Books of 2018

I was hoping to add another book to this list, but it seems I will not finish reading it before the year is out, and also it is too beautiful a book to hurry up the reading, so I will make that my first book of 2019. I made a films of 2018 list a couple of days ago, in case films are more your thing.
But back to books: 2018 was a year with a nice variety of readings, more varied than my books of 2017 list. Also, a lot longer: I read 29 books this year, which is 6 up from last year. Again, I didn't read a long classic novel (although they are still on the to-read list) and also I quit reading a couple of books that took me too long to get through. If I have little time to read, I want to spend that time with books I actually like.

So, my complete 2018 list:
1 Lincoln in the bardo
2 Uncommon type
3 The heart goes last
4 The English patient
5 The sense of an ending
6 The ocean at the end of the lane
7 De zeven wetten van de liefde
8 The blind assassin
9 Murder on the Orient Express
10 The ABC murders
11 The noise of time
12 Fahrenheit 541
13 The Penelopiad
14 The view from the cheap seats
15 The garden party
16 All Change
17 The Liar
18 A handful of dust
19 Seveneves
20 The Children Act
21 My purple scented novel
22 The diary of a bookseller
23 Far from the madding crowd
24 Call me by your name
25 The only story
26 Shades of Grey
27 Normal people
28 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
29 Pride & prejudice & mistletoe

So, four rereads: The ocean at the end of the lane, The Liar, The Children Act and Shades of Grey, all by some of my favourite male authors (Gaiman, Fry, McEwan and Fforde). Two Dutch books, which are both non-fiction. I started reading two Dutch novels, but put both of those down as they didn't engage me enough. Will have to try again next year.
I had a couple of book resolutions for 2017 and 2018; stop reading of I don't like the novel, fewer rereads, read more great new authors such as Margaret Atwood. Also, as I was short on these last year; read more Dutch novels, short stories, non-fiction, and more new female authors. Some of those worked out, some clearly didn't. Despite the 'rules' I was really hoping for new novels by Ian McEwan or David Mitchell, but not having those I read more by new discoveries such as Julian Barnes, Margaret Atwood of course, and my newest love; Sally Rooney. Also, I read four Man Booker prize winners this year (Lincoln in the bardo (2017), The sense of an ending (2011), The English patient (1992) and The blind assassin (2000)), which makes 2018 a year filled with some of the best novels ever written.

Anyway, let's look at some lists:

Best English novel
1 Normal people
2 The sense of an ending
3 The English patient
So many great novels this year! This list was hard to make, also because novels that I've read more recently seem to stick in the memory better than those I read in January or February. But I managed to bring it down to three novels. But the undisputed number one is Normal People by Sally Rooney. I haven't been this happy reading a novel in a very long time. The Sense of an Ending makes a close second, though. Julian Barnes was a 2018 find, and I actually read three of his novels this year. The Sense of an Ending was the first and by far the best. It is one of those deeply emotional, tragic without being dramatic, stories about someone finally realising how much they've been deceiving themselves all of their life. As I wrote in February; This is a novel you can pull out each year, read again, and still find new bits in it. I will leave it alone for a couple of years, and then time will tell whether that is true. The last novel on the best novel list is another Man Booker winner (Normal People was merely longlisted, which is a shame, although I am now reading the 2018 Man Booker winner Milkman and can see how that is even better than Normal People) and another novel I read in February. The English patient, an instant classic I'd somehow missed all this time. I was watching Bodyguard on Netflix yesterday and it got me thinking about The English patient, so much so that I had to rewind because I'd been reminiscing so much. That is what a good novel does to you; it sticks with you, and you remember it while watching or reading other great things.
Honourable mentions on this list go to The Blind Assassin and Call me by your name, which didn't make the list but are still great novels.

Best Dutch novel
Non-existent this year

Best classic
1 Fahrenheit 541
2 Far from the madding crowd
3 A handful of dust
As always, one can argue here when a novel counts as a 'classic'. Last year, the oldest novels I read were over 20 years old but didn't feel as classics because they were still so current. This year, I felt like putting The English patient here, only to find out that novel is actually from 1992. Strange, how some novels feel much older than they are, while others are exactly the opposite.
Anyway, the novels I put in are from 1953, 1874 and 1934. I could also have put the Agatha Christie novels I read, as they're also from the 1930s, but I liked these less. Fahrenheit 541 is the newest novel on the list and my biggest discovery of 2018. I still can't explain how I missed this novel up until actually reading it (because Neil Gaiman mentioned it in The view from the cheap seats) but there you are. Read this novel, if you haven't already. Far from the madding crowd is a Thomas Hardy novel, which makes it a classic in its own right, but also a book to be shunned if you studied English literature and wrestled through Jude the Obscure, as I did. But as it turns out, this is a far nicer read. A handful of dust is also one of those fallen-through novels; one of my friends actually wrote here thesis on Evelyn Waugh and I never bothered to read any of the novels in it, except for Brideshead revisited a couple of years ago. I liked that better, A handful of dust is a bit too cynical and nasty for my taste, but still a good read.

Best non-fiction
1 The view from the cheap seats
2 The diary of a bookseller
3 Het bestverkochte boek ooit
I'm not sure if The view from the cheap seats counts fully as non-fiction, as with Neil Gaiman you can never be sure, but it by far the best non-fiction I read this year. The diary of a bookseller follows the life of a bookseller in the biggest bookshop in Scotland, which was a revealing, if somewhat narcissistic, read. Het bestverkochte boek ooit is by De Correspondent, the Dutch non-news news website that is expanding into the USA to bring the news that is not the current, actual, hyped up news but the stories behind the news, the events slowly unfolding. This book is about our obsession with numbers and what they actually mean.

Best short-story collection
1 Uncommon type
2 The garden party
Not a lot of short-story collections this year, but more than in 2017, when there were none. Uncommon type was a big surprise this year; it turns out Tom Hanks can actually write a pretty decent story! The second short-story collection I read was by Katherine Mansfield. I read The Garden Party (the story from the title) for my English lit studies, when again it was one of those timeless stories that feel still current, even though it was written in 1922. The rest of the stories are nice reads, but not as memorable as Tom Hanks' book.

Best fantasy/scifi
1 Seveneves
2 The Penelopiad
Not a lot of fantasy or scifi to go around this year, and Shades of Grey counts as a reread, but these two deserve some kind of mention. Seveneves is a scifi novel that taught me more I ever thought to know about the ISS, living in space, space physics and building a new world. The Penelopiad is Margaret Atwood's interpretation of the Odyssee myth. This may not count as fantasy in the strictest sense of the word, but I do want to mention it because of her very human and real characters.

Best 'new' author
1 Sally Rooney
2 Julian Barnes
3 Michael Ondaatje
This list can hardly come as a surprise. Will read more of these authors whenever I can.

Most disappointing novel
1 All change
2 The heart goes last
3 The only story
This list always hurts. This year, it contains three of my favourite 'new' authors; Elizabeth Jane Howard, Margaret Atwood and Julian Barnes. I've said all I ever wanted to say on All change. The heart goes last was my most disappointing Atwood novel this year; compared to The Blind Assassin or The Handmaid's tale it feels rushed, with stock characters and a stock message. The same is true for The Only Story; Julian Barnes's newest novel. I had actually forgotten what it was about, but reading the blurb it all came back to me; the failed relationship of characters I didn't actually care about. Especially reading it directly following Call me by your name, which depicts a blossoming relationship in all its lovely longing, this novel made me thoroughly sad. I hope to pick up better novels by Atwood (Alias Grace is still waiting) and Barnes next year, as it hurts me to put authors I usually really love in this list.

Authors I read more than once:
- Margaret Atwood (3x)
- Julian Barnes (3x)
- Agatha Christie (2x)
- Neil Gaiman (2x)
- Ian McEwan (2x)

Films of 2018

For a couple of years I've been writing a 'Books of...' post (the 2018 edition will be upcoming) but with the end of the year nearing and lots of other lists appearing in various media, I wondered why I wouldn't make a 'Films of ...' version as well. In an average year, I watch many more films than I read books, because films are shorter, cheaper, and watching a film is a shared experience. Because I have a membership card at the biggest cinema of my city, I can watch any film I want for a fixed price per month. Also, this cinema actually remembers all the films I watched there in an nifty app, thus giving me the below overview with just one click. I watched many more films than these, of course; arthouse films at the arthouse cinema, Netflix original films, films at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and Hongerige Wolf festival, older films that found their way to my screen in some other way (in the past month alone I saw Twelve Angry Men from 1957 and Mary Poppins from 1964). But to include all would be impossible. So I will stick with the list my cinema provides me with; the new films I saw in 2018, excluding re-releases (I saw Grease on its 40 anniversary), Disney special weeks and the in-house pre-premieres.

