I've joined Amanda's Summer Reading Challenge (thanks for pointing me in that direction Danielle) largely because it is a challenge with no rules and no specific genres. This works well for me in that I want to read anyway, and it focuses my reading a bit over the summer months.

I wandered around my bookshelves and pulled a few books off that I’ve been meaning to read for a while. The result is a bit of a strange mix, but I’m looking forward to them. Since the challenge lasts two months, I thought it would be realistic for me to select a book a week (bearing in mind that I’ll be reading other African titles alongside this selection!). So, here are my choices in alphabetical order:

ALLOTTED TIME - Robin Shelton
The subtitle reads "twelve months, two blokes, one shed, no idea" which just about says it all really! Here's hoping it inspires my own vegetable growing efforts (don't talk to me about slugs).

THE BLUE TAXI - N.S. Koenings
I've never heard of this author before, but the book is set in East Africa (cover blurb doesn't say where). I always find it interesting to compare how Africans write about our own countries and how outsiders write about them.

EXTRA VIRGIN - Annie Hawes
"amongst the olive groves of liguria" is lent to me by a friend and so obviously needs a bit of prioritization in order to read and return it. The proliferation of books on settling in Italy as a foreigner is amazing, but I seem to enjoy most of them.

JANGO - William Nicholson
Second in the Noble Warriors Trilogy. I've loved his books for teenagers and look forward to this immensely. If you haven't read him yet, start with his Wind on Fire series, beginning with THE WIND SINGER.

PITCHING MY TENT - Anita Diamant
I adored THE RED TENT and enjoyed (but less so) GOOD HARBOR. This is a collection of Diamant's essays. If I get it done before my folks arrive in June, my mum can take it home with her - good incentive.

RESTORATION - Rose Tremain
Another loan from Francofinn - I always feel guilty if I've borrowed a book and yet not read it. This one has been gathering dust for some time. More than a year ago I started it, was loving it, then I'm not sure what happened, but I stopped and now I don't remember the plot at all. So, here's to starting over.

SWEETNESS IN THE BELLY - Camilla Gibb
"...an exquisite homage to Islam" apparently. Never read anything by her and suppose I should. The story is split between Thatcher's London and Haile Selassie's Ethiopia - an interesting contrast.

VERA - Elizabeth von Arnim
Von Arnim is someone I've discovered through the blogosphere and been wanting to read for some time. It is usually a case of living in hope that a copy of one of her books will appear in a secondhand bookshop. However, luckily for me, Elaine at Random Jottings has taken pity, and kindly sent me a copy and I'm really looking forward to getting my teeth into this, especially since I found THE ENCHANTED APRIL in the Oxfam bookshop yesterday, and ELIZABETH AND HER GERMAN GARDEN on bookmooch. Yes, I know I said I was only buying African books, just ignore me.

We had lovely guests over for dinner yesterday, and I had such a wonderful day preparing for their appearance that I thought I'd share it. Firstly, I decided “forget work!” which meant that I could mosey around doing things gradually.

Since it needed chilling in the fridge, I started by making a chocolate lover's dream from Celia Brooks Brown's NEW VEGETARIAN (if you try this yourself, track down Green & Black's white chocolate because you get the lovely vanilla bits in it, making it even more interesting). Easy peasy - no cooking (except for melting of chocolate and butter), and only 5 ingredients, although for the faint-hearted among you look away now, for it is made almost entirely of double cream and chocolate, the other bits are incidental. So delicious.

Next I set the soup on the go: (Zuppa di Zucca if you're being correct, pumpkin soup if you're me) from Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers THE RIVER CAFE COOK BOOK. This is a deceptively simple but stunning soup. You wouldn't think so. How exciting can pumpkin soup be? Very, it turns out. We've never served this without the table falling silent as it is first sampled, followed shortly by recipe requests. And everyone has seconds, even though it is the starter. Even die-hard pumpkin haters.
If you are vegetarian, replace the chicken stock with a top notch vegetable stock, like Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon.

After lunch I took the bridle way shortcut on my way down to town. I'm such a frequent passerby that the nesting blackbird family ignore me now. The stinging nettles are out, along with other weeds and wildflowers - the combined effect with the low overhanging trees, makes for a deep green tunnel as you make your way along. I posted off bookmooches at my friendly local corner store/post office. I've long since given up queuing for hours at the main branch in town, where thirty people will stand in an inching line for half an hour. In my teeny local branch a two people queue is a flurry, and three or more he might call in crowd control! The advantage (or disadvantage, depending on your point of view) is that he is both interesting and interested. So my adventures at the Soyinka event were asked after...

A little while later I popped into the Kenyan Indian newsagent and the Turkish dry cleaners. Then the local farmers' market, The Goods Shed, had flat leaf parsley, asparagus, strawberries, and raspberries, all from farms within an eight mile radius. Canterbury Wholefood had the courgettes, rocket and pinenuts to round out the menu.

I cheated and took a bus home (running out of time) and was rewarded with the following sign: “With all teenagers in the South East so stylish and mature it's no wonder we get confused. Please carry a discount ID card to help us save you money!” Sadly no-one asked for ID. The recent profusion of grey hairs must have given the game away.

My last prep was to whizz up a sundried tomato pesto, and rinse the salad(See the brilliant Denis Cotter's THE CAFE PARADISO COOKBOOK), while roasting the vegetables for the “filling” in the risotto bake (NEW VEGETARIAN again). As the guests arrived, that slipped straight into the oven.

So, if you had been over chez us last night, you would have been served with:

Zuppa di Zucca
Rocket & flat-leaf parsley salad with currants, parmesan, a balsamic dressing and sundried tomato pesto crostini
Torta di risotto with char-grilled courgettes and three cheeses
White chocolate mousse torte
Coffee/tea

Delicious. Who said vegetarians don't eat well?!

Recently I was delighted to discover an influential African connection to the Cathedral, dating back centuries! Thank you to my father for sharing with me SACRED BRITAIN: A Guide to the Sites and Pilgrim Routes of England, Scotland and Wales by Martin & Nigel Palmer.

"For over fourteen hundred years God has been worshipped in this Cathedral through the prayers and praises of countless generations." This is imprinted on the evening prayer handouts at Canterbury Cathedral, serving as a reminder of the age of the place, and of all the people who have passed through it. Yesterday evening the Cathedral choir was quite, quite superb - the boys' voices in particular absolutely soaring. While the sun is setting later, it was not direct shafts coming through the windows, but a resonating glow of light through the medieval stained glass.

Among the many who have passed through, Adrian the African, comes as the greatest and most wonderful surprise to me:

In 668 the Archbishop of canterbury elect, Wighard, died while in Rome to receive his authority. The Pope, St. Vitalian, decided to appoint in his place a man who would broaden the understanding of the newly established Roman Church and assist in establishing a Catholic hierarchy in Britain. In fact he sent two men: one was St. Theodore, the other St. Adrian.

Theodore was a Greek monk born c.602 in Tarsus, in what is today central Turkey. Adrian was an African - possibly a black African - who had become abbot of the great monastery of Monte Cassino. It was to him that the Pope originally offered the archbishopric, and it was the African who recommended the Greek from Turkey. The Pope agreed, so long as Adrian went as well. Adrian was in fact to live for thirty-nine years in England until his death.

