Books of 2016

In 2015, I set myself the goal of reading one book a week, or 52 books in a year. As you may remember, I failed at that, but still managed to read 41 books in total. The catch was that I could only read books I'd never read before, which put both a strain on my finance, and made me ache for some the books I wanted to reread, but wasn't allowed to. And also, I didn't really have the time to finish a book each week, with the size of the novels I was reading (The discovery of heaven just takes a couple of weeks, at best).
This year, I did not set myself any reading goals, but I did keep track of ever book I read. Just a short list at the back of my agenda, which worked well for me in 2015, and again so this year. I think this is a habit I will keep, as it is nice to see how much you've read, but also which novels. On one of the first days of this year, I made some lists about what I'd read in 2015, and as I'm pretty sure I won't finish any books in 2016 anymore, I will now do the same for this year.
In total, I read 21 books, which feels about right for a 'normal' year in which I wasn't trying to push any particular number. Looking back on the list I had some "wow, did I read that this year?" moments, for books which feel like they've been inhabitants of my bookcases for years. Other books I'd simply completely forgotten about. and some I will never forget about. Some I've written about extensively, others I've apparently never mentioned here.

This is the complete list for 2016:

1 Grief is the thing with feathers
2 The Art of Asking
3 Bonita Avenue
4 A God in Ruins
5 Pluche
6 As in tas
7 De verwarde cavia
8 Anna Karenina
9 Me before you
10 The Martian
11 Slade House
12 In the light of what we know
13 Magnus
14 A little life
15 After you
16 Northern lights
17 On Chesil Beach
18 Amsterdam
19 The buried giant
20 Mothering Sunday
21 Nutshell

Some differences from 2015: there are two rereads in this list (both by Ian McEwan), and there are more Dutch books, relatively speaking. Only three non-fiction books. Fewer classics.
So, to destill some lists (of just the newly read books):

Best English novel
1 A God in Ruins
2 Mothering Sunday
3 Nutshell
This was a difficult one. I read a lot of great books this year, and one would probably expect the much-praised A little life or In the light of what we know to be in this list too. However, this year has confirmed for me that I love two things in novels: small, intimate plots, and what we shall call 'literary' language. This explains for Mothering Sunday and Nutshell, which are both very small, very literarily written (yes, that is a word), and take place in the space of a single day or a single womb. And A God in Ruins (can you believe I'd actually forgotten I read that book this year?) is just beautiful. Kate Atkinson previously wrote Life after life, which was great too, but this (sort of) sequel is even beter. I cried when I finished it, probably the only book I cried about apart from Slade House (and Me before you, if I'm to believe what I've written before). I'd never expected two 'new' authors to jump ahead of my beloved Ian McEwan, but Nutshell just wasn't good enough for the competition.

Best Dutch novel
I'm supposed to put a list here, but really, I didn't like any of the Dutch novels I read this year. Bonita Avenue is hailed as some sort of magnus opus, while being a debut, but I didn't really see it. Magnus is by one of my favourite comedians, but it wasn't all that great. De verwarde cavia was just cheap. It was a sad year for Dutch literature in my list.

Best non-fiction (whichever language)
1 Pluche
2 The Art of Asking
3 As in tas
None of these were really great, but As in tas is really just cashing in on the author's father's dead, while I've written enough about what is wrong with The Art of Asking in another post. Pluche is the memoirs of one of my favourite politicians, and while not perfect, definitely the best of this lot.

Best fantasy/scifi novel
1 The Martian
2 The buried giant
3 Slade House
The Martian is definitely one of the best realistic scifi novels I've read in a long time. It is funny, dramatic, scientifically realistic, and as I'd already seen the movie, I kept picturing Matt Damon, which is pretty nice too. The buried giant is the most unlikely fantasy novel I've ever read, deeper and darker than I'd expected. I would not normally put a David Mitchell novel at the bottom of a list, but Slade House was just too short, and it felt a bit too rushed. Like he wanted to get a short novel out there before going on to one of his normally much lager ones. Let's hope we get one of those in 2017.

Most disappointing novel
1 After you
2 De verwarde cavia
3 A little life
Funny how much a book can disappoint you even when you aren't really expecting anything great from it. After you is the sequal to Me before you, and it doesn't get any more cliche. Really, don't read it. De verwarde cavia was self-published by one of my favourite comedians and non-fiction writers, so I had my hopes up, but it is really about nothing. fluff. Wasted time. I feel almost ashamed for putting A little life in this list, because it has been so acclaimed, and everybody loves it. And I loved it too, the first two-thirds of it. Then it just got too... not gruesome, although I've heard enough people say that too. It just got too lost in it's own plot. The author really wanted to complete the whole 'life', and as such threw in a lot of stuff that a good editor would have taken out again. Really, at 60% of the pages, a more condensed, focussed story would have made for a better novel. So this novel really became a disappointment as I was reading it, and if it hadn't been for the final 200 pages, this book would be at the top of my "Best English novels" list. Funnily enough, when I wrote about it earlier, I was far more positive about this novel, so apparently my opinion changed radically in hindsight.

And finally, because I put it in last year:

Authors I read more than once
- Ian McEwan (3x)
- Jojo Moyes (2x)
Like last year, one of my favourite authors is the most-read one (last year it was David Mitchell and Dave Nicholls). I could do a McEwan top 3 (On Chesil Beach, Nutshell, Amsterdam) but really, who does that sort of thing?

NaNo Days 26, 27 & 28: Winner!

Yes, no use throwing in a cliffhanger here: I won! 50,495 official words written! In 28 days! Wooh!
For those watching the stats: I had been racing ahead in the past couple of days, reaching 45k on Saturday, and stopping at 48,786 yesterday afternoon. So with three days still to go, I only had to write about 300 words every day for three days to finish. But why do that, when you can just throw in 1,700 words and finish it off?
The best part about this year (apart from it being over; this was really one of the hardest NaNo years I have ever had...) is that the story is also actually finished. It has reached a point where I could throw in a final punchline, and call it a day. It is still pretty open-ended, but it has come full circle, the story arch has ended in a nice big finale, and everything is resolved. This is actually a first, for me. Usually, there were bits in the middle I jumped over just to get to the end, or I wasn't even halfway through my story when I reached the 50,000 mark. But this year, apparently, I have written a semi-fantasy, not-that-funny, 50,500 word novella. Who would have expected that?
Of course, of course, I now have to say something about wanting to reread it, and edit it, and hone it to perfection, but honestly, I would rather be rid of the thing for the coming week. Or two. It's not all that good, there are parts in the middle where I almost literally had to push myself to get any words out, and the story took a complete detour from what I had originally planned. So no, this is in no way the novel I wanted or expected to write. But hey, that's NaNo for you. And perhaps, come January, I'll take a peek at it again. For now, I am done typing words on a screen, and will just celebrate my newly obtained victory with a good night's sleep!

NaNo Days 23, 24 & 25: Round numbers

For those of you who like round numbers just as much as I do (and who doesn't); you'll be pleased to know that I am now at 43,750 words (par is 41,666). My average per day is now 1,750, and I've written 2,225 words today (you can't win them all).
We're really in the home stretch now, with just 6,250 words to go. If nothing really unexpected happens (you never know) I should be able to finish in time. The story is moving along nicely, I have no trouble coming up with what to write, it's more finding the time to actually sit down and pound out 2,000 words. But, with the weekend coming up, who knows where I'll be at on Monday?

NaNo Days 18, 19, 20, 21 & 22: On a roll

Somehow I always feel scared about jinxing my progress by putting in a title like that, but it has to be said; the last few days the writing has gone easier than ever. At this moment, I am at 39,810 words, while par for today would have been 36,666. That means that I am 190 words short of being 2 days ahead of schedule. The lovely thing about the NaNo stats page is that it tells you "At This Rate You Will Finish On", and for me today that date is November 28th.
Now before you start planning the celebrations for the 28th, I do have to add that the only reason I've been writing this far ahead is that I won't be able to write that much in the coming days, and I wanted to get a buffer in place for those days. So all may seem well for the moment, but let's wait and see what the future brings.
Storywise, things have taken an unexpected twist, when one of the side characters I made up on a very uninspired day in Belgium has suddenly fought herself to the forefront, and even decided to fall in love with one of the other main characters. Plot twists, you never see them coming. It did make for about 2,000 words of expositional writing today, which is always nice, but it doesn't really help the main story along. I still have 10,000 words to come to some sort of a conclusion, and with all the extra characters jumping on board, I don't think I will. But hey, all of my NaNo's so far have been without an ending, and those that had an ending have been partly without a middle, so who says I actually have to write a fully complete story? It's all about the 50,000 words, right?

