Former People

Author: Douglas Smith

Year published: 2012

Pages: 374

Time It Took To Read: A couple of weeks - not a beach book!

I don't know much about the Russian revolution. It was missed out of my GCSE history, because apparently the feudal system of 500 years ago is more important than something that happened barely a hundred years ago.
Like many others, my knowledge was mainly grouped around some names (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky), a vague communist ideology, and the murder of the Tsar and his family in 1918. I've read quite a lot about the murder of Tsar Nicholas II, and it was a horrific murder. Discount, if you will, the politics and the status of the family. A husband and wife, their four daughters and their invalid son, along with some servants, were taken into the cellar of the house they'd been held at. They were told they were going to be shot (they went down believing they were to be moved), and the soldiers opened fire. Unfortunately, the family had sewn their jewels into the clothes, which sounds decadent, until you realise that this was pretty much the only liquid assets they had left to use if they managed to get out of Russia. These jewels acted as bulletproof vests. The family were stabbed with bayonets once the bullets ran out. It took ten minutes. Imagine watching your family gunned down and stabbed for ten long minutes. Once they were finally dead, they were burned, buried, moved around a bit and eventually found in 1981 and 2007, and reburied.
So, that's what happened to the monarch. But no monarchy exists without an aristocracy to support it and to marry into. This book deals with what happened to the noble class.
Russia in the early 1900s was plagued by poor government and civil unrest. A revolution was seen as inevitable and welcomed by many; rich and poor alike.The type of socialism employed by Lenin reversed the status quo. Rich estates were given to peasants, rich people were sent to work in the fields. Their possessions were either stolen, destroyed or simply removed from them by the government. Many nobles fled into Europe, where they had families or second homes. Indeed, the Tsar was trying to arrange to get out to Great Britain around the time he was arrested. The reluctance of George V in allowing his cousin to seek refuge meant they had to stay. However, many other nobles chose to stay, not wanting to abandon the motherland. They often spent long terms in prisons and work camps, and several were shot for treason. But as this book demonstrates, life went on. People married, they had children, they lived as best they could in their newly reduced circumstances.
Then Stalin came along. The nobility (along with other undesirables) were made official Outcasts. This forbade them to work, to own property/land, to seek healthcare or use legal services. They were imprisoned in gulags for long periods of time, with little or no warning, or reason. Sometimes, they were released for a few years, only to be rounded up and executed. Being sent to the gulag often meant death anyway, from starvation, dysentery, and other infections.

This book concentrates on the Golitsyn and Sheremetev dynasties. There is a lot of interbreeding, and repeated names, which makes it hard to follow - there's a family tree and list of characters, but I felt like having a notebook alongside, writing things as I went along would have been more helpful. I didn't feel particularly involved with anyone's plight and everytime I became absorbed, the narrative switched to someone else. By the time the action switched back, I'd forgotten who was who.
This book expects you to have more understanding of the Russian revolution than I do. That said, it is exceptionally well put together and researched, and heartbreaking. I just wish the author had concentrated on a couple of strong central characters and made the rest of the story revolve around them. The constant jumping around does not make for a cohesive read. He has not struck quite the right note between dry historical narrative and biography. On to something less arduous!

Book count: 31/50

The Duties of Servants

 

Author: Jan Barnes, original unknown

Year published: Originally in the 1870s, reprint from 1993

Pages: 128

Time It Took To Read: Not long

I read on the toilet and have a selection of books installed there, for when my usual fare is just not bog-worthy. You know you do too, stop judging me. Anyway, I'm currently wading through a fascinating, but deeply depressing book on the Russian revolution, and that's not good toilet reading. THIS however, was PERFECT.
It was originally published in the late 1870s, as a guide for employers of servants. It has a guide to wages, advice on hiring (don't hire married men, they might steal your brandy), and an outline of duties for each servant. It covers the very largest households, and the legion of servants expected, down to the family with just a parlourmaid. It has some GEMS of information, like how to talk about food with your cook without annoying her, and how to cope with SLATTERNS. It's not a very substantial book, but if you like Downton (I don't), or that period of history (I do), or social history (yup), you'll get something out of it.

Book count:30/50

I've also been re-reading some Bill Bryson books - Neither Here Nor There and Notes From A Small Island. That man is a GENIUS.

A Dance With Dragons

Author: George R.R. Martin

Series:  A Song Of Ice and Fire, book 5

Year published: 2011

Pages: 1300, over two volumes

Time It Took To Read: Three days

 

Alas that I have finished the published books for now. Alas. I'll be dreaming of flying round on the backs of dragons for ages now.  This book picks up pretty much exactly where Feast for Crows left off, following the different paths of the multiple main characters. The first half concentrates on the action around King's Landing and the second half concentrates on the South and the wall. The two join up towards the end of the second part. 