Theodore laid the foundations for a just and equitable administration of the Roman Church in England and tried to heal the wounds between the Roman and Celtic Churches. It was his brilliance that set the Church on firm foundations. St. Adrian became abbot of the monastery of St. Peter and St. Paul just outside the city walls in Canterbury. This later became St. Augustine's, and today its site is occupied by St. Augustine's College. This gentle but firm and utterly incorruptible African monk established the monastery as a place of high learning, teaching Greek and Latin as well as philosophy and ethics. So when you walk through Canterbury today and see and hear people from a wide range of religious and ethnic backgrounds you are part of one of England's great cosmopolitan cities - where once Greeks and Africans ran the show and did so in such a way that what we have today we owe in no small part to these two men. (pp.114-116)

Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of the Anglican Church worldwide, a fascinating architectural and historic UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it is falling apart. Pollution is causing the outside stone to peel off and disintegrate, and towards the end of last year a section of one of the rose windows simply fell out overnight. It is a mammoth task. They have launched a fundraising drive, should you feel inclined to dig deep into your pockets.

There's nothing like wandering around a vast hall full of excitement - books are in the air! Well, truthfully, a library or good bookshop is better, but it is the promise of things to come which I always enjoy at the London Book Fair. Not working at buying and selling them this year meant that I was free to roam at will. I do miss knowing ahead of time what is coming out later in the year - anticipation and delayed gratification do add to the relishing of a new title by a favourite author. So collecting catalogues and chatting with the reps I used to see in the shop was interesting.

However, LBF is changing, and some of the big publishers wall themselves in like Fort Knox, staffing the entrance with folks that eye you with suspicion ("You shall not pass!"). It is always refreshing to pass the smaller publishers, like the charming Snowbooks (whose Emma Barnes coincidentally keeps a delightful publisher blog), a much friendlier lot.

My favourite freebie from the fair is an advance copy from the kind folks at Faber of Barbara Kingsolver's ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE: Our Year of Seasonal Eating. It is not out until July, so there's no information on their website yet, but the blurb from the back of the book reads:

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia they set themselves a task: to eat local produce, grow their own or go without, in an effort to live in a way that is better for them and the environment.

This is the story of their first year. They plant vegetables, rear turkeys and get to know their local farming community, overcoming substantial hurdles they face by trying to live a simple life in an "eat now/think later society". Along the way they discover just how compromised our food supply has become and how estranged we have become from the natural processes of the food chain.

Part memoir, part journalistic investigation, and stuffed full of delicious recipes and factual sidebars, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for living in a way that is enriching for communities and respectful of the planet.

I thoroughly enjoy this kind of book, increasingly important in today's world as we search out ways to make our lifestyles more sound and forgiving on the environment and those around us.

When I was a child, growing up on a mission station in rural KwaZulu, there wasn't much choice in the matter - we had no electricity, collected rainwater for drinking, pumped water from the river for household pipes, grew vegetables and kept chickens and geese. Town was far away and expensive, and we needed to be more or less self-sustaining. John Seymour's SELF-SUFFICIENCY was our bible and I remember having a (somewhat bizarre, I grant you) fascination with the pictures describing slaughtering animals - but then we did that ourselves too. It seemed like a perfectly normal way to live, but I realize now how incredibly hard my parents worked to keep us all going. But this re-engaging with land, growing your own vegetables, keeping your own animals is receiving a resurgence in interest in the west, which is no bad thing.

A few years ago Leo Hickman was challenged by The Guardian to live a more sustainable lifestyle in London for one year. He wrote about it in the paper and afterwards produced a wonderful book called A LIFE STRIPPED BARE: my year trying to live ethically, describing his experience. I highly recommend it (my own copy is loaned out at the moment so I can't give you a sample). It is funny and thought-provoking, and entirely non-judgemental. What comes across strongly is Hickman's desire to live a healthier lifestyle for his family's sake. He is not prescriptive, but stresses the importance of educating yourself in options available for the life you lead, and then making informed choices that feel comfortable to you, rather than simply accepting the structure of wider society as an insurmountable and overwhelming obstacle to change: engaged living, if you will. It was a funny and poignant book. A companion reference volume A GOOD LIFE: the guide to ethical living covers issues and suppliers in the UK, but read A LIFE STRIPPED BARE first, as it is the bit with soul.

Thanks to Musical Dave for pointing me in the direction of an ongoing urban sustainable living project in New York City. NO IMPACT MAN blogs daily about his family's experiment, with some wonderful, thoughtprovoking and hilarious results. The "comments" are often marvellous as people make suggestions for how to improve his life.

Something we are very interested in ourselves, although my meagre planting this week of the herb patch is such a tiny step. This weekend, it will be purple sprouting broccoli, lettuce and tomatoes going in. I'll let you know about the Kingsolver. In the meantime I'm thinking climbing beans and pumpkins...

Dover Castle in Kent is one of those really satisfyingly castley castles, if you know what I mean - moats, ramparts, tunnels, hugely thick walls, a fabulous keep...the sort of place one imagines English castles to be when you're small and reading books about England from the other side of the world. This weekend I visited with a friend and we had a whale of a time exploring. Did you know that apparently Henry VIII moved around a lot because of the stench in his castles when everyone was in residence? It looks like Dover used rainwater in the garderobes, however, so it may have been on the cutting edge of lavatory science! The stained glass windows in his castles kept his glass cutters busy - every time he replaced a queen, they had to replace the windows! There are fantastic medieval tunnels with the guns still in place and a tucked away concealed guardroom at the bottom of the moat, with a simple but effective multiple gated entrance slightly easier to defend. You really get a sense of the age of the place down there (the castle was built in the 1180s).

One of the big attractions is that beneath the castle, in the famous white cliffs themselves, are a rabbit warren of tunnels begun in the Napoleonic era but extensively expanded during the twentieth century. The evacuation of Dunkirk was organized from here and you can still see military command equipment and paperwork on display from the period. There was an underground hospital as well, and extraordinary footage shows ships sinking and bombers being shot down off the coast with crew bailing out in parachutes. I was particularly amazed by this because serendipitously, like so many books I read, the latest choice slots right in with this period. Last week on the new books display at the library was K.M. Peyton's most recent offering, which I snaffled up immediately. A choice between a "how to drive" manual and fiction? No contest!

I loved Peyton's Flambards series as a teen - the horses were ok, but what really gripped me were the planes and cars - the excitement of new inventions coming into their own was perfectly described. She had a superb sense of place and time, and I also remember the series being rather angst-ridden and romantic, which is perfect young teenage reading. I haven't read them since, so this recollection is no doubt flawed.

The new Peyton, BLUE SKIES AND GUNFIRE, is set in the Second World War at the time of the Dunkirk evacuation, and having just seen the footage at Dover when I started the book this weekend, I had vivid images of aerial bombing raids in my head as I read. Josie is evacuated from London to stay with relatives in the country. Hormonal and stroppy, it is a life-changing experience for her. She has moved near an airbase and by the end of the book we have discovered, through Peyton's plot-driven descriptions, something of the dreadful realities of the lives of fighter and bomber crew at that time.

