A Reading Pile for March

Here are some books I am hankering after reading in March.


Some have been on my shelves for years; some are more recent additions. I would like to think that is is possible I could read them all in March, but I expect that would be overambitious...

As You Like It at Theatr Clywd.

About twenty minutes from our home is a wonderful theatre called Theatr Clwyd. It is usually packed with an appreciative audience. There's no unwrapping of sweets or other irritations, and the seats are comfortable and well-raked so everyone has a good view.


We go there fairly frequently, and I can't think of anything they've produced that I haven't enjoyed. On Saturday we went to see Shakespeare's As You Like It, a play I haven't seen before, and think it is the best production I have ever seen. It was funny, very well acted (there was not one wrong note), beautifully staged and I could hear every word. Of course the script was pretty good too... It made me realise, again, how little there seems to be left to say because Shakespeare has usually expressed it perfectly already.

Smut: two unseemly stories by Alan Bennett

A sweet little surprise came in the post yesterday; no, not a Valentine from a secret admirer but a book called Smut by Alan Bennett.


I have encountered Alan Bennett twice in the flesh: the first time in the Cheltenham Literature Festival when he was interviewed on the stage in front of hundreds (and described as a 'National Treasure') and in a small cafe in Liverpool when he seemed to be with a group of students. Each time he was wearing his low key but distinctive uniform: tweeds, corduroys and woollens in beige, brown and blue. There is something soft and understated about him - and very English. He seemed equally at home in both places. He may be our National Treasure, but he also knows how to be one of us.

I think this comes through in his writing. It is set in the England I knew in my childhood, a time when all the colours now seem to be the 'touched-up' sort from bottles of tints. Even though he writes about mobile phones and the internet, this earlier time is always present. The people are holding on to their mid-twentieth century hang-ups. Homosexuality may be legal, but it is still risqué. They have sex, but they have it in the English awkward way: if they are not embarrassed, they know they ought to be. This, after all, is 'smut' and they can't admit to enjoying it. They talk archly, and the narrator, who intermittently comes to the fore makes hilarious and clever asides.

The first story, 'The Greening of Mrs Donaldson', concerns a 'fragrant' 55 year old widow who not only takes on an unusual job in a hospital, but also receives an even more unusual payment in lieu of rent. The second story 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes' features a woman of a similar age, but this time concerns her whole family and their various secrets. To say any more than that would give away too much. They both end neatly and satisfyingly.

In the first story Alan Bennett mentions a picture by Harold Gilmour called Mrs Mounter. She was a doughty old land lady, and the portrait obviously made a big impression. Mrs Mounter is a typical Bennett character: a feisty and pretentious exterior proving to hide something of great depth - once the thin and brittle covering is cracked. I have seen the portrait on display at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool: a place where Bennett's characters - who are ostentatiously cultured - would feel at home. I remember hearing about another momentous encounter with art when Alan Bennett was a schoolboy. The art in question was a biblical scene with a half naked woman lactating so forcefully that she could feed the infant Jesus a foot or two away. 'And that,' Alan Bennett's teacher had pointed out to her ogling charges, 'is smut.'

Of course it was better when he told it. Whenever I've heard the word 'smut' I've thought of it. The two long short stories in this book called Smut are similarly entertaining and memorable.

Many thanks to Profile books for sending it to me.

Entering the Realm of the First Emperor of China (220 BC)

I am nearing the end of of my Qin Dynasty reading, and as usual the book pile has grown a little as I have been carrying out my investigations...



I started with the first few chapters (early times to Han) of the Cambridge Illustrated History edited by Patricia Buckley Ebrey which gave me an excellent grounding,



I then revisited a book I had read a couple of years ago: The Dynasties of China by Bamber Gasgoigne. Just a couple of pages in that introduces the era.


I then moved on to read The First Emperor edited by Jane Portal.

This was a series of essays on various aspects of the life of the first Qin emperor, but its main focus was the archeology of his tomb near Xian. Various experts described the buildings, the scientific studies, the clothing, the social aspects and what is known about the emperor's life. There was a little overlap, but this added to the dove-tailing effect as one expert took over from the one who had gone before. The book is stunningly illustrated, and I now feel I know a lot about the contents of the emperor's tomb.

One of the authors of the essays was Michael Lowe, and I read his book: Everyday Life in Early Imperial China next.

This concentrated mainly on the Han empire that came after the Qin. The Han Empire lasted for several centuries, whereas the Qin lasted for less than two decades, so there is much more information about life under the Han than the Qin. One of the main sources of information is The Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian, and I have read the pertinent parts of this too, having discovered one night that it was available on the Kindle ( The First Emperor Selections from the Historical Records by Sima Qian, translated by Raymond Dawson).