These were:
1 Breathe
2 The Greatest Showman
3 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
4 Darkest Hour
5 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
6 Taal is zeg maar echt mijn ding
7 The Maze Runner: Death Cure
8 Game Night
9 Every Day
10 Mary Magdalene
11 Ready Player One
12 Hostiles
13 Phantom Thread
14 Midnight Sun
15 Avengers: Inifinity War
16 De Matchmaker
17 Isle of Dogs
18 Deadpool 2
19 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
20 Love, Simon
21 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
22 Incedibles 2
23 Ocean's 8
24 Tag
25 Mission Impossible: Fallout
26 Adrift
27 On Chesil Beach
28 Blackkklansman
29 A Simple Favour
30 Venom
31 Juliet, Naked
32 A Star is Born
33 First Man
34 Bohemian Rhapsody
35 The Children Act
36 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
37 Robin Hood
38 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
39 Ralph Breaks the Internet
40 Mary Poppins Returns

A pretty varied list, if I say so myself. Some Marvel, some arthouse, some YA, some action films. Some comedy, lots of drama, a couple of Dutch romcoms; my film habits are more diverse than my reading habits.
So, because one list is not enough, let's break this down into some neat little lists:

Best English film
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
3 First Man
Right, so this is always the last list I write (even though it is the top one) because it is the most difficult. What do I put here? The films that moved me the most? The films that surprised me? The films that are beautifully made? In the end, I put the films that made the strongest impression, the films that I will remember some years into the future. On Chesil Beach is a film adaptation of one of my favourite Ian McEwan novels. It stars Saoirse Ronan, who is one of my favourite actresses. I cried my eyes out in the cinema; the story is heartbreaking to read, but to see it played out on the screen is somehow even more moving. Nothing much happens, it is set in one afternoon and evening, but whole lives can change in just that short amount of time. Not sure why it received lukewarm reviews, to me it was one of the highlights of the film year. The same is true for Three Billboards, although that is of course a wildly different film. This film is filled with raw emotion without becoming overly dramatic. Frances McDormand won a deserved Oscar; she plays a very strong woman, without being the perfect hero we we see in so many films. She makes impulsive, sometimes somewhat stupid, choices; she is human in her rage. With two strong female leads the third film may be somewhat of a surprise, but First Man also made an impression, not because of Ryan Gosling's performance as Neil Armstrong (although he was great as always) but because of the whole madness of actually sending people into space in metal boxes atop giant fuel tanks that almost shake apart on the start. Again, we have a dramatic story without overt drama. Also, Claire Foy fills the strong female role here. Three films to watch again.

Best Dutch film
I'd love to do a list here, but I only saw one proper Dutch film; De Matchmaker, which apart from the article you may be forgiven for thinking was actually an English film. It was pretty good, great actors make all the difference (even though some of them were type cast in the same role they've played for at least 5 years now, practice apparently makes perfect).

Best animation
1 Isle of Dogs
2 Ralph Breaks the Internet
3 Incredibles 2
No argument here; Isle of Dogs is hands down one of the best films of 2018. It is beautifully made, with lots of attention to detail, the story is moving and whacky at the same time, as are the characters the style reminded me of my earlier love of Kubo and the Two Strings and it just gives you an overall feeling of having seen a work of beauty. Ralph Breaks the Internet is a bit of an odd one, as I never actually saw Wreck-it Ralph, but it was fun and creative, with good characters and a nice (if somewhat predictable and long) plot. The only reason it wins from Incredibles 2 is that I can actually remember what happened in Ralph, whereas the Incredibles seem to have disappeared from my mind all together. I did see the original Incredibles film and liked that more than its sequel.

Best book adaptation
1 On Chesil Beach
2 Juliet, Naked
3 Adrift
In 2018 I was lucky enough to see film adaptations of several favourite novels come out; On Chesil Beach and The Children Act by Ian McEwan, and Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. The first is one of the best films I saw all year, the second sadly made the 'most disappointing' list. Juliet, Naked was a bit of a surprise: the novel translated to screen better than I'd expected. Adrift isn't just a film adaptation of a book, but a 'based on true events' film (Tami Oldham wrote a book about her experience of being adrift on sea for 41 days). This could have been a overly dramatic survival story, but the film is beautifully made, cutting away from the couple on their broken boat to how they met and the hours before the storm, thus giving a great tension build-up. Not a film I expected to like, but one I will remember for some time to come.

Best sequel
1 Mary Poppins Returns
2 Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle
3 Avengers: Inifinity War
Soooo many sequels this year. So, so many. Not all of them good, mind you. But the Mary Poppins sequel, which took 54 years to come about, was actually really great. I hadn't seen the original until about a week ago, so I am new to the fandom, but I loved the original and the sequel. Emily Blunt makes for a great Mary, it is amazing to see how many different roles she has already done. I felt the same happiness about the Jumanji sequel; it took a long time arriving, but it was really nicely done. I think this may be the first The Rock film I actually enjoyed. Also; Jack Black. Then there are lots of lesser souls in the sequel universe; Mission Impossible, Jurassic Park, The Maze Runner, but the Avengers film steals third place. I will not mention the Fantastic Beasts sequel here (see below).

Best Marvel
1 Avengers: Inifinity War
2 Deadpool 2
3 Venom
(I'm just putting Marvel adaptations here, not worrying whether they are actually part of the MCU. Also, no, I didn't see Black Panther or Ant-Man and the Wasp). It wasn't a great Marvel year, this year. Sure, Infinity War was pretty nice, but it is not a film in and of itself, the open ending drove me nuts. Also, too many characters crammed into one move. Deadpool and Venom were disappointments story-wise and character-wise. Maybe I should have gone to the Marvels I didn't see, which would make this sad list my own fault, but the overall feeling is just; meh.

Best young adult
1 Love, Simon
2 Every Day
3 Midnight Sun
Okay, so Yong Adult must be everybody's guilty pleasure, except for actual young adults, who think that there is finally a film that understands them. Love, Simon should be nobody's guilty pleasure, but a film you proudly proclaim loving. It is almost un-American in its realism (somewhat like Atypical), with of course the necessary dose of drama added. But the story is sweet and feelgood, the characters are believable and the message is great. (I should probably have gone to see Call me by your name as well, but I just read the book and couldn't stand destroying the image in my mind with the film adaptation.) Every Day and Midnight Sun are more stock 'nobody but you understands me' YA fare, but still nice enough to inculde on the list. The final Maze Runner film never stood a chance.

Most disappointing film
1 The Children Act
2 Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
3 The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
This is a painful list. By definition, it only includes films I actually had high hopes for. I mean, when I visit Tag or Game Night I don't expect any great artistic revelations (although they were both better than expected). So my hopes were really high for The Children Act, especially as McEwan wrote the screenplay himself (as which On Chesil Beach, which is in the first list), but this was such a disappointment. Emma Thompson is acting her heart out, but the story is just so flat, the characters are flat, their development and thought process is non-existent and the main message or point is just completely lost. When I explained how the characters are in the novel to my baffled friend (who hadn't read the book) she exclaimed: why didn't they film that instead? My thoughts exactly. Second major disappointment is the Fantastic Beasts sequel; the first film was so lovingly made, centred around Newt and his beasts, and now we get an in-betweeny with way too many characters, no coherent plot to speak of, too many action scenes thrown together, no actual Grindelwald crimes (as promised by the title) and to make things worse; no beasts to speak of (also; as promised by the title). Eddie Redmayne is wasted on this film. The third film in this list is there because it was just a major disappointment overall. I love The Nutcracker, I will visit the ballet in a couple of days, but this film just had nothing to do with that story or anything else. There was no proper plot, no characters to relate to, just... nothing. The only good thing about it was Matthew Macfayden (to end this somewhat downer ending on a positive note).

Normal People

The novel I decided to read from my to-read-pile was Normal People by Sally Rooney, as you may have guessed from my statement that I couldn't live without it a second longer after reading its review. And the review was right. This is a great novel.
It has been a long time since I read anything that felt like it was exactly what I should be reading at the time; one of those novels you don't want to read too quickly because then you'll have read it all and there won't be any new bits of story left. The plot is what it is; basic boy-meets-girl stuff. I read somewhere that this is a love story, but not a romance. This is very true. But don't let the love story bit fool you. The language and style is beautiful. It is a contemporary story, but it feels completely timeless. There are descriptions and short in-between sentences that stuck with me for a couple of days; there are bits that are just so beautifully written that you have to read them again just for the joy of it.
Then there are the characters. Obviously, these are not normal people, or they wouldn't be found in such a magnificent novel. And in a way they are, as the title tells us. The story is about Marianne and Connell; the first is awkward and unpopular in secondary school, but blossoms when she gets to uni. He is the other way around; the popular soccer star in high school, but lost in the posh university universe. Somehow they have found each other, and somehow they manage to stick by each other. They both have their flaws; personality traits and experiences that run deep and influence every decision they make. The scenes where they are together, depending on each other and supporting each other, are the best in the book. But then they break the fragile bond between them, at first because they are clumsy and inexperienced, later because they cannot stand the intensity of the emotion, or the feeling of being so close to another human being. They are very recognisable, striving to fit in and be normal people but at the same time standing out because they are so beautifully crafted. It reminded me in some ways of Jude in A Little Life, only somehow better written.
There are lots of other things in the novel; class boundaries, intimacy issues, gender roles; there is a fair bit of sex in a very casual, normal way. All of this fleshes out the story, makes it more than just a love story, but for me it wasn't the main thing. The main thing was their story.
And then I got to the back inside cover of the novel and there is a picture of Sally Rooney herself and it turns out that she is only 27! Who, at 27, could know this depth of character, these intricate details of the human personality that make people who they are, that make people act and react the way they do? Some other review called her 'Jane Austen for the millennial generation', and I have to agree completely. I can't wait to read Conversations with Friends, her first novel.
But, here is the big but to this novel. The ending. I won't spoil it for you, but the final chapter really bugged me. The chapters alternate between Marianne and Connell, not their full point of view but we follow either of them around, and the final chapter is a Marianne chapter that I really disliked. Somehow, it even felt rushed the way it was written. I read deep into the night to finish this novel, so I thought it may have been my sleepy head just wanting the story to finish, but upon reread the rushed quality is still there. All the emotion, all the light, loving connections that existed between these characters are now replaced by sodden, plonking style. It was a major let down.
But overall, this novel is beautifully written, in a fresh, young, sparkling style. The characters are so well made. The story is so light, so fragile, it might break at any moment (and for me it does break in the final chapter). Still, it is a lovely read, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a story that loves its characters and itself.

