Caution; Rambling reflections of a literary heart

It is in our inherent human nature to take stock at this time of year and reflect on what we have lost and gained. Not the accumulation or discarding of things material but what has ultimately altered the landscape of our hearts. With as equally as many manifestations as love, loss has proven itself to be one of the main arteries of the beating and pulsating heart of literature and poetry. I could not afford the luxury of reflection a year ago as I was in the midst of experience which was tainted with the denial of loss. Today on this not so sunny December day I can do a double take of how through its many different guises loss has undeniably altered the person that sits here today. As throughout my life I have found solace though through music, mainly Florence, Mumford and sons and old Sarah Mclachlan songs and literature, most recently Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguru and the heartache that accompanied me has led me to the discovery, not only the reading of poetry, but the poet within where loss has been both fuel and driver of the metaphorical vehicle.

Its been a year and a half since I have seen my best friend and I wonder can I still use that term to refer to her if the friendship doesn’t exist any more. Perhaps it is a term that supersedes time and events, like the word brother or Lizette . Or perhaps it is a term that can only lay claim by mutual agreement in which an absent party nullifies it. Whatever the case may be it has proven to be the biggest continual loss of my life thus far. Through its manifestation of friendship how easy it was to love, how easy it was to destroy a thing of beauty and extreme depth which had the fragility of paperweight porcelain. How easy it was to be unforgivably faltered and misunderstood.How hard it is to grasp that an accumulated and compounded,misinterpreted few days outweighed 4 years. How hard it is to explain the ache and pain of the shards of the sharp edged paper-thin porcelain stuck within my flesh that pricks a little harder and deeper at the thought and sight of what has been lost. The emptiness of her absence is vast and has left even the most general attempts at friendship and bonding, hollow. The fuel, however, that taps from it is rich and rewarding and through words comes healing, and through new life comes a chance to be and do better. The crushing blow comes not from the realization that I am not perfect but that my imperfections are intolerable and unforgivable when weighed against the essence of who I am. Even though a certain light within in me has been diminished forever as soon as this concept began to hit home. I miss her and if she would let me reinterpret the broken shards to sand them to rounder edges I would but ultimately I know that this present, this void, will remain my reality.

On the 23rd of Decemeber someone who was very dear to me would have celebrated his 30th birthday but as fate would have it he will forever be 25. And how he has shaped my life for the few years he was present in it. He very harshly awoken a very naive self to the fact that life was not only black and white but an endless colour chart of grey. Although I should probably give half the credit to literature and Bernard Schlink for this as well. He forced me to think about things rather than just accept them and uncovered and instilled a sense of adventure in me that lay dormant for far too long. I am better for having met him even though I know I will never have the chance to yet fully understand his complicated heart.

In May 2010 my almost biggest lost became my biggest gain. My mom had a double heart attack and had to have and angiogram to open up one of her arteries. What was considered to be a simple procedure caused her heart to stop on the operating table. The doctors and nurses struggled for 20 minutes to resuscitate her, in other words her brain was left for 20 minutes without oxygen. After reviving her they had to induce a coma and bring her in a state of hyperthermia to save her brain and heart. They gave her a 1% of survival and if she did manage to survive, they prepared us for major brain damage and that she would never be herself again. It was hard to come to terms with these statistics but the unfailing support from my friends carried me through a time where I was incapable of anything accept begging prayer and hope. I could not lose my rock in life it just wasn’t an option, having that phone call come through to say she didn’t make it...not an option. As it is with grace that is undeservingly bestowed on us, and after what felt like an eternity my mother awoke from her coma unscathed. Her 1% survival rate didn’t even cause her a 1% loss of her brain capacity. I have never witnessed the kind of strength with which she manage to carry herself through her recovery. And I have never felt the intense agonizing pleading and bargaining within myself as I did in that week of hell. Her presence in our lives reminds us daily at what her doctors scientifically described as ‘impossible’ and a ‘miracle’. There are people who do believe in miracles and people who don’t and then you get us, people who get to witness one. Being able to still share in the bond between mother and daughter, stronger than ever, has been the biggest gain this year.