Yesterday's Sunday Times (another coincidence) carried a review by Michael Burleigh of a new book out on on RAF Bomber Command (BOMBER BOYS: Fighting Back 1940-1945 by Patrick Bishop). Burleigh writes: "The statistics are sobering. Between September 1939 and May 1945, RAF Bomber Command lost 47,268 men, killed on operations, with a further 8,305 killed in training missions. Almost half of the 125,000 men who volunteered for this service did not survive: a rate of attrition considerably higher than that suffered by officers in the first world war." If you cannot quite picture what this means, the review notes:

The odds were against the bomber boys. In 1942, fewer than half of all heavy-bomber crews would survive the 30 sorties of their first tour and one in five would make it through the second. In 1943, only one in six could expect to survive one tour and one in 40 a second. A Canadian airman kept a book, listing names and odds. "Do you know, Bill, you're on the chop list tonight?" When asked to stop, he objected:"We know some of us are not going to return."

H.E. Bates's FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR FRANCE begins with an eerie description of flying back towards England following a mission, and the thoughts in the pilot's head as the wounded plane limps and then crashes. Bearing in mind that Bates himself flew during the war, this description is no doubt creepily accurate. In BLUE SKIES AND GUNFIRE Josie dates a young man, but then falls in love with his brother, a fighter pilot. While one might be forgiven for thinking the result would be a fairly predictable read, it isn't. For one thing, Peyton's own experience (she was aged ten to sixteen over the course of the war years) shines through. The plot delivers a real kicker at the end, which has you re-evaluating human nature (I won't say more). This is teen fiction of the highest order, especially for those who like historical novels, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It seems appropriate to finish this post with an extract (apologies for the length, but I think it is charming) from Peyton's wonderful Author's Note at the start of the book, as her experience colours the book throughout. She writes:

I lived on the outskirts of London and saw much of the Battle of Britain in the sky above. I was on a train going to school which was machine-gunned, and had to shelter under trees a few times out in the country from a Spitfire, flying very low, shooting up a Messerschmitt, or vice versa. I was not evacuated until the time of the doodlebugs, when I went to an aunt in Birmingham after school broke up for the summer holidays. The doodlebugs were terrifying, but I actually enjoyed the excitement of the rest of it. We were not bombed out, luckily, although we had all our windows blown in, and my school was very knocked about. In winter we had lessons wearing all our outdoor clothes, including gloves for there were no windows and no heating. We all had terrible chillblains.
So this book, although fictitious, is written with a lot of true things in it. I did have a very romantic, innocent affair with a man ten years older than myself who was wireless operator/gunner in a bomber. He flew on raids over Germany night after night and was shot down once, parachuting into the sea. He was very lucky to stay alive. His brother, a pilot, was killed. He proposed to me under the cherry blossom in Kew Gardens. I have never forgotten him.

Yes, well, I'm usually a week late for everything only this time I have an excuse because the books hadn't arrived yet (and they still haven't, but I've changed supplier!). It is (was) BAFAB week, otherwise known as "Buy a Friend a Book Week" as envisioned by Debra Hamel. The idea being to give a friend a book "for no good reason." A nifty idea, I think. Although I never need much of an excuse to add to my own burgeoning shelves, it is always a good thing to pass on a book or two to others. So, I have chosen Anne Fadiman's EX LIBRIS: Confessions of a Common Reader to give to a friend, and I have an extra copy to give away to one of you lucky blog readers out there too. Dovegreyreader has a novel way of selecting her BAFAB winner by making her cats walk across post-it notes! My selection process will undoubtedly be more mundane (names in a hat?!), but equally fair. So if you'd like a copy of EX LIBRIS, do say so in the comments or send me an email and I'll add you to the pot (where you are in the world does not matter, I will post anywhere).

Here's a taster; Fadiman has just tried out a list of words she doesn't recognize on family and friends in the hopes that they too will not recognize them, so she won't feel so bad. A few correctly identify the occasional word (she refers to them as Wallys after Wally the Wordworm from her childhood - you'll have to read the book to discover the delicious details of this story):

All the Wallys could remember exactly where they had encountered the words they knew. The English professor said, "Mephitic! That must mean foul-smelling. I've seen it in Paradise Lost, describing the smell of hell." My brother, a mountain guide and natural history teacher who lives in Wyoming, said, "Mephitic, hmm, yes. The scientific name for the striped skunk is Mephitis mephitis, which means Stinky stinky." The lawyer, who, incredibly, had bumped into mephitic just the previous week in Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, possessed particularly vigorous powers of memory. When I asked him to define monophysite, he said, "That's a heretic, of course, who believes there is a single nature in the person of Christ. I first encountered it in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of which I read an abridged version in a green Dell Laurel edition with a picture of Roman ruins on the cover that I bought with my allowance for seventy-five cents when I was in grade school, at the bookstore at the corner of Mill Road and Peninsula Boulevard in Valley Stream, New York. I read it while walking home. It was springtime, and all the trees on Mill Road were in bud." No man ever remembered the face, dress and perfume of an old lover with fonder precision than Jon remembered that glorious day when he and monophysite first met. (p.15)

Surely you must want to read it after that?! Do you recognize yourself, or someone you know? To add to sauciness around this read, it has recently been linked to plagiarism charges against Ben Schott; you can have a read here.

I can never resist memes which "require" me to spend time browsing my bookshelves and so, following in the footsteps of Stephanie over at So Many Books, here are my selections for "10 books I would read right now if I didn’t already have a bunch of other books going" (the requirement being that I already own all of these):

Stephen Bates A CHURCH AT WAR: ANGLICANS AND HOMOSEXUALITY
I am a practising anglican (episcopalian, for you americans out there), so am constantly frustrated by, and grappling with, the big issues of the day faced by the church as an institution. In England the two largest are the issue of women clergy (far from resolved) and gay clergy (in some sort of don't-even-go-there administrative wasteland). I won't get into a long discussion here, but for me the more crucial overriding issue is "where is God in this?" I mean, is God really bothered? And I have to think not. A great priest is a great priest, whether gay, straight, female, male, black, white or brown. Let's get on with it. Stephen Bates is The Guardian's religious affairs and royal correspondent. I like his interesting press commentary, and am curious to see what he has to say.

John Boyne THE BOY IN THE STRIPED PYJAMAS
I recommended Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's PURPLE HIBISCUS to a friend who, gratifyingly, loved it so much she's been recommending it to everyone she knows. In return she recommended this Boyne to me. It looks like it might be shattering.

Michael Dirda AN OPEN BOOK
When I lived in Washington D.C. some years back, I would religiously read the lovely Dirda; he became a staple - one of those folks whose latest despatch I'd look forward to, thinking there'd be something in there for me (even if I never got around to reading it!)

Cynthia Enloe THE CURIOUS FEMINIST
Cynthia Enloe is one of those pioneering types in the field of international relations, in that she tried to place women front and centre. Bearing in mind that women are very often excised from the study of government, politics and international relations (other than as victims) this was a refreshing approach.

John McGahern THAT THEY MAY FACE THE RISING SUN
Kimbofo over at Reading Matters has a reading group, and this was their previous selection. Appropriately, I even bought my copy in Ireland, but I've yet to begin it (story of my life). Ireland is where we holiday most, and I have a real soft spot for the country.

Beverley Naidoo THE OTHER SIDE OF TRUTH
Beverley Naidoo is a talented children/teen writer. I met her several times when running the bookshop up in London and I have to say that she epitomizes the image of the hardworking writer - I was always very impressed with her work ethic and friendly approachability when confronted by fans. I haven't read this one of hers.

