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)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Not tying myself up in silly rules like 'I can only read novels I haven't read before', like I did in my 2015 book challenge, gives me the peace of mind to reread novels I loved when I'm in between reading new things. When I finished The Sense of an Ending, I wasn't ready to dive into another new novel just yet. Some novels tend to stick in my mind, leaving no room for a new novel to take up enough space to really get into it. If I then do start reading a new novel, I unavoidably get lost somewhere around page 50 because I wasn't paying enough attention in the beginning, which can ruin an entire book for me.
So, rereads are a Good Thing. In this case, I wanted something short, but not too light; just a couple of days worth of reading before I could dive into the next novel on my list (The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, in case you're wondering). After digging around in my bookcases I came up with Neil Gaiman's last proper novel, which I was sure I'd written something about on this blog, but which turns out to be only a passing mention in my 'holiday reads' of 2013. Funny, how you can remember something as having a profound impact on you, but then cannot find any evidence of said impact when looking back.
Anyway, the novel in question is The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It is about a young boy in England, about forty years ago, who has a falling in with magic and otherworldly stuff and doesn't come out all that well. The story is told through the same character (now an adult), remembering things as he sits next to the ocean of the title. This framework sets us at some distance from the story, which works very well in this case, because we the readers at some point realise we know something the protagonist doesn't (I won't spoil the ending for you). However, the 'and then this happened, and then that happened, and then I said...' structure isn't the easiest read, and upon rereading I felt further removed from the action and emotional impact on the main character than I did on the first read. Maybe because I already knew what was going to happen, breaking the suspense I felt the first time around.
The great thing about Neil Gaiman novels, though, is that they are not starry-eyed, happy ending, the-hero-saves-the-day kinds of novels. His style is magic realism, and the magic and the realism are present in equal proportions. People do stupid things. People do not say important things because of legitimate reasons (and not as a plot device). People hurt one another and do not make up, or forgive, or forget. People are generally as real as they can be. The magic, on the other hand, is also as real as it can be. It is accepted as something that simply exists; not everything is logical, or explained, or analysed. Magical things happen, with a semblance of realism, and life goes on. They can be dark things, dark magic, performed not only by the 'evil characters' but also by the 'good guys'. This is also a fact of life; good guys do not only do good things. And magic cannot save everything. It is not the deus ex machina solution found in so many fantasy novels, but a means to an end that sometimes fails.
In short, you can disappear into a Neil Gaiman novel, finding yourself in a world that is connected to our own, but with some elements added that you can simply take for granted, without having to know every little thing about them. And this was exactly what I needed, going from one novel to another. Nice as this is, it somehow feels as if this isn't enough appreciation for a book I read with such anticipation and joy the first time around. Maybe the Julian Barnes novel was still roving around in my mind, or maybe knowing the ending somehow takes away the biggest emotional tension. In which case I envy all who haven't read it yet, as they will still have that experience upon the first read. As I will have with many other books to come.

The Art of Asking

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

52 Books Challenge - The lists

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One Hundred Years of Solitude

After finishing Netherland, I decided it was time for another one of those classic novels I still have to read (on a sidenote: I think that in 50 years time Netherland itself will be considered one of those 'must read' classic novels, but that may be my prejudice as a New York-loving Dutch person). Since Gabriel García Márquez has just passed away, and One Hundred Years of Solitude has been living in my bookcase for a couple of years now, ever since my boyfriend got the novel for his birthday from a Mexican exchange student, I decided to go for that one. My boyfriend isn't going to read it even if he somehow finds himself in 100 years of solitude, and a lot of good things have been said about it.

This wasn't my first Márquez novel, because for Spanish class in secondary school I'd read No One Writes to the Colonel. In Spanish. This was, to put it mildly, a challenge. Week after week we'd wrestle through the paragraphs, each having to read and then explain a page in turn. You got to prepare at home, so I always had lots of translated words scribbled in the margins, but still I couldn't make any sense of it. And I wasn't the only one, after finally making it to the final word in the novel, mierda, our teacher triumphantly slammed his copy of the book shut, threw it on his desk, and said; "Si! Mierda!" We stared back at him, expecting some kind of explanation. When he just stood there waiting for an equally enthusiastic response from our side, one of the students ventured: "Mierda? Shit? What does that even mean?" He took a big dramatic Spanish sigh and said: "If you don't understand why that is a great ending, you don't understand literature." Which I thought a bit rich, even then.