Frances Wood's The First Emperor of China
also depends on Sima Qian's book, but she also uses the content of the Emperor's tomb to give a concise description of life in Qin China. Again, this book was very well illustrated with drawings which added a lot to my understanding of the era.


The remaining books I have dipped into: China Land of Discovery and Invention by Robert K.G. Temple - which is a catalogue of Chinese inventions, and each time I look I am amazed at the range of Chinese discoveries made so long before our own. The Anthology of Chinese Literature from early times to the 14th century by Cyril Birch

gave me a taste of various Chinese writing including extracts from Sima Qian, and Zhuangzi which enticed me to read more (the Raymond Dawson translation and also Zhuanzi's Essential Writing).

The I Ching was recommended to me by Anne S. I have so far only dipped into this too but already I see it provides an excellent insight into the mindset of China in this era.


I like to feel fully immersed in a time and approach it from as many different ways as I can find. So apart from the books I have also been watching films: Confucius

(which was full of epic battles and gave the sense of a wandering scholar), Hero (more fighting, but this time one to one and conveyed in a mystical and fantastical way)

and tonight, perhaps, The First Emperor

after which I shall come blinking back into the light of the modern day.

Frost feathers...

...on the inside of my window.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

Today I read and finished The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elizabeth Tova Bailey, having downloaded it onto my Kindle. Unsurprisingly, given the title of this blog, many people have told me about the existence of this book ever since it came out a couple of years ago.

It is beautifully presented, even on Kindle, with lots of small drawings, and I learnt a lot of interesting facts about snails. The book is mainly about how a debilitating disease causes the writer to slow down. She turns it to her advantage: as a result of her constant vigilance she was able to make an observation no one else had ever made about snail parenting skills.

Despite her predicament, the account is almost cheerful, and reading it I learnt to appreciate, once again, the value of 'the slow'.

My Book on Kindle

I am delighted to report that my book is now available on Kindle.
I have, of course, downloaded a sample straightaway...


Thank you Seren!

I Consult I Ching

Following on from Anne S's comment in my previous post, I found an I Ching reader on-line. It invites you to ask it a question so I asked 'How can I improve how much I do?'

What it did then seemed complicated and involved tossing a virtual coin six times and then decrypting the resulting code of heads and tails by using instructions and sayings from I Ching.

The answer it gave was as follows:

Cast Hexagram:

9 - Nine

Hsiao Ch'u / Gentle Restraint

Winds of change high in the Heavens:
Air currents carry the weather.
Dense clouds blow in from the West, but still no rain.
The Superior Person fine tunes the image he presents to the world.

Small successes.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

No matter what you do, the fruit of your labors never seems to ripen.
Your reward remains just out of reach.
Men have gone mad from such anticipation.
Don't lose your balance lunging for the brass ring.
While the Fates continue to restrain you, go them one better and display a self-generated restraint and grace.
Look for the humor in the situation.

As Anne says it is like consulting a wise sage - and gives me an idea of how the ancient gave advice.

It strikes me as timeless. I am sure the same sort of opaque guidance was given by the Oracle at Delphi, the divination bones of the Ancient Chinese and those who consult shamans and astrologers everywhere.

This morning I can see what the point of this is too. Its function is not to tell the future or actually give an answer, but encourage the punter to step back and reflect. To consult the oracle the king had to send a messenger up a mountain in southern Greece; to extract an answer from a divination bone the bone had to be heated and cracked, and wait while those cracks were interpreted. I am sure it calmed the commander contemplating battle and could give a king either confidence or a chance to reconsider. Perhaps the longer and more arduous the journey the better, because it is the journey that counts. Likewise, the astrologer has to gaze at the stars, and then consult tables, and the fortune teller in the tent takes her time to gaze into crystal balls or deal cards. The punter waits, and then after the response comes he still has to work out what it means. As he does he is reflecting and doing nothing. In Tao terms I guess this is a result in itself.

So the phrases I have decided to take with me today are:

The Superior Person fine tunes the image he presents to the world.
Small successes.
Don't lose your balance lunging for the brass ring.
While the Fates continue to restrain you, go them one better and display a self-generated restraint and grace.
Look for the humor in the situation.

So I shall edit, celebrate small improvements (rather than aim for the large brass rings), avoid facebook ... and laugh. That sounds very good to me.

Early Imperial China I

I am in the thick of another place, another time: early imperial China. I am concentrating on the Zhou, Qin and Han dynasties, and very interesting they are too.



