A Common Reader is . . . . . . written by Tom Cunliffe, of East Sussex, England. It consists of book reviews and more general articles about reading and books and currently receives over 4000 unique visitors each month. So far 212 book reviews have been published.
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 I started to read the books of Franz Kafka as a young man and found them remarkably relevant to me at the time, describing as they do a sense of alienation from mainstream society which so fitted in with 1960/70s counter-culture.
Working in my first boring office job, the thought of waking up as a beetle (Metamorphosis) did not seem too unlikely a possibility, and the thought of being pursued for having committed some unknown crime (The Trial) was all part and parcel of hanging around with people who had radical political ideas. The fact that no-one in suburban London cared tuppence what a group of long-haired young men were talking about in the pub was neither here nor there – perhaps we just wanted to be in Kafka’s world, and it certainly felt good to have one of Penguin’s Kafka paperbacks sticking out of your jacket pocket.
James Hawes is passionate about Kafka but believes that the bulk of modern scholarship is misguided in painting him as a lonely, heroic figure, bullied by his overbearing father, ignored in his lifetime – a “fair unsullied soul” almost saintly in his appeal. Excavating Kafka is his attempt expose the “K Myth” and to inject a note of reality into the study of Kafka, a man of his times who as we might expect had all the usual foibles and failings as the rest of us – and a few unique to himself for good measure.
The first thing to say about this book, is apart from the writer’s attempt to correct other Kafka scholars, its actually a very readable biography of Franz Kafka, written in an amusing style and imparting vast amounts of information in a relatively compact package. I think you’d have to read a substantial biography and then a couple of books of literary criticism to get quite as much information (unless of course you favour the cartoon approach!).
Continue reading Review: Excavating Kafka – James Hawes
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 I suppose one of the quickest way to get an idea about someone is to look at their bookcase, or even better, to talk to them about books which have inspired them and guided them through life. Quite a few writers have been tempted to write about their life in books – I’m thinking about Francis Spufford (The Child that Books Built), John Sutherland (The Boy Who Loved Books) and Alberto Manguel (A Reading Diary) to name a few among many. I greatly enjoyed reading these and in any case, I collect “books about books”, and when I saw Rick Gekoski’s new books, Outside of a Dog, it had to be mine.
Rick is not the first person to write his life story in the context of the books he’s read, but this one is as good as any and was a read both amusing and informative. I’ll quote from the publisher’s website to list some of the books covered:
Dr. Seuss, Horton Hatches the Egg;
Magnus Hirschfeld Sexual Anomalies and Perversions;
Allen Ginsberg, Howl;
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye;
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land;
Descartes, Meditations;
David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding;
W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems;
F.R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit;
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy;
Tom Wolfe,The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test;
Ludwig Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations;
R.D. Laing, The Divided Self;
Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch;
D.H. Lawrence,Women in Love;
A.S. Neill, Summerhill;
Roald Dahl, Matilda;
Alice Miller, Pictures of a Childhood;
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic;
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams;
Carl Hiaasen, Double Whammy;
Peter Wright,Spycatcher; and
Rick Gekoski, Staying Up.
And there was a good enough mix of the familiar and the new to keep my interest throughout. Rick is basically an academic (ex-lecturer in English at Warwick University) turned rare book dealer, and has many contacts in the world of literature. And oh yes, he’s been a judge on the Man Booker Prize. So, as far as literature is concerned I guess he’s qualified to write about books, which he does eruditely, knowledgeably and perhaps above all, humorously. Continue reading Review: Outside of a Dog: A Bibliomemoire – Rick Gekoski
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I’ve seen Icon Books Introducing series in the bookshops but it was only when confronted by a long train journey with my current novel finished that I finally dived in and bought one. I don’t think I’ve read a graphic book before and I was suprised by how much I enjoyed reading Introducing Kafka [...]