Anyway, I would not let that experience put me off of reading
One Hundred Years of Solitude, only this time, I would be reading in English. The front, consisting of a naked lady staring vacantly in the viewers eyes, somewhat baffled me, especially in connection with the blurb, which informed me that the novel was about a little village, and especially about seven generations of a family who had lived in that little village for one hundred years already.
I'm now more than a quarter of the way through, and I don't know much more about the naked lady, or about the seven generations. What I do know is that this book is brilliant. 
I love magical realism, which is why I love Neil Gaiman's work, but this is a whole different thing altogether. You just have to let your suspension of disbelief stretch into impossible lengths, and just go with whatever is happening, even though all your instincts are telling you that a minute ago everything was just as it is in the real world. Also, the style is great, with some characters drawn out over the pages, while others are put down in a few brushstrokes, but then they all turn out to be completely different then you'd originally thought. Big, important events (death, war) can be condensed into a single line, which you will then miss and have to reread to get, whereas small, uneventful things can be drawn out across the pages, with some paragraphs stretching multiple pages.
It took me a while to get into, to get the dense, layered writing style, the somewhat-recognisable-but-still-strangely-different setting and the many references and figurative elements, but now that I'm into it, I want it to last as long as possible. This isn't a novel to read quickly or glancingly, but also, I don't want it to end.
So once again, the label 'classic' has proven to be correct. I feel like I am repeating myself with every classic novel I read, but again, this will be one of those novels that will stay with me for years to come.

Writing when bored

So Neil Gaiman said (quite a while ago, but only today did he actually post a link to the interview on his blog) that "the best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored." Which is why he is temporarily suspending his use of social media, as they distract him from what he should really be doing, namely "making things up".
This is very true. Writing is done best when your head is clear of other things, and it's wandering around, hopping and skipping over a wide variety of subjects and events and memories, until somehow and from nowhere inspiration hits and you're filled with this wonderful feeling of A Great Idea That Must Be Written Down Now. Only experience has taught me that writing it down at exactly that moment actually kills the process, so I tend to muse on it a bit longer until it is cristallized into exactly what I want to say, and then I write it down (by which I mean: I take out a notebook and pen, and literally write it down. Using a computer to type things up is wonderful, but it also makes you type things you can easily delete again, whereas when you put in the effort of actually writing, you think about what you're writing and exactly how you're saying things more. That's the way it works for me, at least).
Now my head hasn't been exactly empty or bored lately, so logically I haven't been doing much writing. But I have had this storyline at the back of my head, complete with protagonist/narrator, ready to be fleshed out whenever my head felt the time was ready. This holiday, my head became sufficiently cleared enough, and somehow whole themes, sentences, concepts, dialogues and paragraphs came jumping out at the weirdest moments. Usually while I was slightly bored about the thing I was actually doing, such as trying to finish a 1500 piece jigsaw puzzle, cleaning the toilet, or biking through town. You have to be doing something else, it doesn't work when you're lying in bed ready to fall asleep, or walking a long distance, or just sitting still. There has to be some conscious, but minimal and slightly boring, activity going on in your head, with your subsconscious being sufficiently unoccupied.
This makes me both happy and sad: happy to know that I can still have these moments, and then write them up and feel incredibly accomplished, and sad to know that once I have to start working again, my mind will be taken up by lots and lots of practical things that will push out any space for creativity or musings of any kind. Maybe someday I will be able to have a dayjob that requires minimal attention span and doesn't 'linger' in my head so I can still write in the evening hours or during weekends, but I don't really see that happening. Art isn't a part time thing. I wish I were Neil Gaiman.

The read-on moment

So I've been reading The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of a Window and Disappeared, the novel that ' everybody'  has read and that is still in the top 10 of English novels at my local book shop (where, probably, about 10 people buy an English book a week, so it may not be a very accurate representation), and to tell you the truth, I didn't like it very much.
The writing style interesting, typically Scandinavian (even in translation this shines through), and it takes a while to get into. Jonasson likes to explain things that are very very obvious. He likes to give so many details that when asked you could actually tell which colour someones toe-nails were painted. He likes to make most of his characters either very stupid or very weird. All of this is amusing, funny even, when you start to read, but as you get to page 50 you start to think: is he still using this trick? I'm kinda done with it now!
Around page 150, I was seriously contemplating not reading any more. I hardly ever put down a book without completely finishing it, but this might have been one of those rare cases.
But then, somehow, he made me read on. It was not that the story gripped me (I won't spoil too much, but it is sort of a murder-mystery combined with Forrest Gump, only in this world, Forrest would be one of the normal guys compared to most of the characters), you can see where this story is going from about chapter 2. No, his writing style somehow got better, more natural, less in-your-face typical. The annoying little side-steps and superfluous 'of course' and minute detail somehow worked. It felt like Jonasson himself was struggling to get to this part of the novel, and now that he was half-way, and knew where it was going, he could somehow relax and write better.
Which is funny, because that is exactly what happens when I write a novel.
But leaving that aside, for me, every novel has sort of a 'read-on' moment, when you get totally immersed in the story and just cannot put it down. For some novels, this is the first line, such as "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much" or "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" (if you don't know where these are from and do care, look them up). Sometimes it takes a while, such as with A Game of Thrones, the novel that a friend had been bugging me to read for months some time around 2004, and when I finally started, it took quite a while for me to like it (I've re-read it several times now, and it still takes a while). Several Neil Gaiman novels have the same effect. Other novels you can't really appreciate until you've finished them, and then you have to go back and re-read them. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was one of those for me, and The Remains of the Day too.
It makes me wonder whether everyone experiences these 'read-on' moments, and whether they're actually the same moments for everyone. And are they really the moments an author was fully confident that their story was going to work, or are they imposed upon the novel by the reader?
With my next new novel, not sure which one it's going to be, but I'll try to pick a good one, I'm going to try and keep track of this. I still have to finish reading about the 100-year-old first, although that does not seem like such a problem anymore now.

