Category Archives: books

Stuff, excess of

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I found this essay about stuff by Paul Graham last year. It struck a chord at the time because we were packing to move from a bigger home to a smaller one. We gave away a lot of stuff but still brought a fair amount of it to the new place. There is now a room full of still packed stuff because it can’t be unpacked until the loft has been insulated and prepared as a storage space. So I have to wonder, if we haven’t touched all that stuff for 13 months, do we really need it? Do I even remember what it all is?

I dislike clutter. Whether PG’s theory about parsing is right or wrong I don’t know but I do know that, in my own home at least, I’m far more relaxed in a clean, tidy room than a dirty, cluttered one. So I’ve gone paper free with as many of my bills as possible and I’ve gone digital as far as possible. I download books to and use the Kindle app to read them on the iphone. I haven’t bought any CDs for quite a while, instead preferring to use Spotify. I realise that you can’t find everything on there but I find about 90% of what I want to listen to and that’s a good enough trade off for me. For films I use Sky Movies. In the rare case that I find a film that I’ll want to watch over and over again I will consider buying the disc but it’s more likely that I’ll just watch it again on Sky.

Christmas and birthdays are the worst times for accumulating things I don’t need. Specifically for these occasions I have a wish list on Amazon but sadly Kindle editions of books aren’t available as gifts yet. (Mind you, I do like ‘real’ books. I don’t class them as useless stuff, after all, they are useful when I need to save the iphone’s battery and, unlike digital editions, I can lend them to people. Anyway some books, such as cookery books, have to have a decent physical form to be of any use.) I don’t mind if people go ‘off list’ to buy me a gift provided that it’s something they’ve thought about. I have one dear friend who likes to introduce me to new books and it’s rather lovely. But on the whole I’d rather not have presents because I have everything I need and want.

Mother’s Milk

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This book describes the damaged and painful relationships of the Melrose family. It opens with a five year old’s stunning recollection of his own birth. That is the peak of the entire book. From there it slides into dull middle class family life. There is boredom, betrayal, frustration, exhaustion and obligation. While the prose is fantastic, the characters were fully formed from the beginning and I felt that I was plunged in amongst them and left to work hard on getting to know them. Admittedly this may be because I haven’t read The Melrose Trilogy which precedes Mother’s Milk.

It is touching how both Patrick and Mary are desperate not to let their families’ histories poison their sons although it’s inevitable. Their fears about the futures of their children felt tender and real. Patrick’s despairing and sometimes drunken trains of thought are also excellent. They are so vivid and insane.

Most of the characters are unlikeable because they constantly swallow down their emotions. I waited for some kind of outburst (climax?) but it never came. I didn’t get the wit either; it was just annoying, like some kind of pointless competition to say the most clever thing, when instead they should have spent some time talking sensibly to try to sort out their real problems. All the adults in the book avoid issues rather than dealing with them head on.

Summary

Well written but nothing actually happens.

Shantaram

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I’ve finally finished reading Shantaram, on my third attempt to read it to the end!

The Good

I really enjoyed the travelogue aspect of it which took me back to India. I loved the parts set in the slum. He’s clearly spent a lot of time with Indians and has a great deal of affection for them.

The most unpleasant parts of the plot were the best written. His term in jail, the war and the murders and violence were all compelling.

It’s a good story with plenty packed in and has the feel of a number of books of different genres all shuffled together.

The Bad

I didn’t like any of the characters apart from Prabaker. Partly that was because there were just so many characters and he didn’t develop them very much so you didn’t get the chance to know them. Having said that I didn’t like Lin either. He always seemed to be boasting about himself: how he could speak all these languages, how he was a good fighter, how he healed people, how well he did at making money for the mafia etc. I also didn’t like the way he described how close he was to some people towards the end of the book and yet they had hardly been mentioned before that point.

The Ugly

The worst bits were the philosophical discussions (couldn’t stand all that rubbish about God being the ultimate complexity) and Lin’s romantic feelings for Karla and Lisa which made me cringe. I was also going to add all the supposedly clever stuff that people like Didier and Karla spouted but at least Lin pulled Karla up on that at the end of the book.

Summary

I’m glad I read it. It’s not the kind of book I usually go for but it was a remarkable story and made me want to go back to India.

Eat, Pray, Love

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I’d wanted Eat, Pray, Love mainly because I was interested in the Eat part in which (I’d heard) she goes to Italy and eats everything in sight. As it happened, food didn’t feature as much as I’d hoped. Even so, the book was a decent enough read and I have to take my hat off to her complete honesty throughout but I didn’t identify with most of it, apart from when she writes about not wanting to have children. I’m very glad someone is getting those points of view out there:

[I still can’t say whether I will ever want children. I was so astonished to find that I did not want them at thirty; the remembrance of that surprise cautions me against placing any bets on how I will feel at forty. I can only say how I feel now- grateful to be on my own. I also know that I won’t go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life; I don’t think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth. Though I suppose people do reproduce sometimes for that reason – for insurance against later regret. I think people have children for all manner of reasons- sometimes out of a pure desire to nurture and witness life, sometimes out of an absence of choice, sometimes in order to hold on to a partner or create an heir, sometimes without thinking about it in any particular way. Not all the reasons to have children are the same, and not all of them are necessarily unselfish. Not all the reasons not to have children are the same, either, though. Nor are all those reasons necessarily selfish.]

[…To create a family with a spouse is one of the most fundamental ways a person can find continuity and meaning in American (or any) society. I rediscover this truth every time I go to a big reunion of my mother’s family in Minnesota and I see how everyone is held so reassuringly in their positions over the years. First you are a child, then you are a teenager, then you are a young married person, then you are a parent, then you are retired, then you are a grandparent – at every stage you know who you are, you know what your duty is and you know where to sit at the reunion. you sit with the other children, or teenagers or young parents, or retirees. Until at last you are sitting with the ninety-year-olds in the shade, watching over your progeny with satisfaction. Who are you? No problem- you are the person who created all this. The satisfaction of this knowledge is immediate, and moreover, it’s universally recognised. How many people have I hear claim their children are the greatest accomplishment and comfort of their lives? it’s the thing they can always lean on during a metaphysical crisis, or a moment of doubt about their relevancy – If I have done nothing else in this life, then at least I have raised my children well.

But what if, either by choice or reluctant necessity, you end up not participating in this comforting cycle of family and continuity? What if you step out? Where do you sit at the reunion? How do you mark time’s passage without the fear that you’ve just frittered away your time on earth without being relevant? You’ll need to find another purpose, another measure by which to judge whether or not you’ve been a successful human being. I love children but what if I don’t have any? What kind of a person does that make me?]

When my mind is quiet, these questions occasionally surface. Who am I and what is my purpose?