Pepetela JAIME BUNDA, SECRET AGENT
Aflame Books is a new independent publisher, focussing on translating into English books from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East originally published in another language. This is the first of their titles I've picked up and I'm looking forward to it very much (I loved Pepetela's THE RETURN OF THE WATER SPIRIT). If you enjoy Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you'll probably like Pepetela.

Elif Shafak THE FLEA PALACE
Both Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak have had a rather difficult time in Turkey lately because of their work.

R.C. Sherriff THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT
One of my favourite books is John Wyndham's THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, which has so much contemporary resonance, despite being written in 1951. THE HOPKINS MANUSCRIPT, I get the impression, has similar overtones. And it is a Persephone title.

Niall Williams AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
The dove grey one over at dovegreyreader scribbles raved so much about Williams (and then he left her equally charming messages) that I succumbed - I trust her judgement, so am sure this will be good; also, did I mention I have a soft spot for Ireland?!

Naturally, it is highly unlikely I'll read any of these soon but one can live in hope...now go and rummage through your shelves, what would you read if you could?

A very happy new year to you all!

I am feeling saint-like for shopping for three consecutive days last week with a gaggle of teenagers. First I should explain that I am NOT a good shopper, and specifically not a good clothes shopper. My worst nightmare is dragging around shop after shop, filled with hordes of people - mostly not looking where they're going - and trying on clothes. I buy clothes when I need them, or not at all (the exception to the rule is sari shopping in India, who can resist those gorgeous silks?! The best thing about sari shopping too is that since there's no need to try anything on, the decisions are simply about colour and fabric). Here in England the post-Christmas sales were on of course and so clothes shopping was what the young 'uns wanted to do (age range 13-23 and a mixed gender group too; oh, the complications!). To be fair, because I wasn't trying anything on, it was fairly painless; I am a very good coat and bag rack, I discovered. And I give free fashion consultations. Quite useful to have around really.

I promptly blew the whole "I am not a shopper" theory by raiding the Chaucer Bookshop, the Hospice charity shop and the Oxfam bookshop on the way home afterwards, emerging with a bagload of books. We just like different things, but I certainly can shop! My latest haul:

THE MOON OF GOMRATH - Alan Garner (20p, 1965 edition in pristine condition; My favourite of his is THE WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN which includes just about the most claustrophobic description ever of squeezing out of tight places deep underground)

SWALLOW, THE STAR - K.M. Peyton (20p; I've never read this, but as a teenager loved her Flambards series; some of Peyton's out of print back catalogue is being reprinted by Fidra Books, so this seems highly appropriate to get up to speed).

Three of the now out of print Mantlemass books by Barbara Willard: THE LARK AND THE LAUREL, THE SPRIG OF BROOM, THE IRON LILY (79p each, pristine copies from the 1970s; I haven't read them since I was a child, but snaffled them up as I loved them then and have rarely seen them since, so am looking forward to the re-read. I'll have to keep a lookout for the missing ones in the series). Also Willard's THE MILLER'S BOY, which I've never read.

WHITE MUGHALS - William Dalrymple (£1, in pristine condition).

THE BLACK INTERPRETERS - Nadine Gordimer (£3.99, hard to come by, printed in 1973)

THE LITERATURE AND THOUGHT OF MODERN AFRICA - Claude Wauthier (£5, 1966. Looks interesting; originally written in French and the focus is mostly Francophone African writers, which I don't know an awful lot about as I don't speak/read French, so I am looking forward to this).

FEATHER WOMAN OF THE JUNGLE - Amos Tutuola (£12, but well worth it - absolute gold dust: hardback first edition 1962 in pristine condition, SO exciting! The cover blurb says "Four years...is a long time to wait for a new book by the inimitable Amos Tutuola, whose reputation is now almost worldwide..." Isn't that interesting? Published by Faber & Faber at the time, my guess is that he has passed out of the awareness of the general reading public now.

Retail therapy!

May your year ahead be full of wonderful reading.

So go to your quarters now and attend to your own work, the loom and the spindle, and tell the servants to get on with theirs. Talking must be the men's concern, and mine in particular; for I am master in this house.
The Odyssey. Telemachus replying to his mother Penelope. Translated by E.V. Rieu.

When I selected titles for the From the Stacks Challenge, my criteria were simply titles I'd had sitting there for ages, split into some which I really, really wanted to read and those which I felt I should read because they'd just been sitting there far too long. Quite by chance, my current selection is hammering home a message hard to ignore - the ordinary lives of women.

I've been blown away by Fettouma Touati's Desperate Spring (why did it take me so long to read this?!), following the interconnected lives of an ever-expanding Algerian extended family.

I'm not sure that I'll finish Zimbabwean Tsitsi Dangarembga's The Book of Not in time for Friday's meeting with her, but I'm giving it a stab. Picking up where Nervous Conditions left off, Tambu is exploring her place in the world from the confines of the Young Ladies' College of the Sacred Heart.

Serendipitously, our reading group is reading Namibian Neshani Andreas' The Purple Violet of Oshaantu, describing constraining village life for a group of rural women.

All of these books, to a greater or lesser extent, deal with women's lives, expectations, hopes, dreams, marriages and constraints. I'll blog more on each as I finish them, but this is just to say that you might think this would all be tedious, hectoring or boring and instead it is gripping stuff and I am enjoying myself thoroughly.

As a foil to these women in African countries, I have picked up at the library The Bitch in the House: 26 women tell the truth about sex, solitude, work, motherhood and marriage, edited by Cathi Hanauer. I'd seen this reviewed in the mainstream press last year, with mixed reactions, but it is serving as an interesting complement to the fiction titles.

On the train up to London last week, a mixed group of teenagers got on and I suddenly became aware of their conversation when a boy asked "Are you a feminist?" One after the other (peer pressure no doubt) every girl in the group strenuously denied any interest in feminism. I restrained myself from commenting, but all this current reading tied in perfectly with what I quietly thought - you don't want the right to equal job opportunities, equal pay, freedom of movement, freedom to dress as you wish, then? What would you say if I said you couldn't be out on a train with your male friends? Could not go to school? Could not wear that miniskirt? What do you think feminism is? I can recommend a book or two...

I'm knee deep in several fiction titles at the moment but not near enough finishing any of them to write about them. In the meantime, I gaze out at our leaf strewn rear lawn and dream of the spring. Actually I like this time of year: the cold keeps the air crisp and there is a particular clarity of the light which is hard to describe. I woke this morning to a powder blue dawn, skeletal trees across the bridle way outlined against the sky, and low lying metal grey-blue clouds on the horizon.

My dreams of the spring are not to hasten it, but are me plotting out the vegetable patch in my head, my future abundant herb garden, banks of wildflowers, the compost heap, and so on...The pleasure is all in drawing out the planning, for which long winter nights and a Persephone notebook are all important, for sketches, and border plans, and my increasingly lengthy list of herbs.

I've just finished STICKY WICKET: Gardening in tune with nature by Pam Lewis which has added greatly to my enthusiasms about our little garden. Of course, down in Dorset she has a much larger property, but there's plenty here for really any sized garden (even a balcony full of pots) because it is her enjoyment of her garden and the ideas she brims with which make for such a satisfying book.

Lewis's focus is on gardening with plants that complement the natural environment and animals. This just so happens to tally with what we are hoping to eventually achieve in our garden and so it is fascinating to read what has worked (and not!) for her. I like her approach:

A wildlife wilderness needs thickets to give cover and, design-wise, to add to the sense that all is not quite revealed, accessible or entirely controlled. I try to enter the mind of a hedgehog, slow-worm, bird or a mouse and think what, for them, would represent a safe, protected environment. For instance, tuckering down or nesting in - or beneath - a tangle of unclipped evergreen privet, a thorny pyracantha or a hawthorn hedge bottom would seem like a snug, safe and private little kingdom (p.152).