NaNo Days 25 & 26: Winner!

So yeah, I won! I don't know if I've ever won on Day 26 before, it feels awfully early, but I can't be bothered to check right now. 50,196 words in total, according to the NaNoWriMo website. I actually wrote 4,006 words today, all on the write-in at IKEA, where I'm also writing this from. My last word war I wrote 57 words per minute, so it was a sprint to the finish.
Somehow, winning feels better when you do it amongst fellow Wrimos, with also the Discord channel to cheer you on. I got several congratulations, both real life and online, which makes the win feel more real.
Concerning my story; yeah, it ended how it's supposed to end. They get each other, they kiss, all is well with the world. Although there are some nice parts, some pretty neat dialogue, and even some stupid in-jokes I didn't actually plan for, I can safely say I will never ever do anything with this story again. And I probably won't ever write romance again either. But I got to 50,000 words in a month (a month? 26 days!) and that's what counts!

NaNo Days 19 to 24: 40k and the home straight

So last week I had the week off. I had to many days still left over to take with me to next year, and I could also do with a bit of a break in the middle of the busy season (sales, holidays, etc). Also, of course, it was good for writing.
The aim was to write 2,000 words every day, which would bring me pretty close to 50,000 by the end of this week. This did not work out exactly as planned, as on Day 21 I didn't actually write a single word. But I still made the 40k on Day 22 and am now a little over 43,000 words. Feels like I should be able to finish the story in a couple of days, especially as I still have a write-in ahead of me on Monday. However, I feel like I should have more words on the page by now, because my going has been pretty slow.
What makes the writing pretty tough is that I have sort of lost interest in my characters and story. I know they will end up together, despite all the tension I've been trying to put in their exchanges, I know when and where it will happen, but I can't actually be bothered with all the stuff happening in between. It is kind of silly; I already knew what the ending would be before I started to write, which is a unique situation for me, as I generally don't write an ending to any story, but somehow that didn't make it easier to get there. So I've been putting in all kinds of personal experiences just to flesh out the story a bit more, which doesn't really have anything to do with the main narrative. Scenes that have nothing to do with the actual romance portion of the plot, but are there just to get more words in. A proper editor would put a red cross over them in a heartbeat.
This is fine. It is what NaNo is about; getting words on the page. Also, I never expected the romance genre to be the thing for me, and it turns out I was right all along. You live and learn, and learn and write. Just a little under 7,000 words to go.

The to-read pile

I have a lot of books. To anyone who knows me or has read a few posts on this blog, this cannot come as a surprise. All those books live in bookcases spread throughout my house. The bulk of my fiction lives in the living room, ordered in an ever-changing system but currently somewhat logically organised alphabetically by author's name (with a clear distinction between English and Dutch fiction, of course). In between all of these books are also some books I haven't read. I couldn't tell you how many exactly, but more than 10 and less than 50. For a while, I kept all my to-read books in between the other books, because it wasn't their fault I hadn't come around to reading them yet, so they should be allowed to live with the others. However, this led to frequent cases of 'having nothing to read' and therefore 'buying more books just to have something to read'. The bookish brain is easy to trick into buying more books.
To prevent a complete overload of non-read books, I introduced a 'to-read pile'. This is a stack of books on one of the shelves, consisting of books I haven't read or am in the middle of reading but have put aside for some reason. Although, to be fair, it doesn't contain all the books I haven't read yet, for then the pile would quickly fill up with giant tomes such as War and Peace, The Count of Monte Christo, Parade's End and The Fountainhead. Also, it doesn't contain all the books I am in the middle of reading, because I always keep a stack of those on my bedside table; books I got tired of while reading in bed which never made it back down to the living room again. So its a bit of an arbitrary pile, but let's be honest, we're talking about a book sorting system; it's not going to bring us world peace.
November is usually a month where the to-read pile is pretty big, due to a couple of reasons:
- my birthday is in October
- the shorter the days, the bigger my urge to buy books
- I generally don't read a lot during NaNo, and what I read tends to be a reread
So for a sneak preview of the upcoming months, I will now share my current to-read pile with the world:

To read, 19th November 2018

As you can see, no new books will fit on this pile at the moment. This is a good sign for me to actually start reading something that is on it.
But what is on it? Two books I'm in the middle of; Stephen Fry's Mythos and Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill. The former I couldn't really get through, the latter is a train book (a thin, light book that I've already read, which I can slip into a bag whenever I need distraction on the train). Then there are books I got for my birthday; The Catcher in the Rye, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Calypso, We zullen niet te pletter slaan and Een schitterend gebrek. A nice blend of classics and wholly unknown novels and authors. Are you experienced? was also a gift, although not for my birthday. Milkman is the 2018 Man Booker winner, so an obvious buy. Normal People was a novel I found out about the day after my birthday, and I couldn't actually live without for another second. The other two, Little Fires Everywhere and Het bestverkochte boek ooit*, are my only guilt buys: books bought while standing in the bookshop for no proper reason, when I really have to buy something although there is no rationale behind it. I usually have more guilt buys in spring, in autumn I can somehow control myself as my birthday and the holidays are coming up.
So, there we are. 10 brand new books, 1 partly read, 1 a reread. If I were to give you an estimate that the next book I will read will come from this pile (I just finished rereading a Jasper Fforde book this morning), I'd say the odds are 50/50. Because despite the to-read pile, I can still pick up a completely different book. It's controlled chaos, as is all of literature.

NaNo Days 11 to 18: Flat and up

Last week was week 2 of NaNoWriMo, also known as Hell Week. The week where you come to the realisation that 50,000 really is a lot, your story is actually not as great/funny/exciting as you thought, your characters are all a bit meh, and you can't for the life of you remember why you ever thought doing NaNo was a good idea.
I didn't really suffer very much from Hell Week this year, mostly because I didn't actually have the time to write anyway. But I kind of foresaw this happening, and put in a nice buffer of 4,000 words on day 11, followed by three days of not writing. Not even thinking about writing, to be honest. By day 14 I was 1,000 words behind par. Nothing to worry so far, as on day 16 I did another write-in that gained me 3,500, which, combined with the 2,500 words I wrote yesterday, puts me right back on track. It does make for an interesting stats chart:

We are now on day 18, par is 30,000 words and I started today at 30,049. So yay me!
I haven't written a single NaNo word yet, but I hope to put in at least 1,000 before I have other things on my mind (company, films, chocolate). Somehow, this year's November seems more filled with social events than any other November ever was. Must remember not to have a social life next year.
I put up bird food a couple of days ago as the temperatures have turned to freezing around here, and I am now joined by a colourful crew of fluttering birds outside my window. The cats are too invested in staying warm to go outside, so my feathered company is quite safe. And distracting, but in a good way.
Anyway, time to write something that actually counts towards my wordcount!

NaNo Days 9 & 10: 20K!

So the last two days have been very grey and rainy and sad, which makes for perfect writing weather. However, somehow, this year all of my days got swamped with social events, so I'm not as far ahead as may have been expected. However, I just crossed the 20K boundary with 20,012 words. This means I'm two days ahead of schedule. It also means I can stop writing for today, which is a blessing, since for the last 500 words one of my cats has been leaning against my right arm, putting it into an awkward position and now somewhat of a cramp. Time to give it a rest!

NaNo Days 5 to 8: Fits and bursts

Is it already November 8th? How time flies!
On Monday, I attended my first write-in since 2011. Two of the people who were there in 2011 were still there, only older and with many more NaNo words below their belts. We were nine in total, the youngest was only 12, the oldest must have been around 45. We sat at IKEA, talked, joked, ate, and also occasionally wrote some words. I managed to write about 2600 words, which is pretty good for a write-in. At that point I was about 4,000 words ahead of par.
Then on Tuesday, I sat in a bar with a friend, had good conversations, drank a little too much, and didn't write  word.
On Wednesday I wrote about 1,000 while on the train to a meeting. I was planning to also write on the way back, but I fell asleep.
This morning, I was below par for the first time this NaNoWriMo. That should have given me an anxious feeling in my stomach, but after such a busy week I was now so sleepy that it didn't really hit me until I got home and saw that most of my writing buddies were already way beyond 15,000 words. So I sat down, participated in 3 word wars, and am now at 15,016 words. The par for tomorrow is 15,000, so I'm one day ahead again. Fits and bursts, that's for sure.

