How I Read It

Years ago I read a lot of fiction because I travelled long distances daily on public transport and it made the journeys bearable. Most of the books I read then are long forgotten, including their titles. Some however I have read again since, and intend to re-read. I'm afraid I'm hard to please as to fiction, having always preferred non-fiction reading. But some books have become an important part of my life: When I talk about these books, you will see that I am not engaging in literary criticism. I am simply telling you about the books I love and what they mean to me. Neither will I be recounting the stories the works embrace, because you may want to read them for yourselves, without any prior expectations.

My copy of Crime and Punishment, by Feodor Dostoevsky, is one of the Collector's Library volumes I wrote about in an earlier blog. I know tastes differ widely, but really, if you do not read this book, you are missing an experience which no other book could ever give you. If you have read it, I recommend that you do so again. Each time I read it, it seems different. It transcends its translation from Russian and also the many years since it was first published in 1866, to enter the mind and lodge there forever. Obviously I am not the only one who loves it, since it is with justification a very famous work.

In the end, however, it is what you or I make of the books we read that counts. Often I think it would be both interesting and refreshing to hear from people who dislike some famous and universally lauded books. How often have we read that a reviewer hates a book through and through.? It would not be long before such a person found him or herself looking for a job. Yet I have opened umpteen novels, read a few lines and closed them forever. Or I have read the first couple of chapters, thinking they are not too bad, and have soon discovered they have lost their charms.

“The Householder”, by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, published in paperback edition by John Murray , London, is a small book, set in India, which I would recommend anyone to read. It is the story of a serious and self-conscious young man in the first months of his made marriage, his developing love for his young wife, how he comes to terms with his interfering mother, his social life, his job...it is a deceptively simple tale, worth reading again and again. It does what a good novel should, to my mind. It rings true. When I got into it, it made me think. I felt sympathy for the characters. And at the end, I felt I had read something worthwhile. It led me along, and I was always interested enough to follow.

This is another important point when reading. Too often have I read and found the train of thought or the plot so tortuous that it was a pain to follow the story, and in the end I just closed the book. When I was very young I used to feel obliged to finish a book even if I really disliked it, and then one day I just realised “I don't need this”, and afterwards I felt freer when reading. However, that has meant that there is now very little fiction that comes my way which I want to finish, and certainly a minimum which I would reread. There are novels which I quite liked when I was reading them, but still I have never felt the inclination to read them again. Two examples of this are “White Tiger”, by Aravind Adiga, and “The Help”, by Kathryn Stockett, which has just recently been made into a much acclaimed film. They are good reads but I do not want to read them again. On the other hand, I intend to buy for myself “No Longer At Ease”, by Chinua Achebe, which I gave away in a fit of generosity to a friend, and which I found unforgettable. In the first place, it is a really good story. But also it explains so much about the background to corruption in Nigeria and other African countries, which most of us only know through those incessant and by now very predictable and boring missives telling of vast sums of money awaiting us in hidden vaults in mysterious banks worldwide which somehow have found their way there after various coups, murders and whatever you're having yourself. Can there really be people who respond to these e-mails? I recall reading somewhere that if even one person does fall for it, the scam has become worthwhile. I would be amazed if even one person ever responds nowadays. The real scam, I think, is on the poor unfortunates who obviously buy copies of these letters believing that by despatching them they will shortly have their fortunes made. That is probably the only way any money is gleaned by those e-mails now. Of course this book was written well before the internet or world wide web existed, in 1960, but somehow it helps to explain the mindset of those who engage in scams of this kind.

The classic novel “Silas Marner”, by George Eliot, is a good read. Once again it has the virtue of being quite a short book, thus holding the attention well. The story has a nice twist which sadly can never totally surprise again after the first reading, and the style of writing is very old-fashiuoned to a modern reader. It was first published in 1861, and my copy is a Collector's Library one, published in 2005. From my liking for shorter books you may conclude that I could not have read any large tomes such as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, or Anna Karenin. On the contrary, many teenage days were spent reading these. “Anna Karenin” was worth reading, but I was too young to understand the feelings which motivated her life choices, and I would not have the energy to read it again now. “War and Peace “ I found wonderful, but I skipped all the war and battle scenes, and I know I would do so again. Likewise with that famous novel by Mikhail Sholokhov, 'And Quiet Flows the Don'. I've never been interested in politics, of which most history seems to be composed, and so the battle scenes in that book I also dispensed with. The one part which stuck in my mind to this day and which made the novel memorable for me was the old father at a time of near famine eating and eating all the family's hardwon stores and getting fatter and fatter through grief when his son was missing. Is it enough, I wonder, to be moved by and find unforgettable just one small part of a novel? Perhaps yes. In the same way, I recall the end of the “Beast in Man”, by Emile Zola, and the terrible and powerful picture conjured up of the troop train loaded with war-going soldiers, heading at speed and driverless towards inevitable disaster.

“Wind in the Willows “ is one of my all-time favourite works of fiction. Every time I read it I find something new, which is not bad for quite a short book. I remember so well how much I loved as a child the part where Mole finds his old house at Christmas and also the place where Otter is looking for his lost son, and how well I remember Badger's house when his friends come upon it by chance when lost in the snow of the forest. It was first published in 1908, and my copy is once again a Collector's Library one. Kenneth Grahame, the author, wrote it for his son, I believe, and I was sad to read that his son in later life committed suicide. Knowing that gives a further poignancy to the novel, somehow.

No doubt many will consider my tastes very low brow, but I tend to like simple stories. For me, Aesop's Fables cannot be improved upon, though I was never lucky enough to have learned the original Greek. In the category of short stories that never weary, The Oxford University Press collection “Modern Irish Short Stories” contains some true gems, including Frank O'Connor's very well-known “My Oedipus Complex”, and “Guests of the Nation”, two totally different types of work, and the unforgettable “Exile's Return” by Bryan MacMahon, If you can get hold of this collection, there are a few in it which will help you understand much more where the Irish 'are coming from', as they say in current parlance. .The stories are of the old Ireland, but no matter how far we have come from those days, somewhere in our souls many of the old ways linger. The devastating story “Going into Exile” by Liam O'Flaherty, describing a so-called American wake in the days before Skype or the internet, makes one appreciate the gifts of communication we have today.

James Joyce's “The Dead” is one of the stories in the collection. I can see it is a well-written piece, but I cannot warm to it. In fact, I must confess the same of anything of Joyce's I have tried to read. Ulysses is one of those books that I just didn't want to get through, which will no doubt shock many people of a 'literary' turn of mind. I appreciate that it was something quite new in its day, and it's famous for its stream-of-consciousness type of writing that changed literature for ever. However, it is not for me. As for Finnegan's Wake, I didn't even get through the first page. I recall reading the autobiography of a column writer for the Irish Independent of many years ago, who insisted that the peculiar language used in this work was actually taken from the common cant of the inhabitants of the Dublin Liberties in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I cannot recall his name but if I come across it I will put it in the blog so that those interested can judge for themselves.

Books are like people, really. Some, no matter how clever or good, you will not personally like. In the end, no matter how much critics praise a work of fiction, if it doesn't find a resonance in your heart, let it go, it is not for you. For every reader, there will be some books which achieve this, and which will become more than acquaintances in your life. Count yourself lucky and enjoy them as long as you live.