Plainsong - Kent Haruf

Picture this. Me. It's yesterday morning. I've just finished back-to-back reading the Age of Unreason series by Greg Keyes which had itself followed on from Karen Miller's Mage duology. I need a Change of Pace. A break from SFF. I also need to make inroads on the TBRs as all the above don't count as they were library books. I picked up Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Hrm. Not sure. Could be a bit worthy. What the hell - Scot Pack liked it when he read it recently so I'll give it a bash. Can't hurt... Stay up in bed reading it until finished. Blimey. That was good.

I just can not believe that I let it sit untouched on my TBR pile for five months. This is a serious contender for May's Bookling POTM and it'll have to be a pretty special book that knocks it off the top spot.

In Plainsong, "The story weaves together several characters: pregnant 17-year-old Victoria Roubideaux; the McPherons, an elderly pair of cattle rancher brothers who take Victoria in; Tom Guthrie with his two young sons 'Ike and Bobby, who've been abandoned by their depressed mother; and a high school teacher who knows them all, Maggie Jones."

An aside: Interesting that I used speech marks for the quote I lifted, as Haruf's own approach to punctuation disregards their use entirely. This is not as irritating as it sounds.

Plainsong is a deceptively simple, spare telling of these characters day to day lives and their intersection with each other in the rural community of Holt. Nothing unexpected happens, you can see what's going to happen to the characters and the plot itself almost non-existent. But it's all so beautifully written. All of the people, and the situations they find themselves in, are so very real and it was heartbreaking to watch them do or say things that you know will bring them unnecessary pain. This is such a beautifully written book and I shall be making people read it. Possibly while I watch.

Kent Haruf is an absolute master storyteller and I see that he revisits some of these characters in Eventide so I'll have to tell Mr B to add "just one more book" to the birthday demands list. Or perhaps two if I also include Tie That Binds...

The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

So. I've just finished The Book Thief and it was one hell of an emotional journey. I'll post more once I have had time to articulate my thoughts.

Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

Inkheart is a book about books and a book about the love of books – which made it sound like a Bookling sort of book to me! It is really intended for the young teen market however it caught my eye on my niece’s bookshelf so I liberated it. Although the first in a trilogy, Inkheart ties up enough lose ends to be enjoyed as a stand alone read.

The novel tells the story of Meggie (a twelve year old girl who really loves books) her father Mo, a book-binder, and a stranger named Dustfinger who shows up at their doorstep on a wet and windy night. Although it’s not revealed at the outset, Mo has the ability to bring characters from books into the real word by reading aloud. His talent comes at a price however as something from this world is always sent into the book in their place.

It is Mo’s fault that some of the evil characters from the titular book-in-a-book Inkheart are at large in this world and Meggie, Mo and Dustfinger (joined by Meggie’s book-obsessed great-aunt Elinor) set off to recover the last copy of Inkheart. Although I’d describe this as a magical tale, it is definitely not a Harry Potter clone – it’s set in modern Italy and inventively imagines what would happen if fully-formed fictional characters came to life.

One of my regrets about reading Inkspell was that I did not get to do so when I was the same age as Meggie as the younger me would have absolutely adored it and may possibly have given it a top ten place in her book box. The adult me noticed that the phrasing is occasionally slightly awkward but it’s hard to tell if this is as a result of the translation from the original German or not. The story itself is entertaining enough to smooth out any quibbles though and I did I stay up well past my bedtime on Sunday to finish it.

I enjoyed this book and would heartily recommend it to any young (or old) reader - although the villains are a bit scary so maybe not too young... I look forward to borrowing the second book in the trilogy, Inkspell, and the slightly ominously titled Inkdeath in when it’s published in April. It’s due to be released as a film starring Brendan Fraser later this year so get in before the hype does!

The Assassin's Cloak

The Assassin's Cloak is an anthology of “the world’s greatest diarists” edited by Irene and Alan Taylor. The ever-lovely Mr B bought me this book after I spotted a mention of it on dovegreyreader’s blog a few days ago when she was talking about her daily reads for 2008. I’ve spent a very happy couple of hours this afternoon browsing through January and I am now fully caught up. I must confess that I also read the first one for tomorrow (my eye was caught by Pepys describing his uncle’s new wife as “a pitiful, old, ugly, ill-bred woman in a hatt”) but then I stopped myself as I intend to savour this book rather than gulp it down.

The book is laid out like a diary with 1800ish entries from 170 diarists spread throughout the year. Some contributors are very famous diary-keepers such as Benn, Pepys and Waugh but others are more obscure (although that could just be me!) and the dipping in and out of such a wide variety of lives being lived across several centuries is where the real joy of this book comes from. There is a useful, albeit brief, biography section at the end of the book which I have already used several times. Occasionally it is frustrating to read an entry when you don’t understand the context but luckily there is a solution…

I Wrote On The Pages!! I’ve seen the “do you or don’t you?” topic debated before and I felt that this was a good choice of book to test my nerve on. I am happy to report that it’s been a very liberating experience and I have enjoyed scrawling in the margins such illuminating notes to my future self as “more context” and “Who is she? Find out.” So far the writing is in pencil as I just could not bring myself to write in pen but we’ll see how that rule fares when I don’t have one to hand.

I look forward to my daily dose of this book throughout the year and I already have plans to dig out my copy of Waugh’s collected diaries (that I had forgotten I owned) and to buy several others…. Does the booklist ever stop growing?

Oh – and in case you are wondering where the title comes from (as Mr B and I were): “A diary is an assassin’s cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen” – Willian Soutar, 1934.