Story-wise, I can't actually remember everything that I wrote. The characters are coming to life more, and I've written lots of dialogue because I got so fed up with all the exposition. It feels like I'm coming into my stride, although at the same time it feels like I'm not really writing romance anymore, like the romantic bits are tacked on top of a 'normal' story. I never expected this genre to be 'the thing' for me, so I'm glad I'm making it work anyway!
2,234 words down so far for today, let's see if I can make that 3,000 before my eyes fall shut.

NaNo Day 4: Raptors?

Today was a beautiful sunny day, which I spent mostly running around to fix all the weekend chores I had to cram into one day. But I managed to find time to write as well! I participated in three word wars, one of which I organised myself, and have gained 2,828 words so far. I hope to be writing some more later on, as my overall goal for today was 10,000 words, but for now the well of inspiration is slightly depleted at 8,689 words total.
So today I decided I was done doing introductions, and got right down to the main point of the novel; the love interest. Can't write romance without a love interest. I had not thought about him before, as usual, so the character just sort of appeared out of thin air as I put words down on the page. We'll see how much of him remains in later writing sessions, as I tend not to be too consistent in my character traits throughout NaNo.
So what about those raptors? Apparently, whenever you participate in a word war, there is a chance you'll get a raptor. Team with the most raptors wins, of course, and the Netherlands is at 51 raptors so far. Two of those were contributed by me, as I received a raptor after two of today's word wars. No idea where they came from, it is just a part of the craziness that is NaNoWriMo.

NaNo Days 2&3: rolling onwards

So yesterday I was at a conference and didn't write a single NaNo word. Hence the buffer on Day 1, of course.
Today I recuperated from the busy day, but didn't get home until about four, and didn't start my writing until about half past five. It's now ten minutes past seven, and I managed to pour out 2,390 words in that hour and a half. And 2,390 words will be my score for today, because my brain now feels like it is fried to a crisp.

In the actual writing, I realised I'd forgotten to add my main characters main hobby; musing about situations that will probably never happen. I'd given myself this option to add such musings in between the main actions, so when I feel like doing something a little bit different, I can add a standalone 'mini story' in between the main story to get some words down, without actually disrupting the storyline. I wrote the first of these during a 30 minute word war, it turned out to be 1,414 words (47 words per minute). If they all turn out around that size, I could reach the daily goal just writing a side-story, if needs be. And, if all goes well, they'll even fit into the main story line!

For now, no more NaNo, just dinner, relaxing series, and an early night.

ETA: I just realised I hadn't added my total word count so far, even though you can of course calculate that for yourself; 5,861 words. That means I've reached two achievement badges by now; 1,667 words and 5,000 words. 10,000 words is up next!

NaNo Day 1: Romance, anyone?

So today is November 1st, which means it's NaNo time! For some reason, I hadn't discovered the DutchNaNo Discord channel in previous years, so I kept my NaNo'ing mostly to myself. Today, I joined the website, and discovered a world of random chatting, writing distractions, and word wars. Also a neat bot that keeps track of the word wars and provides writing prompts and what not. It is a bit of a distraction, with 50+ people all talking at the same time it is pretty hard to keep track of things, so I mainly joined for the word wars, which means 20 or 30 minutes of non-stop writing and then posting the word count you managed in that time. Apparently, my writing speed is about 50 words per minute.
So at the end of today my score is 3471 words. A little over the 3,000 that was my goal, but way lower than the 4,808 count I reached on my first day of the 2016 NaNo. Never mind, I put in the buffer I needed to tide me over tomorrow, when I will be at a work conference the whole day and unable to write. After that it is the weekend, which should give me plenty of writing time.

Story-wise, I'm supposed to be writing a romance, as that is the genre I set myself, but today I didn't really get into that atmosphere. Surprisingly, it didn't take long at all to get into the 'second person perspective', where my main character is 'you'. Also, I could fit some dialogue in there, which I thought might be difficult. Other than that, it's been exposition, exposition, and more exposition, as I laid down the main character's surroundings and job. Will have to get more into the romantic atmosphere this weekend, because now it reads more like a manual than a love story. Anyway, I'm very much done for the day!

NaNoWriMo 2018

Ha, the middle of October is here. That means it's almost November, and almost National Novel Month time! (I just checked, I wrote posts of similar type on October 18th 2013, October 17th 2015, October 14th 2016. I also wrote a 'NaNoWri-NO' post on the 8th of October 2012. It has been quite a streak so far.) As you can see, there is no 'no' in the title of this year's post, and I am pleased to tell you I will be participating again. Last year I kind of dodged the issue and didn't actually write a blog post about it, even though I did register a novel and crammed out about 900 words of a rewrite that wasn't really going anywhere. The rewrite of the same novel I spent two Camp NaNos revising. The rewrite of the novel that I now seriously want to rewrite again, as I have new insights on the matter.
However, NaNoWriMo is something different than Camp NaNo. For one thing, you actually have to stick by the rules, and the rules say you have to write something new from scratch. For another thing, you have to write the full 50,000 words, and as I mentioned in 2016, rewriting just doesn't give you the same drive as a whole new story does. So another rewrite is not what I will be doing this November. Great as my 2015 NaNo novel was, I've spent enough NaNo time writing, rewriting and editing it. It's time for something completely different.

The last time I said that, I went in for 'comedy' and really had to fight to get the words out by the end. So we'll see how this one goes.

The genre I picked is 'romance'. Not a sentence I'd ever thought I'd ever write. But there were are.
I was inspired by Call Me by Your Name, a novel I recently finished, and The Only Story, a novel I'm currently reading. As far apart as those two novels may seem in plot and style and space of the story, they're both about love, and they both spoke to me on a different level. Added to that, I decided it was time for me to write from a female protagonist's point of view, something I haven't done since my 2010 novel. So for the 2018 instalment of NaNoWriMo, I will be writing a romance novel from the point of view of a female protagonist. The working title is "How not to fall in love", which should tell you something about the happiness of the love portrayed in the story. I have working titles for most of the chapters too, and quite probably already an ending. For the style I've settled on a mix between The Only Story and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and if you don't know what I mean by that, you should definitely read either or both of those novels. The only thing I was still debating was whether to write in Dutch or in English, but I've pretty much settled that the story will take place in Groningen again, which makes for a Dutch novel.
Basically, it feels like I'm more prepared than I ever was. Plot wise, that is. I have no idea what my main character is like, or her love interest, or who will pop up beside them in this story. But that's okay, as long as I roughly know where the plot is taking me, the characters usually sort themselves out. I'll keep you updated on any novelling related info as usual, so in roughly a month's time we'll know whether the crazy novelling path I'm sending myself down this year turns out to be fraught with peril or paved with success!

Far From the Madding Crowd

So I've read this book. It's by Thomas Hardy, which means it's at least 150 years old. I read his Jude the Obscure in uni, where it was the novel that took me the longest to get through, apart from Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (and probably Pamela by Richardson, but that I didn't even start). So why would I ever dare to get into a Hardy story again? For one thing, I'd seen the film. This is a cliche, but cliches are there for a reason; they tend to be true. I'd seen the film, and although it baffled me slightly in places, I really liked the story and the characters and the whole bizarre atmosphere. Also, I went on Goodreads and saw that the novel had some pretty positive and humorous reviews, strengthening me in my belief that this might actually be a different sort of novel.
So I started on Far From the Madding Crowd. And it was everything I thought it would be, and better.
Now Hardy was a Victorian. Which basically means he was a prude, especially to modern Dutch eyes. But then he goes and writes a novel about a strong female character who not only runs a farm on her own, but also has three suitors hanging about. This gets him into trouble on several occasions, where Bethsheba's personality seems to make a 180 degree turn to have her fit into the then accepted idea of female dependence, religious purity and overall correctness. This is all set in some idyllic rural setting, which, if you read between the lines, is not that idyllic after all.
I had the advantage of reading the Penguin scholarly edition, which uses the original manuscript text and not the revised version that was actually published. This contains even more out-of-character remarks on sexuality, religion and other subjects that would not have passed the censor. As such, it is a beautiful period piece, showing a pretty young Hardy (he was 34 when it was published) exploring some pretty wild ideas. It all wraps up nicely and correctly, but the way there is strangely crooked.
But apart from the weird inconsistencies in the tone and subject matter, this novel has some really weird plot twists. When Bathsheba moves out of reach for Gabriel Oak, her first love interest, all of his sheep mysteriously jump off a cliff and fall to their death, forcing him to find other employ and ending up saving some distant farm's crops from a fire - a distant farm that surprisingly turns out to belong to Bathsheba. Unrealistic much? But it is all written down with a matter-of-factness that implies that these things happen in rural communities, where life is so much smaller and easier.
I won't spoil any more of the plot (although this classic story is probably known to those who actually want to read it, and of no interest to anyone else), but there are several other great moments involving Valentines, bloated sheep, pistols fired, and general miscomprehension. I wonder how Hardy's contemporaries read this story, as it may have offended their good taste on several accounts. Or maybe this story shows that our ideas of prude Victorians are too strict, and they may well have just like us, if you dare to read between the lines. That bodes well for the other classic Victorian novels that have been sitting on my bookshelves for too long!

