Ten years’ blogging

Looking at the data that WordPress offers me, I realise that I’ve been running this blog for getting on for ten years, which feels like a bit of an achievement, and perhaps time to take stock, as well.

There are well over 900 posts, and I have about 350 followers, although no way of knowing how many of you drop by regularly or read every post. This last year, a lot more visitors seem to have been digging back into the archives and looking up specific posts. And I don’t know why certain posts are so popular – on Carol Ann Duffy’s The Wound in Time, her poem commemorating the centenary of the 1918 armistice, on John Danby’s Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature. Ismail Kadare and Josef Skvorecky are popular this year; Theodore Kroger’s The Forgotten Village is a perennial favourite post. I’d really like to know more about why people visit and what they think, but you seem to be pretty reluctant to post comments, so I guess I’ll never know… But it is quite satisfying to think that people are stopping by regularly to read what I have to say.

As I blog about every book I read, the activity of blogging has affected the way I read and think about what I read, in a positive way for me. Sometimes I wonder if it also affects what I choose to read, but nothing yet has shown me that this is the case: I read what I want to read, one thing leads to another, and each year is punctuated by certain books I’ve looked forward to. This year’s have been Margaret Atwood’s The Testimonies and Philip Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth.

In the past I was also reflecting quite a lot on my experiences as a teacher, and the teaching of English, but as I’m now in my ninth year of retirement, there’s rather less of that. I’m still in touch with some of my former students, and pleased that they remember me, and often say appreciative things about the past. I’m aware that the nature of the teaching profession, and what teachers are expected to do, has changed quite radically in this country in recent years, even though the corpus of English literature hasn’t; to me, this means that a good deal of my experience is no longer relevant today. However, I’ve spent some of my time writing some study guides (on The Handmaid’s Tale, Antony & Cleopatra, and Journey’s End – if you’re interested in these you will need to visit the ZigZag website) which I’ve enjoyed doing, and which has helped to keep my brain in gear and use some of the accumulated knowledge and wisdom (?) of the years.

I’ve occasionally also written political posts, and sometimes have felt like writing more, but have not done so. I want to keep this a literature and reading blog above all else, and often think there’s too much political pontificating about without someone else adding more…

I shall keep going with this as long as I’m able to, as it currently feels like a useful discipline. There are dozens more books piled up waiting to be read, and somewhere I think I’ve accepted that I’ll never get to the end of them…

Thank you to all my readers, whoever and wherever you are. And do post a comment to let me know what you like or don’t like, what you agree or disagree with.

2018: My year of reading

A bit more reading than last year: I’ve managed to slow down the number of acquisitions slightly and have passed on quite a lot of books to Amnesty International this year. So far I’ve read 68, and can also report that unlike last year, I don’t seen to have given up on any. Out of the total, 21 were novels, half of those science fiction, and most were re-reads; I’ve read almost no new fiction this year. I’ve blogged about as often as previously, and still Theodore Kroger’s The Forgotten Village is one of my most popular hits, as is John Danby’s Shakespeare’s Doctrine of Nature for some reason.

A resolution for 2019 is to read more fiction, as is to continue with clearing out books I shall never read again, trying to buy fewer books, and trying to read more of those on the waiting pile, which I think has probably stopped growing(just as well) but hasn’t shrunk appreciably…

Awards for 2018: most disappointing read was Klaus Mann’s The Turning Point, his autobiography completed shortly before he killed himself. I struggled with Thomas Mann as a student and his son’s book sat on my shelf for over 30 years. His daughter Erika’s collection When The Lights Went Out, a collection of short stories about life in a small town under the Nazis, however, I did enjoy, and wrote about it here last year [?]

Again there is no award for weirdest book: I haven’t read anything weird this year.

Best new novel: an easy choice, this one, as there were so few to choose from, but it would have been my choice anyway – Stefan Brijs’ masterpiece set in the early days of the Great War, Post for Mrs Bromley. I do hope someone is out there working on a translation into Englsh.

