so behind! eek!

wait, i start every entry like that...
Books read:
At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson
Shakespeare, Bill Bryson
Cooking with Fernet Branca, James Hamilton Paterson
The Imperfectionists, Tom Rachman
Papier Mache Monsters, Dan Reeder
Best European Fiction 2010, edited by Aleksander Hemon
Instead of a Letter, Diana Athill
Somewhere Towards the End, Diana Athill

and a few other things that I know I read since I last wrote, but can't remember now. Sad sad sad.

Bill Bryson: the At Home book was a little unfocussed?? if that is the right word, but still enjoyable. QUITE FANTASTIC, however, was the Shakespeare book: he goes through and actually documents all the primary sources to figure out what is really properly known (so far) about Shakespeare's life, and the excellentest part of all is the very last chapter when he goes on a riproaring un-Bryson like rampage against all the conspiracy theorists who say Shakespeare couldn't possibly have written Shakespeare. Read. Now. Fun. (Fun, but still very scholarly, so you can look clever while reading it).
Cooking with Fernet Branca is a tricky book to describe - seriously, seriously loopy & quite literate, it features my very favourite fiction trick of all: the unreliable narrator (TWO of them, in fact!), as well as deliciously tightly packed precise prose. I was slightly disappointed that the narrators didn't turn out to be quite as unreliable as you might hope (i.e. what from even the first paragraph smells of a mere delusion of competence turns out to be actual competence, sort of), and a few of the weirder elements (the male protagonist, for instance, has a penchant for bizarre recipes involving endangered species) don't quite make sense even within the context of the loopiness of the book, but overall yay very funny and thank you to my sister for passing it on.
I don't even want to think any more about the Tom Rachman book, I am so cross with it. Well, more to the point, I am cross with the reviewers they quoted on the back cover, who made the book sound like a bundle of high-class fun with misleading words/phrases like "hilarious" and "beguiling" and "finding out where the author is going is half the fun." The book consists of a series of interwoven stories told from the perspective of each of the employees at a failing English-language newspaper based in Rome, and **spoiler alert** every single one of the stories leaves you with a hard painful lump in your stomach about what a horrible unfair tragic place the world is. When a basset hound called Schopenhauer, his hapless master's only friend, gets its neck wrung for no good reason, I'm sorry to say, I decided I couldn't be friends with Mr. Rachman even though I am sure he is very nice in person.
Papier Mache Monsters, on the other hand: wow, now, there is a book to restore your faith in joy in the universe. Even if you no interest whatsoever in creating awesome papier mache monsters, you should read this book. It has lovely pictures and he is funny and makes jokes about his cat who was obviously trying very hard to get in the way during the photo shoot for the book and he boosted my level of interest in one day creating my very own papier mache monster from maybe a 2 out of 10 before reading the book up to a 6.5. (I actually got it out of the library thinking it might have some pointers useful for making a papier mache elephant-shaped chest of drawers, which has a longer story behind it that needs to be told here). So there.
Best European Fiction - meh. so far not loving it. (I kind of gave up half way through, to be honest). Very laudable that they are trying to publish stories originally written in languages that are not big players (Galician, Slovenian, Irish, etc.) that you would otherwise never find, but Aleksander Hemon has... very male taste in fiction. Driftless middle aged men who are unhappy; occasionally there's an encounter with either a prostitute or an implausibly nice/pretty/young girl; they go back to being miserable. Half way through the book, I finally caught on, and I thought, hmm, I don't think I need to finish this.
but TAHDAH! here is the WHOLE POINT of this blog entry, which is Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End omg omg omg omg everyone should read this book I loved it loved it loved it. Some background: Diana Athill is a nonagenarian who worked her whole life in publishing as a literary editor; she has written a couple of memoirish books previous to this, but this one specifically is about growing old (i think she was 89 when she wrote it) and it is nothing short of a revelation (I thought). She is so generous, so clear-sighted, so funny, such a smartypants, marbles so much more intact than mine are at 37, and so credibly grateful for all the experiences she has had. I am going to have to go back and read this book again. And possibly again after that, every few years until it becomes obvious that I will never be as graceful in my outlook on life as she is. I couldn't stop talking about this book for days after I finished it, and I think I recommended it to all sorts of probably inappropriate people.
And now for something completely different: bed! yay!