Tag Archives: life

A mostly mainstream year

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The figures are in. Actually they’ve been in since January 1 but I’ve only just got round to processing them. Of the books read in 2009, with 2008’s figures in brackets:

  • Total: 54 (53)
  • Science fiction /fantasy: 19 (30)
  • Translated from Swedish: 1 (4)
  • (Auto)biography/fact: 9 (5)
  • Crime: 3 (3)
  • Gave up: 1 (2)

A mere 19 science fiction or fantasy! That’s even counting ones like Boom! by Mark Haddon which is technically of that genre but not entirely serious – but not, though, counting No Highway by Nevil Shute, which for the most part is an enjoyable and prescient progenitor of the techno-thriller genre punctured at the end by a séance providing the denouement. I got the feeling Shute ran out of ideas: “The vital clue is lying in the middle of the Canadian wilderness and our hero needs to find it – how I can get it to him?”

But anyway. 19 out of 53. 36%! That must be the lowest quite literally for decades. A marked increase in factual reading, though. Other people’s lives can be interesting. I also note that I managed an entire year without reading a single thing by Terry Pratchett, which has been unheard of since I first discovered the man. That would have changed if anyone had got the hint and given me Unseen Academicals for Christmas. (Gosh, I have a birthday in February, what could people possibly give me? [Bonusbarn muses: “You probably don’t want anything pirated, do you?”]).

And because I know you’re dying to ask, the 54 are:

  • The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Resurrection Men, Ian Rankin
  • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
  • Strange Itineraries, Tim Powers
  • Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
  • Blind Faith, Colin Harvey
  • The Business, Iain Banks
  • Nice Work, David Lodge
  • Varjak Paw, S.F. Said
  • The Bookseller of Kabul, Åsne Seierstad
  • Stealing Water – A Secret Life in an African City, Tim Ecott
  • The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, on Tour: Aged Far Too Much to Be Put on the Front Cover of a Book, Adrian Plass
  • Changeling, Mike Oldfield
  • The Oz Suite, Gerard Houarner
  • The Stress of her Regard, Tim Powers
  • The Second Rumpole Omnibus, John Mortimer
  • The Odessa File, Frederick Forsyth
  • The Day of the Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
  • The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross
  • Principles of Angels, Jaine Fenn
  • The Prefect, Alastair Reynolds
  • Where Eagles Dare, Alistair Maclean
  • Moab is my Washpot, Stephen Fry
  • Life of Pi, Yann Martel
  • Dead and Alive, Hammond Innes
  • The Inferior, Peadar Ó Guilín
  • The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett
  • Future Bristol, Colin Harvey
  • Icehenge, Kim Stanley Robinson
  • Endymion Spring, Matthew Skelton
  • Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
  • The Ghost, Robert Harris
  • Boom!, Mark Haddon
  • The Owl Service, Alan Garner
  • Jason, J. M. Marks
  • Elidor, Alan Garner
  • Sirius, Olaf Stapledon
  • Odd John, Olaf Stapledon
  • The Last Templar, Michael Jecks
  • Miracles of Life, J.G. Ballard
  • No Highway, Nevil Shute
  • deadkidsongs, Toby Litt
  • One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
  • A Parliamentary Affair, Edwina Currie
  • Fighter Boys, Patrick Bishop
  • The Storm Prophet, Hector Macdonald
  • Pompeii, Robert Harris
  • John Newton: From Disgrace to Amazing Grace, Jonathan Aitken
  • Christianity Explored, Rico Tice & Barry Cooper
  • The Sorcerer’s Tale: Faith and Fraud in Tudor England, Alec Ryrie
  • The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne
  • A Spot of Bother, Mark Haddon
  • William Wilberforce, William Hague
  • Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson

And life was too short to read Master of Hawks by Linda E. Bushyager.

Never mind the ballcocks

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How nice to be typing this with hands that aren’t chilled to the bone. How lovely to come through the front door this evening and feel warm air against my face. Yes, the central heating is back. Not that it ever really went away …

It happened last year too. When we put the heating on after the summer break, the pump made a worrying weebling sound and nothing else happened. The engineer was called. He stuck his hand into the inaccessible cupboard space above the boiler, fiddled with something, and was rewarded with the sound of water gushing into a container. The tank that feeds the boiler had slowly drained over the summer and the ballcock that regulates flow had got stuck in the up position. Easy to fix.

So, this time, when the heating stopped working and the worrying weebling began, the tank was the first thing I checked. I got up on the ladder and checked the inaccessible cupboard space above the boiler. I peered in. There was the tank. There was the ballcock. There was water in it. I checked with my fingers. I jiggled the ballcock a little. No problem with the water supply, but no heating either. So we called the engineer. He stuck his hand in, fiddled with something, and was rewarded with the sound of water gushing into a container …

Well, baptise me Morman and call me Stephanie – there’s two tanks up there? I never knew. You have to get up a very wobbly ladder and really crane your neck to see either of them, but the main one is big enough that it stands out. The other is much smaller and you really have to crane to see it. Live and learn, people, live and learn. Or in this case, live somewhere for 18 years and then learn.

At least this now means two of the three reported Christmas malfunctions have been fixed: we have a working shaver light too. Just the leaky roof to go …

Narnian Tourist Board advises: lay off the Turkish Delight

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There’s a school of thought that quite understandably sees snow as nasty slushy cold wet stuff, good only for closing schools, cutting power lines and blocking roads. But there is still a certain something to it: the blurring of all lines, natural and artificial, to smooth white; the token resistance and then yielding crunch of it underfoot. If Lucy had stumbled through the wardrobe into a desert land locked in a permanent drought, the Narnia series would never have got off the ground.

Best Beloved made it to work safely by bus and reports “10 perfectly formed snowmen symmetrically placed on the steps of the Martyrs’ Memorial, wearing sunglasses.” Sadly I have no picture of this. The two men in her life are at home due to closure of school and workplace so at least I’ve been able to take other pics to chronicle the event.

Albert muses that it’s better than pigeon poo, anyway.

Abingdon School manages to look even more like Hogwarts than usual.

Some of the inmates pupils have applied their privately-educated braincells to building an igloo.

I walked into town for the sake of it and bought a paper at West End Newsagents. The manager couldn’t contain his delight that the new under-cutting, business-stealing, utterly unnecessary WH Smith was closed, unable to hack it in a mere 12 inches of snow. That’s why Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers rather than a nation of chain store staff. He was correctly identifying our strength.