NaNo Days 14, 15, 16 & 17: Vive la France

So I am writing this from the little cottage that we rented in France, in Normandy to be precise, in the little village of Bazenville, which consists of about twenty houses and two hundred sheep. At the moment, there is a bit of a storm going on outside, but we're nice and snug inside, warm and cosy, with the wind howling outside. It feels somewhat Christmassy, even though the temperatures here are quite a bit higher than at home, and the trees still have a lot more leaves than what we're used to by now.
In this little cottage, I finally got ahead of par. Or rather: my story finally gripped me. I think the main help in this was actually finding time to read, and the book I'm reading (The Buried Giant by Ishiguru) inspired me to look at my fantasy world in a whole new light, and add some extra characters and plotlines that I never would have thought of on my own. It's not that I'm copying his story, not by a long shot, it's rather that I'm absorbing it's atmosphere, and trying to convey that to my own story.
Which is working pretty well; for the last four days, I've written 2,000 words each day. That means I've been writing about 350 words extra on top of the daily 'required' amount, and I am now almost at the word count I should be at tomorrow (30,000). Which is nice, as tomorrow we will be travelling home, so I don't have that much time to write. And otherwise it is nice too, because it shows that my story is finally picking up speed.
Let's hope I manage to keep on track when I'm back in our own cold, rainy, grey country!

NaNo Days 11, 12 & 13: Visiting the neighbours

So I'm writing this from a hotel room near Ieper (that Ypres for you English lot), where I have just reached 22,035 words. Par today is 21,667, so I'm still a little bit ahead of schedule.
Which is a miracle, if you knew how stumped for inspiration I am. Seriously, it's been a long time since writing was this difficult. Like I mentioned in my previous post, I have an idea of the sort of story I want to write, but somehow, it isn't happening. Maybe my characters don't quite fit, maybe I just can't find the right tone of voice, I don't really know what the problem is, I just know that there is one.
Now of course I'm still writing, but because it doesn't feel quite right, it's not going as fast as I would have thought. I was hoping to be around the 25,000 words by now, but it's a struggle just to stay on par each day. I could change the genre, but that means that I will have to write against a lot of exposition I did in the earlier parts, which I can remember from earlier years is pretty difficult, and not all that motivational. So I'm hoping for a flash of brilliance on an inspirational plot change, which will get my characters back on course. The good thing is; they are now all doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's just not going the way I was hoping when I started.
Still, I'm on par, and I'm finding time to write every day, so you won't hear me complaining. Just little inspirational grumbles.

NaNo Days 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10: Staying on par

Right, I'd forgotten how hard it is to do NaNo and have a proper social life. This week, I managed to do both, but there was one moment when I was sitting at home thinking "Ah, everything is sorted, now I just have half an hour to relax before my friend comes over for dinner... gah! I haven't written a single word today!" which resulted in some frantic exposition writing that any good editor would throw out immediately, but that kept me on par for that day.
For that is where I've been trying to stay: on the recommended word count. So far, I've managed, staying ahead just a couple of hundred words each day (par word count in brackets):
Day 6: 10,640 (10, 000)
Day 7: 12,546 (11,667)
Day 8: 13,503 (13,333)
Day 9: 15,178 (15,000)
Day 10: 16,930 (16,667)
As you can see, the frantic writing described above was Day 8, where I cashed in on the progress I'd made on Day 7. Ah well, I'm still hanging in there.
What about the story? Yes, well, week 2 is generally known as Hell Week, and I've experienced a little of that, although not too much. This is the week in which your story starts to stink, and you can't really see the point of writing it anymore; it's stupid, it's badly written, and why did you pick this awful plot and these unimaginative characters anyway? I had some of that, mostly because I hit the point up until which I'd actually thought out my plot. So I just wrote lots of backstory on my characters, and dialogue which mainly involved them discussing insane subjects (again, stuff any proper editor would remove with the stroke of a pen) until I'd gotten a better idea on what was going to happen. I remembered what it was I'm actually trying to write, and that gave me some pointers, so I think the plot will be moving forward at speed from now on again.
As always, there are characters I like, and some I like less. They have all surprised me, with backstories and motivations and personalities I didn't  think up before I started writing. Where does this stuff come from, I wonder? The mousy little girl from the poor village turns out to be the smartest one in the group, whereas the sly, plotting courtier turns out to have a heart after all. Who knew?
So today is my last day before going on holiday (yes, somehow I always end up planning a vacation in November), which will not only involve frantic writing but mostly frantic finishing up of work things and frantic packing. Of course, I'll bring my laptop along for the trip, and I'll plan in an hour of writing time each day. Yesterday, I wrote exactly 1,000 words in less than 30 minutes, so with one hour each day I should be able to (finally!) comfortably pull away from par. If all goes according to plan, that is...

NaNo Days 2, 3, 4 & 5: In sickness and in health

Somehow, every November, somewhere near the beginning of it, I fall ill. It happened last year on days 5 & 6, and this year it came a little bit earlier. Again, it was the flu, but a somewhat heavier variety this year, which actually put me off writing for a whole day. Luckily, by then I was ahead of schedule. Today, the first day I'm actually feeling like sitting upright and thinking about word output again, I just had to write until 8,333 words to be on par again. I am now at 8,360, and the day has just begun. I'm hoping to get to 10,000 today, which gives me another nice buffer for the days to come.

To be honest, I'm not fully recovered yet, and it's taken me over 2 hours to get to the 1,300ish words I've written so far. I've done lots of Sporcle quizzes in between, which takes your mind off the word thing, and somehow recalibrates you for another stretch. Hopefully, by tomorrow I'll be fully up and running again. Despite the difficulty of writing, it is still pretty fun, and my characters are behaving as they should be. They are just rolling from my fingers a bit slower than I would like, but hey, you can't have it all.

NaNo Day 1: A new genre

NaNoWriMo 2016 has started! Woo!
So last year, November 1st fell on a Sunday, giving me ample time to get a nice head start. Today, it's just a normal Tuesday, and I had to go to work like any other day, planning to start my novel some time around 6 in the afternoon. However, as the novelling gods would have it, there really was very little I could do today, and as I had been working overtime for most of October, I decided to go home early and get a nice start on my novel.
That worked out pretty nicely, with one hour of novel writing done (not counting the time making tea, answering work emails, and the like) I am now 2,327 words down. Yay! That means I've already completed the first day of writing, and am nicely on route with the second. Building up a buffer for the harder days to come has always been one of my favourite tactics.

In the end, I have decided to write in English, as this somehow felt more appropriate for the story. Apparently, it's easier to be funny in English than in Dutch. Not that I'm sure what I'm writing is actually 'funny' per se, I've put it down as fantasy (which it clearly is, even though the story doesn't really know it yet) and not 'humour' (which I'm attempting to put in, but I'm not the kind of person who laughs at her own jokes, so whether that is in any way successful will be for others to decide). In any case, writing in English is harder than I'd thought; I've looked up about a dozen words by now, some of which are so obvious I'd like to remove them from my search history without leaving a trace. But it is good practise, and I can feel myself getting faster and easier with the language as the writing goes on. By the end of November, I'll (hopefully) be a full-blown English novelist again.

Enough meta-writing for now, back to the actual novel!

ETA: I'm now at 4,808 and about finished for the day. Another successful first NaNo day!

NaNoWriMo 2016

Yes, it's that time of the year again. The days are shortening, the temperature is dropping, and the amount of mails from the NaNoWriMo headquarter is getting almost unbearably high. November is almost upon us, and November means National Novel Writing Month.
And this year, as in any other year when it is humanly possible, I will be participating. And also this year, no trips to Iceland and (hopefully) no burglaries will stand in my way of winning (not that they held me back last year...).
I was thinking about becoming a NaNo rebel, and instead of starting a whole new novel from scratch, adding 50,000 words to the novel I wrote last year. However, that doesn't really feel right, partly because it is 'against the rules', and partly because it doesn't really generate the same amount of drive and energy to add on to something that already exists. So, in the end, I've decided to write something new all together.
Now I've been digging in my own NaNo archives (you can find all my author info on http://nanowrimo.org/participants/dromera/) and apparently this will be my seventh NaNo. I'm not really sure that is true, because I vaguely remember trying to write something in 2012 as well, but that  attempt probably crashed and burned so quickly that I didn't even save it. Anyhow, six previous NaNo's, one of which (2008) I can't remember a single thing about, other than that I didn't make it. 2007 also failed, but at least I still have the actual file from that year, even if it is just plain text. All the other years, I did manage to write 50,000 words in a month's time, making my total number of NaNo words written around 205,000.
Other noticeable things: of the five years that I actually know the title, four of those titles were the name of the main character (Sylven, Erik, Suzanne, Johannes). Also, I have basically written fantasy in one form or another (often mixed with reality) every single year, except for last year, when the plot really took place in my own town and in our own world. All novels were written in Dutch, except for 2011. Finally, all of my novels have been of the 'serious' kind, except for the 2011 one, which was "Satire, Humor & Parody", according to the genre I picked (although in reality it really was fantasy). All in all, 2011 is the odd one out. Longest title, different genre, and written in English. So this year, that's exactly what I'm going to do again.
I've picked a title that should give something away of how serious you're to take this (The Egg of Col Umbus), and written a short synopsis: Four people all embark upon the same quest: obtaining the Egg of Col Umbus. I've got the basic motivations for all of those four characters, although otherwise I have no idea about who they are. I have a very basic idea of the plot, but I think it will go in a wildly different direction when I actually start writing. This is going to be one of those novels that will happen upon me, and we'll see how it turns out.
The only thing I'm still not sure about is the language I'm going to write in. Funny stuff doesn't really work in Dutch, in my experience, so I'm leaning towards English. However, I haven't really written any long texts in English for about three years now (not counting this blog), so I may have some difficulty there. But, English somehow 'feels' better, so I think I'm going to stick with that. And who knows, I may change my mind halfway through the novel, and nobody is really going to care. 50,000 words is 50,000 words, after all.
I will keep you all updated on my progress once the writing begins, and hopefully the whole thing will go as smoothly as last year. Just writing that down makes me laugh with my own sheer naivite, but hey, who knows? I might actually be getting good at this!