What a wonderful concept of both garden and wildlife lurking, in a positive sense, and providing the space to allow that. STICKY WICKET is made up of several interlinked gardens (rather as Sissinghurst flows, I imagine, perhaps incorrectly, but a lot less formally). Lewis covers the creation and construction of each with discussions about how they reached planting decisions, how wildlife has reacted, and her thoughts as the gardens filled out. Accompanying all this are lovely photographs. I highly recommend STICKY WICKET as a gift for any gardener of your acquaintance. It has the added benefit that if they like the book, the gardens for which the book is named are also open to the public - I'm plotting an excursion for next year already!

I have had a really nasty cold. The I-need-sympathy part of myself wants to claim it was pneumonia, but no, it was/is just a cold. One of those versions where your head is all bunged up and you can't sleep properly at night because you can't breathe, and then spend the daylight hours moping around feeling watery and miserable...you get the picture.

The Albion Bookshop has started its closing down sale - 50% off everything in the shop. I am sad they are closing - where will I go for my book buying habit? I need a place with both knowledgeable staff and character. As I pointed out on dovegreyreader's blog a little while ago, that leaves Canterbury with two Waterstone's and a WH Smith, and me wanting to scream! There's one specialist Christian bookshop (it IS Canterbury after all, seat of the Anglican archbishop), and several secondhand and charity bookshops which are great, but every town needs a really good independent. I am a rudderless boat...

Ok, enough of the melodrama! None of this has turned me off taking advantage of the Albion sale. My first foray into the burgeoning shelves has produced a lovely bagfull, most of which are heading straight out the door as Christmas presents for all the nieces and nephews:

An Angel Just Like Me - Mary Hoffman
Better known for her Amazing Grace series, Hoffman has created here a lovely story of a young black boy puzzled by all the Christmas tree angels being white and female. He goes in search of an angel in which he can see himself, starting with a visit to Santa (turns out it is family friend and art student, Carl) and a wish...

Daddy-Long-Legs - Jean Webster
For the young teenage girl in your life. A funny and touching account of an orphan girl whose education is paid for by a mysterious benefactor. It was only on re-reading it myself last year that I realized just how much of a feminist and social conscience young Judy develops. When I read it as a teenager, however, I only noticed the romance and related to the boarding school experience. Recommended for the teenager/tween in your life who has already read and loved Anne of Green Gables, What Katy Did, Little Women, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder series.

The Diddakoi - Rumer Godden
Kizzy is a diddakoi - gypsy - and so different from the rest of the children in her village. She lives in a wagon in an orchard with her grandmother and smells of woodsmoke from the evening fire. A wonderful story about pride in being different, and learning to accept difference in others.

Goodnight Mister Tom - Michelle Magorian
One of my favourite children's books of all time - I give this to every child I know. Be careful about the right age: at least aged ten I would recommend, as the themes are serious and quite traumatic. Every child we have given it to has come back to us saying they loved it and wanting to talk about it. Willie Beech is evacuated to a country village during the Second World War and billetted with a crotchety but kind Mister Tom. This turns out to be his saving grace after years of deprivation and abuse in the city. Very sensitively handled and a compelling story of genuine friendship and love.

The Silver Sword - Ian Serraillier
Children make their way across Second World War Europe, trying to find their parents. The bravery and self-sufficiency of these children is what appeals to young readers.

The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity - Amartya Sen
Sen is a genius, and one of my favourite make-you-think intellects. We were in India when he won the Nobel Prize for Economics and it was great to see the festivities as a result. I remember being stuck in traffic and looking up at a giant billboard proclaiming "SEN-SIBLE ECONOMICS" which I thought was very clever (really wished I'd had my camera with me at the time). The cover blurb here from Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, is accurate at summarizing his approach:

The world's poor and dispossessed could have no more articulate and insightful a champion among economists than Amartya Sen. By showing that the quality of our lives should be measured not by our wealth, but by our freedom, his writings have revolutionized the theory and practice of development.

If you haven't read him and are interested, I'd suggest you start with the excellent Development as Freedom, which is written in an accessible fashion for the general reader, rather than as an economics text.

Interesting Times: A Twentieth Century Life - Eric Hobsbawm
I've been wanting to read this since it came out and my excuse for buying it is that the Kent library system does not own a copy so my arm has been twisted! Who can resist (those of you that like history books) the cover blurb:

Hitler came to power when Eric Hobsbawm was on his way home from school in Berlin, and the Soviet Union fell while he was giving a seminar in New York. He translated for Che Guevara in Havana, had Christmas dinner with a Soviet spy master in Budapest and an evening at home with Mahalia Jackson in Chicago. He saw the body of Stalin, started the modern history of banditry and is (presumably) the only Marxist asked to collaborate with the inventor of Mars bar.

This all sounds a little sauced up of course. I read some of his history texts in coursework (Nations and Nationalism since 1780 and The Invention of Traditon) and rather admired them, so I'd like to read this too.

I did hope to resist the urge to buy more books this year, and I have clearly failed, but my excuse is that it is a one-off opportunity with the sale, and that most of them are not for me...

Virginia Woolf is haunting me. I have never liked her work - it seemed impossible to enjoy it somehow, and so much of what I tend to read is for escapism. One can hardly slip into her world and find a comfortable spot, or so I thought. I did manage to successfully deal with THREE GUINEAS when I was at university, but that was as far as I could go. Oh, and I was quite absorbed by Michael Cunningham's THE HOURS.

However, Susan Hill has decided to convert all of us ignoramuses, and is running a course for anyone who has never got on with Woolf. I recommend it: no credit, no grades, just guided reading at your own pace with a bit of an online chat with other readers. On Susan Hill's blog, click the BOOKS AND READING option on the left hand side of the main page, WOOLF FOR DUMMIES will appear beneath it. We've started with a chapter of Lyndall Gordon's VIRGINIA WOOLF: A WRITER'S LIFE for background reading and to place her writing in context; now we are reading her very first book THE VOYAGE OUT. I am pleasantly surprised - not quite what I was expecting. I borrowed my edition from the library. While their catalogue listed it as on the shelf, I couldn't find it. When I asked, the librarian disappeared off into the bowels somewhere (where the public is not allowed to enter) and came back with a nice sturdy 1975 Hogarth Press hardback edition. Of course now I want to know what else is down there . . .

Woolf has been dogging my steps in other ways too: Emma Barnes at Snowbooks has kindly sent me a copy of THE LONDON SCENE, a very prettily produced collection of Woolf's short essays. Should complement the Hill selection nicely, thank you Emma.

Not only that, but an interesting collaborative project is developing on the other side of the pond, with bloggers invited to set up a wiki where anyone can add footnotes and textnotes to a piece of literature. The test piece is Virginia Woolf's KEW GARDENS. Take a look at Dorothy's blog.

