A long blog about books

We started this blog last New Year, largely inspired by reading Jonny’s summary of his and Mand’s year on theirs. Suddenly I saw a point to blogging. It was the answer to all my vague ideas about keeping notes of the funny things the boys said; it gave me a way to record milestones without producing one of those naff (to my mind) baby books; it was something to do with all these millions of pictures I insist on taking; it was a way of remembering all those really important things in life that I have always been horribly unable to retain. The only thing I can tell you about our lives in 1997 was that I gave up smoking on August 2nd (at 4pm actually….it was quite a big thing in my life at the time). The same will not now be true of 2007.

So after a year of this blogging malarkey, I wanted to follow the Hills’ lead with some sort of “sum up” of 2006 and, perhaps unsurprisingly (predictably?), I thought about books. Please note – this may be the kind of blog entry you don’t want to bother to read! You have been warned.

Dominic’s year in books began and ended with Enid Blyton. I’m not quite sure why Blyton’s books are a bit sniffed at – they seem pretty good to me. He started with the 3 Faraway Tree books, dwelt for a long time on the short story collection, The Green Story Book, and is finishing up with The Secret Seven. Beyond these, Chris enjoyed reading him Philip Pullman’s the Scarecrow and his Servant and Dad did the honours on holiday with Emil and the Detectives.

Max has a more eclectic taste. We have read Charlie and Lola a lot. We’ve enjoyed Where the Wild Things Are, The Snail and the Whale, A Squash and a Squeeze and we’ve loved Badjelly the Witch. He has spent a lot of time objecting to Dominic’s perplexing attraction to “chapter books” - always said in a very sneering and dismissive manner. Max is less of a story lover than Dominic, but despite appearing to pay very little attention, he still seems to be pretty good at keeping track of whatever is going on.

Madeleine’s not quite ready to give us a book review yet, but her likes and dislikes are pretty clearly expressed. Her favourites have certainly been the beautifully written and illustrated books by Janet and Allen Allberg, Each Peach Pear Plum (which I just love) and Peepo. The boys never had these two so it gives a novelty bonus to the reading adult, although she also loves Charlie and Lola and Meg and Mog: both of which, while good, are very, very familiar to us now.

I spent a lot of the year in non-fiction land, reading about seventeenth century France and keeping the “Oh my God I’m at home with 3 small children, my brain has disintegrated” worry at bay. I’ve tried to read some “good” books but have been pretty disappointed with Ali Smith’s The Accidental, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty and Hilary Mantel’s Beyond Black. However, things perked up when I read Julian Barnes’ Arthur and George and started Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, although since I finished that in 2007, it probably shouldn’t be mentioned yet. Shona and I have also begun a very enjoyable little reading project, which we decided we should start at the beginning with, and so have read/re-read the Iliad and the Odyssey. As a happy offshoot from this, I can strongly recommend The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood.

Chris has travelled, and therefore read, a lot. He has raved about James Ellroy’s The Black Dalia, which I then read and enjoyed, and he has joined the merry throng of people enjoying Jasper Fford’s novels. At the beginning he loved these but having borrowed the lot from Mandy and then managed to leave two (yes two) of them on different planes at different times, some level of disillusion may be setting in.

And finally, although not a book, I feel I should mention that we both seem to have spent a lot of time reading wikipedia. We worship at its Url!