People you think are going for the long haul die, others reappear when they shouldn't, and someone finally gets a little comeuppance. But the reason I love these books is because there is no linear action-judgement-consequence. Someone does something vile and gets off scot free. Someone else leads an apparently good life and suffers all manner of hell. Nobody is wholly good or bad (though some are wholly stupid) but it doesn't matter if what they are - if they're in the way of the story, they die.GRRM is a twisted puppet master.

Hopefully, Winds of Winter will be released next year and I won't have to writhe in expectation waiting for it for six years.

 

If you haven't read these books, and you like fantasy or sagas, and you think you'll enjoy them, try and read them all consecutively. It gives you a much better idea of who's who, family trees (the appendices help, but they're not very well written) and WHY things happen. I read the series with long gaps between books 1 and 2, and 3 and 4 and it made somewhat disjointed reading, while I tried to remember who was who. I will re-read the lot when the next one comes out.

Book count: 29/50

A Feast For Crows

 

Author: George R.R. Martin

Series:  A Song Of Ice and Fire, book 4

Year published: 2005

Pages: 778 + appendices

Time It Took To Read: Three days

Oh, Game of Thrones! Oh, George R.R. Martin! Oh, misery! Oh, death! Oh, despair!

I read the first three SoIaF  books last year, on recommendation from multiple sources. The first one took ages to get into, the second was a bit slow going, the third was a neverending, heart wrenching tale of WOE. This is similar to the third. GRRM does not pull his punches. He's not writing a fairy story. It is difficult to fathom whether anyone will get a happy ending, at this point, especially considering he's writing another two volumes of the series, and writes them on a slow timescale.

It's difficult to know where to start when describing this series. It is set in a massive, realistic world. The scope of it is enormous. The amount of central characters is huge - nobody's story is really secondary. Instead of there being one protagonist, there are loads, and they are regularly killed off. Considering most fantasy work is based around one or two characters, who you know are almost certain to survive, it can be quite jarring. GRRM will not be second guessed, as anyone who saw the recent Red Wedding episode of the show can tell you. Imagine Lord of the Rings, but with more sex, and with Frodo brutally murdered halfway to Rivendell, and you may have a bit of an idea of what kind of epic you're dealing with. I don't actually watch the TV series, because of plot differences and the fact the TV show might give away things I haven't read yet.

This book concentrates on half the characters, with a note at the end explaining that there was just too much to fit in one book, so the other half of characters are in the next volume. I don't want to tell you WHO it concentrates on because I can't remember if there's a question mark over their deaths in the first few books, but I don't think I'm giving much away when I say this book is mostly concerned with the Lannisters, the Starks and the Ironborn. There are brutal murders, plots that seem straight out of the court of Henry VIII, religion, and lots of misery. Nobody is happy, nobody is safe and there seems no end to the endless suffering in the realm. And I love it. I saved the last three books to read after my exam, partly to stop myself becoming wholly entrenched, partly to give myself a goal. I started reading this literally as soon as I got home after the exam. It can be quite difficult to follow the myriad plot threads, especially when they cross over, but there are full character lists in the appendix of each book.
I prefer A Storm of Swords to this one, but I think that's because all the characters are involved (and it was SLIGHTLY less relentlessly grim). I would've been quite pissed off had I bought A Feast for Crows when it was released and had to wait six years to find out what happens to everyone else in A Dance With Dragons. As it is, A Dance With Dragons is sitting next to me, and I'm about to start reading. SQUEE for these books. SQUEE for them, and their refusal to comply with the usual fiction tropes of a happy ending, or hope, or even a little bit of happiness. SQUEE for complicated characters! SQUEE for female characters with actual plot! SQUEE for fantasy treating its readership as intelligent adults, not teenagers, with no knowing wink!
Squee indeed.

Book Count: 28/50

Procrastinating? Moi?

