Poetry corner

Sneakily, I realised that I could catch up with my quotas if I read a poetry book, as they tend to be much shorter!

Of course, poetry cannot really be read quickly. The fewer the words in a poem, the more carefully each one seems to have been chosen, and the more attention they demand. However, I decided I could at least widen my knowledge by picking poets I had never read.

I had already read Larkin's This be the Verse, the famous poem where he says, "They f**k you up, your mum and dad" and an excellent poem it is too. However I had never really fancied reading any more of his work, for the shameful reason that he didn't fit my romantic conception of a poet with his unattractive looks and specs. Fortunately my book-a-day scheme is leading me into unfamiliar ways!

The poems I enjoyed most in this collection were about animals: Wires, At Grass, and particularly Myxomatosis. This last is only 9 lines wrong but it perfectly captures a moment in time and the rabbit's confusion. The last lines are particularly touching and if it reflects an actual incident, you can only be glad that Larkin was there to dispatch the poor animal.

Without Reservations: the Travels of an Independent Woman by Alice Steinbach

Caroline lent me this, so I rushed home to read it (after Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two of course!)

It's the true story of a woman who decides to take a year off from her pressurised job as a journalist, and to travel and to try living in the moment much more. It's written in an easy, flowing style and you will drool at the descriptions of Paris, Monet's Garden, Venice and many more locations. It's a kind of modern Grand Tour. Really, she was brave enough to do what many of us would like to if we could organise the time and money to do it.

I thought her best writing, however, was her "remembrance of times past". She captures exactly those moments when we realise, for example, that the little boy we knew has gone forever, that we never realised those seemingly-ordinary, everyday moments would ever be lost to us in the past. Then she picks herself up and gets on with her life.

Luckily for her, getting on with her life often seems to involve meeting gorgeous foreign men!

Too much testosterone this time ...

I started thinking about the Victoria Holt historical novels I used to read as a teenager and quickly found some on Ebay. I started with The Demon Lover. Victoria Holt writes just as well as I remembered, with a sympathetic heroine who finds herself in some danger. Disturbingly for today's readers though, the heroine falls in love with the man who drugged and raped her. It's not just the historical setting of these Gothic romances which are outdated, it's the attitudes. I've got another couple to read, but hopefully these won't be setting feminism back 100 years like this one.

In other news: Strictly Come Dancing

I watched Austin's testosterone-fuelled tango* on Saturday night and ladies, I am a convert!

I'm not too disappointed by John Sergeant's continuing success. Yes, public votes for John mean that better dancers have to leave, but by this stage of the competition they would be competing against each other anyway. Heather has had to leave, and Cherie, but to be honest I don't think they would have been in the final anyway.

If John ends up in the final though, that WOULD be a travesty!

* Scroll down past the main screen and you can click on clips of the different dances from Saturday.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I'd heard of this, but hadn't read it because I feared it might be too upsetting (it is the story of a murdered teenage girl, and of how she watches her family from Heaven). Well, in parts it was very upsetting, particularly those concerning the little brother. However, it was also an enthralling read which I couldn't put down. It was even funny in parts. Alice Sebold's humanity shines through in her treatment of all the characters.

In which I get all philosophical

In my reading pile was The Fall by Albert Camus (in translation, thank goodness). This is a monologue and as you might expect from the philosopher Camus, the emphasis is on the ideas rather than plot. This made it rather hard going. It is well written, but the concepts are such that you cannot appreciate them on one reading. Another point of difficulty is the narrator's character: is he being truthful? There is not much action either, except for one very striking scene at the heart of the novel ...

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

I finished Snow Falling on Cedars last night and I was really caught up in it by the end. I could see then why the author had set things up in the detailed way he had. San Piedro Island had become a real place to me by the denouement, and when I looked up it was almost surprising not to be in the middle of a terrible snowstorm.

I still had time for The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, which is only 121 pages long. Bennett writes amusingly of the Queen taking up reading, and there were several laugh-out-loud moments. Things get a little more serious as the book goes on, with the author imagining how singular it must be to be the Queen, and there is an excellent conclusion.