Running

So somehow two thirds of August have passed without me blogging. It's not that nothing happened, lots of things happened, some things even worth blogging about, but the blogging itself somehow didn't happen. I blame it on the heat, it melts one's brain until you can't form proper sentences. Or remember that you want to form them.

Despite the heat, one of the things I have been doing is running. I call it running because that is what you're supposed to call it, 'go for a run etc', but it's not like I'm going anywhere fast. My average speed is 7 minutes per kilometer, or 8,5 km/hr (that's 5.2 miles an hour for the imperialists). It is a steady speed, I can keep that up for all of my run without any decline, but it's still in the 'slow but steady' category. The aim is first to build up some more stamina so I can actually run for a longer time, and then build up the speed.
But why do I run? I could say a lot of inspirational things about feeling healthier or setting goals for myself or whatnot, but I think Matt Inman basically said it all in his comic about running long distances and 'beating the blergh'. Okay, so he runs ultra marathons. I run 2 k, max. The principle is the same. He mentions 'the Blergh', the thing that keeps you from moving, that encourages you to eat or do unhealthy things. Basically, the Blergh is human nature, as we have been programmed for thousands of years to eat as much as we could whenever there was food and not to spend any energy doing other stuff. It's evolution, and now that food is so abundantly available, it's making us fat and lazy. We're not the only ones; all creatures are basically lazy when their basic needs are fulfilled.
Now Matt lives in the US, where you can get a full plate of fast food at the price of an apple here. I don't eat unhealthily, I just don't move a lot. I bike to and from work every day, and some days, that's all the exercise I get. I spend 9 hours sitting behind a computer screen, when I get home there are chores and whatnot, but usually I spend the evening with friends, and again we spend it sitting down. So for me, the problem was not so much food as movement. I spent my time, that precious commodity, doing other things than moving.
This is not good. It wasn't making me feel good. I wanted to move more.

So why running? It's basically the easiest, most down-to-earth sort of movement there is. You put on your running shoes, and you go out the door. No membership required, no team mates or specific time slots or special equipment needed. You just go run.

I didn't actually just put on my shoes and started to run, I did some preparation and myself on some sort of build-up schedule. The first aim was running 15 minutes at a stretch. I specifically didn't set myself any distance goals, because my average speed is so slow that they would be harder to achieve, and if I know anything about myself it is that I needed to get some results in fast, or I would just stop doing it. So 15 minutes at a stretch was the goal, and after about three months of on-and-off training (with a two week holiday in between), I actually reached that goal. Woo hoo!
But as I reached it, I realised it was not getting there. It was about building up my strength, my endurance, about getting my body into shape (by which I mean; better at exercising. Not losing weight, although that is a nice bonus when it happens). Some days, the run goes perfectly and I feel great and I'm going faster than I thought or further than I thought and I experience a bit of the runner's high that 'real' runners are crazy about. Some days, I feel slow and cumbersome and I can't even reach the minutes I did last time, let alone run the extra time I'd set myself for that particular day. Not to worry. I ran. It's always better than not running. The goal is the running in itself, the feeling good about doing that. I'll leave the other stuff, the fancy gear and the special diets and the races to the pros.
Maybe that is the trick, for me at least: if the goal is to move more, to get your butt of the couch and build up your muscles and your endurance, just going out to run is enough. It's doesn't have to be fast, it doesn't have to be far. You just have to do it.

Camp NaNo Days 24 to 29: Winner!

Wow. It was long, it was hot, it was an absolute struggle to concentrate, but I got to my goal of 20,000 words! My official stats say 20,097, which I will take any month of the year (except November, when you need 50,000). I put in 2,865 words today, which is the highest number on any of my Camp NaNo july days, but I just wanted to get the thing over with.
My stats are completely wonky this month, as I mentioned earlier, all leaps and bounds:

But I got there in the end, writing through an official heat wave of 13 days. I do see the advantages of writing in November.
Quality wise, some parts are pretty good, some parts I know I will never want to read again if I can help it. My aim was to provide back story for my seven main characters, and I wrote back stories for six of them, which is secretly better than I'd hoped, although the aim is to get 4,000-5,000 words for each of them, and I think I only made that for one. But it made things easier NaNo wise, because if I didn't like the character I was working on, I could switch to another chapter and be in another world all together.
My next thing will be to combine this Camp NaNo with my April Camp NaNo, giving me about 41,000 words, and then smoothing things out and filling in the blanks. I know there are going to be a lot of inconsistencies, duplications, and weird changes in tone or plot, so it will need work. But for now, I'm done with writing!

Camp NaNo Days 10 to 23: still writing!

I'm still writing! Not so much at/for/on this blog, I have to admit, but the Camp NaNo is still going strong. I just finished my writing session at 16,161 words today, not because I didn't know what to write anymore, but because it was just such a beautiful number to finish on.
My NaNo writing has been going in leaps and bounds, with me being 3,000 words ahead of par on Day 11, and then staying on that number for five consecutive days, thus eating up all of the buffer I'd written. But this was all planned; my July weekends are filled with festivals, birthdays, and other social events, so on the days I do write, I aim to put in at least 1,000 words to stay ahead (my suggested daily goal is 646).
The weather is still very beautiful, sunny and warm, so I spend those writing evenings outside, writing in the cooling air and under a darkening sky. My stats page tells me that 'at this rate I will finish by July 29th', let's see if that will be come true!

Camp NaNo Days 3 to 9: 1,500 does the trick

So I started this Camp NaNo by writing nothing, then I wrote a lot in one day, and then I wrote nothing for quite some time. Summer, it seems, holds so much more diversions than November. However, I am able to write outside, and when the weekend came I put in four days of around 1,500 words each, which brought me back up to par and then some way ahead; I am now at about 7,950 words where I should be at 5,806 to break even. A 2,000 word margin is not bad.
I started by writing the character whose personal story lay closest to my own in recent times, as that somehow seemed like a good starting point (she has a completely different personality from mine, and I hadn't really thought about her at all, I was sure I was going to start with someone completely different, but then I sat down and her story just came pouring out). Then yesterday I started on the character whose personality and personal story could not be further from my own, because I felt like a change, and today I started on the character who reminded me of one of my colleagues (I never 'copy' real people into my stories, but I tend to be inspired by people who share certain characteristics with the people who populate my novel). So it's been nowhere near chronological, but I think the different angles and stories keep me entertained. In the meantime I also added a bit to the 'general' story, because I came up with a bit of dialogue that I wanted to make sure I did not forget, so it hasn't all been 'personal backgrounds'. But that doesn't matter; as long as there are words on the page.

All Change

Today I finished the Cazalet Chronicles, by Elizabeth Jane Howard. All Change is the fifth book in the series, and the one she wrote almost twenty years after the other four. The story is set nine years after Casting Off ends, and it took me a while to get into it. Somehow, this book felt disconnected from the other four in time, space, characters, but also in writing style. In the first four novels, chapters consisted of one character's view of the world, the way they spent their time. In this last novel, characters are grouped together in chapters, with one chapter towards the end including short snippets of almost all the characters in the novel. I say 'almost', because some of the main characters of this (and previous) stories somehow disappear mid-novel, never to appear again.
There were other inconsistencies as well; some personalities seem to have changed between novels (I read one review saying 'the characters act out of character'), some needless repetition, especially concerning food (how many oysters can one book hold?) and a focus on actions rather than thoughts. It feels like this novel could have done with some more editing. She wrote the story shortly before she died, and sadly, it really isn't her best work.
The plot concerned mainly the younger children, whereas we didn't really see the main characters from the earlier novels, some of them appeared just as backdrops. Somehow, this made me sad, as the stories about Polly, Clary and Louise showed them breaking free from the patriarchal constraints; now they were reduced to mere mothers, mothers with relationship troubles.
I would almost wish she hadn't written the novel, although I do love knowing how all the characters ended up. They are back to normal life, the war being over, but somehow normal life is harder for them than the war period. Still, that somehow reduces their lives to petty disputes about petty things, whereas if earlier novels taught us anything, it was that this family will get through whatever the world throws at them. In the end, that does turn out to be true, although again the plot focuses on action rather than thought or feeling. The ending is quite nice, if only because it is an open ending, leaving the reader to dream up a better future for all of these beloved characters. If I were to reread the series again, I would leave out this last novel.
The title says it all, ironically; the story, the writing, even the characters, all have changed. And not for the better.

300th post

Also, just because I love pretty numbers and pretty facts, this is the 300th post on this blog! The amount of posts has been steadily declining over the years, with 105 posts in my first year (2012, a third of the total) to an absolute low of 21 posts last year, but including this post I am already up to 24 for this year! Let's see if I can pour out 300 more posts in another six years time!
And to make the numbers even prettier; in page views I am around 29,585, so in just a little while the 300th blogpost will get the 30,000th view!