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 The Oxford University Press website helpfully gives a list of potential readers of their books and in the case of Death and the Author, the expectation is as follows:
a. Anyone with a interest in D. H. Lawrence;
b. anyone interested in exploring what it is like to have a disease for which there is no cure,
c. the appeal of alternative medicine,
d. the temptation of suicide for the terminally ill,
e. the diminishing role of religion in modern life,
f. the institution of famous last words, or
g. the consequences of dying intestate
I suspect this covers quite a large proportion of people in one way or another and in my case I tick the boxes on quite a few of those. Anyway, I came to this book after reading a very favourable review by William Palmer in this month’s Literary Review, and I was not disappointed.
Although this book focuses primarily on D H Lawrence and his experience of tuberculosis, David Ellis uses this platform to explore a wide range of death-related topics. We learn much about the impact of T.B. on people before strepotmycin conquered the illness once and for all. Lawrence for example spent most of his adult life in battle with the disease and his last few years were ruined for him by the hacking coughs, the fevers and the accompanying debilitation which turned his nights into a hideous torment. It is only amazing that he was able to continue to work so hard throughout this period, and this was only because when urged to rest, he found his mind relentlessly thinking and planning.
Continue reading Review: Death and the Author – David Ellis
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 Making an Elephant is one of those books which I thoroughly enjoyed from the moment it arrived through the post – a nicely designed and substantial book with plenty of interesting content (including quite a few well-chosen photographs). And from a favourite author, providing considerable insight into the writer’s life, with illustrations and stories aplenty.
Swift writes on a vast range of topic, and rarely fails to please. I first came to his work through Waterland, one of those books which managed to draw me into a wholly believable yet utterly strange landscape (in this case The Fens) which I had never encountered before. Since then I lingered in the Fens while on a business trip to King’s Lynn, a journey which I found myself interpreting through my memories of Waterland.
Then Last Orders came along and quite rightly won the Booker Prize (and was later filmed so effectively with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and others). Since then I’ve read most of Swift’s books and enjoyed them all so it was difficult to resist this varied collection of pieces from such a wide range of sources.
In Making An Elephant, we find episodes from Swift’s life, illustrated by short articles, portraits of other writers, interviews, poems and essays. It is an ideal book to dip into, but I found myself reading the whole thing over a couple of days, conscious that it is also a book I will enjoy having on my shelves to refer to when thinking about the writing process or just wanting to recall some of the evocative scenes described in it.
Continue reading Review: Making an Elephant – Graham Swift
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 I am always interested in the way reading affects people, and also in the psychology of the German people in the build-up to the Second World War. Timothy Ryback has studied the remnants of Hitler’s private library, some 1200 books, which occupy shelf-space in the rare book division of the Library of Congress in Washington. In his new book, Hitler’s Private Library: The Books That Shaped His Life, Ryback describes the original collection of 16,000 books, and how as the sub-title suggests, they “shaped his life”.
I am used to hearing how books educate, inform and enlighten and it was a surprise to read that the wholly unenlightened Adolf Hitler was “possessed by a voracious appetite for reading”. From his earliest years after returning from the First World War battle-front in France, Hitler scoured the book-stalls of Munich to fill two book cases in his rented rooms. He read “intently, even fiercely”, usually late into the night, and Ryback records an occasion when Eva Braun interrupted a reading session and was “dispatched with a tirade that sent her hurtling red-faced down the hallway”.
Associates recalled, “I can never remember Adolf without books”, and “books were his world”, with reading being a “deadly serious business”.
A list exists of Hitler’s borrowings from a right-wing lending library in Munich and shows that between 1919 and 1921, he borrowed over a hundred entries ranging from early church history to first-hand accounts of the Russian revolution. The list includes an large number anti-Semitic texts such as “The International Jew – The Worlds Foremost Problem”, “Luther and the Jews” and many others.
Continue reading Review: Hitler’s Private Library – Timothy W Ryback
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 I always enjoy John Sutherland’s writings having first come across his literary columns in The Guardian. I’ve already read this year How to Read a Novel and The Boy Who Loved Books, so when Curiosities of Literature came out a month or two ago it was a bit of a “must have”. In fact it turned out to be the perfect book to take on holiday, being very easy to dip into and always providing entertainment in odd moments reclaimed from the swimming pool or excursions.
