Reading in company
Mar. 28th, 2022 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThis is the first post of 2022 about what I've been reading: which doesn't seem right. In my mind, there are far more book reports in this journal than there are in reality. Is that ambiguous? It should be. I think of the journal as containing more book talk than it does; also I compose book posts in my mind which never make it to the keyboard. For no better reason than that it feels more urgent to write about things that have happened; books will always be there...
Yes, well. There's a post that's been brewing in my mind since that weekend at Beamsley Hospital, and D.'s visit ten days ago has jogged my memory about it. It was a good weekend for reading, in the absence of internets and televisions and such, and it turned out that D. and I were each reading - and enjoying - books we had given each other. This was gratifying enough in itself, and the randomness of the juxtaposition just increased the urge to write about it.
I had come across Graham Robb's The Debatable Land almost by accident. I spotted it in a bookshop I wanted to support by buying something, and not finding any of the books I'd been planning to buy; I had, with reservations, enjoyed his book on France... Like The Discovery of France, The Debatable Land explores a location through an investigation of its history, and places the personality of the author front and centre. The more I read, the more I thought it had a good chance of appealing to D., and I was relieved to find that I'd been right.
I've come across the expression 'the Debatable Land' in literary circles locally, used fairly loosely to refer to the English/Scottish border - the territory of the reivers, the boundary that moved from one side of the Tweed to the other, changing the status of Berwick-upon-Tweed as it shifted. This, says Robb, is not quite correct. The debatable land he is writing about is a much more restricted area, just, as it happens, across the river from his new home. What's more, that 'debatable' is a misnomer: the land is 'battable', rich pasture suitable for fattening cattle. It is this use that has given it its special status, not privately owned, with cattle driven onto it each day and removed each night, with no resident humans or farm animals, not lawless but subject to specific local laws...
That's a pretty discovery for a new resident to make about one particular valley, at one particular time. The book opens out into a broader history of the border reivers, and as it does so, it paints the portrait of the author as a slightly startled new northerner. This article in the Glasgow Evening Times is a good introduction: moving from Oxford to Liddesdale to be nearer to his mother, he thinks of himself as a returning northerner (born in Manchester to Scottish parents) but the first night in Carlisle suggests that things are not so simple. What's more, his understanding of the Borders is complicated by the referendum on Scottish independence, in which he has no vote, although the national boundary is the boundary of his property. And just when all seems to be well, and the desired result delivered, he is completely blindsided by the outcome of the Brexit referendum.
Which would be a downbeat ending to the book, but luckily Robb has another discovery up his sleeve. The first pages of the book tell us there's a second discovery in store - I use words like "discovery" as the text does, with no solid basis to evaluate its plausibility - but he holds back the reveal, and I'm not going to spoiler it. But it's a big shiny one, and I laughed when I realised what it was: Is he going there? Well, of course he's going there! I don't know what his publishers' marketing department had to say about this strategy, because it's a discovery in an area they could have had a lot of fun with. If you want to find out what it is, you could read the book.
While D. was chuckling over Graham Robb, I was reading Kevin Hearne's Hounded, the first in his 'Iron Druid' fantasy series. D had managed to pick up a duplicate copy in a charity shop, and passed it on because he thought I might enjoy it. And once I had got past the opening, I did.
Perversely, what put me off was almost certainly designed to draw me in. The central character is a two thousand year old Druid living - and running a shop - in Arizona. Not where you'd expect to find Celtic gods, Fae, the usual suspects? That, he explains, is a large part of its attraction: he can get on with enjoying life without stumbling over old enemies. I'd be very happy with this sort of story, but Hounded is designed for people who demand more action than that, and on page 4 he is jumped by five would-be assassins. Of course he fights them off, without much effort, because that's the kind of hard-boiled druid he is. That 'iron' in the series title is not metaphorical, he really has bound himself with iron, which helps. He's also irresistible to women, and when I say 'women', I mean goddesses. And inevitably, he is pretty pleased with himself.
This is all tedious, and irritating, enough. But it's the price of admission to an entertaining take on Celtic myth, with a variety of unexpected turns and alliances. I'm not rushing off to look for the rest of the series, but nor am I saying never again!.