The last two years has taught me that I am person of strength, that I can be wrong and learn from it to be better, and I have learned to be patient with myself, with others and with life which I now discover has probably prepared and led me to be more ready to for this moment where life and another gain is rapidly growing inside me with every breath. I am still aching from past events and with some I carry a perpetual pain which on days leaves me grasping for my crippled altered heart and pleading with it to stop yearning for what no longer is, but I can also state with confidence, crippled heart and all that I have managed to be happy and content with what I have.

Even though it is loss that fuels the pen to create the metaphors to understand human emotions, it is from the strength that we witness in others and ultimately gather within ourselves as a result from these experiences, that inspire us to have the confidence to pen them down and carry on through the loss, use it an channel it, even if it is through a forever altered version of ourselves.

Holiday reading spots

It's at last holiday time and I am armed with my favourite holiday indulgence Phillipa Gregory, my half finished Haruki Murukami's Norwegian Wood, Milan Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being and and my Everest, Marlene van Niekerk's Agaat and this is where I will be enjoying them: Old Mac Daddy Luxury Trailer Park.





I can't wait, just a few more things to pack then we are off tomorrow morning on an early flight. I can't wait to see our quirky For Better or Boerewors suite and unwind swimming, hiking and of course reading.



(images; Old Mac Daddy)

The rest of my reading will be happening between Christmas and New Years here:


A work in progress, my own little makeshift bohemian reading spot at home for the hot summer days. I am sure here I will make a considerable dent in Agaat, as well as making some progress on our new and improved upcoming website.

I remember fondly our holiday reading spot from exactly a year ago, Koh Lanta Thailand which housed us and our companions, The Girl who Played with Fire and Shantaram for hours and days on end.



Happy reading this holiday and here is hoping that you find your perfect spot.
From the lazy bloggers of The Paperhouse Review

Gone nesting

December holidays are approaching and I have my guilty pleasure's reading list ready. A reading nook usually adds to the pleasure and I wouldn't mind passing the time in one of these:

Read-Nest by Dorte Mandrup Architecture



via Apartment Therapy


Nest Rests designed by Daniel Pouzet and Fred Frety



via Black Eiffel

Writer Harry Mulisch dies

Harry Mulisch has died at the age of 83 on the 30th of October 2010. It was only last year that I was introduced to this celebrated Dutch author when I read The Assault (De Aanslag). It is a beautiful and complex story set in WWII, a period Mulisch often revisited in his novels. De Aanslag, very much like Bernard Schlink's The Reader, highlights the ethical grey areas of war. It is a perfectly scripted crime puzzle of a young Dutch boy who witnesses the demise of his whole family by the hand of the Germans. The family is mistakenly believed to be responsible for the shooting of a much hated Dutch fascists/German informer. The boy survives and grows up to become an anaesthetist later in life but it is rather he who in turn becomes numbed by this traumatic event from his childhood and throughout his life becomes indifferent towards the mystery of why it was his family that had to pay the unfair price, but the answers come to find him and seek him out through life events and the solution to the puzzle is most riveting and unexpected. I loved every second of this book and the end haunted me for months. I walked with the answer and I felt incomplete with its resolve, not from a literary perspective but from an inherent human one who seeks justifiable black and-white finger pointing answers. It is a novel so rich in perspective and as with the Dutch language, beautifully descriptive and I wish I had been introduced to Mulisch sooner. De Aanslag was made into a movie which won best foreign film award at both the Golden Globes and Oscars. Mulisch was also thought by many to be a possible candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. His book The Discovery of Heaven (De ontdekking van de Hemel) was named Best Dutch Book Ever in 2007.