Best novel (as in not one published recently) I think has to go to Ernst Weichert’s The Jeromin Children, although Marguerite Yourcenar’s L’Oeuvre Au Noir comes a very close second.

I have a difficult choice to make for the next two categories, Best non-fiction and Book of the Year, as they are both non-fiction. Since it’s my blog and I’m allowed, I’ll cheat. I award Best non-fiction title to Alberto Angela’s Empire, a really good example of the popularisation genre that actually works: the story of the Roman Empire told through the travels of a one sesterce coin. That allows me to give my Book of the Year title to Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses, one of the most horrifying and depressing books I’ve ever read, but which absolutely needed to be written and published, as such things must never be forgotten.

I’ll finish by thanking all my readers for your interest in my thoughts, and for your comments if you’ve made any; I hope you’ll continue to visit and find worthwhile things to read here in 2019…

On blogging

I’ve been blogging seriously for over five years now, so I step back to take stock of what I’ve been up to and what I’ve actually achieved. Nearly seven hundred posts, enough words written for several novels. Posts about individual books, novels, plays and poems. Posts on more general topics, to do with aspects of literature and teaching. Posts about my travels, about the Great War, and lots more besides.

I’ve enjoyed writing them, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered. And now I’ve got myself into a sort of routine, where I find I’m thinking more critically about a book as I read it, and often jotting down short notes about what I’ll write about. Sometimes an idea for a more general piece will pop into my mind as I read, or when I’m awake in the night, and I’ll start jotting down my thoughts; eventually it will be time to write it up, if there’s enough to say. So there’s a kind of mental discipline here, I feel: I read more carefully and critically, and make myself try and give coherent shape and form to my ideas. There is also the thought of all that complex electrical activity in my brain not going entirely to waste…

I write each piece using my notes, revise it carefully, and look for a picture of the book’s cover to illustrate it, if the post is about a particular book.

I have getting on for 300 followers, either via facebook or direct subscribers. Not that many, I think, but then I realise my subject-matter and my approach is a fairly serious one. I get upwards of a couple of thousand visitors a year; not that many really. Some posts get lots of readers, some only a couple, some none at all, I fear. I’m astonished at the ones visitors flock to – Theodore Kroger’s The Forgotten Village seems to head the list at the moment, closely followed by Derek Guiton’s A Man That Looks on Glass. The first is an obscure memoir set in revolutionary Russia, the second is part of a dialogue about the future direction of the Religious Society of Friends. Amazing what search engines will do…

I haven’t had that many comments on what I’ve written, and sometimes this saddens me; I wonder if it’s because I come across as too knowledgeable, or my reading and thoughts are too obscure, or the way I express my opinions tends to preclude comment or discussion. I’ve long wanted to engage in dialogue with more of my readers; I’m grateful for the comments that do develop into an exchange, and I like it when people disagree with me, take issue and argue – I think my former students would back me up here… Anyway, to those of you who do comment, whether to agree, disagree, or offer a different perspective on what I’ve said – thank you.

2016: my year of reading

Looking back on 2016, I’m struck by how little reading I’ve actually done this year – only 51 books finished, the lowest total since 2001. There are a couple of ‘started and paused, probably given up’ (Celine’s Voyage au Bout de la Nuit, and Uwe Tellkamp’s The Tower, if you really want to know). And I’ve managed to reduce my acquisitions for the year to 38, which is a reasonable achievement in my judgement; it would have been considerably lower but for a spree in November… And I’ve continued with the culling of the library too, although I’m not sure it really shows.

