laughs to be pretentious or lecturing.

From: a friend with great taste in books

Read: while sheltering from the rain at National Trust Tyntesfield

Felt: like having a chat with a new friend over coffee and some pretty tasty Danish pastries. It was funny and moving and honest and informative. Well researched, well written and a joy to read. The whole expat palava rang painfully true.

Would recommend: highly to everyone, especially those who have lived abroad or are planning a move or anyone who likes a good laugh. So everyone then. Heads up – the food descriptions will make you really very hungry.

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book review - fiction

No one writes to the Colonel – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

September 24, 2016March 4, 2018by mugginshereLeave a Comment

There is something wonderful about a novella; a sense of dipping only a toe into another world. Visiting for a short while makes it easier to settle in a space that might not be naturally yours, a chance to try out a new author, genre or style of writing. I think I might find a longer work by Marquez more daunting but this was a lovely taster and I found myself taking the time to enjoy the slow meandering tale. The entire world of the colonel is painted with such attention to detail and colour it doesn’t matter that the plot meanders and the pace dawdles. This seems to have been written to be read in the shade when it’s too hot to do anything fast.

Here’s a snippet of brilliant writing:

The lightning interrupted her. The thunder exploded in the street, entered the bedroom and went rolling under the bed like a heap of stones.

and here ‘the woman’ and ‘the colonel’ are as close to names as these main characters get:

‘You can’t eat hope,’ the woman said.

‘You can’t eat it, but it sustains you,’ the colonel replied.

From: Hatchards St Pancras

Read: In a morning while sitting by the pool

Felt: Transported to Spain. Not absorbed by the book but more a curious observer.

Liked: the hope and simplicity of the Colonel

Would recommend: as a quick time filler, a good hand luggage book for a short journey.