A Little Life

Someone recently asked me that same old question: what makes some books Literature, and others not? Note the capital L: we're talking serious literary business here. This is a question we debated in every literature class I took in university, and for me, the answer usually goes something like: Literary books aren't about something, or some event, or someone; they are about life. The plot doesn't really matter all that much, there isn't some big mystery to be solved, or adventure to get through. It's about humans living their lives, experiencing the things that humans experience, and possibly the things that make them human. And these books get you thinking about life, the way you experience it, and your place in it. Others may have other definitions (we didn't really decide upon one universal definition during those literature classes either), but I think mine works pretty well for all of the big classics (I've mentioned it when discussing Anna Karenina, One Hundred Years of Solitude, but also Richard Yates, and many others).
The definition of 'life itself' works really very well for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, which must be the most literary contemporary work I've read for a long time. This is probably one of those instant classics; one of those novels that students 50 years from now will still be reading and talking about. I've already mentioned before that it is a big book; 720 pages, but now I can tell you that it is a heavy book as well. There is nothing 'little' about the life contained in it (although the protagonist may not see it that way), for this is one of those books that does contain one whole life, viewed from almost every possible angle. It isn't told chronologically, and in the beginning you may be tricked into thinking that it is going to be about four people, but you quickly realise that most of the other characters only serve to mirror or respond to the main character; Jude. The book isn't really about anything else, but his life; his experiences, his feelings, his actions. As with all great characters, he is multi-layered, inconsistent, unreliable. Things he tells the reader about himself are often contradicted by other characters, showing how we can deceive ourselves in how we think about ourselves. By the end of the book, it's as if you know Jude better than he has ever known himself, which is probably true.
Of course, stuff does happen. They go to college, they scramble to get by in menial jobs, they start careers, they form relationships, they travel. Good things happen, bad things happen. No really big life events puncture the world of the novel, although all characters are living in NYC, and probably live through the 9/11 attacks. The city changes around them, and some of this change is mentioned, but it isn't important to the story. The story is Jude.
At some point early in the novel, I could see what Yanagihara was doing, I could see the structure of her novel through the cracks. My suspension of disbelieve was shattered for a moment, but it quickly restored itself. However, this made me worry a bit, and there are some minor issues with this book. The point that distracted me was one of the introductory chapters to one of the other three main characters, Malcolm. In the beginning of the novel, we get to see things from all four points of view: JB, Malcolm, Willem, and Jude. Throughout the novel, these points of view fall away, until Jude alone is left. I think she could have kept the other characters in for a bit longer, as you get to know them quite intimately in the beginning, and it annoying not to know what they think or how they experience things later on. You know what happens to them because Jude knows, but you don't get their point of view anymore.
One other thing that always annoys me in novels, is that almost all characters are involved in artistic or creative professions, and all of them are highly successful. I've read many novels in which the main characters are writers or poets or playwrights, always famous, always successful, that it really makes me doubt whether writers can think outside of that creative world anymore. In A Little Life, everybody is an artist, a painter, a sculptor, an architect, an actor; everybody except for Jude, who is a lawyer. This sets him apart from the others and adds meaning, but it again influenced my suspension of disbelieve. Where are all the unsuccessful people with normal jobs? Isn't their life worth writing about?
But these are minor things, and they by no means influence the reading of the novel, which is great. The pages are word-heavy (there is very little dialogue), but you still get to them quickly, because the language is quick and easy, even when discussing the hardest of subjects. I've read someone describe the novel as containing 'gratuitous violence', and some scenes are pretty graphic, but they always serve a purpose. The author isn't trying to shock anyone, she is describing life as it happened for Jude, and is probably happening for thousands people all over the world. If you're shocked reading some of these bits, that probably means your life was a bit happier than his. But that shouldn't shy you away from reading about his life, which may make you think about your own 'little life'. I for one know that this book will stay with me for a long time to come, and I think this will be true for many readers still to come.

I like big books

I realised it's been a while since I've written about the books I'm reading. This is not because I haven't actually been reading, but because of the admission in the title: I like big books. And big books take a while to get through. Last year, when I was trying to read 52 new books in a year, I picked the smaller ones because I would be able to cram more books into a year. This year, things have been a little different.
Because the new books I buy usually disappear into one of my five bookcases, it often happens that I can't really remember that I still have unread books somewhere, so I buy even more books to read (well, this is the excuse I tell myself for buying ever more books). To call a halt to the ever-growing expanse of books, I decided to put all the books I own and still haven't read into one big pile on one of my mantelpieces, so I could easily see how much I still had to read, and avoid buying more books. And believe it or not, this sort of works (although I did not put all the books I still have to read on the pile, because taking War and Peace or Far from the Madding Crowd or The Count of Monte Cristo from their respective rows will leave me with such gaping holes that I will feel compelled to buy more books to fill up the empty spaces).
I have now picked three books from the to-read pile, and two of these have been big books. And by big I mean 500+ pages. Apart from being big, they're also 'heavy' books, not only literally, but figuratively as well. I mean, I have the sequel to Me before you on the pile, but it will be one of the last books I pick. So, in short, I apparently like big books.
The first book I picked was In the light of what we know, by Zia Hayder Rahman. I've mentioned this one before, as the book I could not get through in the States. This is one of those books that you either really get into and love, or throw away after twenty pages because it isn't really about something. Or because it is about too many things at once. It is pretty big (564 pages), but it needs to be big, because it's dealing with so many subjects at the same time. This is the kind of heavy literary stuff that has allusions to about a hundred other literary works (most of which probably went over my head, but I read a review that described it as Heart of Darkness (although every novel that has something to do with colonialism or post-colonialism is compared to HoD at some point) meets The Great Gatsby, which I thought was pretty accurate), wins awards and is never read by a mainstream audience. It was an impressive read, and although it took a long time to get through, it did not feel as too big. It felt as exactly right for all the stuff it contains, and because of the importance of its contents, it feels right that it should take a while to get through.
Following, I decided to read something Dutch, and I picked a book by Arjen Lubach, who is one of my favourite Dutch tv presenters (not in the least because he is from the city I live in, but mostly because of his great sense of socially critical humour). The book I read was Magnus, and I think it's a good thing Lubach went from writing to presenting, as this book is not particularly good. It is, however, again pretty heavy in it's subject matter, although in a far more conventional format and style than its predecessor. But this was not a 'big' book, and I feel like the only reason I picked it was that it was the best Dutch book I had available at the time.
Upon finishing Magnus I wanted to get back to English literature as soon as possible, and again I picked the biggest book from the pile: A Little Life, by Hanya Yanagihara. This book has been making the rounds for quite some time, and I'd been hesitating over buying it for a while, when a friend made it all easier by giving it to me as a present (the British Picador version, not the original US version with the much-debated cover). We're talking 719 pages, one of the biggest books I have, and probably the biggest contemporary novel I own (most of the other large ones being nineteenth century stuff). It took me a while to get into, but now that the characters have become familiar (in the beginning, I kept confusing JB and Jude, which I can't imagine anymore now) I really cannot put it down. One of the reviews on the back says "It's not often that you read a book of this length and find yourself thinking "I wish it was longer" but Yanagihara takes you so deeply into the lives and minds of these characters that you struggle to leave them behind", which must be the highest praise any 'big book' can get. And I'm only at page 156!
So, last year it was all about quantity. This year, it is not about quality per se, but about picking the books that I really want to read. And I can now safely admit; I like big books.

Kim Moore

As you probably know by now, I usually read prose. That is to say, 'a form of language that has no formal metrical structure. It applies a natural flow of speech, and ordinary grammatical structure, rather than a rhythmic structure. Normal everyday speech is spoken in prose and most people think and write in prose form', according to Google. So this blog is basically prose.

The thing I don't usually read (or listen to) is poetry. It's not that I am allergic to poetry, as some people are, finding it boring or slow or pretentious, it's just that it not something I really come across in my everyday life.

The big exception to this is Dichters in de Prinsentuin (Poets in the Prince's Garden), a poetry festival in Groningen each summer. It takes place in the Prince's Garden, which is a beautiful garden in the centre of the city, protected from the hustle and bustle around it by high walls. I should really go there more often, but because it is so secluded, you actually forget it's there. During the festival, the poets perform on what is known as the 'tea field' near the tea house, and also in the 'loofgangangen', which are the circular hedges that you can get romantically lost in. These hedges have little 'windows' behind which the poets stand and recite their poetry. The great thing about this festival is that it combines famous and published poets with amateurs, and puts them all on the same level in the loofgangen.

