Trust the Plastic

So - reading logs

I read a very short book called Doctor in the Navy which did exactly what it says on the dust jacket being a James-Herriot-style account of a .. err ... Doctor in the Navy in what I think is the late fifties. I'm not sure why I took it out of the library - it just seemed to fall off the shelf. It was OK as a palate-cleanser after the Kate Bush book. I'm also not sure whether it's true - I mean was the Wrens' accommodation in Portsmouth really called HMS Impregnable

Next up was A Gate at the Stairs - by Lorrie Moore who is better known for her short stories - this fact is the biggest complaint in the Amazon reviews; there is too much descriptive stuff in the novel for a lot of her fans and indeed the actual story is not that substantial being padded out with long and often unconnected musings by the narrator. This must not put you off because it turns a sentimental pulp story into a deep reflection on one's own existence. Never do these diversions seem anything other than entirely pertinent to the atmosphere and ambiance which is the real reason for the book - the real meat. This makes the events so much more affecting. The narrator is supposed to be only twenty but has the wisdom of a woman twice her age which upset another subset of the reviewers. Again do not be put off by this. I can think of plenty of twenty-year olds I have known with the sophistication of people twice their age. Maybe at that age, we just lack the eloquence to voice the feelings we have. A novel is always a triumph of remembered detail over the fuzziness of any reality on which it based and therefore making a narrator analyse the situations in which they are placed is no more than detailing a conversation to make a point. The only true capturing of reality comes from recording devices with a far higher veracity than that of the human memory. As one reviewer said this book can stand a whole raft of spoilers for it is not the story that matters - it is the writing and with writing this good, the details of the plot matter only when you get to them.

And for Fathers' Day we have The Wavewatcher's Companion from the Idler Gavin Pretor-Pinney - he of the Cloud Appreciation Society. I'm still only on the second chapter of this but the initial dipping I did shows it to be a deep and funny investigation into all-things wavy.