I started with a film called Confucius (551 - 479 BC) to give me a taste of the 'Spring and Autumn' era at the end of the Zhou Dynasty. It seemed windswept, cold and desperate. Reading about the philosopher's life in the Cambridge Illustrated History of China, the film seems true to life. Women were little seen except by the hearth or, once, dressed in red silk dancing in a troupe. Confucius was a teacher longing to give advice to the leaders of the many different states which were at war with each other just then. People should put others first, he thought, and should respect authority.



The film shows him wandering around the plains of China for most of his life before kings realised the wisdom of his words.

His disciples wrote down his words in a series of 'Analects' ('Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you,' was one of the things he said (which seems familiar)) and these were taught to subsequent generations. Mencius, for example, was taught by Confucius' grandson and asked King Hui of Liang (370-319 BC):

'Why must your majesty use the word 'profit'? All I am concerned with are the good and right. If your majesty says, 'How can I profit my state?' your officials will say, 'How can I profit my family?' and officers and common people will say, 'How can I profit myself?' Once superiors and inferiors are competing for profit the state will be in danger.'

Which seems especially pertinent today.

The Daoists, which were around at the same time, offered another philosophy which was more mystical and centred on the 'Way of Dao' or the source of all that exists. The Daoist works seem more poetic and open to interpretation. I suppose it could be summed up with the words of the Beatles: 'Let It Be.'

One of the source books, 'Laozi' seemed to recommend ignorance:

'A sage governs this way:
He empties people's minds and fills their bellies
He weakens their wills and strengthens their bones
Keep the people always without knowledge and without desires,
for then the clever will not dare act.
Engage in no action and order will prevail.'

However, Zhuangzi (369 - 286) seemed to give a more humorous interpretation, and I have downloaded his book of parodies and parables onto my Kindle.


The age that brought Confucius and Tao in China, also brought Buddha in India and Aristotle, Plato and Socrates in Greece. Maybe people had settled down long enough to think, or as the Cambridge Illustrated History puts it, ' began to stand back and look beyond'.


The west and the east are compared at the end of the chapter on the Qin and the Han Dynasties that came next. This is roughly synchronous to the Roman Empire and the two have something in common: they both built walls to keep out barbarians, they both sent out settlers and officials to administer and gather taxes from their colonies, educated the local land owners, and even the areas of the two empires were similar. However, there were differences too: the Chinese culture was crop-based, and there was much greater cultural cohesion due to the use of one common script.

The agrarian society is yet another reason for the decline in Chinese science in later years (which so fascinated Joseph Needham): commerce was held in contempt in ancient China, and merchants were heavily taxed. During the Han Dynasty the state also took over the distribution of grain, as well as the running of the iron foundries and salt works. All of these discouraged trade and industry: both of which drive the discovery of innovations in science and technology.

Other reasons (as I have discovered earlier in my reading) may have been the prestige of a career in the civil service (so gifted people were attracted to this rather than to a career in innovation), and the lack of an aristocracy (this meant there were no factions, hence little competition for power and so little internal fighting - which again precluded the necessity to innovate).


Having made notes on the first three chapters, I decided I wanted to learn a little more about The First Emperor, and so have moved onto the book I bought about three years ago when I went to see the Terracotta army in the British Museum with my mother. I have only read a couple of chapters but the text is proving to be as inspiring as the photographs.

The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt

Siri Hustvedt's novel The Summer Without Men is lingering with me this morning. I finished it last night. Although a short novel, with a scant 200 short pages, it is rich with several themes skilfully woven together. It begins with the words: 'Sometime after he said the word pause, I went mad and landed in hospital.' The 'Pause' is the mistress of the narrator's husband; it devastates her because the marriage is a long and, until then, a happy one.

By the start of the novel, Mia has recovered enough to leave hospital and goes to live in a rented cottage in rural Minneapolis close to her elderly mother's retirement home. Her mother is a widow, and her friends are known as the Swans - all women - the pupils that turn up to Mia's poetry class are all pubescent girls, and her next door neighbour is a woman with a four year old girl and baby (and largely absent husband) the summer of Mia's recovery is an all feminine one.

The book chronicles Mia's return to strength, with a variety of intelligent and astute observations about the mind, consciousness ('the hard problem'), mental illness, male and female relationships, marriage, sexuality and ageing. In fact, the whole of female life is here: the effect of motherhood (there is a particularly touching scene when she helps with the baby next door) - in both the young and the old; childhood and the painfulness of finding a place to fit; middle-age and the acceptance of aging and death.

An unusual and attractive feature of the book is the way Mia addresses the reader. She observes that most readers of novels written by women tend to be women, and by the end of the book she addresses that reader directly, 'You, friend out there...' she says, and by that time I felt I certainly was. I shall certainly be reading more of Siri Hustvedt. I have a feeling she could become another favourite author.

Thanks to Sceptre for sending me a copy of this book.