Last year, someone shanghaied me into volunteering, and I enjoyed it so much I did it again this year. Not because I care so much about the poets (I don't know about 90% of them, which doesn't really come in handy when they get free access and I still try to get them to buy tickets because I don't recognise them), but I really love the atmosphere this little festival generates, and being outside a whole day, and just helping out in such a great initiative.

But this year, there was a poet who really grabbed me. Now most of the festival is in Dutch, but the first evening was in another location, and it was an international event, with one poet from Iraq, one from the UK, and one from Macedonia. The poets first read in their own language, followed by their official Dutch translator reading the same poem in Dutch. Which wasn't really necessary for the English poet, because most people can understand English pretty well. At the moment I didn't know whether it was because you could actually understand her, or because the poems were just so great, but I really really loved the British poet, Kim Moore.

I don't know what it is about English, but somehow everything sounds more beautiful in it. Stuff that would be sappy and cliche and sometimes even plain horrible in Dutch, is romantic and thoughtful and deep in English. I think in in part it has something to do with the rhythm of the language, the way the stresses are placed, and part with the fact that we Dutch are just way too 'nuchter' (down to earth) to really get lost in poetry. One of my favourite poems, The Lady of Shalott, could never ever exist in Dutch, because it is way too flowery and romantic.

Anyway, back to Kim Moore. She looks so typically British it is almost deceiving. Most of the poets on these festivals have something weird or typically 'them' (funny hair, hats, weird habits or a funny way of talking), but she just stood there in jeans and a tank top, reading some of the most beautiful poems I've ever heard. So following her performance, I did something I've never done before, which is to buy a poetry book. And then I had another first, as I actually went up to Kim Moore, and asked her to sign the thing. Which she gladly did, although I felt bad about distracting her from her friends and her beer, so I babbled something incomprehensible, and then I left.

And then I started to read.

I know the thing about poems is that you should read them very slowly and thoughtfully, and reread, and try to grasp its meaning and deeper layers before moving on to the next. Also, you should go through the book in sequence, because the poet is actually meaning something with that sequence, and each poem will add something to the next. 

Of course, I did neither of those things; I just started reading and reading, gobbling up the poems, somethings skipping a few and reading ahead, or going back to read a short one that caught my eye. Doesn't matter, they were all great. The subject matter is familiar and recognisable, the sentences are down to earth, but the rhythms and cadence are just right, the figurative language is spot on, and the message is something anyone can understand. These are small, tiny things, that pack a whole history in a few lines. I wish I could share all of them with you, but that would be unfair to Kim, as nobody would buy her book anymore. So I'm just going to give you the first one:

And the Soul

And the soul, if she is to know

herself, must look into the soul...

- Plato

And the soul, if she is to know herself

must look into the soul and find

what kind of beast is hiding.

And if it be a horse, open up the gate

and let it run. And if it be a rabbit

give it sand dunes to disappear in.

And if it be a swan, create a mirror image,

give it water. And if it be a badger

grow a sloping woodland in your heart.

And if it be a tick, let the blood flow

until it's sated. And if it be a fish

there must be a river and a mountain.

And if it be a cat, find some people

to ignore, but if it be a wolf,

you'll know from its restless way

of moving, if it be a wolf,

throw back your head

and let it howl.

Now from the outside, this poem has everything to be pretentious and woolly; there is a quote by Plato, it has these sentences that end in funny ways, it is weirdly repetitious until suddenly it isn't, and it's about souls. Really, if you're a poetry hater, this is the perfect example. 

Still, I think this poem actually proves all of that wrong. I think this is a really accessible poem, which doesn't really look like very heavy stuff because of all the animal imagery (she really likes her wolves, by the way), but when you think about it, it actually is about something. So you can just read it, have a nice picture in your head, and move on. But you can reread it, and then you start to see other thing in it, and think about what it means, and start to think about souls, and how a soul could look into a soul, and what kind of animal your soul would be, and whether animals have souls, and whether that is what they mean with a soul looking into a soul; you can only think about these things because you are human, etc etc. So there are lots of layers to the poem, but still when you read it, it is this beautiful image of the soul as different animals.

And that's just the first one!

Anyway, that's my poetry lecture for today. Go and read her stuff, if I've inspired you. She keeps a blog about poetry, which is a lot better than what I've just told you, and will probably lead you on to other great poets. Or even better, you could turn off your electronics, buy her book, and read some of her poems while sitting in a nice city centre garden, sipping tea and being totally away from it all.

Sporcle

If you're a fan of common knowledge, interesting facts, or logic puzzles, be warned; this post may lead to a new addiction.
So I've been playing Quizduel (it's this game on your smart phone where you choose a category and get 3 multiple choice questions in that category. Then you switch, and the other person first has to answer the same questions in your chosen category, and then gets to pick one of their own) with one of my colleagues for about a year now, and it's been fun, but at times also rather slow, as you have to wait for the other person to respond.
And then another colleague mentioned Sporcle. I'd totally forgotten about Sporcle, which is weird because I'd played some games on it a while ago, and it was great fun. But anyway, he mentioned that he had an account and that he spent some time on it whenever he felt like doing random Internet stuff (for me, mostly; while I'm on a train). And I went back, and remembered how great it was, and also made an account, and now I'm addicted.
I mean, what's not to like? There are literally millions of quizzes, divided into categories ranging from 'Just for fun' and 'Entertainment' to 'Literature' and 'Science'. But that's not all. They have different types of quizzes too. No standard multiple choice answers, but intricate logic puzzles where clues lead you through filling in all the squares, or sorting challenges where you have to think about what connects the elements you can choose from. Lots of picture quizzes with images or maps you can click on, but also quick quizzes which take just 1 minute to solve (or so they say... I never finish them in time).
And the best thing about having an account; you can see how well your friends did in a quiz, and challenge other players. So when I miraculously get 100% at my first attempt in some oddball quiz, I will challenge my colleague to see how well he does (depending on the subject, he's usually better or quicker). Also, you get to collect badges. Looots of badges. I now have 14, ranging from 'Newbie' (for signing up) via 'Sorting Hat' (for doing 25 Harry Potter quizzes) through to several badges earned for playing 15+ quizzes between specific times. There are 401 badges in total, some of which you only get for playing 1,000 quizzes of a certain category or type.
Now I am a slightly competitive person by nature (as long as it doesn't involve too much exercise), but even without the challenges and badges, just from the general quality and depth of the quizzes, Sporcle is really a thing to check out. Fun and frustration guaranteed. And if you feel the need for a challenge... my username is Dromera.

Me before you

So the book I took with me to read in the US was In the Light of what we Know by Zia Haider Rahman. This is a pretty heavy book, filled with mathematics and philosophy, life stories, the invasion in Iraq, and the areas where all these things meet. It is not a book you can easily read after say, hiking in 40 degrees Celsius and driving 300 kilometers on single-lane roads through the desert. Or on a nine hour flight sandwiched between a chatty Scotsman who will fall asleep on your knees (seriously...) and a ten year old French girl who will fall asleep on your shoulder.
So I decided to get something a bit lighter, both in content and in weight, and I ended up buying the film edition of Me before you. This was partly based on sentimental value, as we saw the film while we were in the US, and partly on the fact that the Barnes&Nobles was huge and I had really no idea where to begin.
Me before you is a romantic novel by any standard. One could even call it a chick flick, as it is aimed at chicks, and you can flick through it in a day without ever feeling the need to put it down to digest its contents. It is the unlikely story of poor girl from working class family goes to work as a caregiver for a handsome rich guy who has been paralysed from the neck down in a traffic accident. And of course, they clash, they fight, they hate each other, until inevitably they fall in love. As Disney already taught us years ago:

Tale as old as time
True as it can be
Barely even friends
Then somebody bends
Unexpectedly

Just a little change
Small to say the least
Both a little scared
Neither one prepared
Beauty and the beast

Ever just the same
Ever a surprise
Ever as before and
Ever just as sure
As the sun will rise

Funny, as that is exactly how it is (really, Disney movies tell you all you need to know about life). Even after watching the movie, you feel a tinge of fear; will they realise what they mean to each other? Why are they so blind? Why are they so stubborn? And then the sigh of relief when it all works out.
Only in this case, it doesn't really work out. He is still paralysed, and in pain, and completely unable to accept his new life. And without spoilering the end for you, this is a very interesting film to watch in a southern US state, where some things are a lot less accepted than here in the Netherlands.

Anyway, why am I droning on about this fluff novel when I usually write about the Great Literary Works? Because it was fun. I read most of it in a single day (technically longer, as during that day I went through 9 timezones, so let's put it at 24 hours). Not only because I did not need to put it down, I did not want to. It is a great read, even though you can clearly see all the suspense and cliffhanger tricks that Dan Brown and others are so fond of putting in their novels too. This is great writing on a whole other level, but that doesn't make it any less great. And I could snobbishly look down on it, but why bother? It's not like 'Literature' is so much better or wholesome than novels like these. Looking at how many people read them, one could argue that these novels are culturally far more important. And where The Great Literary Novel teaches you something about all aspects of life, these novels teach you something about dreams coming true, and love, and still believing in all those Disney fairy tales of long ago.
So yeah, read it. You will cry, I promise you that.
In the meantime, I have just bought the sequel, which is probably just rush job to cash in on the movie success. And won't read it straight away, because you can only take so much light stuff before you need something you can really get your teeth into again. But whenever I feel the need for some light, improbable romance, it will be ready and waiting.