Susan has said not to read anything else so as to avoid preconceptions about Woolf. As always, I flipped through the book reviews this weekend and in the Sunday Times CULTURE what do I find, but a review by John Carey of Victoria Glendinning's LEONARD WOOLF: A Life. This paragraph caught my eye:

Bloomsbury was excited too. Virginia’s brother Adrian Stephen, who met Leonard when he came home on leave in 1911, reported that “he was very amusing about Ceylon. His descriptions of hanging were very interesting”. Glendinning thinks that, rather as Othello’s tall tales of travel captivated Desdemona, so Leonard’s adventures stirred Virginia. “He has ruled India, hung black men,” she gushed. All the same, it is hard to see why she married him. She felt “no more than a rock” when he kissed her, and his Jewishness was distasteful: “I do not like the Jewish voice. I do not like the Jewish laugh.” Taken to see Leonard’s mother, she wrote maliciously about “Jews in Putney”, mocking their clothes, food and manners. Anti-semitism was a Stephen-family thing. Adrian did comic Jewish imitations, and Virginia expressed horror at the prospect of sharing a room with “22 Jews and Jewesses” — Leonard’s family. “It’ll be as hot as a monkey house.”

She sounds the most odious creature. So Susan, you have your work cut out for you in trying to convince me otherwise.

In the meantime I have been totally lacking in self control and added to my "To Be Read" pile with a new haul of recently released African titles:
ALLAH IS NOT OBLIGED - Ahmadou Kourouma
THE BOOK OF NOT - Tsitsi Dangarembga
HALF OF A YELLOW SUN - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
SLEEPWALKING LAND - Mia Couto
Fabulous!

Like all incurably addicted readers, keeping a handle on my "To Be Read" pile is always a challenge. Lately mine has taken to galloping away from me about the house. This has not been helped by the fact that we gave away our biggest bookshelf (via Freecycle, that wonderful site). The bookshelf had two extensions to the main section, which we had to take off when we moved to this house three years ago. Unfortunately, the new study just cannot contain a bookshelf of this scope, so for ages I've had books double-parked on every shelf. Finally, we've accepted defeat and have asked a carpenter to build us a new unit especially for the space. In the meantime, since the original bookshelf is now gone, we have mountains of books piled in the study and laundry. Ultimately, of course, a new shelf will not really solve the problem that I have too many books! The eternal dilemma. . .

Recently, instead of having one or two books on the go, I've had five or six. . . or ten (I keep finding juicy sounding titles on other people's blogs, plus there's my "work" reading for the book I'm writing). I've decided this is probably too many as I am in danger of losing the atmosphere and character of each story. Yesterday I finished two love stories (don't groan, it is more encouraging than it sounds).

I picked up Peter Millar's FINDING HOPE AGAIN: Journeying Through Sorrow and Beyond from a second-hand sale last month as I was moseying home. Those of you who read this blog regularly will know that I had a big feeling sad blip last month when I wasn't coping too well with the loss of our baby. This book fell into my lap at a highly opportune moment. A good half of the book is about finding hope in other people and situations - I found this the weakest aspect but, to be fair, possibly because I wasn't in the mood. But Millar's reflections on finding his wife dying on their bathroom floor, struggling through the days, weeks, months, years that followed is really moving. It is, essentially, one long love song to his wife, to whom he was married for twenty-seven years. I suspect that you won't enjoy it if you are not practicing some sort of faith, as this is how Millar makes sense of his world. I found the sections on grief particularly strong, and helpful to me at this time.

On a lighter note, MARIANA by Monica Dickens started off slowly, but finally succeeded in running away with me (I stopped reading all the other distractions for a bit and just focussed on her for a day). Written in 1940, set in immediately pre-WW2 England, the period detail is superb. Dickens captures the agonies of teenage feelings perfectly (attachment to family homes, holidays and full of adolescent angst). There are some really funny moments:

In spite of the fact that she paraphrased 'Much have I travelled in the realms of gold' as 'I have made several expeditions to the gold-mine district,' and had to write a French essay on trees without knowing the word for leaf, Mary passed the entrance examination for St. Martin's High School.
She cried when she left Manton House, not because she minded, but because it was the thing to do. Miss Cardew kissed her in the hothouse temperature of the study and told her always to remember the School motto: 'Faint not nor fear,' to which Mary only just stopped herself from replying automatically: 'Half-time is near, then comes the biscuits and ginger beer.' (p.91)

A really sweet poignancy crops up from time to time. For example, I liked:

'Look here, it will be three minutes in a sec. and I haven't got any more money - I'm in a box.'
'Does it smell?'
'Yes. But that's not the point. I haven't said what I wanted to.'
'What, darling?'
'Pip, pip, pip,' said the telephone.
'I love you.' His voice was cut off and Mary went out of the box and walked through the corridor lounge, smiling a foolish, secret smile to herself. All along the gauntlet of armchairs, from behind the camouflage of knitting-needles and library books, peered the old eyes that never missed a thing. (p.331)

There are some exquisitely foreboding moments about the impending war, like this one from Mary's honeymoon:

When was it that it had first begun to matter when The Times came three days late? When had they first begun to puzzle out the news in the Roma, to try and get Daventry on the proprietor's wireless, crackling through storms in the Alps? Mary had not been bothering about the world. Her only worry up till now had been whether or not her shoulders were going to peel. From one day to another it seemed there was a crisis, and the English people in the hotel actually spoke to one another. . . It seemed impossible to think that anything really was the matter, when the sea off the Amalfi Coast was bluer than it had ever been, and the purple bougainvillaea was draped like a panoply over the terrace wall. (pp.368-369)

There is a slightly dreary period in the middle when not much happens (which is the point, and I hasten to add does not equate to dreary writing, rather beautifully paced contrast), but fills out into quite a fast pace - a wonderfully enjoyable read overall.

Oh joy! The latest SLIGHTLY FOXED has come out. My local independent bookshop, The Albion, is tucked away down a side street leading to the main gates of the Cathedral. I adore the shop because it has creaky stairs, quite a good children's selection, and an eclectic assortment of books - you never know quite what you will find there - and of course (I can't resist) it is not part of a national chain. Anyway, as it happens The Albion stocks SLIGHTLY FOXED. I have a sneaky suspicion that I'm the only customer who buys it, but never mind (sigh).

This edition looks set to unearth some more delights - I've had a quick flick through and was transported back to my childhood with a piece on Peter O'Donnell's Modesty Blaise books. My grandfather had a set which I read with relish - Modesty was an impressive heroine, quite unlike Nancy Drew, and I was awestruck. James Bond hadn't a patch on Modesty. I believe the series is currently being reissued in the UK by Souvenir Press and I will look forward to re-reading them and seeing what my adult perspective is. I suspect they are ideal for reading in the bath!

A piece by Julia Keay is also worth noting here. The book discussed is THE SPIRIT CATCHES YOU AND YOU FALL DOWN by Anne Fadiman. I had read Fadiman's EX LIBRIS with great enjoyment, a super present for someone who loves books. THE SPIRIT CATCHES... however, is in a league of its own. A truly superbly written and wrenching book, it describes a small Hmong child in America who is cared for deeply by both her family and the medical team looking after her, but nevertheless trapped by cultural misapprehension. The doctors diagnose epilepsy and want to medicate, while the family believe her soul has been frightened and trapped by a spirit (hence the book title). I am ashamed to say that I had never heard of the Hmong people before reading this, but since seem to see frequent references including the horrifying photo features the Sunday Times magazine has twice published in the past year of Hmong in Laos. Fadiman writes the history of the Hmong in an accessible and interesting fashion, so that the larger story of their devastating communal experience is intertwined with the riveting tale of little Lia. She deserves every award.

