Another year in books has flown by. After my book challenge in 2015, I've been keeping lists of all the books I read through 2016 and this year. As in previous years, I'm always surprised to find which books I read not even half a year ago; amazing how quickly you forget when it was that you read something. On the other hand, some novels I feel like I've just finished them while that turns out to have been more than a year ago.
No reading goals, just keeping up the numbers. I read 23 books this year, which is 2 up from last year. Mainly, I think, because I didn't tackle any big literary reads (like Anna Karenina last year) and there were some rereads, which are always faster. As always, some books have already been discussed at length, while others may have their first mention on this blog right below.
The complete list for 2017:
1 The High Mountains of Portugal
2 The Sellout
3 Juliet, naked
4 Black Swan Green
5 The Outrun
6 Last Orders
7 The Handmaid's Tale
8 How to be good
9 The Jane Austen book club
10 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
11 Hag-Seed
12 The Joy Luck Club
13 England and other stories
14 Mijn Meneer
15 The Light Years
16 The North Water
17 Marking Time
18 Here I am
19 Confusion
20 The Best of Adam Sharp
21 Cloud Atlas
22 Exit West
23 Casting Off
So, five rereads; Juliet, naked, Black Swan Green, The Jane Austen bookclub, Harry Potter, and Cloud Atlas, two of which are by the ever-popular David Mitchell. The Joy Fowler and JK Rowling were because there was a bit in the summer where I wanted to read but not invest actual brainpower into the reading, so I went back to some really easy rereads. Only one Dutch book, which is also the only non-fiction title on the list (although it is partly fictionalized, it is the autobiographical account of Ted van Lieshout's youth). Technically only one short story collection (England and other stories), although one could count The Joy Luck Club as short stories (I read one of the chapters as a 'separate' short story during my studies). No classics at all. I was going to say 'no Americans' until I realised both The Sellout and Here I Am are written by Americans; somehow they both disappeared from my mind pretty quickly. No new novels by Ian McEwan, or David Mitchell, or any of my other popular authors, simply because there weren't any. Actually, now that I think of it: no Ian McEwan at all this year. After the triple McEwan there may have been a slight overdose, but still; this must be the first time in about 10 years that I read no novel by Ian McEwan for a whole year. This will surely be rectified in 2018.
Let's break the novels that I did read down into some lists:
Best English novel
1 Exit West
2 Last Orders
3 The Handmaid's Tale
A difficult choice this year! Exit West is clearly the winner; another Mohsin Hamid novel that I dearly loved. It is a very contemporary novel, featuring a couple from a unspecified Middle Eastern country fleeing through one of the mysterious doors that keep opening up all over the world, leading to other places. It is both mystical and very realistic, and I'm sad it didn't make Man Booker this year, as it would have been a deserved winner (I've just started reading the novel that did win, and Exit West would beat it with its hands tied behind its back at this point). Do read something by Hamid!
Last Orders is Graham Swift's Man Booker 1996 winning novel, which gave me the combined emotions of a WWII novel and The Full Monty, with it's 'band of brothers'-like bantering and the emotions simmering under a surface of beer and beautiful language. Same goes for The Handmaid's Tale; it's old, it's great, I've written all you need to know when I read it. Funnily enough, both Last Orders and The Handmaid's Tale could count as my 'classics' this year; they are both over 20 years old, and still very current.
Best Dutch novel/classics
Non-existent this year. Strange, as I did get lots of new novels, and have a pretty long backlog in both these categories. They must never have been at the top of the to-read list.
Best non-fiction/best short story collection
Only one novel in each of these categories this year, so not really lists to speak of.
Best fantasy/scifi novel
1 Exit West
2 The Handmaid's Tale
3 The High Mountains of Portugal
Not a lot of these to go around either, but I would of course have put in Cloud Atlas and Black Swan Green if they hadn't been rereads. Two of these also feature in my Best English novel list, but The High Mountains of Portual deserves special mention. Yann Martel, like Mohsin Hamid and David Mitchell, can capture you with a world that is very much like ours, but than turns out to be slightly unlike ours in a magical way, and your suspension of disbelief just goes with that until you find yourself in their made-up world still fully believing that these things could really happen here and now. Realistic fantasy, a true escape into literature.