Road tripping to National Parks

So for two weeks, I found myself in the US. In the southwestern part of the US, specifically; Arizona, Utah, Nevada (and some New Mexico and Colorado thrown in at Four Corners).
How did I end up there? A friend of mine had a conference in DC, and we decided to do some road tripping afterwards. Genuine road tripping, that is, no plans or reservations or anything, just driving around and seeing where we'd end up. So we had a place of arrival and departure (Phoenix Sky Harbour airport, although we arrived and departed separately due to financial reasons) and a rental car, and that was basically it. We'd go wherever the road would take us.
Turns out, it took us to National Parks. Loads and loads of National Parks. On the third day, some friendly ranger told us that we could actually buy an Annual Park Pass for just 80$, which would save us entrance fees to most National Parks (except for those on Navajo land, as they can still charge), and after that, we were really unstoppable.
There is so much beautiful nature in that part of the world. Vast stretches of empty nothingness, with very few roads or villages in between. We drove the length of our own country several times over, and saw nothing but nature with a capital N (okay, and some flattened prairedogs, coyotes, etc. But most of it was alive and not on the road). And it's so diverse! You can be driving through a flowering cactus filled desert one minute, and stand at the edge of a pine forest-filled canyon the next. I've done the middle of Australia, and that has a lot of nothing too, but it's mostly the same red-orangy desert nothing. Here, you never knew what to expect in the next 100 miles.
If we would have been a bit better prepared, we could have done some very nice long hikes, but as things were, 35+ is just too many degrees to start trumping about unprepared. We did some really nice and rewarding short hikes to arches and canyons and the tops of volcanoes, and otherwise saw the rest of it from the ideally located view points (in the beginning, we'd take pictures from the road, but then we found out that if ever there was a nice few, there would be a scenic view point for us to get out and snap away as we liked).
So, any favourites? Of course! If you're in for petrified forests (and believe me, you are), go to Petrified Forest National Park, and take the scenic drive past thousand year old trees (no collecting, or you'll be cursed forever). If you're into arches and other weirdly shaped rocks and geographical features, go to Arches National Park (see what they did there? Even if you're completely unprepared, the name of the park will just tell you what to expect. And in the park itself, you had stuff like 'sheep rock'; a rock shaped like a sheep, 'balanced rock'; a rock balanced on top of a thin spire, and 'delicate arch'; a... you get the gist by now). Visit Bryce or Zion National Parks for the best hiking in slightly lower temperatures. And of course Monument Valley, where I managed not to wreck our rental car on the 'dirt' (=gravel) roads.
All in all, we drove 4500 kilometres. We did not venture into California, as it has too many great things to fit in just two weeks, and decided that we'll have to come back for that some other time. Probably a bit earlier in the season, as the tourist crowds really started to get going towards the end. But still, two weeks of being so totally removed from your own 'habitat', under the vast blue skies and the big empty roads; I wouldn't mind coming back next year!

Garden murder

So I'd been cultivating my windowsill vegetable patch, which wasn't all that great space-wise, but it was growing along nicely. But as you may have gathered from the title, it has suffered from a murderer. A serial plant killer.
To refresh your memory, the plants I had growing were spinach, green beans, cherry tomato, endive, courgette, watermelon, fennel, radish, gherkin and red beet. The spinach was starting to get into flower, so I picked all the leaves that were edible (about 10 or so), put them in a salad, and had a nice meal of them. I took pictures, but they have been lost along with my poor bricked phone.
Next up, green beans. I hadn't even noticed, but some of the little white flowers had started to drop off, and where they had fallen off small green beans were growing. The plant itself was also pretty small, so I had to pick some of the beans to prevent the thing from collapsing, and to make sure the other tiny beans were getting some nutrition. So I ate 3 of my own green beans in my risotto last Sunday, and I was pretty well able to distinguish my own from the other supermarket-bought ones (they tasted better, but the texture was not so great, a bit rubbery/chewy). And I still have some beans left growing, so I will make another mini-meal out of those sometime soon.
Those were the success stories.

Another photo I have lost, less unfortunately, is the one of my spinach plant after my killer cat knocked it off the window sill. There were dirt and roots and leaves everywhere, and he'd started to eat from it as well. Then, I came home to find all the beet plants on the floor, because he had pulled them out of the ground and just left them to die. I could have put those back, but they still had very small roots (no beets to be found) and I didn't think they would make it as they'd already gone pretty limp.
At that point, I moved some of the more precarious plants (the beans, the watermelon, courgette and gherkin) upstairs to my bedroom, to prevent them from being slaughtered as well. I thought the serial plant killer wouldn't touch my tomatoes (nightshade, should be poisonous), endive and radishes (bitter) and fennel (too big a pot).
I was right on two accounts, but one day I came home to find my endive completely eaten away, just a few sad little green parts visible. Not that I particularly like endive, it was the plant I was least enthusiastic about getting (maybe apart from the watermelon on practical accounts), but still, it was part of my garden. And today I came home to find most of my radishes uprooted. Not that there were any radishes underneath, just pretty small root systems, so again it hadn't really been growing properly, but it's the principle that matters.
Anyway, spinach, beets, endive and radishes have been murdered off quietly and efficiently, mostly while I was at work. I'm starting to think the cat was suffering from the lack of attention due to my caring for these plants, although the lack of development on the beets and radishes may tell you something about how green my fingers really are. So maybe it was just plain boredom. Or puberty.

Five down, including the thyme that perished earlier, six to go. The beans are still growing nicely, which is good. The cherry tomato is getting pretty big, but no signs of flowers as of yet. The fennel looks like it's doing okay, but I have no idea what's going on beneath the earth; it may be another failed attempt at a root vegetable. The courgette, gherkin and watermelon are getting a bit out of hand, and I'm thinking of moving those to my parents, as their own veg patch failed to deliver and they have the space to actually grow these things.
All in all, not really something I could eat myself full on, let alone make a living out of, but still, any result is a better result than I expected on the outset. And the lack of snails and other natural hazards is more than made up for by my own feline plant danger.

Bricked

Last Friday, my phone died. It was acting weird the evening before, constantly rebooting while I was installing updates, but it had performed its proper alarm clock function in the morning. Then it somehow turned itself off, and never came back on again. Apparently in techy terms, it's 'bricked'; no more use for it than for a brick.
Now I had been mentioning to people that I wanted to get a new phone sometime soon, because it was starting to get slow and full and obnoxious, but this wasn't really the way I wanted that to go. Same thing happened with my laptop; I mentioned wanting to get a new one, and it promptly got stolen. Somehow the universe and I are getting our signals mixed.
Anyway, luckily I still had my work phone on me, so I could contact the people I was at a convention with. But other than that, I had nothing. I couldn't contact people, I couldn't check my apps, I couldn't even register how many steps I was taking. Also, I knew there would be a pretty big chance that all my pictures and contacts (the only phone number I know by heart is my parent's land line, otherwise I'm blank) and chat history would be lost forever. Sounds like the perfect time to have a major freak out, doesn't it?
But I didn't freak out.
I felt uncomfortable about not being able to reach out to people, to have a way of connecting with them. If someone somewhere needed to tell me something, or had a problem, they couldn't reach me. But otherwise, it didn't feel like a major drama. It was the same when my laptop crashed: I felt a mild panic about having lost so much data, only to remember that most of that data didn't really matter that much anyway. I mean, I would be really really sore if I lost all my pictures, but I make regular back-ups of those, and otherwise; what's there to miss? Lots of music files I didn't really listen to since I installed Spotify. Several games I'd been halfheartedly playing, and gained some levels in, but lost interest in months ago. My chat history. Now that is a thing, because I am one for going back and rereading old conversations when I have nothing to do (long train journeys without wifi). So that will be a miss, although people are already working hard to get me a new chat history. Also, my personalised settings; my ring tone, background picture, etc. Some of those have been the same for years, and I will miss them now they're gone. I may get them back, in time, but they're not the first priority.
So, in short; my life didn't fall apart when my phone broke down, it just got a bit less cluttered and data-heavy. Also, it feels good to know that the major function of my phone, for me, is to be in touch with the rest of the world. That was the thing I missed, not some game or Facebook or whatever. And although I missed being able to communicate, having a quiet weekend without contact wasn't so bad either. Makes me feel like less tech-addicted than I feared!