At first glance it appears to be yet another of those attractively-produced little books aimed at the Christmas market – the sort of thing which is opened with a laugh but soon bores. However, anyone who loves books will find plenty to interest here, some light and inconsequential facts (the first spliff in literature, the shortest poem, the longest book etc), but even these, with Sutherland’s immense store of knowledge, are set in a context which illuminate rather merely amuse. (and incidentally, the first spliff appears in Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines and the longest book is Clarissa by Samuel Richardson and is about a million words long).
Continue reading Review: Curiosities of Literature – John Sutherland
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 I’ve always enjoyed reading books about reading and have a few on my shelves (not least the excellent, A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel). Margaret heard John Sutherland talking about How to Read a Novel on the radio, and when she told me about it, I decided to see what it was like, and was pleasantly surprised how good it is. While feeling I already know how to read a novel, when I read about John Sutherland (Booker Prize judge, Guardian columnist, academic etc), I guessed he would something to say to a compulsive reader like myself.
In How to Read a Novel, John Sutherland certainly tells his readers how to read a novel, but also covers many other topics about publishing and the book trade. Beginning with the presentation of the book (dust-jacket, cover design, author photograph etc), he moves on to show how these have all developed over time to become a key marketing tool – packaging is all, in the book trade as well as for those who sell baked beans.
John Sutherland well understands how difficult it is to choose a book to read among the vast numbers available in bookshops or online and gives his views on reviewers, advertising, back cover recommendations, best-seller lists and competitions. His considerable background as a reviewer, columnist, academic and Booker prize judge enable him to provide a huge amount of inside information to help readers navigate a bookstore without being taken in by the marketing hype of the industry.
Throughout the book, Sutherland describes the history of novel publishing, but in a humorous and entertaining way which draws the reader along with him. The book is witty and amusing as well as being informative. Where necessary, he focuses in on specific books, and shows how particular novels were land-marks of their time, which led to many others following. The book is almost a mini-history of the novel and shows how public tastes have changed over the years.
Continue reading Review: How to Read a Novel – John Sutherland
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I first came across Anne Fadiman some years ago via her book of reflections on reading Ex Libris. I enjoyed that little book more than its size would suggest, and when I read a review of At Large and Small I was intrigued enough to buy a copy. I found that it contains a [...]
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 This book, The Emergence of Memory, consists of conversations with, and essays upon, the German writer W G Sebald, author of Austerlitz, Vertigo, The Emgrants, and Rings of Saturn. When W G Sebald died in a car accident in 2001, after publishing just four books, his readers felt both a huge sense of loss, and also a sense of irony, that such a melancholic, perceptive writer should have come to an end quite so synchronistic with his writings. It seemed so appropriate that his disjointed, somehow incomplete literary wanderings should come to an abrupt end, leaving so many questions hanging in the wind.
All great works of literature either found a genre or dissolve one (Walter Benjamin, quoted in the book under review), and Sebald’s books are quite unique, baring a resemblance to nothing which has gone before, and almost certainly being followed by no book quite like them. Sebald creates thoughts in us which are entirely our own, as though discovering something which has always been there, but unrecognised until the convoluted prose of Sebald has penetrated into out own depths to release something precious from its swirling eddies.
For those who still hunger after more Sebald, this book fits the bill very well. A collection of essays and interviews with Sebald, it fills in many gaps, offering assistance to those who ask the questions:
- Are these novels or reflective travelogues?
- Are the characters Sebald meets real or imagined (or perhaps composite)?
- Who is the narrator?
- What is the meaning of the photographs?
- Are the photographs genuine illustrations of the events in the books?
- What is the relationship of the books to the Holocaust?
Continue reading Review: The Emergence of Memory – Lynne Sharon Schwartz
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