Best 'new' author
1 Elizabeth Jane Howard
2 Graham Swift
3 Margaret Atwood
Only Elizabeth Jane Howard is really a 'new' author for 2017, and I've written enough about her novels in my previous blog post. But Graham Swift and Margaret Atwood are some of my recent discoveries of whom I want to read more. I'd read my first novel by Swift, Mothering Sunday, as one of my last novels in 2016 and this year I continued with Last Orders and his short-story collection England and other stories. I'd have wanted Wish you were here on the list as well, but it went into reprint just as I ordered it, so that will have to go for 2018 (when I wrote about Last Orders in March it had also disappeared from view in the bookshop, so I'll have to look into that...). Margaret Atwood is not really a 'new' author for me, as I read Oryx & Crake during my English studies, but she is one of the authors I've put on my 'must read more' list. This year I read The Handmaid's Tale and Hag-seed, both of which are great in their own way. I got The Heart goes Last a couple of weeks ago, so she will also feature in the 2018 list.
Most disappointing novel
1 How to be good
2 The Sellout
3 The Outrun
(4 The Best of Adam Sharp)
Wow, this was really the easiest category to fill this year. Not a good sign. I was looking forward to How to be good, one of the few Hornby novels I'd never read, but it was thoroughly disappointing. Moralistic, full of angry relationship issues, with a wavering plot and unlikeable characters. The Sellout was the Man Booker winner of 2016, so naturally I read it, but I didn't like it at all. It is supposed to be a funny social commentary on contemporary America, but I can't remember finding any bit of it funny. The main character struck me as pathetic, his backstory was unbelievable and the plot even more so. The Outrun appeared to be good at first; girl returns to small town Orkney life after her big-city London life blows up in her face, but in the end it didn't really go anywhere, the character didn't come to life for me as in so many of these 'woman retreats to find herself' novels. Special mention for The Best of Adam Sharp, again a novel by Graeme Simpsion that disappointed. It felt like a slight do-over of The Rosie Project, with some High Fidelity elements thrown in. He really turned out only one good novel, his first, and I will now stop reading whatever else he writes until the recommendations tell me it really is too great to miss.
Authors I read more than once
- Elizabeth Jane Howard (4x)
- Margaret Atwood (2x)
- Graham Swift (2x)
- Nick Hornby (2x, one reread and one new)
- David Mitchell (2x, both rereads)
Sunday 31 December 2017
Wednesday 27 December 2017
Elizabeth Jane Howard
My 'books of 2017' list will be coming up shortly, and I'll already give a sneak peek at one of my absolute favourites this year: Elizabeth Jane Howard. Or more specifically; her series of novels about the Cazalet family. The first of these, The Light Years, was only this year translated into Dutch, even though the original novel stems from 1990. Due to the raving review of the translation, I decided to buy the original. Talk about hidden treasure!
The first novel is set in 1937 and follows the Cazalet family on the brink of WWII. "The Cazalet family" is not easily described, but in essence we follow two generations; the Cazalet brothers and sister, Hugh, Edward, Rachel and Rupert and their spouses, and the generation of their children. I'm now in the fourth novel of the series, Casting Off, which is set in the post-war time of 1946-1947. I don't know about the fifth part, which was published much later than the first four, but so far I've seen the 'junior' generation grow from 4-16 years of age to 14-26, which means some of them have children of their own now. The Cazalet family is ever-expanding, through marriage and child-birth, and some of the family friends have also become part of the Cazalet clan. As in any good novel, some of these characters have found their deaths, too.
The 'older' generation, having lived through yet another great War, have had their own fair share of developments, but it is really the younger one the first novels focuses on, especially the cousins Louise, Polly and Clary. And after having been with them for four novels and ten fictional years, it really feels as if I've gotten to know these characters, as if they are people who might live just down the street. Even though they are close in age, and clearly have inherited some of the more persistent family traits, the cousins are three very distinct personalities. They have each made some difficult life choices that have got them where they are now. It can get a bit chick-flicky (lots of relationship talk, lots of affairs), but there is more to these novels than that.