Anna Karenina

For the past couple of months, I have been reading one of the absolute classics of 19th century literature: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. In English, although it is a Russian novel, because a) my Russian isn't that good, and b) careful Googling told me that this was the best recent translation of the novel. It's 800+ pages, and it took me a while, also because I read three Dutch non-fiction books in between (none of which is really worth mentioning). It took a while not because it was difficult, or boring, but because it was simply very very long. I can take my time reading a novel because I think it is especially beautiful, and I want to give it the attention it deserves, and I can take my time because there isn't any way of getting through it quicker. This was a case of the latter.

Anyway, Anna Karenina. I had not seen the film nor did I know anything about this story, except for the fact that it was about someone called Anna Karenina (whom I pictured somewhat like Keira Knightley, probably because of the film trailer). Neither was really true. I mean, there is a character called Anna Karenina in the novel, and she does play a pretty big part, but then there are dozens of other characters who also play pretty big parts. And Anna influences them, in a way, but not all of them, and some characters never really meet her at all. She is pretty radical in her actions and thoughts, but so are some of the others. So although she is supposed to be the heroine, you could just as well have called the thing "Konstantin Levin" or "Pre-revolution upper class Russians" (although Tolstoy of course didn't know about the revolution at the time of writing). But I can see why he went with Anna Karenina, and I don't mind the title, but it kind of gives you the wrong expectations. Also, from the description, she looks nothing like Keira Knightley.

On a side note; Russian names are really impossible. I mean, the women I can somehow grasp, because they are Anna and Kitty and Dolly; nice, logical names. They do have three or four other names, and nicknames (Kitty and Dolly are short for Ekaterina Alexandrova Sherbatsky and Daria Alexandrova Oblonsky), but at least you can keep them apart. But the men! There were two who I just referred to in my head as AA and SA, and every time the perspective switched to one of them, I had to remind myself whether they were Anna's or Dolly's husband. When they were in the same room, or even worse; talking to each other, I really couldn't keep up who was who. And in some cases, I didn't realise that two separate names actually belonged to the same character until I was a couple of chapters down the line. They should really sort that out.

So what is the novel about? Life, in general. People living their lives. People thinking about their lives, how they live them, and what they can and want to change. The main events of life; birth, love, marriage, death, and in the case of the Russian aristocracy: drinking, gambling, horse racing, and a lot of debt. Not much really happens, that is to say, no invasions or wars or life-changing events, except for those mentioned above. And the really life-changing stuff that does happen is described in a few lines, almost off-hand, like 'oh yes, and then he died'. 

The thing that gets most attention is what the characters think about all these events. And they think a lot. Some of it is just Tolstoys own political propaganda, but most are really universal human thoughts and emotions; the stuff that keeps people up at night, or the way people think about each other. The decisions that they make, and what they think of those decisions, and how they justify things to themselves. Most of it is recognisable, sometimes almost scarily so. Whether he writes about a man going to court his future wife, a woman thinking about her new-born child, or a man sitting with his dying brother; these characters come to life, they are real people, with real thoughts and emotions. It took me a while to get through, but this was not because of those sweeping, strongly emotional passages; sometimes 30+ pages (description only, no dialogue) would whisk by as I was carried along on someone's musings.

So I can see why this novel survived and became one of the classics; it is about the fundamental human emotions and experiences. There is a lot of stuff in between, some of which would be edited out if the thing would be written now, but that's the nineteenth century novel for you. Between the lines and main events, you can find what makes humans human. And since Russia 1878, that hasn't changed all that much.

Windowsill veg patches

Remember those veg patches I told you about last year? You could get them this year as well, if you spent 15 Euroes on groceries (someone in the marketing deparment must have gotten higher targets). Now I don't usually spend that much on my shopping, but other people I know do, and they were kind enough to donate their veg patches to me, because of my supposed 'green fingers'. So in the end, I got 11 veg patches, which I was going to raise in a gardenless home.
Also living in this gardenless home is a hooligan kitty, who likes to eat everything it can, and otherwise destroy things it can't. So I put my veg patches in a little plastic greenhouse, to protect them from kitty harm.

Veg patches in protective casing

Cute, hey?
They are: red beet, green beans, cherry tomato, spinach, radish, fennel, thyme, endive, gherkin, courgette, and watermelon. Yes, watermelon.
As you can see, in this picture some of the plants had already started to grow, while others were hiding underground. I put those plants big enough (according to the very precise instructions on the little cards) into bigger pots, planting them out to their individiual wishes. They were growing nicely, apparently safe from feline harm.
In the end, I had four little patches left in the green house: thyme, gherkin, courgette and watermelon. And this is when the kitty disaster struck. One day, I had just gone out to get some groceries, and when I got back I found the thyme upside down, and all the little cards pulled out. Which meant that I had no idea which was the gherkin, which the courgette, and which the watermelon. I made an educated guess, but I'm still not sure whether I am raising the correct plants under the correct name...

Anyway, they all sprouted! 100% success rate!
I planted out the remaining mystery plants to their (probable) specifications, and for a couple of weeks now, my window sill has looked like a mini jungle.

Fennel, radishes, green beans, spinach, cherry tomato, and red beets.

Endive, possibly watermelon, possibly courgette, possibly gherkin.

You may notice that the thyme is missing. After my 100% success rate in sprouting, I somewhat failed in raising, with the thyme never really growing properly, and finally just disappearing into it's container. But still, 10 plants is more than enough for just a windowsill.

The spinach is starting to flower, which means I will have to eat it soon. All the other plants are still miles away from producing anything, but it looks nice, and apart from a bit of watering and turning (they really like to grow towards the sun) they're no bother at all. And best of all; no slugs!

Musical investigations

Wow, it's been a while. And in all of that while, nothing really interesting happened, which is probably why I haven't felt like writing a blog post. That is to say, lots of things happened, but they were mostly along the lines of work, meeting with friends, watching movies, etc etc. And I've been reading the same novel (Anna Karenina) for at least two months, so not much to say about that either.
But! There are developments on the musical side of things. Some time ago I wrote about discovering Spotify, and coming to the conclusion that I treated it pretty much the same as any other technology; stick to what you know. But things, they are achanging.
First of all, some big company decided that they would share all The Beatles songs with the rest of the world anyway, which was pretty nice. But more importantly, I've been looking up new music myself. Not really 'by myself' as such, but I've been getting recommendations from others, or hearing songs on commercials, or on the radio (and checking which song they are by using the nifty app SoundHound) and I've added those to my music. And then (this is the magical part) I go to that artist's page, and listen to their other music. Not all of it, of course, but the top 10 songs at least.
Which has led me to discover the following artists:

Ludovico Einaudi: man, he is brilliant. I know nothing about this man, apart from the fact that his song Life was used in a commercial. So I checked him out, and found a treasure trove of beautiful instrumental music, most of it just a piano. My absolute favourite is Nuvole Bianchi, which has almost 40 million listens on Spotify, and is hauntingly beautiful. I'm still trying to find the sheet music, to be able to play it.

John Mayer: I thought this was some guy from the 60s, but apparently he's quite a bit more recent. I heard Heartbreak Warfare on the radio, which I loved, and then I checked out some of his other songs, which were really nice as well. Mellow, but not sleepily so. He can get a bit whiny, but then we skip to:

Modest Mouse: can you believe this band name? Too cute! Anyway, someone recommended Dashboard (which has a very funny video clip too), and then I looked some more on their page, and found out they're the guys from Float On, which was also used in a commercial (sad, how many songs I know mostly from tv ads).

Muse: I've had lots of friends who were into Muse, but somehow I'd never really listened to any songs. Now that I have, I find them a bit too aggressive for what I would normally listen to, but there are times when I like that uptempo shouty stuff, for example when I try to hammer out some minutes for meetings.

I could go on and on (The National, Wolf People, The Raconteurs), but most of them are kind of the same music as I've always loved (Ludovico Eunaudi is like Howard Shore and Philip Glass, and all the other guys are your regular middle of the road band, leaning slightly towards the countryesque). So technically, I haven't really evolved that much, especially when you compare it to the friend who has suddenly decided she's into 'gangster rap'. But still, small steps towards more musical open mindedness.

Morocco

Last week I spent travelling through Morocco. This is not as daring or adventurous as it may sound, because 1) I was with an organised group that took great care of me, and 2) Morocco is not the dangerous country many take it for. It is one of the most colourful, friendly, welcoming and diverse I've ever seen. From snow in the peaks to heat in the desert, from rainy shores to sunny green fields; there is something for everyone.

I'd been planning to go on holiday with a friend for a while, and we were 'going to the sun', as they say here; going someplace with nicer weather than our own. A relaxing beach holiday was out of the question as we both go completely crazy when forced to sit still and do nothing, so a more adventurous plan was quickly hatched; the four imperial cities of Morocco (the other option was Israel, but I really want to take more time for that). After some careful comparisons, there was really only one holiday that could fit both of our schedules and visited all the places we wanted to see. We were a very small group of only six, the other four being ladies of between 55 and 65. Our tour guide was 28. In effect, the three of us were on holiday with four mothers. It was great. We got along surprisingly well, there were no major fights or discussions, and I think everybody had a good time.

And the country itself was great. We visited Casablanca, Rabat, Meknes, Fez, and Marrakesh, and although we did so in only 6 days, I didn't feel rushed or overwhelmed once. This may be because of the carefully balanced trip, but I think it is mainly because we had some great local guides, apart from the one that stayed with us the entire trip. 