Camp NaNo Days 1 & 2: Full steam ahead!

So, the July Camp NaNo started yesterday. I did not write yesterday, I was too busy doing other things and basically did not feel like it. I started writing today, around a quarter past eight in the evening, and I just finished at a quarter to eleven on 2,722 words. In NaNo stats, that puts me somewhere between days 4 and 5, if I were going to write this in a proper linear fashion (as if that would ever happen). You could say it was a productive evening (yes, I am in ironic understatement mode, I just wrote 2,700 words in 2.3 hours and I am almost three days ahead of schedule).
As I mentioned, this Camp I will be writing the background stories for some of my characters in my main story. I thought about doing them chronologically, and had actually only mentally prepared for the first character, but then this afternoon I started wondering about the penultimate character, one of the three that has a big reveal/plot twist in her background story, and I decided to just go for it and write her chapter first. It isn't done yet, but so far it contains about 2,700 words of description/exposition and 22 words of dialogue. And that feels fine, this is a character you don't really get to know in the main story, so there has to be a lot of information to make up for that and put her on the same level with the others.
But more amazingly, somehow those 2,722 words were waiting somewhere in the back of my mind just bursting to get out. I hadn't thought about them before, I didn't know which way this story was going to go, I just sat down and wrote. I've experience that before, when I was in the middle of a story and found my flow, but never with a character I knew so little about. Usually I write lots of dialogue on my first days, because dialogue is the easy bit (for me). And then this happened.
I won't have that much writing time in the coming days, so it's good to have built up a bit of a buffer. I wonder whether I will go on to finish this character's story first, or whether I will have another one of these creative outbursts on the other characters. There are eight in total, so I will easily get to 20,000 words just writing those. And then ending up with eight short unfinished bits to tack on to my already written storyline, sounds like a very NaNo way to go about things!

Camp NaNo 2018 - The sequel

Camp NaNoWriMo isn't only held in April, you can also take part in July. Which feels weird, because July has 31 days to November's and April's 30, so you get an extra day to accomplish the same feat. But who am I to complain?
So this July, I will head back to Camp. Although, can you call it 'going back to' when you're not actually talking about a physical place, but a website with reshuffled cabins? Not sure, but the image works, also because I will be returning to the story I wrote for the April camp (which is the rewrite of my 2015 NaNo novel). I put down the main storyline in April, and now I will be adding the background chapters for each main character, which will hopefully fit in between. And if they don't, I will try not to fiddle with the stuff I already wrote in April, because that will not get me more words, just a more fluent story. And as we all know, the purpose of NaNoWriMo in any form is just output, not a pretty story.
I've set my aim at 20,000 again, not because July will be a busy month (unlike April) but because I've never written in the height of summer. At the moment, the weather is 13 degrees and rainy, but that will probably turn to warm and sunny by the end of the week. Let's see if I'll keep up with my writing when I can also be sitting outside, in the sun, enjoying a novel someone else wrote!

Penelopiad

Margaret Atwood is a great author. I may have mentioned this before, but my admiration seems to be developing in the direction of a full-on literary girl-crush.
So I've been reading Mythos by Stephen Fry, his retelling of the Greek myths. And while mr Fry is great, and his writing style is light and humorous, I seem to be unable to get through the book at any speed. It's more a series of leaps and bounds, with long periods of reading-something-else in between. These thousand year old stories remain a bit dry and dusty, even in the hands of modern writers.
Then I came across The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, a retelling of the Illiad/Odyssey from Penelope's (Odysseus's wife) perspective. Aparently Canongate does a myth-retelling series, in which they ask a couple of great authors (including Phillip Pullman, Ali Smith, A.S. Byatt) to retell a myth from a contemporary perspective. So far, they're at 9 stories, but the aim is to get to 100 in the end.
They were smart enough to ask Margaret Atwood to do one right in the beginning, which gave the whole series a boost. And Atwood wouldn't be Atwood if she didn't give the whole thing a truly feminist twist (although she disagrees with that classification, saying that it was just written from the point of view of a woman). So Penelope is the main character, telling us the story from the realm of Hades, which is firmly set in the 21st century.
Now I hadn't gotten to the Odyssey bit in Mythos, but the story is well-known: it took Odysseus quite a while to get home from Troy, fighting monsters and sleeping with goddesses, while in the meantime his wife waited faithfully, surrounded by dozens of suitors trying to claim Odysseus's kingdom. Or, in other versions of the story, Penelope went all-out with these suitors. In The Penelopiad, she explains that she was just trying to survive the best she could. She is neither sinner nor saint, she doesn't want to be put on a pedestal like Odysseus and his big stories (the cyclops was just a one-eyed guy in a drunken bar fight, according to her), she was just a woman trying to get by.
Another element to the story are the twelve maids hanged by Odysseus upon his return. In the 'official' version, these maids were working together with the suitors and had to be hanged for their treason. In this version, Penelope reveals she asked the maids to spy on the suitors and work with her to help her get by. She never gets a chance to explain this to Odysseus before he hangs the girls. However, Penelope's chapters are interspersed by 'chorus' chapters in which the maids give their point of view, which throws yet another light on the story. But still the double standards are clearly there: the maids sleeping with the suitors earns them a hanging, while Odysseus sleeping with a goddess earns him praise.
Finally, Penelope has some beef with her cousin Helen, who of course started the whole Trojan war by running off with Paris. Helen continuous to haunt her in the underworld, showing up with throngs of suitors still following her. What it comes down to, is Penelope being jealous at Helen for being more beautiful and revered than herself. Given both their back stories, this is completely recognisable and it makes me like Penelope more as a character. She did her best trying to keep Odysseus's kingdom together while he was away, but in the end, she doesn't feel as good about herself as Helen, who does nothing but play men against each other. It should be the other way around, but as with so many relationships, things are not that logical.
The Penelopiad took me about two days of reading to get through. It is not dry, it is not dusty. It is the story of a woman trying to explain why she did what she did, firmly set in our time but describing events of three thousand years ago. And it is completely recognisable; this is a human character, with human actions and flaws. Maybe that is what makes these Greek myths slow reading; all these super-human characters who get away with everything gets boring after a while. We like superheroes best if they show some sort of flaw, some weak point that makes them more human. This is what Margaret Atwood did; she gave a human perspective on a non-human situation. And I tend to agree with her; that doesn't make the story feminist, it just gives another point of view. Something we could use more often, in classical literature. I hope the rest of the Canongate series is as good as this, for these stories, dusted and renewed, still deserve to be retold for many years to come.

Fahrenheit 451

Sometimes you come across a book, a Work of Literature, that has changed the world significantly, and did so quite a while ago, and you'd never heard of it before. And you can't imagine how that happened.
In the case of Fahrenheit 451, Neil Gaiman mentioned it in his non-fiction collection The View from the Cheap Seats. In fact, he mentioned it several times, and with high praise. If Neil Gaiman likes something, and I like the things Neil Gaiman likes, then by all common logic I should also like the thing Neil Gaiman likes. So when I had a three hour lay-over on Istanbul Airport on my way back from Israel, I tried to find the novel. Oddly enough, the airport bookshop put it on number 3 of their books top 10. Not bad, for a book that came out in 1953. Also, it made me want to read it even more. Luckily I was smart enough to check it before I bought it, as the books that were in the top 10 were also all in Turkish. So I bought it when I got home.
Now I'd read enough about the genre (speculative fiction), size (just 50,000 words), title (the temperature at which paper burns), writing process (Ray Bradbury sat in a basement of the university at a typewriter you had to feed 10 cents for half an hour of typing and wrote the whole thing in 9 days) and plot (the protagonist's job is to burn books) of the novel to assume I knew quite a bit about it. Also, in hindsight, Fahrenheit 451 explains the very strange title of Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, which I never quite got. Things were falling into place before I even read it.
And then I read it. This is a novel written in just 9 days, and it took me three bouts of 1-2 hours of reading to get through it. I think there is no other way to read it but fast; you can feel the speed, the urgency with which it was written, and you feel the same urgency to get through it. Not because of the plot, which is, as in any great Literary Work, not the main thing. Because of the ideas, the feeling, the atmosphere the book breathes. This not just about a guy (aptly named Guy) burning books for a living and realising that this is not right. This is about the society he lives in, a future society (the future of 1953) in which people are kept dumb and inactive through government propaganda and excessive home entertainment systems.
As Neil Gaiman writes, this book tells just as much about Ray Bradbury's vision of the future, as it does about the time he wrote it in. Some people believe in 'the death of the author', but this is one novel that cannot be seen separate from the time it was written. It was a warning, a warning against government oppression (the McCarthy trials were in full swing), against fear, against the dumbing down of the population, against the rise of television, against individualism as people isolate themselves through ear buds (Seashells) and live in a world of their own while in the middle of a crowded street. Of course, Bradbury couldn't predict things like the Internet, and in some respect his technologies seem sweetly outdated, but I think he would see his worst fears having become reality if he could see the world today.
Looking back, it is of course ironic that this novel is such a best-seller in Turkey at the moment. It is right up there with 1984 and all those other dystopian novels, the ones that seem to predict the world we find ourselves in more and more. But in contrast to many others, the main point of Fahrenheit 451 is that it's not the government doing these things to people. It's people doing them to themselves. People choosing to be entertained, to isolate themselves, to loose contact with the people that surround them. In that sense, it is closer to Dave Eggers The Circle, although there is no sense of a commercial goal in Fahrenheit.
Bradbury described himself as "not a predictor, but a preventor of futures", and it is sad to see that it did not quite work out that way. The book is on many reading lists in the US, although ironically the book is also sometimes heavily censored because of its 'foul language' and portrayal of Christians. Those who censor a book like this must not have read it for what it is.
I cannot imagine why I've never come across it before, but now that I've read it, I can see its influence on so many other works. I will have to read it again, in a couple of years or so, for all the things I missed when I went through it full speed. This is a book with layers, with subtexts, with themes that will only become apparent on rereading. Luckily for us, the book-burning prediction has not (yet) come true, so it will be waiting for me when I decide to return to it.