Our African fiction reading group meets next on Wednesday 20th September discussing Djiboutian Abdourahman Waberi's THE LAND WITHOUT SHADOWS, newly translated into english. A week later the non-fiction group meets on Wednesday 27th discussing Michela Wrong's I DIDN'T DO IT FOR YOU: HOW THE WORLD BETRAYED A SMALL AFRICAN NATION, her recent book on Eritrea. So, lots of reading to do! Any of you London-based lot who'd like to join us, the meetings are free and gather at 6:30pm in Oxfam's fairtrade coffee shop Progreso in Covent Garden. We'll be looking at what to read next so come along and have a say!

It goes without saying that the death and destruction of the people of Lebanon is of primary concern, but I am perturbed to note the bombing of the Saqi warehouse in Beirut. For those unfamiliar with Saqi Books, they are a bookshop on Westbourne Grove (near my old London stomping grounds) focussing on the Middle East. In recent years they started their own publishing company to complement the bookshop. Having run a specialist African bookshop I can tell you that this all makes perfect sense in the context of chain bookstores in the west unwilling to stock backlist titles on anything other than bestsellers, and particularly not about parts of the world deemed unpopular. For people of other nationalities it is these specialist interest bookstores that become a home away from home where finding a "rare" or "difficult-to-acquire" book is guaranteed.

Below I have extracted a few pertinent paragraphs from an article by the award-winning author Kamila Shamsie summarizing the incident:

Among the books stored in the warehouse were Hikayat: Short Stories by Lebanese Women and Qissat: Short Stories by Palestinian Women, two collections due in London in August. Soon after the war started, someone from Dar al-Saqi (Saqi’s sister company in Beirut) sent six copies of each book to Jordan with a friend fleeing the country -- the 12 books later made their way to Paris, just in time for a planned window display. The rest of the books, or what remains of them, are still in the warehouse...

She concludes the article with a description of what Saqi is about:

Despite the paucity of distribution channels, many of Saqi’s authors -- and books -- rapidly became huge successes. At the heart of its ethos is an understanding of the need for two-way exchanges: Western books translated into Arabic, Arabic books translated into English, constant conversations between Beirut and London, titles which demand that readers from different parts of the globe reconsider their perceptions of their worlds and also that they look more deeply into received wisdom about other worlds.

It is an ethos that has enabled Saqi to build up a list of exceptional writers. In addition to its unparalleled list of literary luminaries from the Middle East, Saqi publishes acclaimed writers such as the Albanian winner of the first international Booker prize, Ismail Kadare, Argentine-born Alberto Manguel, British writer Maggie Gee, Aamer Hussein from Pakistan and Croatian novelist Dubravka Ugresic.

Among the most poignant of Saqi’s recent publications is Samir Khalaf’s Heart of Beirut: Reclaiming the Bourj. The Bourj is a public square in Beirut described as an “open museum of the world’s civilisations”. During the Lebanese civil war and in the Israeli air-strikes that followed, this vibrant, cosmopolitan space was reduced to a no-man’s land. As the Saqi catalogue explains, Khalaf’s book “argues passionately that its reinvention is at hand, and must be encouraged: the Bourj must reclaim its disinherited legacy of pluralism and tolerance’’. It is among the books in the bombed-out warehouse in Beirut.-- © Guardian Newspapers 2006.

For the full article on the Saqi warehouse bombing by Kamila Shamsie click here.
Kamila Shamsie is one of the contributors (along with one of my favourite authors, Paul Auster, and many illustrious others) to Lebanon, Lebanon, an anthology published this month with all proceeds going to Save the Children, Lebanon.

This past week was difficult. It is exactly one month since I miscarried. Strangely it is worse now than it was immediately afterwards. On reflection I think this is because I was so relieved at being alive, that I focused more on that than losing the baby. Now all I can think about is how isolated I felt, how much blood there was, how small the baby was, how the doctor referred to the baby as "the matter", even though it was recognisably a foetus (that makes me feel really terrible). I was cleaning the bathroom this weekend as we had guests coming and noticed that the toilet seat was damaged (slightly skewed). When I asked the giri whether he knew what had happened, turns out I damaged it when I passed out, fell over and grabbed at it to balance myself. I have no recollection of this at all. I do remember passing out and the jarring sensation as I hit the floor. It was scary.

A friend visited last week with her new baby and told me about someone in her NCT group whose baby died while she was in labour. This seems in my mind to be infinitely worse than what happened to me, so I feel bad too that I should feel so upset about such a comparatively minor experience. I never felt the baby move.

There's a programme on ITV here in England with two cleaning experts that apparently go around shaming people into cleaning up their messy houses (I don't remember the programme name). Last week one of the ladies, Aggie, was interviewed on Richard and Judy about her new autobiography (I was channel - hopping, ok!). In it she describes miscarrying at five months, alone in her flat, and burying the baby in the local park as she was so frightened and didn't know what to do (the incident occurred 30 odd years ago). The same day as the interview last week she was taken in by police for questioning because of her description and may be charged with concealing a body. While obviously I had full medical care and my case was also different, what struck me about her story was the fact that she was so upset so many decades later and clearly remembered how terrified and alone she'd felt as though it was yesterday. Does one ever get over it?

As all insatiable readers do, I have turned to books to make sense of the world around me, with limited success to date. I started off with MISCARRIAGE: WHAT EVERY WOMAN NEEDS TO KNOW; a positive new approach by Lesley Regan, and found it singularly unsatisfactory. While it clearly describes every possible cause for miscarriage and how to avoid it, I am already in the "been there, done that" phase. I have already experienced it and know what caused it - now what? I was struck by the fact that this book sits in a sort of no man's land of information. It serves little purpose for the woman who has already experienced a miscarriage, but on the other hand you wouldn't really read it while you were pregnant as you wouldn't want to think about miscarriages. I suppose it fills a general slot for students writing papers etc.

I am starting to realize that for me this has less to do with finding out further information on miscarriages, and more to do with experiencing, accepting and living with grief. So now I am on the lookout for books that might deal with this (any suggestions welcome). Mining through a secondhand bookshop yesterday I found FINDING HOPE AGAIN: JOURNEYING THROUGH SORROW AND BEYOND by Peter Millar. The words that leapt from the page I opened it on read:

To feel attached to a wider sense of lament is not to lessen my own personal sorrow, but rather to give it greater grounding, depth and movement (p. 44)

I do feel this way. I have been struck by just how many people I know have had miscarriages, many of them multiple. I am even more struck by the fact that I had no idea (most only told me once I had a miscarriage myself). While I knew of some of my friends' miscarriages, the scale of the more accurate experience is startling, but in a strange way very reassuring. There is a wealth of anguish, but also great comfort and peace of heart from these women. Like Millar's words, I find hope in that.

On to slightly cheerier topics (and more representative of my daily life; despite how the above sounds, I am not permanently wretched). Exploring Canterbury this past weekend with a visitor reminded me that this is a great centre of pilgrimage. Living here every day it is easy to forget that and go about one's daily business without seeing what actually is right there. John Stilgoe, one of the finest teachers I have known, changed entirely the way I look at the world, but sometimes I need a reminder to actually look at what is in front of me - to see it as it is now, but also think about what the buildings, cobblestones, lampposts, gargoyles, gratings, edifices, towers and trees meant when they were young, or younger, and what they are now. In a city as old as this where pilgrims have trudged or come striding to the cathedral for over fourteen hundred years, that is a great deal of wider context and meaning. As I walked home yesterday, a Franciscan monk (brown robed and worrying at the white cord around his waist) waited at the busstop reading a book amidst a swirl of tourists and returning students. Everything changes and yet nothing changes. It made me smile and feel at peace with the world.