The Future of books is taking some notes from the past

This is a very interesting look at the future of books or rather books within the realms of social networking which I spotted on Cherryflava. It considers three different approaches of which the last one reminds me of the adventure books I used to take out from the library where at one point in the story it would give you the option to choose how the main character should proceed by turning to different pages which all lead to different outcomes. The past is always inspiring the future.

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

Literature as inspiration: Yeats

(image; Lissadel)

I am taking a break from Homer for a day, for it is one of those days where it just seems silly to be almost 30 and to be studying again from scratch but be it 20,30 or even 50 Homer never seizes to inspire, as art and literature throughout the ages has taught us. What I am learning this time round is there is no age limit where that which we love and value will ever stop to inspire us. And this semester I was thrilled when I discovered that one of my assignments was to be based on a poem that over the last two years have become dear to me. It all started with a band...who on a day became inspired by literature.

We all have that cd, or a few of them that have a permanent home in our cars or have become a cemented figure next to your cd players. When you haven't played them in a few months or when radio starts to become only white noise we reach for them and it is like hearing it for the first time. My finger for years went to track 5 on that disk: Bad Dream by Keane



Why do I have to fly
over every town up and down the line?
I'll die in the clouds above
and you that I defend, I do not love.

I wake up, it's a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I'm not the fighting kind.

Where will I meet my fate?
Baby I'm a man, I was born to hate.
And when will I meet my end?
In a better time you could be my friend.

[chorus]
I wake up, it's a bad dream,
No one on my side,
I was fighting
But I just feel too tired
to be fighting,
guess I'm not the fighting kind.
Wouldn't mind it
if you were by my side
But you're long gone,
yeah you're long gone now.

Where do we go?
I don't even know,
My strange old face,
And I'm thinking about those days,
And I'm thinking about those days.

I have always been infatuated with the chorus and there were days when it became a mantra that I kept repeating to myself. On a flight from Dubai late May 2008, I started searching the menu of the onboard entertainment. Music and comedy has always been the best remedy for my all consuming fear of flying. I found Keane's Live at the O2 concert. Almost instant calmness ensued. Front man Tom Chaplin revealed that Bad Dream was inspired by W.B Yeats' An Irish Airman Foresees his Death. The chorus carries even more weight for me now and the poem has become a beloved one of mine. Even the intro to the song sounds like the droning of propeller driven World War 1 airplanes and the air raids of the time and so sound links itself to the words of this great WW1 poem. Co-writer of the song Rice-Oxley said that “We wanted to get a balance between a kinda dream sequence. It starts very quietly, and I love the idea of being in a plane, like a Spitfire or something, being so high up in the sky that you can't hear the guns below you and so on. And it's almost got a serene silence which is what this Yeats poem seemed to really express. The song starts very quietly, but it gets huge and angry as it goes on... The big distorted washy piano sound in the middle is a pretty vast sound and it's I guess an attempt to express all that anger bursting out"


Neil Hannon reads Yeats at Keane's Live at the O2

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

Literature can inspire so much greatness from within us and it can be channeled into so many forms and translations. This is by no means a new phenomena but one that has taken place since the birth of literature, since Homer. And today even a popular song can lead us to great literary discoveries, it can lead us to Yeats. We should never be afraid to go down that curios rabbit hole...

The A.W.O.L Trifecta

It has been a brutal past two months on both body and mind which has led me away from TPH. I have recently learned the joyous news that I am pregnant but had to deal with some pregnancy woes but everyday is one that is getting easier. The supposedly honeymoon phase of the second trimester is now only a few weeks away, apparently the creative juices is at its most vibrant during this period, thus looking forward to what might sprout from this. I am also in the midst of a very hectic exam schedule. And thirdly where will writers be without a little bit of never ending emotional suffering from the past that sends us into solitary literary confinement away from our blogs and seeking comfort mostly from pillows, wide blue skies and luckily for me into the arms of the most profound book that I have read this year. So a lot has happened, a Man Booker prize winner, which has left me underwhelmed and a new Nobel laureate has been announced. I have 3 more exams dates left until we speak again and catch up on all things literary which should be early November.