The story vs the words

So yesterday I got into a bit of an argument with my uncle about books. It was my mother's birthday, and my aunt and uncle had just given her a book (Breaking Dawn, in Dutch, which amused me to no end as my mother will never ever be anywhere near the stereotypical Twilight Saga reader, also, she hadn't heard of or read about any of it before...) Anyway, my uncle turned to me and said something along the lines of "it's so sad, giving people books as presents". Why, I asked him. Because you read them once and then are done with them, he said. (Ironic, since his preferred birthday presents are bottles of alcoholic substances, which rarely make it through the evening, but there you are.) I was to amazed to respond, but my aunt added; "yeah, I always read my books once, and then I'm done with them, so then I give them away." I found my voice, and said something like "the book I'm reading now I've already read 10 times before and will probably still read when I'm 50", to which my uncle snorted and said that he found that hard to believe. I then said that it all depends on what type of book you read; with some books, you are done with them after you've read them, because you know all there is to know (crime novels are a good example). But some books, which are generally called Literature, you can read over and over again, because its not about the story, its about the whole thing, the language, the message, the themes, the setting, the references, the words, the way the sentences flow, the characters, the psychology, and the story.

I think they got a bit angry after that, as if I was writing down the books they read.

But honestly, it's not as if I'm being snobbish about this. I've also read loads of books you just read once, then you know what it's all about, and then you don't have to ever read them again. Dan Brown's books are a good example: I read all of those, but only once, and I wouldn't read them again anytime soon. Once you get the plot, the whodunit, and the intended message, you're done. I've read some books for courses, some African and American and Indian literature, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but will probably never read again. I just don't get any more out of it than I already have (which is mainly due to the difference in background and literary culture, which is a shame, but it happens). This does not make these books any better or worse than 'literary novels', it just has a different purpose. (The irony here of course is that the books my aunt and uncle like to read are called "literary thrillers", which makes it seem as if they have any literary potential, while they really don't.)
I've read some books 10 times, and still don't 'get' them entirely. Atonement is a good example. Once you've read that, you know the trick, the thing, the extra surprise at the ending (which I won't spoil for you here). But that does not make you go 'owww, know I know what it was all along, I can just toss it out', it makes you go 'I have to read this again! Now that I know what it's really like, I can see the whole thing in a different light...'. And the second time you read it you discover all kinds of themes that weren't there the first time, and foreshadowing, and lines running through the novel which connect it from beginning to end even though it exists in four different parts. And then you read it again, and you discover even more... With other authors its about the use of language. Neil Gaiman is a good example here; his stories are also multi-layered, but they generally end up with the good guys winning (generally a girl) and the bad guys losing. You know this when you start. But his language, the proverbs, the little stories, the in-jokes, the references, everything is just so funny but thought provoking at the same time, that you can read it several times and still not 'get' everything out of it.
And now I'm just talking about contemporary authors, not even the great classical writers like Dickens Chekhov or Woolf or <fill-in-your-preferred-author>. Nothing much can happen in their stories, but still they are considered great authors, because it's not only about 'what happens'.

I know I've studied literature for four years, so I'm bound to look at it differently than your average 'pleasure reader', but I know there are many people out there without a degree in literature who think the same. Or experience the same, rather. And again, it's not that one type of book is better than the other, it's about what you need or want in a book, how you look at it, what it is supposed to do for you. If all you want is to be told a story, to be amused, to think about what will happen next and feel clever when you'd figured it out just a few pages before the protagonist does, then great, read on, dear friend. I would love to tell you that you're missing out, that other books could give you so much more, but if that's not the thing you're looking for (or have time for, or have the mindset for) then it won't do for you what it does for me. So we can both be happy reading what we're reading, even though we don't understand the other's choices. That's the great thing about books; you can escape in them.