So, I decided my fifty books should all be books I hadn't read before. Otherwise, there's no challenge for me. I'd just re-read the top two shelves of my bookcases and be done.
Now, thus far, this hasn't been a problem. However, with my exam looming in less than a week, I shouldn't be reading anything other than endless coursebooks about health. Health, health, health. Where everything you'd think is a good thing is actually bad, and they use big words like salutogenesis and iatrogenesis and expect you to understand and recite their  meaning verbatim (a paradigm of wellness in spite of disease, and medicine making you worse, in case you were wondering). Reading for pleasure at this point in time comes with a whopping great side order of GUILT and PROCRASTINATION. So, I've not really been doing much of it.
I've been reading magazines. Mainly the Radio Times, because I prefer reading about telly to watching it, but also cardmaking, Private Eye and food magazines, because I am crafty, snarky and greedy.
I've also been re-reading a few old favourite books. First, The Lord of The Rings because reading The Hobbit made me yearn for all that hobbity action, and elvish bollocks. Then The Pillars Of Hercules by Paul Theroux, which is a travel book about a man who meanders around the edge of the Mediterranean, carping furiously at everything. I love him. I also read French Provincial Cooking by Elizabeth David. She really started the food revolution in this country after rationing ended, introducing garlic as a non-terrifying foodstuff, and increasing interest in things like pasta. Her books are poetry, and her recipes all seem pretty legit. I admit, I read them for the food porn rather than as a manual.
Currently, I am reading...slyly and guiltily... Sunrise With Seamonsters by Paul Theroux, which is a collection of his journalism. It's mostly based around travel and other writers, and covers the first twenty years of his career. I'm also reading, less guiltily, The Art of Eating by M.F.K Fisher. If you have never heard of Mary Kennedy Frances Fisher, you are MISSING OUT. She was basically the US's version of Elizabeth David, waxing lyrical about French food and inspiring two post-war generations (she started writing between the World Wards) to eat better. The Art of Eating is an anthology of her first five books, and her autobiographical The Gastronomical Me is one of the best examples of food writing I've ever read. It is delicious. I am evangelising. Go read.

So, in a week, I start on the enormous pile of fantasy books waiting for me. After seeing the reaction of TV viewers to The Game Of Thrones Red Wedding, I can't wait.  And I really can't wait to get this hateful exam done... Where was I? Prevention...is it better than cure? Probably not... *sigh*

The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

 Title: The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England

Author: Ian Mortimer

Year published: 2012

Pages: 432
Time It Took To Read: A few weeks

God, I'm on such a go-slow this month. I've got an exam looming in 25 days (GULP) and despite the fact I'm putting revision off, I cannot concentrate properly on anything else. Except blind panic and flailing, but that's fairly standard.

Anyhow, I started reading this a few weeks ago, and have been persevering VERY SLOWLY. That's not to say it's a difficult read - it really isn't - I just have a lousy slow mind at the moment.  I am a big fan of Ian Mortimer - the Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England is one of my favourite history books. 

Instead of concentrating on the monarchy, which virtually every other history book does (mainly because that's where the documentation lies), Ian Mortimer looks at sources to find out how regular people lived. He writes the book in the form of a guide to another country, with sections on the land, diet, entertainment, transport and illness. It is FASCINATING. 

Although this isn't written as a series, you will probably find it helpful to read the Medieval England guide first, as this book assumes you've read it and builds on the knowledge in that book. It compares life in Elizabethan England both to the medieval era, and to the present. 

Book count:  27/50

I have a VAST TROVE of books to read after my exam, including the latter three Song of Ice and Fire series, and loads of other fantasy. But for now, I fear the revision needs my attention a touch more.

Shadow of Night

No photo. Go look it up on Amazon, it's BLUE.

Title: Shadow of Night

Author: Deborah Harkness

Series: All Souls Trilogy Book 2

Year published: 2012

Pages: 630

Time It Took To Read: Two afternoons

After reading the first of this series, I compulsively bought the second. Then I remembered how horrendously behind on uni work I was and made myself forsake it until my last TMA was in. My last TMA was submitted on Sunday and I picked this book up yesterday. AND DEVOURED IT. 

Now, I don't want to give away any major plot twists, but the story thus far is that a witch has fallen in love with a vampire (as you do) and now they're hiding in time from the Congregation - a scary collection of witches, vampires and daemons who keep order. The witch, Diana, has a very shaky grasp of her power, and is trying to find a teacher. The vampire, Matthew, has his finger in every possible historical pie.He is omnipresent, friends with every luminary of the 1590s, and exceptionally politically powerful. Diana has to cover up her 21st century origins, and Matthew has to try and cover up several hundred years of changing ethics and politics. And then they have to try and get what they came for, and then get home again.

There are, as mentioned before, lots of parallels with the godawful Twilight series. The biggest differences are that Diana is a fully rounded character, not a melancholy teenage idiot, and the author really knows her historical stuff. The book falls down slightly in some of the dialogue, but more than makes up for it in invoking the atmosphere of 16th century Britain. It did slightly rankle at how quickly Diana dropped her modern behaviour, though this is explained away by her learned background. 

Also, my useless vasovagal response kicked in when there was biting of chest arteries, and I nearly passed out. It is no good being triggered by venepuncture, when enamored of vampire fiction.

There will be a third in this series, but Deborah Harkness hasn't BLOODY WRITTEN IT YET. I feel slightly like going a bit Misery to force her to write it faster, but that way madness lies ;-). It really is quite a compulsive read. I am not a patient person, but will certainly be reading it when it finally emerges.In the mean time, if you are a fan of vampire books, or supernatural books, or alternative history books, or just historical fiction, I really recommend this particular book. But read the first one first, or it won't make all that much sense.

Book count: 26/50