Man Booker shortlist announced

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize has been announced and here they are:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)
Emma Donoghue Room (Picador - Pan Macmillan)
Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Atlantic Books - Grove Atlantic)
Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)
Andrea Levy The Long Song (Headline Review - Headline Publishing Group)
Tom McCarthy C (Jonathan Cape - Random House)



This is the one I am dying to read, C by Tom McCarthy which also has one of the best covers of the year. It opens in England at the turn of the twentieth century, and is the story of a boy named Serge Carrefax, whose father spends his time experimenting with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. Serge grows up amid the noise and silence with his brilliant but troubled older sister, Sophie: an intense sibling relationship that stays with him as he heads off into an equally troubled larger world.

After a fling with a nurse at a Bohemian spa, Serge serves in World War I as a radio operator for reconnaissance planes. When his plane is shot down, Serge is taken to a German prison camp, from which he escapes. Back in London, he’s recruited for a mission to Cairo on behalf of the shadowy Empire Wireless Chain. All of which eventually carries Serge to a fitful—and perhaps fateful—climax at the bottom of an Egyptian tomb . . .

I have to get my hands on it.
The winner will be announced on the 12th of October.

See pictures and information on the nominees on The Guardian's website as well their review of C

(image; The Man Booker Prize)

Arbor Month: Save a tree, buy only good or secondhand books this month

Arbor month started on the 1st of September 2010 and I have planted no less than 5 trees in my yard. My husband and I are trying to offset our huge carbon emission from last year and has committed to only traveling locally this year (though I must confess this is partly due to the double recession of our own finances). But apart from the obvious climate related reasons I think every self confessed bibliophile needs to plant at least one tree this month. You only need to walk into the likes of Exclusive Books or CNA to realise who many of our precious resources and trees are being sacrificed to publish ,quite frankly, rubbish.

So I urge you to do one of the following: plant a tree as a thank you to the paper and its source that has brought you many hours of reading pleasure and shop locally or secondhand. Buying books from a local independent bookseller not only supports your own community instead of the big corporates but makes a lot more carbon sense. And the best and worth while has probably been separated from the masses to enhance your browsing experience. See a previous post explaining this offset here

Pick n Pay and Woolworths will be selling young potted indigenous trees in their flower aisles, perfect for balconies or consider these green starter packs from Eco Living Gifts


More on the bookshop above in my next post.

5 minutes with Ian McEwan

Here is a short but very interesting 5 minute interview by BBC reporter Matt Stadlen with my favourite British author, Ian McEwan. They talk briefly about Amsterdam's Booker Prize value, his approach to writing and his love for music. Click here to view the interview on BBC.

Oh Sweden how do I love thee, let me count the ways...

1...Stieg Larsson



In my previous post I recommended that some light reading should be acquired for this the first month of spring so that we can reconnect with nature and spend some time enjoying the warm and beautiful African sun. And if you still haven't heard of (where have you been?) or made an attempt to start reading Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy then there is no better time then now. I started my last installment a month ago and because I know that after The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest there will be no more Lisbeth Salander, I am taking my time to finish it and restricting myself to only a few pages a day. I am not usually one that buys into hype or consider books for their ratings on bestsellers lists, so when a friend of mine insisted in lending me a copy I transferred it to my my husband's nightstand for him to test it out for us. Well the rest in history and the trilogy has become a welcomed guilty pleasure and indulgement which has kept us thoroughly entertained.


Not since ABBA has the Swedes been able to grab the world's attention with such intensity. On holiday in Koh Lanta, Thailand we found the beach strewn with people, cocktail in hand and in their hammock's (myself included), each and everyone with a copy of one of the three Stieg Larsson's in every possible language and cover you could imagine. We realised later that Koh Lanta was home to rather sizeable amount of Swedes and that it even had a Swedish school. It might quite be possible that they were giving copies of the book out on the plane on their way there.The copy you see in the picture above is one that I purchase from a women with a bicycle driven stall, umbrella and all, outside our hotel in Shanghai...for R20. I think it fell of one of those mass production trucks somewhere in China...I hope.