Apart from the characters, which are very well-developed and written, there is the language. Long, drawn-out sentences full of description, which perfectly set the atmosphere. Some of the characters are focused on interior design or clothes, and their chapters contain detailed descriptions of all the rooms and garments they see around them. In other chapters, a few sentences set the scene. The dialogue is also very well done, you can actually hear the characters talk, and even though there is very little 'she said sulkily' or 'he said pointedly', you can get the gist of the emotions simply from the writing.
Then there is the interesting fact that the author was actually born in the same year as the aforementioned cousins. She actually lived through these times. And it is in the small details that this becomes clear; having to get by on rations, getting creative with the small amount of food or clothes coupons that one had, the information about the Cazalet family's business in hard woods, and most importantly; the way people interacted with each other. The verisimilitude is very strong. The discovery of this series of novels coincided with my discovery of the tv series The Crown, which is set in roughly the same time. Both really let you drown in a time seventy years gone, making the past come alive.
Most surprisingly about the interaction between people is the position of women. Already, some of these characters who had maids and cooks and 'dailies' before the war, are having to fend for themselves in the post-war times, when young girls didn't 'go into service' anymore. You can see the class differences disappear before your eyes, you can see women try to carve out a position for themselves, either in a job, in their marriage, or in the new-found possibilities of divorce or emigration. The social change that the war brought about is really the overarching theme of the novel, starting with the Victorian attitudes of the grandparents, through the elder Cazalet brothers' defining experiences in WWI, and the upheaval WWII brought about.
But don't let these heavy themes fool you; these novels are really about people, people trying to find their way, in the light years, marking time, in confusion, and casting off, as the novels are so aptly named. They are one family, but apart from the family business they don't share all that many common goals, until the outside world starts to press in. It makes you feel privileged that you have been allowed to have a peek at their lives for so long.
As I said, I'm almost done reading novel number four. I could have finished all of them ages ago, but these are the kinds of novels you want to draw out, to read one or two other novels between subsequent parts of the series so you can go back and reconnect with these characters, so you won't gobble it all up in one go. I'm very curious about the last part in the series, All Change, but I won't get to that until we're some way into 2018. Hopefully, the best will have been saved for last. And otherwise, there are some more novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard to discover!
The first novel is set in 1937 and follows the Cazalet family on the brink of WWII. "The Cazalet family" is not easily described, but in essence we follow two generations; the Cazalet brothers and sister, Hugh, Edward, Rachel and Rupert and their spouses, and the generation of their children. I'm now in the fourth novel of the series, Casting Off, which is set in the post-war time of 1946-1947. I don't know about the fifth part, which was published much later than the first four, but so far I've seen the 'junior' generation grow from 4-16 years of age to 14-26, which means some of them have children of their own now. The Cazalet family is ever-expanding, through marriage and child-birth, and some of the family friends have also become part of the Cazalet clan. As in any good novel, some of these characters have found their deaths, too.
The 'older' generation, having lived through yet another great War, have had their own fair share of developments, but it is really the younger one the first novels focuses on, especially the cousins Louise, Polly and Clary. And after having been with them for four novels and ten fictional years, it really feels as if I've gotten to know these characters, as if they are people who might live just down the street. Even though they are close in age, and clearly have inherited some of the more persistent family traits, the cousins are three very distinct personalities. They have each made some difficult life choices that have got them where they are now. It can get a bit chick-flicky (lots of relationship talk, lots of affairs), but there is more to these novels than that.
Apart from the characters, which are very well-developed and written, there is the language. Long, drawn-out sentences full of description, which perfectly set the atmosphere. Some of the characters are focused on interior design or clothes, and their chapters contain detailed descriptions of all the rooms and garments they see around them. In other chapters, a few sentences set the scene. The dialogue is also very well done, you can actually hear the characters talk, and even though there is very little 'she said sulkily' or 'he said pointedly', you can get the gist of the emotions simply from the writing.
Then there is the interesting fact that the author was actually born in the same year as the aforementioned cousins. She actually lived through these times. And it is in the small details that this becomes clear; having to get by on rations, getting creative with the small amount of food or clothes coupons that one had, the information about the Cazalet family's business in hard woods, and most importantly; the way people interacted with each other. The verisimilitude is very strong. The discovery of this series of novels coincided with my discovery of the tv series The Crown, which is set in roughly the same time. Both really let you drown in a time seventy years gone, making the past come alive.