We saw mosques, mausoleums, mellahs, royal palaces, gates, medinas, souks, tanneries, potteries, and every kind of shop under the sun. We saw high mountains and beautiful valleys, waterfalls and oceans, goat herds and pampered cats, and everything in between. We saw old men in long djellabas on donkey carts, young women at the wheel of a modern car, iPhone clasped to their ears, and everything in between. We had fabulous food, great views, and warm welcomes everywhere. I try to make a point of not visiting countries twice if I still have others on the list, but Morocco is definitely a place I want to return to. It's a small, warm, colourful universe in its own.

A God in Ruins

It's been a while since I've written anything about books here, but that doesn't mean I haven't been reading them. And the last book I read, A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, was one of those books which after a few chapters I decided to read really slowly and attentively, because it is great and meaningful and complex and beautiful, and I didn't want to rush through it. Meaning that so far this year, it has been the best book I've read.
A God in Ruins runs parallel to Life after Life, which I'd read and loved a couple of years ago. In that novel, Ursula Todd lives her live again and again, trying to kill Adolf Hitler before he rises to power. It has vivid descriptions of the Blitz, as well as beautiful imagery of the British upper middle class in the twenties and thirties. In this novel, (a 'companion piece', rather than a sequel, according to Kate Atkinson) we follow the life of Teddy Todd, Ursula's younger brother (and one of the more sympathetic characters of Life after Life). It doesn't give any conclusions as to which of Ursula's lives finally became the 'true' one, we just have to see this as one version of reality. In this, Ted becomes a bomber pilot in the War, flying his Halifax deep into German country to bomb industrial areas (at first) and helpless civilians (as the war progresses). But it is about more than just WWII, as several other chapters tell of his life after the war, his marriage, his daughter Viola, and his grandchildren Bertie and Sunny. We don't just follow Ted, but Viola, Bertie, and Sunny as well. They are wildly different characters, each a product of their parents, their upbringing, and the time they live in. Their relationships don't always run smoothly, with the children often being the smarter ones than their parents, but as we (the reader) can look into their heads and see their histories and the decisions that made them who they are, we can sympathise with all of them.
The novel has some wonderful phrases that will stick in my mind for a while. "When the time came people stopped trying to forget the war, and started trying to remember it"; clearly painting the difference between Ted's generation and Viola's; between the people who lived through the war and don't need to remember to make sure something like that never happens again, and those born long after it, who can't really appreciate the sacrifices made by there parents. "Bertie loved her grandfather. Her grandfather loved Bertie. It was the simplest arrangement." closely followed by "Sunny loved his grandfather. His grandfather loved Sunny. It was the most complicated arrangement." Two sets of almost identical phrases, showing the difference in two very complex interpersonal relationships that form the backbone of the book.
Then there are the many literary, cultural, and historical allusions that run through the novel. I'm sure I missed at least half of these, as many are to Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress, and it's been a while since I read those, but the ones I did get brought a smile to my face. And you can easily read it without knowing about the extra layer. Smart little things like; "'Out,' she said, shooing Izzy toward the front door, and again, 'Out' 'Damed spot,' Hugh murmured." will ring a familiar bell, even if you've never read or seen Macbeth.
And in the end, as Kate Atkinson writes in her afterword, the novel really is about fiction, about telling stories, about living in a fictional world or living a version of yourself that you have decided to become. Especially Viola has a tendency to make the world the way she likes it to be, and to point to the fictional actions of others as the cause for her own character and place in life. Which can be a frustrating read, especially when you know Ted's or Bertie's or Sunny's version of the events, but every good book has characters you love to hate. And in the end, you can be the judge. What was real, and what wasn't?

Walklogger

About a year ago, when it was just as grey and rainy and windy as it is now, we (that is to say, me and my colleagues) were all sitting around whining about how much we wished for it to be spring so we could go outside and be active, instead of being inside and being depressed, We all felt bloated from the holidays, but nobody really bothered to do something about that, because we were still in our large comfy winter clothes. But we did feel inactive, and lazy. And then I remembered that someone had once told me that you had to take 10,000 steps each day to be healthy. So we looked online, and although not everybody was in agreement (the argument is still going strong), most people did agree that walking is good for your health, fitness, blood pressure, and what not. So we all decided to try and walk 10,000 steps a day.
Now you have to remember that we all have jobs which involve sitting behind the computer a lot. Or sitting in meetings a lot. Or listening to presentations a lot. And I mean, really a lot. But still, we could give it a shot. So we all downloaded some sort of app to our smartphones to track our steps (those in the possession of an iPhone didn't need to do that, because Apple already automatically registers your movements and probably uses that to some sort of advantage). I chose Walklogger, simply because someone else was also using that and said it was a good app.
I don't know how many steps I took the first day, but I know it was nowhere near 10,000. Turns out, 10,000 steps takes about 1.5 hours of walking, depending on how fast you walk. We were really competitive, sharing walking scores and trying to beat each other to a higher step count, but the only one who ever really made the 10,000 was the one person who already took a walk each morning after breakfast and before work. So we decided to go on lunch walks, instead of eating in the canteen, and that really boosted our step count. Still no 10k, but we were doing good. But then some people had meetings, or it was raining, or there was a nice lunch presentation, and we didn't really take the walks anymore. After about two months, nobody was sharing their step counts anymore, and most people had removed the app from their phone.
But not me. Not that I'm aiming for 10,000 every day, that would be absurdly optimistic. My daily step count aim is 2,000, with at least 3 days of 5,000 steps (Walklogger gives you a bronze medal when you reach 5,000, and a silver at 8,000, and a gold medal at 10,000) every week. Which seems to be a pretty managaeble goal, if I think to take my smartphone with me everytime I walk. In the office, I do take a lot of small walks (150 steps to and from the coffee machine) that are often not counted because I don't have my phone with me. And there are some days when I easily manage 10,000, when I take a walk in the woods or walk to the city centre for some shopping. Then there are other days when I don't even reach 1,000, although usually that's because I've forgotten my phone somewhere. But it does mean that when I can choose between walking or biking, and there is no time constraint, I more often go on foot. Which is a nice change, even though it won't really make me that much healthier in the long run.
So Walklogger works for me, but you can probably use any walk logging app in the store, I haven't tried any of the others. I like the medal system, although it is a bit disappointing that you don't get any extra medals for walking say 15,000 or 20,000 steps (my record high was around 23,000, the day I walked the Great Wall of China). I like how it shows when you were walking, using little graphs that go up when you take more consequetive steps. And it shows you how many steps you took in this month and year. Somehow, Thursday is the day I walk the least, although I have no clue as to why that is.
And it's just fun, collecting the numbers, and batteling against your lazy self to reach those 2,000 steps. As for today, I have exactly 306 steps to go.

Now what?

January and February are officially the 'Now What?' months in NaNoWriMo; months in which you realise that you've written a 50,000 (more or less) word novel, and realise that you actually have to do something with it. Or not, but in NaNo-land, that's not really an option.
So they offer various things you can do in these Now What?-months. Most of these involve connecting you to published authors and other NaNo writers, so you can find support in their stories and suggestions. As mentioned before, I'm not a big partaker of the NaNo group process, so this isn't really for me. But there is one thing I did like, and that is their 'Revision Promise'. It reads as follows:

I, talented author, hereby pledge to edit and revise my manuscript in these, the months following the word storm that was National Novel Writing Month. 
By agreeing to this legally binding document, I swear to undertake the unluxurious process of editing the first draft of my novel. I understand that this process can be messy and disheartening, but ultimately just as rewarding as writing it all the first time. 
I have replaced all creative implements (pens, pencils, keyboards, touchscreens, quills, and hunks of charcoal) at my workspace with destructive ones (erasers, backspace keys, white-out, and comically large mallets). I will refine and chop sentences, paragraphs, and chapters with impartial ferocity. Above all, I promise to regard my novel with a critical but not cruel eye, for it is a work of my one-and-only imagination and deserves to be made even better.

Sounds good, doesn't it?
So that is what I'm going to do; I will revise what I have written. I could also pledge myself to finish the story (always a difficult thing for me), but there are too many inconsistencies and gaps and badly-written things in the first few chapters for that to work. So first; revision. Let's see what this thing can look like when I spend my time thinking about it, instead of hammering out as many words as possible, as quickly as possible. And if I still like it at the end of the revision, I may even feel inspired to finish it.
But let's take this one step at a time.