Israel

After staying in Europe for far longer than I'd ever expected, my next journey to another continent finally came about. I could let you guess where we went, but the title kind of gives things away. I could have put 'the Holy Land', which is how Israel likes to sell itself to tourists (and hotels, and shops, and what not...) but I don't actually belief land can be holy, even after visiting what is supposed to be just that.
So Israel. We planned the trip around Christmas time (appropriately), when the world seemed somewhat at peace and somewhat quiet. We picked tour dates (we went with a group, because my sense of adventure is not so big that I want to travel this country alone) that would fit in nicely with our days off (Ascension and Pentecost) without checking what would be happening in the country during that time. As we found out, a lot is always happening in Israel, even without the US president deciding to move an embassy. Somehow we ended up in the middle of its 70th birthday, the national Palestinian grief day, a Jewish holiday, and Ramadan. Which gives a nice glimpse of the many sides you encounter: Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and somewhere in between Christians. With several layers of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman history thrown in the mix.
Several Israelis and Palestinians complained that there were very few tourists this year, probably because of the protests or political boycott or general apprehension. But let me start by saying; not one moment during this trip did I feel unsafe. On the contrary, everyone we met was friendly, helpful, and generally relaxed. I wandered around Akko's souk after sundown, with all the shops closed up and the call for prayer streaming from the minaret, and I felt as safe as I could be on the deserted streets. We visited a coffee shop on a Golan mountain (aptly named Coffee Anan), which had been closed the week before due to missiles launched from Lebanon, and the staff was as cheerful as your next door Starbucks (probably cheerfuller, come to that). I did not hesitate to leave my belongings on the beach when I went swimming in Tel Aviv. And even when we were in Jerusalem, where tension is highest and several groups jostle with each other on a very small piece of land, there was no feeling of direct danger. This is a very safe country to visit, unless you go to Gaza, or find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that could happen anywhere on Earth.
As I said, the country is many-sided, but it is also pretty small. It is about half the size of the Netherlands, and two weeks were enough to see all we needed to see. We started in Tel Aviv, which feels like nothing more than very fit people running and swimming and relaxing on the beach, but a short walk to Jaffa, the old town, and a nice tour by Sandeman showed us the history of the place. We then went to Haifa, which didn't do that much for me, and Akko, which has a very nice old city full of Arabic influences. We left the coast to go, via Nazareth, to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee, which is the most depressing 70s kitch hotel conglomerate you'll ever see, but does provide access to some of the religious sites, as well as the aforementioned Golan Heights and nature reserves. We travelled through the West Bank to Jericho, stayed in Jerusalem for two days when we visited the old city, the Western Wall, the Temple Mount and Yad Vashem, with a trip to Bethlehem thrown in, floated in the Dead Sea, were amazed at Masada, and finally spent the last afternoon on the beach in Tel Aviv, where it all started.
It reads like a lot, and it probably was, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like we visited several different countries, some very historic and some very modern, some deeply religious and some completely secular. From Arabic souks to the wide streets and light rail of Jerusalem's modern city, from the golden dome of the Dome of the Rock to the stilled beauty of a Greek Orthodox monastery hidden away on the West Bank, from the hip and happening (and culinary delights!) of Tel Aviv to the quiet conservatism of the Jews at the Western wall, there are so many sided to the country you start anew with fresh wonder each day. Your mind doesn't get bogged down with more of the same, for no two places are the same. And as I said, two weeks was about enough to see it all.
Our group was almost as diverse as the country we visited, with the youngest (me, apart from the tour leader) and the eldest separated by 47 years. The group consisted of people who travelled alone, couples, friends, brothers. Some had travelled all over the world, for others this was the first time outside of Europe. Some had prepared every day minutely, others had no idea of the country they were going to visit. Some were deeply religious, some had already lived in the country for several years, some were very pro-Palestinian, some were more interested in shopping for souvenirs. Somehow, it worked.
All in all, it was a good trip. I won't get into politics now, although those are hidden just beneath the surface of almost every conversation we had. I take no part in those. I just partook of a wonderful, many-layered, many-faced country, with all of its history, all the different religions and cultures and customs, and I was enchanted.

The noise of time

After reading two Agatha Christie novels while finishing up Camp NaNo (I'd never read anything by her before, and they were on sale, and I am not so snobbish about books that I am above reading 1930s crime novels - which were highly entertaining, by the way) I started in my newest Julian Barnes novel, The Noise of Time, which I picked up because The Only Story still hasn't come out in paperback. The Noise of Time is from 2016, but I'd never heard of it, and it felt like a good substitute while waiting for the novel I actually wanted to read. Which must be one of the worst reasons for reading a book, but there you are.
According to the blurb, it is about a man in 1930s Leningrad, waiting to be taken away to The Big House. Funnily enough, it took me quite some time to realise that this man was not all that happy in his life, that he was living under Stalinist oppression, that being taken to The Big House was not in itself a good thing. The novel goes on about this man, a composer, and how his life during the Soviet regime has played out. He is not a friend of Power, in fact he has three daunting Conversations with Power, which form the main subjects of the three parts of the novel, but in the end, when he is tired, he seems to give in to the Party's wishes after all. Or does he? The oppression, the manipulation, the false accusations and sudden disappearances of his fellow musicians are felt throughout the novel, but the protagonist considers himself a coward, someone who will survive because he doesn't stick his neck out.
It was only until I read the afterword by Barnes that I realised this man has really existed. Dmitri Shostakovitch, one of the most important composers of the twentieth century. This was not fiction, but a fictionalised biography. I've mentioned this before, but really, why do stories seem so much more important, seem to carry so much more weight, when you discover that they really happened?
But even if it hadn't really happened, this book still carries weight. The atmosphere, the way he paints an entire decade with just a couple of words, the short paragraphs of just three sentences invoking a whole life. And there are some great sentences in this novel. "Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of time" will stay with me for a while.
In the Soviet Union, art belonged to the people, as Lenin had decreed, but in reality, art belongs to no one but itself. The only way the protagonist made it through those dark times was to cling to his art, to cling to what he believes to be real and beautiful, even when Stalin decides his work is awful and should be banned. Whether everything in this novel is 'true' I will leave for others to decide; this story of suppression and creativity serves as a remembrance of darker times that once were.

Camp NaNo Days 21 to 28: Winner!

Yes! I did it! 20,027 words in a month filled with almost every social engagement and work obligation known to man!
This was not easy going. If I'd optioned for the full 50,000, I never would have made it. 25,000 words may have been possible, but even as it is I had to do some of my writing on my work laptop on the train towards a meeting...
Combined, this must be the wonkiest word count graph I have ever had:

But who cares? I got there in the end. And not totally the end, of course; my personal deadline in my head is always two days ahead of the official deadline.
So, what is next? Hopefully, to continue writing. My story is only about a third of the way through, I'm still liking (and discovering more about) my characters, and the main problem has not even come close to being resolved. Enough work left to do, and as always I'm optimistic about keeping it up, but the reality is I have so far never managed to actually do that. The difference between April and November is that the latter is followed by holiday-filled December, while the former is followed by going-into-summer-relaxation May. So maybe things will be different this time around.
For now, I'm just going to enjoy my achievement!

Camp NaNo Days 11 to 20: quarts and thirds

Wow, this April is going by fast! Just a minute ago we were at day 10, and suddenly we're a third of the way through at day 20. Of those 10 days in between, I spent a total of 7 days not writing. That does not sound like a very productive NaNo, but strangely enough, I am just100 words shy of 15,000, which means I'm three quarters of the way through!
I've been going through in leaps and bounds, writing 1,000+ words on some days and nothing at all on others. This would never work with the 'real' NaNo, and is in fact in direct violation of the 'idea' of NaNo; make time every day to write, but it does work for this Camp NaNo. With only 5,000 words and 10 days to go, I feel pretty confident I am going to make this. Also, because I didn't write every day, and just on those moments I could actually find the time to sit down and hammer out big chunks of chapters, I feel like I should be able to keep up this routine when we get to May. This is far less demanding on my time and mind, giving me the space to actually develop the story and the characters in between. I should have thought of doing this camp thing years ago!