Diversity in writing

I have just finished By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham, who you all (I hope) know as the author of The Hours. Now The Hours is one of my favourite novels, so when I found out that there was a new novel by him, I had to read it (I have somehow missed Specimen Days being published, probably because I was studying biology and only had eyes for fantasy, like most eco-nerds). I was expecting something great and moving and romantic, or at the very least, something set in a historical period with a woman as the protagonist.
Instead, I got a novel about a man in his forties, living in New York, and going through a massive mid-life crisis. Granted, he is an art dealer, so there is something romantic-artistic about the novel, but other than that, the only connection to The Hours is that there is a gay person in it (I won't tell you who it is, because that would be spoilering. Also, I just found out that the author is gay himself, which may explain something).
Don't get me wrong, By Nightfall is brilliantly written and very gripping, and I think it is quite an accurate depiction of current-day New York/society (I've never been to New York, but I hope to be able to tell you in a couple of months). I loved reading it, I will probably read it again (also because it is small and light, but still takes you a couple of days to get through it, so an ideal travel book). But it was just so very different from what I was expecting. So very different from the novel that I know.
This is something that I am still genuinely awe-struck by; authors who can produce a new book about every 5 years, and have all those novels be about completely different things, different periods, different people, even in a different genre. Everything I have ever written has similarities on some basic level and no matter how hard I try, they always somehow creep in. I wish I were able to somehow step out of that "history of writing" and do something completely different, and every NaNoWriMo I try, but it has somehow never happened.
With Ian McEwan (I will always get back to him when given the chance), you can see he has many different subjects and periods and characters, but there is always that thing that connects his novels, his style of writing, the little details, the things that make you go "ah, typically McEwan!" (although Solar is perhaps the exception to that rule, now that I think about it...). That is what it must be like to be a great writer; to be able to deal with a diversity of subjects, but still have readers recognise your style (or "voice", although that sounds very artsy-partsy). I think Michael Cunningham hasn't fully done that, because I did not recognise the same voice that told the story in The Hours, but I do admire his ability to deal with stories that are so very different. Granted, there are some great writers who stick to one area or field or subject and write brilliant books too (Jane Austen? Neil Gaiman?), but I have to admit I do prefer the first kind of author. Because with them, there are always new worlds, new societies, new ideas, new people to discover. So I can't wait for Michael Cunningham's next novel, although I am afraid I will have to wait for a couple more years!

Storytelling

I was going to start this post with a nice quote by Neil Gaiman, but I can't remember the quote and I am unsure where to start looking for it (Smoke & Mirrors, Fragile Things, or his weblog) and as I don't have a lot of time to write this, I will just dive in.
I think storytelling is one of the most important things we humans do. It is so fundamentally human (we probably started developing language and telling stories because we needed something to do by the fire at night, which was the beginning of culture) and so important (people have survived the most horrible conditions; war, concentration camps, being stranded in remote places, through storytelling) that I think most people could never do without. I tell a lot of stories, talking to people about things I have done or seen or heard, sharing pieces of information or news, or just recounting things that I am reading or have read. I don't think I could survive a day without telling at least one story, because even on those rare days that I talk to no other person I still have my cats to make up some story ("Soooo, you thought you were going to jump inside my bag and travel with me, didn't you? Well I'm sorry, but I'm not going out today, so you're going to have to find another way to have an adventure..." etc).
The thing is, with so much energy going into these stories, and a lot of my energy going into other people's stories (not only things friends tell me, but also the plays I'm reading for my Modern Theatre course and the book I'm translating for another course), and then some energy going into writing or thinking up things for classes, I don't have any energy left to write down my own stories. I tell stories, but I don't write them. Maybe it was good I had such a quiet period as a teenager, because I did write a lot then.
I now understand why some writers (e.g. the aforementioned Neil Gaiman) like to hide in some quiet cabin in the woods for a couple of months each year so they can write their novels. You need the quiet, you need to be able to gather all the little strands of the stories and thoughts whirling around in your head and make them into something consistent and beautiful, and you need to be able to put that down in words without being distracted by other things. You need to focus on just your own stories, and nobody else's. You need to be able to tell the story to your paper first, because if you've already told it to 5 other people, it will feel less original and unique and fresh when you finally get to write it down (btw, "writing manuals" don't agree on this, because some say it is good to share your story with as many people as possible to flesh it out... But I don't believe in writing manuals anyway). I had one of these "quiet" periods just before classes started again, and I started writing on a story, but then I became busy again and the thoughts flew away. Let's hope I'll have a really quiet summer holiday (strange thing to hope for).
On the other hand, I think I couldn't really write without having contact with other people. I need to hear about their stories or things that are going in the world, not only to remember myself what life is really like, what people are really like, what kinds of things are really happening, but also just for inspiration. The most random news item or comment or story can suddenly pull open a box full of literary wonders. Also, I'd just go plain nuts being on my own the whole time, with no one to talk (see?) to.
So there would have to be some happy middle between complete isolation and contact. I guess I could do with a little house in the garden, if I (we) ever have a big house, and a garden, and enough time on my hands.