My blog – this one, which you are currently visiting – has been a bit more popular this year, in terms of visits and people signing up for regular access, although I can’t say I’ve made the big time. I have been a little surprised by what have been my most popular posts: both of the following have pretty much the same number of reads. There’s Theodore Kroeger’s The Forgotten Village – I’m not sure why so many have wanted to read about this obscure volume; it’s recently been republished in France, which is where my copy came from, but the visitors haven’t been from there. And then there was Derek Guiton’s A Man That Looks on Glass, an even more obscure book on the future of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers); I suppose many of those visitors may well be Quakers who have heard about the book. And I get visitors to the blog from so many different countries, though not unsurprisingly the UK and USA head the list.

Awards for 2016

Best new book: definitely Second-hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich, which I’m currently devouring and will review later, when I get to the end. I could have given the award to her book Chernobyl Prayer (see below)

Weirdest: probably Vassili Peskov’s Ermites dans le Taiga, a true tale of a family totally isolated and surviving in the depths of Siberia for almost forty years without any other human contact.

Best non-fiction: Chernobyl Prayer by Svetlana Alexievich. You haven’t read anything about the Chernobyl accident until you read this book. The first chapter will break your heart.

Most disappointing: Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit, by Celine, which I’ve felt guilty about for years for not reading, and started this year, but put down for something more interesting. It wasn’t that the book was boring or unreadable, just not gripping enough to keep me interested; I’ve kept thinking that I’d go back to it but so much time has now elapsed that I’d probably have to begin again, which I can’t see myself doing.

Resolutions for 2017: repeat last year’s to buy fewer books, read more, and diminish the pile of unread books sitting in piles everywhere. I’m also, slowly, contemplating the possibility of a re-design of this blog, so that it looks a little less austere, and is perhaps a little easier to find your way around. Would that be a good idea, or do you prefer it as it is?

And so farewell to the world of words for 2016.

Theodore Kröger: The Forgotten Village

Well, this was astonishing, and unforgettable. A bestseller in the 1930s when first published, it’s not been reprinted in English for sixty years, but fortunately the French haven’t forgotten it.

Son of a German watchmaker, settled for many years in Tsarist Russia, the author of what’s described as an ‘autobiographical novel’ (interesting genre, that) attempts to flee to Germany at the start of the First World War, but is captured, condemned to death as a spy and then instead exiled to the wastes of northern Siberia.

Initially he suffers as a prisoner in horrendous conditions, but eventually, thanks to powerful connections in St Petersburg, his life in exile is made rather easier and he rises to prominence in a settlement in the middle of nowhere, becoming the bosom friend of the local police chief. Eventually, through his connnections and family fortune he succeeds in bringing some prosperity and development to the town, ameliorated the living conditions of the thousands of German POWs in the area, and marries a local Tartar girl.

The writer’s love of the place and its people develops and becomes clear, shining through the pages; it’s evident that though unbelievably harsh, Siberia is a beautiful place, in a space and time continuum of its very own. And he discovers a remote village, completely cut off from the ‘outside’ world, which he and his fellow-prisoners aid to become completely self-sufficient and to hide itself from the coming ravages of the Revolution…

There are moments of true horror in his story: a nearby village is stricken by the plague, and in order to stop it spreading, they massacre all its inhabitants and burn the village down. The Kerensky government orders the release of all common criminals: these begin to wreak havoc on the town, and are all eventually killed or driven away.

The writer explores some of the totally unknown areas of the country and he and his companions come across a ghost town, its inhabitants all long dead in their homes; then they discover a large settlement of savages who still hunt with bows and arrows, and manage (just) to escape with their lives.

The utter chaos after the October Revolution is appalling; whole swathes of the country are abandoned to cold and famine and the winter of 1917/18 is atrocious; very few of the several thousand townspeople come through alive…

Some of the story stretches credulity just a little, I think to myself as I read, but then I recall other accounts of Siberia a century ago that I’ve read, and other travellers’ tales, and I think, no, this could well all be true. If in the late 1970s a small settlement could be found, of people who had seen not another living soul for over forty years, then Kroger’s account could be true. It doesn’t read like a novel: there’s no plot, the narrative is linear, people come and go as the author moves around. It’s very powerful, and very moving.