The Blind Assassin

So April wasn't just write, write, write, I also did some reading. Not a lot, mind you, most of the reading of The Blind Assassin took place in March, as this book took a long time to get through. Not because I didn't like it, mind you, but because this is one heavy book. It's 600+ pages, filled with one of the saddest stories I've read in a long time. Margaret Atwood is known for her dystopian novels and this is no exception, but this story takes place in our world. It could actually have happened. Maybe that is what gives it weight over The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx & Crake; this novel deals with places and events that actually were real, so it may well have really happened.
So, what is it about? As the blurb tells us, 10 days after WWII ended, Laura Chase drove herself off a bridge. In the novel, her sister Iris describes the events leading up to Laura's suicide, writing a diary fifty years after this happened, when she is the sole survivor of the events that took place. Interspersed with the 'diary' Iris keeps are chapters filled with other written sources; letters, obituaries, news articles, and most importantly, The Blind Assassin itself, the novel published after Laura's death.
In their youth, for that is how far back Iris goes, they lived a live of luxury; their father owned some big factories and they were the rich family of the village. Their mother died when they are quite young, but otherwise they appear to be the typical upper-class ladies you find in so many novels, educated at home, snubbing their teachers, being a star at social events, etc. This isn't another one of those 'Downton Abbey' novels, however, for they quickly fall down the social ladder when the Depression hits. Their father should close the factories but can bring himself to fire his employees, thus only worsening his own situation. There are rumours of Communists in the ranks and Iris and Laura hide one of these rebellious youths in the attic. To save himself, their father decides to marry Iris off to his main competitor, only to find that the guy didn't keep his end of the bargain. Iris never discloses much about her marriage, but we can read between the lines that it wasn't a happy one.
Then WWII hits, and you can feel the story nearing its climax, with a plot twist that shimmers beneath the lines for at least 100 pages, but you can't really lay a finger on until it hits you. Somehow, all the written sources, all the articles and novel excepts and diary fragments combine to form one great narrative. I reread some of the earlier bits as I neared the end, but this is one of those novels you should reread after you've finished, just to pick up on the hints that must be hidden in the pages.
In short; it is one of those novels that stays with you. A deserved Booker Prize winner, and as such it ticked two of my reading goals for this year; read more Atwood and read more Booker Prize winners. But it also ticks the box of a great story, told with understated feeling, with such imagery that I feel like some of the events actually happened before my eyes, as if they are memories rather than words written down. Now on to happier stories!

Camp NaNo Days 3 to 10: ups and flats

You thought I'd given up by now, right? Writing a novel in April, when work is busy, the weather is turning balmy and you want to be outside as much as possible? Insane! But yet, I'm still doing it.
True, I had some no-writing days in between, but these were planned, as my goal was only 20,000 words. I am currently, on day 10, before I start my writing of the day, at... (drumroll)... 8,388 words! That is almost halfway! And the month isn't even halfway yet!
Stats, because who doesn't love them:

Blurry stats, the bars are my wordcount, the line is the projected wordcount to make a steady pace to 20,000 words.

It goes up a bit shakily, but there you are. Ups and flats, as there are no downs in NaNo (unless your laptop gets burgled and you didn't have a backup, but let's not get into that...).
My average per day is still 838, while I should write 667 to keep up. Now I know there will be a couple of days this week that I won't be able to write, so the goal tonight is to get to 10,000, which is where I should be on day 15. That gives me some room to bide time until the weekend, when writing will commence again in full swing.
Enough with this blog update, I will now get back to writing what I'm actually supposed to. Sorry for the 'mostly numbers' update, I'll get back with some more content when I feel like I can actually waste the time to meta-write!

ETA: I finished at 10,164 words tonight. It took a while, but I got there!

Camp NaNo Days 1 & 2: pretty number updates

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 has started! Wooo!
It started a day late for me, but I made up for that by reaching 2,626 words at 15:15 today. Look at those pretty pretty numbers. I kept my word count at 1,337 (nerd humour) for quite a while after my writing spree this morning, but just now I went back to the story and almost doubled that amount. My NaNo stats page tells me that if I keep going at this pace (as if) I will finish on the 16th of April. And if not, I only have to write 600 words per day to finish on time. Doesn't that sound like something I could actually do?
Now, looking at quality rather than quantity, I am actually pretty happy with what I wrote. I did the prologue early this morning, made a small start on the first chapter, and finished the first chapter just now. Not sure this will be the entirety of the chapter, as it is a bit short and a bit too much 'to the point'; it seems to be in quite a hurry to get the rest of the story started. But I can always go back and edit that later. Now for the second chapter, which is one of the big expositional ones. I really like writing those, as they combine the knowledge I already have of these characters with the new surprising bits I will discover along the way, but they do take a lot of attention to write, and it is usually in these that the little errors creep in which cause inconsistencies later on. But 20,000 words keeps things manageable, so I may even correct those as I write more. When I write more. If I write more.
Onwards!

Camp NaNo preps

As they say in Dutch; een goed begin is het halve werk (well begun is half done). Which is particularly true for writing endeavours, I find, otherwise I find myself staring at blank page for the first half an hour of a writing project. Chris Baty, the founder of NaNoWriMo, wrote a book called 'No plot? No problem!' but then he went on to say that his writing projects always spiralled wildly out of control and how he had to introduce aliens or magic to get everything back on track. But then, he is one of the few people to have won NaNo every year, so maybe there is something to say for his strategy. However, I am too much of a control freak to go down that route, so I actually did some planning!
Step one: something to write on. My previous personal laptop was burgled from my previous house, and since I was low on cash I didn't buy a proper replacement laptop, and have been annoyed with what I had ever since (it was slow, the keyboard wasn't centered in the middle of the laptop, it was slow, it had lots of bloatware, it was slow, I never got around to installing it properly, and also, it was veeeeery slow). I could write on my work laptop, but that would mean the temptation of opening my work email and getting some things 'out of the way' would be too hard to resist; good for my work ethic, not so good for my NaNo project. So, I decided to buy a new laptop. Which, of course, I didn't pick out myself, but my computer savvy boyfriend took care of that. It arrived yesterday, just in time, and this is in fact the first ever blog post from my new machine. So far, I'm loving it, but so far, I haven't done that much with it. We'll see whether I still like it 20,000 (or more) words down the line!
Step two: a plot. As has happened with all my great stories, the plot somehow came to me. J. K. Rowling is always saying how she suddenly got the idea of Harry travelling to Hogwarts while she was waiting for the train to Manchester to depart, and while this sounds very contrived, it actually is how it works for me; I get this image in my head, just one moment in the story, with the setting and the atmosphere, and I know which way it will go. In this case, I was thinking about my successful 2015 NaNo novel, combined with a long-held ambition; to write a story set in one day. Many of my favourite novels, from The Hours to Saturday to Mothering Sunday, are set in the space of a single day. "And in that day, a whole life", to paraphrase Virginia Woolf through Michael Cunningham. So that is what it will be; the central problem of the story (different from the central problem in the 2015 NaNo) will be resolved in that single day.
Step three: characters. As I am doing a somewhat rewrite of my earlier NaNo, I could have just nicked the characters from that story and be done with it. However, for me, that doesn't quite work. I have to know some basics about the character, what they are like, but not everything (and I know my 2015 NaNo characters pretty well by now). I don't keep character fact sheets in which I write down everything from the colour of their eyes to the name of their pet; in fact, usually my characters don't have a name themselves when I start writing. It is like I will meet them through the story: if I know too much about them beforehand they won't appear on the page properly. I do have to have a feeling of who they are, how they will respond to certain situations, what motivates them. So, for each of them I have written down key characteristics plus their answer to the central problem of the novel. They all have a 'working name', which is based on the person I know in real life that is closest to them, or the actual character name if I already know it. The rest I will discover as I write. So far, not a character has failed to surprise me in one way or another as I write, and I am curious to see who will populate my story this time.
Step four: time to write. Ah, this is going to be the difficult one. I usually keep my Novembers relatively free of social events, but this April caught me somewhat unawares, and is also very much full with evenings and weekends filled with events. To keep things manageable, I have set my goal to 20,000 words, but we'll see if I even get that far.
Step five: people to write with. I am not a social writer; I like to curl up on the couch and just hammer away at the keys without making eye contact with another living creature for an hour and a half, but once in a while I do like to attend 'write ins'; social gatherings where people NaNo (yes, that is a verb) together. Camp NaNo doesn't really have any write ins in the Netherlands, but it does have cabins; virtual groups consisting of max 20 people who spend camp 'together'. I have been randomly put into a cabin which seems to consist of nothing more than a message board, on which not a lot of the participants have written anything. I will probably opt out of this cabin and move to another one once I find a set of more active participants. However, this is not my main focus, as I don't really need the motivation of others to keep writing (basically, what I need is time. See also step four). But still, it is fun to have a group of peers around you.

So, that's about it on the preparation front. Writing starts tomorrow, which is Easter Sunday and not a good day for me, as I have two social events lined up. My writing will therefore probably start on Easter Monday, when I can get a good couple of hours in. We'll see how it goes, and I will try to keep this blog updated in between getting the 20k words out.