Strange how some things intersect. I was reading Petrona this morning: in particular a piece she has written about the books most commonly held by libraries around the world. Naturally, this raises issues about stock libraries keep because they think they should, rather than because the books are necessarily read (a very good thing, because tastes do change; and holdings should also be about access). What made me perk up was the fact that two Twains are on the list - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the top 10, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in the top 20.

Twain has reappeared on my radar screen recently because of our current non-fiction reading group title, KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST: A STORY OF GREED, TERROR AND HEROISM IN COLONIAL AFRICA by Adam Hochschild. I think it would not be an understatement to say that most people nowadays (including many Africans living on the continent) know very little about the Congo, and I include myself in this category. Appalling really given current direct foreign involvement there. A recent Human Rights Watch report on the DRC, THE CURSE OF GOLD, reports that 2003 saw in excess of 60 000 civilians dead in the gold mining areas of Mongbwalu and Durba, with more people raped and injured, and tainted gold worth an estimated USD$60 million smuggled out to the West. Blood diamonds from the region also appear on the market and are funding military action there. This all sounds horribly familiar when you open Hochschild's book and read about the millions of Congolese people sucked into the slave trade.

Hochschild first encounters the DRC in 1961:

In a Leopoldville apartment, I heard a CIA man, who had had too much to drink, describe with satisfaction exactly how and where the newly independent country's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, had been killed a few months earlier. He assumed that any American, even a visiting student like me, would share his relief at the assassination of a man the United States government considered a dangerous leftist troublemaker.

He describes how he came to write the book years later:

I knew almost nothing about the history of the Congo until a few years ago, when I noticed a footnote in a book I happened to be reading. Often when you come across something particularly striking, you remember where you were when you read it. On this occasion I was sitting, stiff and tired, late at night, in one of the far rear seats of an airliner crossing the United States from east to west.
The footnote was to a quotation by Mark Twain, written, the note said, when he was part of the worldwide movement against slave labor in the Congo, a practice that had taken five to eight million lives. Worldwide movement? Five to eight million lives? I was startled.
Statistics about mass murder are often hard to prove. But if this number turned out to be even half as high, I thought, the Congo would have been one of the major killing grounds of modern times. (Hochschild p.3)

The book is moving, engaging and (sadly) extremely topical. Where we now pursue expanding markets and source fuel, then empires were brutally expanded and slaves became the fuel which ran economies. Hochschild writes fluidly, and although non-fiction, the book has the ebb and flow of good novels which demand compulsive reading. His latest book (recently out in paperback is BURY THE CHAINS: THE BRITISH STRUGGLE TO ABOLISH SLAVERY. On the strength of KING LEOPOLD'S GHOST, I shall have to read it very soon.

And, oh yes, Mark Twain's anti-slavery writing? You can still buy his KING LEOPOLD'S SOLILOQUY, written for the Congo Reform Association and published in 1904. The Africa Book Centre sells a reprinted 1961 edition. Strange connections...

Yesterday I worked away from home, and since the commute was a combined seven hour trip, I had plenty of reading time (arguably the only advantage to the long commute concept)! After working my way through the day's papers and doing a sudoku or two, I picked up a book I've been meaning to read for ages, COMING HOME TO EAT: the pleasures and politics of local foods by Gary Paul Nabhan.

I do believe that something has gone wrong with our global food supply chain. When local farmers in Kent have fields groaning with a vegetable or fruit (let's say apples, for example) and yet all the local supermarkets' fruit aisles are bulging with the same fruit, but imported from South Africa, Israel, Argentina, Spain, the USA or wherever, there is clearly something not quite right. In the past few years we have tried to be a little more conscious of where and what we buy, preferring to go to the local farmers' market first and then only to the supermarket for the things on the list that we can't find there. Of course, this still doesn't really work if you are not cooking seasonally, and we have a LONG way to go to get this right. A few weeks ago I read an article (sorry - can't remember which paper or who by) which called us "greens lite"! At first I felt slightly injured - we are making some effort after all - then I realized the author was correct. Unless we radically change our eating habits and eat completely seasonally, are we really serious about addressing the issue? Strawberries are available in Sainsburys all year round, and very nice too (usually from Spain), but Kent strawberries from the farmer down the road in season are absolutely amazing!

Back to Nabhan's book; I am in early stages (first fifty pages) so can't give you a definite yea or nay about said book, but am certainly finding it thought-provoking. There is an encounter he describes which I thought was just so wonderful that I have to reproduce it here (indulge me!). I think it resonates in me because I live in permanent voluntary exile myself. To contextualize: Nabhan (an American) is visiting Lebanon to meet his Lebanese extended family for the first time. The first night in Beirut he is taken by friends to dine at the much praised Club Du Lubnan, where they dine in posh surroundings on French champagne, Caspian Sea caviar, Californian shrimp, Sicilian capers, and Argentine beef, all washed down by French and Italian wines, topped off by a smoke of Cuban cigars - a meal fit for a prince.

"The next afternoon we drove over the snowcapped mountains in to the Bekaa Valley. With two carloads of cousins we passed through several roadblocks of Shiite Muslim militia, Syrian and Lebanese forces, Hezbollah guerillas, and local police. Crossing the ancient croplands of the Fertile Crescent, the Bekaa's orchards, vineyards, grainfields, vegetable gardens, and pastures - I grew more and more heartened.

Suddenly our cousins' beat-up old cars careered around a curve into a side canyon where a cluster of cobblestone and concrete houses filled the canyon bottom. They glittered in the sun beneath eroded limestone slopes stippled with fig and olive trees. I could hardly absorb what the Kfar Sibad landscape felt like, for the cars were slowing to enter a street swelling with kinfolk. 'You really have no idea how long they have been waiting for you,' our cousin Shibley explained.

It went into slow motion then: I had never seen so many people with the same bulging eyes and beaked noses as me, my brothers, uncles, and aunts. They mobbed the street under a banner proclaiming WELCOME HOME NABHANS. As we tumbled out of our cars, our cousins engulfed us, wrapping us in hugs and in camel hair abeyas, the robes of princes. Aunts, uncles, cousins kissed us on the tops of our heads, on our cheeks, on our mouths. They held onto us as if they finally had us back - back from some unimaginable placeless exile where each of us had become the muhajjar, 'the ones that had been forced to depart.' But now we had returned to the ancestral home, ca biladna, back in the safety of the family haven, our laji. Older women began trilling the zalgrita, keening the song of homecoming as they accompanied us indoors.

We came across the threshold into a home emanating the warmth of jovial men bringing out their home-distilled arak and women warming up foods shaped all day by their own hands. We were conjoined in a feast a world apart from the one we had been offered in the Club Du Lubnan. It exuded the aroma of our aunts' and cousins' hands, the musk of goats and sheep grazed on the slopes above us, the salt and bitter herbal bite of the alkaline earth itself. We were given a meal I shall never forget, for ever since I have carried it homeward, into every one of my body's cells." (Nabhan, 2002, pp.23-24)