The Art of Asking

So one of the books I've finished so far this year is The Art of Asking, by Amanda Palmer. I thought this book was going to be about how Amanda thought she had to be a Strong and Independent Person/Woman and then saw the light and realised that sometimes, it isn't so bad to ask anyone for help, and now she will tell the reader the how and why of things. As it turned out, she realised this in the first 10 pages of the book, and the rest of it was mostly about her dating Neil Gaiman, her breaking up with her record label and discovering crowd funding, and her sleeping on other people's couches while blogging and tweeting and generally sharing every detail of her private life with the whole world. But luckily, in between all that, there were some gems of wisdom and writing.
So who is this Amanda Palmer? I only recently found out that she, and her former band The Dresden Dolls, are not as famous as I'd always thought, so a short recap may be in order. Amanda Palmer is a singer, songwriter, feminist, and the wife of Neil Gaiman. Which is how I first heard of her, because I've been following Neil on his blog for a couple of years now, and at some point, Amanda popped up (they've been married for a while now, and they recently had their first child). I didn't really check her out at that point, but then one of my best friends mentioned that he loves The Dresden Dolls, so I decided to listen to some of their music, and some of their music is really nice. For the most part, it's a bit too loud/shouty/in-your-face for my taste, but a noticeable exception to this rule is Delilah, which is by far my favourite song. Since then, Amanda has gone solo, and released a couple of albums, one of which contains her playing Radiohead songs on her ukulele.
Anyway, Neil had mentioned Amanda's book on his blog, and when I saw it laying around at the house of the aforementioned friend (in Iceland, which meant he had found it worthwhile to drag the thing 3000 km across the sea) I decided I had to read it. So I did. And I was a bit disappointed, as you may have gathered from the first paragraph, because it was all about Amanda Palmer. Amanda Palmer likes talking/writing/blogging/singing/apping about herself a lot. She also doesn't really like any kind of formal structure, so the book is really all over the place, with long and short bits mixed up and jumping in time and adding new people until you get completely confused. But then there are some bits that do make sense, in a novel-writing kind of way, and she mentions that Neil helped her along, so you can see his influence there, I guess. Also, it does tie up nicely in the end, with a sort of happy ending.
But in between all the rambling and the endless descriptions of tours and couches and tour buses, there are some really nice bits. Amanda mentions The Fraud Police, who will at some point come knocking at your door and tell you that it's all been fun and games, but now you really have to stop pretending you can write/sing/make any difference in the world. It's that secret feeling we all have, of being 'found out' some day, of being discovered as a fraud and then cast aside by everybody. The way she described this, felt really real to me. This is about not trusting yourself, or trusting your own talent. Then there is the bit about trusting others, and you don't have to stand on a pedestal as a living statue, or sleep on other people's couches, to experience that other people are, in general, trustworthy. But it's good to realise that sometimes, and the examples she gives are all true and honest and worthwhile. Finally, the theme of the title, asking for help, is connected with both trusting yourself and trusting others. For example, she's had a really hard time accepting money from Neil when she was in a tight spot, because she felt that she had to be able to be independent. Although she asked random people for all kinds of help, asking the ones you love, the ones whose opinion really matters, is the most difficult. And during these parts, I really loved her, and the book, and the message she was carrying out.
But then there were two afterwords by people saying 'you may not believe this, but this is really the way Amanda is! She's not faking it! Believe me, everything in this book, it's very very true!'. Which spoiled the whole thing, because up until that point, I'd never had any doubt that this all was true. But by pointing it out, by having other famous people write an afterword in which they state that the true things you have just read are really true, you're kind of defeating your own point. Because why couldn't we just trust you on that, Amanda?

Disney to the rescue

In writing tutorials, I've been told again and again; write what you know. It's easier to shape a character that has the same personality traits as yourself, or lives in the same town, or has the same experiences. Look at any writer; many elements in their novels will be in some way or another autobiographical. The familiarity of these settings and experiences makes it easier to process your thoughts into written words.
I've discovered that the same is true for playing the piano.
With my move, my (digital) piano has found a place in the middle of the living room, which means I literally and figuratively cannot really get around it anymore. Which also means I've been playing more than ever, shaping the familiar tunes from more than 10 years ago until they sound like they're supposed to again. But I've also been a bit stuck, with no new pieces to play. I can try and dedicate myself to those pieces from my original books that I didn't really like to begin with, but I'm afraid my motivation will drop below zero when I start to struggle with stuff I don't even think sounds nice.
Cue Walt Disney. Or to be more precise: The New Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs. For piano, of course. A fellow piano player lend this to me over Christmas, because nothing gives you the proper Christmassy feel like a long-remembered Disney song, and as soon as I'd played a couple of songs I decided I had to hold on to this book for as long as I could. Because when you know what something has to sound like, when you're familiar with the melody and the timings and the lyrics, it's so much easier to play.
I started off just playing the melody, which is right-hand only, and only 1 note at a time. This is pretty easy, and you do recognise the song, but doesn't really give you the feeling you're actually playing the piano. It's like the Christmas songs I used to play on my recorder (that's 'blokfluit' for you Dutchies); officially it's 'music', but it feels like it's neither here nor there. So I put myself to playing the whole right-hand part, which contains those single notes from the melody line, but adds extra notes. This started to sound a lot better, but some notes were really dissonant, and felt wrong. So I tried to add the left-hand part, which is always the difficult bit, and by playing really slowly I've managed to get two songs (Part Of Your World from The Little Mermaid and A Whole New World from Aladdin) to pretty decent quality. These are both films I watched to death when I was a kid, so I know every little thing about them (albeit in Dutch; the English lyrics are so much better, and more logical, than the translated Dutch version), so I know when I'm playing things right. Which makes it so much easier to get to grips with a new song, but also; it makes playing fun again. Which is what it's supposed to be.
With these two songs under my belt, I'm looking for the next contender to start practising: probably something from The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame (all 'Disney Renaissance' films, which qualifies me as a proper nineties kid). These are a bit more difficult (I'm really amazed at the depth of these songs; Disney does take children seriously, in the musical sense at least), and will probably be a bit of a challenge, but as they bring back the fun in playing the piano, I really can't wait.

52 Books Challenge - The lists

Now I'm not normally a person for lists or ratings or 'highlights of the past year' or something, but given that I have 41 books which I can group into a couple of meaningful categories, I'm going to give it a go in this instance. These are the things that popped into my head while looking over the books I'd read this year.

Best English novel
1 The Children Act
2 Black Swan Green
3 One Day
Pretty typical, in a year where I'm reading only new novels, that my favourite novels still come from that group of male British authors that I've loved over the years. Must be my style. Also, the only Ian McEwan novel I read all year (and the first novel I read this year) is still a firm number 1. New to this list is of course Dave Nicholls, who I hadn't read before this year, but am now a really big fan of.

Best Dutch novel
1 Tongkat
2 Kom hier dat ik u kus
3 De Aanslag
This was a pretty hard choice between Tongkat and Kom hier dat ik u kus, because they are both beautiful, wonderful novels in their own way. But Tongkat is just so special, I cannot really get my head around it (I will reread it in the near future).

Best non-fiction (whichever language)
1 Dit kan niet waar zijn
2 My Brief History
3 Gratis geld voor iedereen
Three widely divergent books, but all three good in their own way, and all three containing lots of personal notes/touches/stories of the author.

Best short story collection
1 Speaking with the angel
2 The Beautifull Cassandra
3 The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
I didn't read that many short story collections, and none of them were really brilliant, but still, a top 3. Also, my only Jane Austen reading of this year is in there.

Best WWI/II novel
1 The Narrow Road to the Deep North
2 All Quiet on the Western Front
3 Slaughterhouse 5
As always, I read a lot of War novels this year, and some stand out. The Narrow Road... won the Man Booker for a reason; it is a beautifully written, deeply haunting novel about WWII in Asia. Nr 2 and 3 are classics in the genre, and for a good reason. I've said it before, and I will say it again; if everybody would read these horribly fantastic novels, no one would ever start a war again.

Best comic novel
1 Shades of Grey
2 Funny Girl
3 Starter for Ten
I don't often read funny novels, but when I do, they're usually by Nick Hornby or Jasper Fforde, who find themselves high on this list. And then there's another Dave Nicholls, of course.

Classics (whichever language)
1 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
2 Brideshead Revisited
3 De Aanslag
Brideshead Revisited and De Aanslag are technically both also WWII novels, but when looking at them as classics, they somehow rank higher than some of the other WW novels. And the John le Carre novel just blew me away - I will definitely read more by him in 2016.

Most disappointing novels
1 The Rosie Effect
2 All the Light we cannot See
3 The Book of Lost Things
Not everything was good. I was really looking forward to The Rosie Effect, because I loved The Rosie Project, but this was one of the most disappointing sequels I've ever read. All the Light we cannot See won the Pullizer, but really, it's such a hyped-up American WWII novel, I couldn't care for it in any way. And The Book of Lost Things is one of the worst fairy tale retellings I've ever read. If you want to read a good one, go for The Sleeper and The Spindle (my only Neil Gaiman novel, which I couldn't fit anywhere else).

And to complete the list craze, not a top 3 but another neat list:

Authors I read more than once
- David Mitchell (3x)
- Dave Nicholls (3x)
- Rutger Bregman (2x)
- John le Carre (2x)
- Harry Mulisch (2x)
- Nick Hornby (2x)
Again, some of my all time favourites are also recurring reads. I could do you a top 3 of Mitchell novels (Black Swan Green, The Bone Clocks, Number9dream) and Dave Nicholls (One Day, A Starter for Ten, Us), but that would be stretching things.