Cry, the Beloved Country

Finished and adored Posession! If ever I had anything to say about either this, or Lolita, I have forgotten them - save enjoying both.

Cry the Beloved Country caught my attention by having a gorgeous title. It's a very clever book - it draws attention to the evils in Africa by showing us the good. Kind priests, with kind wives, living next to kind landowners with very, very kind sons - you love everyone in this novel, and in the midst of misery treasure every kind deed (and there are lots of these). Suggesting, I suppose, that the evil is just endemic - until root problems are solved, there is no hope for the individual. It was also very beautifully written. For a novel to be great, it doesn't have to be complex - this is as plain as a book could be, and through its simplicity expresses so much more. Highly recommended.

And certainly the polar opposite of Beloved by Toni Morrison, a gothic novel set in post-civil-war America. It's really dense, getting through is like wading through treacle. Its not like the words are long or the grammar complicated - it's just a book that doesn't enjoy being read, if you get me.
In the past few days, I've been going through something of a book lull - I can't find anything I want to read. I got through 4 books in as many minutes yesterday - Martin Chuzzelwit, looks good but I feel like a quick read; Bridget Jones Diary, didn't even get to the first page as it ain't on the list; Detectives, a book of sci-fi noirs, managed two pages before my splitting headache interrupted; Mrs Smilla's feeling for Snow, which was good, but by that point I'd established I wasn't in the mood for reading.

Nor can I work up the energy for anything in a wider sense. After enjoying Cry the Beloved Country, my mater suggested I give Uncle Tom's Cabin a spin. "Because you'll like that".

If you say so. I like being happy. I like ignoring whole chunks of unhappy history. I refuse point blank to watch issues movies, and Schindler's List is the only one of the IMDb top 10 I haven't seen, because they depress me. And I hate, hate novels written in dialect, because I suffer from the malady that is skim reading, and if you skim dialect you don't understand it, and before you know you're flicking through whole chapters for someone who speaks the Queen's English again. At which point, you're hardly getting the whole experience of the book. This is preciciely what happened 100 pages into Uncle Tom - a crying shame, because up until then I had been enjoying it.

I'm also furious at my local library, for being incompetant. I want to get a job there, just so I can sort them out. I was looking for three books, all listed on their computer:

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, because I started reading it in an airport departure lounge. While still in the bookshop, and it had a really nice style - not to mention, defiantly modern in the face of all the Victoriana I'd been indulging in. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan, a brilliant author and one I really can't stand, because poor missing Miss McCann was on my brain, and I'm sure he'd make a great novel out of the situation. Also, because Child in Time is an amazing title for, say, a different, more appealing sci-fi novel, rather than a morbid real life drama. And it has time in the title. And Short Trips - Doctor Who short stories, definitely not on the list, as a break from all that misery and gender confusion.

Eugenides - shelfmarked adult fiction, look at Eu. McEwan - check under Mc, then check Ew, then Mc again just in case I'd missed it. Nada. Not a single book by either of those authors. To set the scene, this was not the first time I'd come looking for these three novels - I'd browsed quickly at least twice before.

I'm head library prefect at my school. As I was at my previous school. How can I not find a book which is meant to be there?! No problem, lets look for Short Trips - shelfmarked, junior fiction. Not desperately embarassed by this, because I know in this case it's been incorrectly shelved - it should be with teens, or maybe the sci-fi? It isn;t there. I check under both authors. I check under D for doctor. I then scour the entirety of the sci-fi section, just in case. Twice.

By that point, I was a little annoyed. Went to a librarian. Asked for help finding Short Trips. So she checked teen fiction, then junior fiction, then got a second librarian to help, all the while cooing "She's looking for a Doctor Who novel!", as I shrivelled at being stuck in a section where the shelves were a head shorter than me, letting someone else look for a book I couldn't find.
It's karmic justice, I suppose.

Finally, she goes to look in their back room. And returns five minutes later, to say sorry, it was lent out to a school in 2001, so maybe MAYBE it got lost? Our local library has "maybe" been missing a book since 2001 and no one has noticed. I didn't have the heart to tell her there were two other books I was looking for also. So that's the last time I look for something specific in this library - from now on, I'm taking the whole list down and taking whatever I find.

There's something of a libriric curse going around right now (libriric: neologism, meaning "to do with libraries. Cute word). Suddenly, my beloved school library has become a lot less friendly. It's not a case of "you can't save them all" - right now I can't save any!

PS - went back to Oxfam. Dictionary of the Khzars was gone. Absolutement typique.

Currently reading: the Bridge, by Iain Banks. Not on the list, but I've been meaning to read it for years, and Beloved.
Up next: Smilla's Feeling for Snow, maybe a Town like Alice. Also, I've been recommended Trollope.
Read since last update: 1
Total read: 78
Of which is: 7.79% of the list