And if these faint damns give you an urge to read the book, I should warn you that the back cover copy contains information about one of the characters which is not revealed until page 200 of the book. I often complain about spoilers in cover copy, but this is extreme.
Yes, well. There's a post that's been brewing in my mind since that weekend at Beamsley Hospital, and D.'s visit ten days ago has jogged my memory about it. It was a good weekend for reading, in the absence of internets and televisions and such, and it turned out that D. and I were each reading - and enjoying - books we had given each other. This was gratifying enough in itself, and the randomness of the juxtaposition just increased the urge to write about it.
I had come across Graham Robb's The Debatable Land almost by accident. I spotted it in a bookshop I wanted to support by buying something, and not finding any of the books I'd been planning to buy; I had, with reservations, enjoyed his book on France... Like The Discovery of France, The Debatable Land explores a location through an investigation of its history, and places the personality of the author front and centre. The more I read, the more I thought it had a good chance of appealing to D., and I was relieved to find that I'd been right.
I've come across the expression 'the Debatable Land' in literary circles locally, used fairly loosely to refer to the English/Scottish border - the territory of the reivers, the boundary that moved from one side of the Tweed to the other, changing the status of Berwick-upon-Tweed as it shifted. This, says Robb, is not quite correct. The debatable land he is writing about is a much more restricted area, just, as it happens, across the river from his new home. What's more, that 'debatable' is a misnomer: the land is 'battable', rich pasture suitable for fattening cattle. It is this use that has given it its special status, not privately owned, with cattle driven onto it each day and removed each night, with no resident humans or farm animals, not lawless but subject to specific local laws...
That's a pretty discovery for a new resident to make about one particular valley, at one particular time. The book opens out into a broader history of the border reivers, and as it does so, it paints the portrait of the author as a slightly startled new northerner. This article in the Glasgow Evening Times is a good introduction: moving from Oxford to Liddesdale to be nearer to his mother, he thinks of himself as a returning northerner (born in Manchester to Scottish parents) but the first night in Carlisle suggests that things are not so simple. What's more, his understanding of the Borders is complicated by the referendum on Scottish independence, in which he has no vote, although the national boundary is the boundary of his property. And just when all seems to be well, and the desired result delivered, he is completely blindsided by the outcome of the Brexit referendum.
Which would be a downbeat ending to the book, but luckily Robb has another discovery up his sleeve. The first pages of the book tell us there's a second discovery in store - I use words like "discovery" as the text does, with no solid basis to evaluate its plausibility - but he holds back the reveal, and I'm not going to spoiler it. But it's a big shiny one, and I laughed when I realised what it was: Is he going there? Well, of course he's going there! I don't know what his publishers' marketing department had to say about this strategy, because it's a discovery in an area they could have had a lot of fun with. If you want to find out what it is, you could read the book.
While D. was chuckling over Graham Robb, I was reading Kevin Hearne's Hounded, the first in his 'Iron Druid' fantasy series. D had managed to pick up a duplicate copy in a charity shop, and passed it on because he thought I might enjoy it. And once I had got past the opening, I did.
Perversely, what put me off was almost certainly designed to draw me in. The central character is a two thousand year old Druid living - and running a shop - in Arizona. Not where you'd expect to find Celtic gods, Fae, the usual suspects? That, he explains, is a large part of its attraction: he can get on with enjoying life without stumbling over old enemies. I'd be very happy with this sort of story, but Hounded is designed for people who demand more action than that, and on page 4 he is jumped by five would-be assassins. Of course he fights them off, without much effort, because that's the kind of hard-boiled druid he is. That 'iron' in the series title is not metaphorical, he really has bound himself with iron, which helps. He's also irresistible to women, and when I say 'women', I mean goddesses. And inevitably, he is pretty pleased with himself.
This is all tedious, and irritating, enough. But it's the price of admission to an entertaining take on Celtic myth, with a variety of unexpected turns and alliances. I'm not rushing off to look for the rest of the series, but nor am I saying never again!.
And if these faint damns give you an urge to read the book, I should warn you that the back cover copy contains information about one of the characters which is not revealed until page 200 of the book. I often complain about spoilers in cover copy, but this is extreme.