Most surprisingly about the interaction between people is the position of women. Already, some of these characters who had maids and cooks and 'dailies' before the war, are having to fend for themselves in the post-war times, when young girls didn't 'go into service' anymore. You can see the class differences disappear before your eyes, you can see women try to carve out a position for themselves, either in a job, in their marriage, or in the new-found possibilities of divorce or emigration. The social change that the war brought about is really the overarching theme of the novel, starting with the Victorian attitudes of the grandparents, through the elder Cazalet brothers' defining experiences in WWI, and the upheaval WWII brought about.
But don't let these heavy themes fool you; these novels are really about people, people trying to find their way, in the light years, marking time, in confusion, and casting off, as the novels are so aptly named. They are one family, but apart from the family business they don't share all that many common goals, until the outside world starts to press in. It makes you feel privileged that you have been allowed to have a peek at their lives for so long.
As I said, I'm almost done reading novel number four. I could have finished all of them ages ago, but these are the kinds of novels you want to draw out, to read one or two other novels between subsequent parts of the series so you can go back and reconnect with these characters, so you won't gobble it all up in one go. I'm very curious about the last part in the series, All Change, but I won't get to that until we're some way into 2018. Hopefully, the best will have been saved for last. And otherwise, there are some more novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard to discover!
Thursday 7 December 2017
Blueberry cake
So I've had my birthday in October, and of course I did some birthday baking. Normally I plan this pretty far in advance, but this year that somehow didn't happen, so I had to make a rather on-the-spot decision about what to make. For some reason (because they were on sale) I had lots and lots of blueberries. So naturally, I made a blueberry cake.
Looking for recipes for a blueberry cake, I came to the conclusion that you can either make:
- a plain cake with added blueberries
- a blueberry cheesecake
As my other cake was a mon chou cake, I didn't want to go for the cheesecake option, but just a plain cake with added blueberries sounded dull. So my solution was basically to make one giant blueberry cupcake, and call it a blueberry cake. And it was quite the hit!
Ingredients:
175 g butter
175 g sugar
3 eggs
225 g self-raising flour
1 tablespoon lemon zest
blueberries (I can't remember how many, but quite a lot. I think about 200-250 grams? Use fresh blueberries, not frozen ones)
For the frosting:
150 g mascarpone (I'd use cream cheese, but we don't have proper cream cheese here)
50-75 g icing sugar (depending on how sweet you want the frosting to be)
some blueberries to decorate
Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease a sandwich tin and line with baking parchment.
Mix the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the eggs one by one, the lemon zest, and the self-raising flour. Finally, use a spoon to stir in the blueberries (if you do this by electric mixer they will get mashed up). Spread the mixture in the cake tin and bake for about 50 minutes.
Let the cake cool completely, turning it out onto a plate or wire rack about 5-10 minutes after opening the oven.
Make the frosting simply by combining the mascarpone or cream cheese with the icing sugar. Add the icing sugar in small lumps and taste in between. The cake is not very sweet, so the frosting shouldn't be too sour if you like a sweet cake. Spread the frosting over the cake in any way you like and decorate with the remaining blueberries.
Final judgement? What works for small blueberry cupcakes unsurprisingly also works for large(r) blueberry cakes. The cake was very moist and not too sweet, the blueberries went well with the mascarpone, basically all was well with the world. A perfect cake for late summer or early autumn, when blueberries are actually in season (one of the perks of having your birthday early autumn: all kinds of nice fruity things are plentily available).
In the future, I will try more of these cupcake-turned-into-real-cake experiments!
Looking for recipes for a blueberry cake, I came to the conclusion that you can either make:
- a plain cake with added blueberries
- a blueberry cheesecake
As my other cake was a mon chou cake, I didn't want to go for the cheesecake option, but just a plain cake with added blueberries sounded dull. So my solution was basically to make one giant blueberry cupcake, and call it a blueberry cake. And it was quite the hit!
Ingredients:
175 g butter
175 g sugar
3 eggs
225 g self-raising flour
1 tablespoon lemon zest
blueberries (I can't remember how many, but quite a lot. I think about 200-250 grams? Use fresh blueberries, not frozen ones)
For the frosting:
150 g mascarpone (I'd use cream cheese, but we don't have proper cream cheese here)
50-75 g icing sugar (depending on how sweet you want the frosting to be)
some blueberries to decorate
Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease a sandwich tin and line with baking parchment.
Mix the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the eggs one by one, the lemon zest, and the self-raising flour. Finally, use a spoon to stir in the blueberries (if you do this by electric mixer they will get mashed up). Spread the mixture in the cake tin and bake for about 50 minutes.
Let the cake cool completely, turning it out onto a plate or wire rack about 5-10 minutes after opening the oven.
Make the frosting simply by combining the mascarpone or cream cheese with the icing sugar. Add the icing sugar in small lumps and taste in between. The cake is not very sweet, so the frosting shouldn't be too sour if you like a sweet cake. Spread the frosting over the cake in any way you like and decorate with the remaining blueberries.
 |
| Blueberry galore (I kept the most gigantic ones to decorate). |
Final judgement? What works for small blueberry cupcakes unsurprisingly also works for large(r) blueberry cakes. The cake was very moist and not too sweet, the blueberries went well with the mascarpone, basically all was well with the world. A perfect cake for late summer or early autumn, when blueberries are actually in season (one of the perks of having your birthday early autumn: all kinds of nice fruity things are plentily available).
In the future, I will try more of these cupcake-turned-into-real-cake experiments!
Fluently flu-ish
Wow, time flies! This reads like one of those obligatory "I'm not dead!" posts after a long period of blogging silence, but it is also honestly how I feel. The last couple of days I've been under the influence of a very violent and persistant virus, having what is euphemistically called 'stomach flu', but which I like to rename 'a snake writhing around in your intestines trying to rearrange som organs'. It wasn't pretty. I won't go into more detail.
But! Lots of other stuff happened, since my last post and before I got the bug. I've been promoted, meaning I am now no longer a generic-sounding 'project manager' but rather a 'publisher'. Sounds posher, is significantly more tricky to fill in on an entry-card to exotic holiday destinations (the first time I went to Africa the steward on the plane suggested we were creative with our job descriptions, putting 'artist' if you were a photographer, or 'writer' when you were a journalist; it would save us lots of time at customs. Sadly, I'd forgotten that by the time I went to Morocco in 2016, and I put in 'publisher' as my profession as 'project manager' wouldn't fit in the teeny-tiny space, and the customs official grilled me for 5 minutes about what I did, who I worked with, what kind of books I published, until he decided that school books must have something to do with the government, I wasn't a radical self-publishing element, and could safely be let into the country).
Also, I had my birthday (more on birthday baking in a next post), I visited London for a week, staying at a great Airbnb and enjoying it more than I'd expected from a city I've already visited six times, and of course I did lots of reading (birthdays always mean more books!). All of that and more, still to come, when I feel more like a human being than home to an intestinal snake!
But! Lots of other stuff happened, since my last post and before I got the bug. I've been promoted, meaning I am now no longer a generic-sounding 'project manager' but rather a 'publisher'. Sounds posher, is significantly more tricky to fill in on an entry-card to exotic holiday destinations (the first time I went to Africa the steward on the plane suggested we were creative with our job descriptions, putting 'artist' if you were a photographer, or 'writer' when you were a journalist; it would save us lots of time at customs. Sadly, I'd forgotten that by the time I went to Morocco in 2016, and I put in 'publisher' as my profession as 'project manager' wouldn't fit in the teeny-tiny space, and the customs official grilled me for 5 minutes about what I did, who I worked with, what kind of books I published, until he decided that school books must have something to do with the government, I wasn't a radical self-publishing element, and could safely be let into the country).
Also, I had my birthday (more on birthday baking in a next post), I visited London for a week, staying at a great Airbnb and enjoying it more than I'd expected from a city I've already visited six times, and of course I did lots of reading (birthdays always mean more books!). All of that and more, still to come, when I feel more like a human being than home to an intestinal snake!
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