2...Ikea

Sweden and their Scandinavian counterparts are renowned for their impeccable style and Larrson does this birth right proud by producing a very stylish if not some what promiscuous series of crime novels. In the second novel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, the heroin of the trilogy kits out her apartment with furniture from Ikea. I found this quirky post on Apartment Therapy on what her apartment in Stockholm would have looked like.



3...H&M
Just because I love it so and miss it so :)

Spring kicks off in Joburg

September not only signifies the start of spring but it is also the month filled with great events happening all around Joburg.



This weekend the Mail & Guardian JHB Literary Festival will be taking place at my favourite spot in Joburg, 44 Stanley Ave from 3-5 September. Click on the link to view the programme. Boekehuis wil be selling books at the event which aims to 'revivify Jo'burg's cultural landscape'. While you are there don't forget to sample what is undeniably the best cup of coffee in Joburg which you can find at Bean There Coffee Roastery .



Arts Alive is starting on the 2nd of September and promises a month full of memorable events. This weekend''s programme makes it hard to choose between the Soweto Wine Festival and the Jazz in the park concert at Zoo lake. Later this month sees an exhibition of William Kentridge at Arts on Main and two poetry sessions in Newtown. See the full programme here



The Kentridge Exhibition coincides with the ARCHITECTURE.ZA.2010 event which takes place from the 21-27th of September.

I propose you take on some light reading this September (of which we will provide you with some suggestions) because it is going to be a busy month.

At last...Spring

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown
Who ponders this tremendous scene
This whole Experiment of Green
As if it were his own!
-Emily Dickenson

After a dry and drab winter which has left Gauteng and surroudings in a dreary and dusty state, Spring is finally here. The yellow and oatmeal frost stricken landscape is at last being penetrated by a touch of greenery. I took these photos of my neighbour's beautiful peach tree in bloom only days ago . Driving past it everyday I wonder if Spring was created with the sole purpose to delight and please?

There is so much to blog about and so many posts and as ever so little time. But for a moment lets put the books down and enjoy this beautiful Spring day.

Feeling European

The lack of post, as suspected, as been caused by the post holiday blues and the onslaught of assignments with impossible deadlines. I think TPH should do like the Europeans do and close down shop for the whole of August and only return in September when spring will have officially made its long awaited arrival and some new posts and ideas will have blossomed along with some free time to share the with you. Until then I leave you with this very curios post I found on Swiss Miss where Kurt Vonnegut explains storytelling through Cartesian graphs on a blackboard. Until Spring, happy reading.



Read his article here

image: Swiss Miss

Book Vending Machines

I love this innovative reclaimed use of these old cigarette vending machines from German publisher Hamburger Automatenverlag
Read the full article on this at Coolhunting

A is for...a place to sit

(images; swissmiss, Utrechtverplettert, Design*Sponge)

Cape Town Book Fair

TPH is counting down the days to Cape Town Book Fair as I get ready to meet up with Cam in the Mother City and after that a holiday in the fairest Cape. In the mean time while we get down to book business I have selected some eye candy book post to keep you busy until our return to the web waves. And for those of you who can't join us this weekend at the book fair, we will report back as soon as the post holiday blues ware off.

See the programme for the weekend here

We are taking the train down to Cape Town and this means ample hours of reading and my companion ...Girl who kicked the hornets nest.

Man Booker longlist and Sunday Times Literary Awards announced

As per the Man Booker website:

The longlist includes:

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)

Tom McCarthy C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)

Lisa Moore February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)


(image: The Guardian)
Click here to view the Booker longlist in pictures


Back on home soil the winners of the Sunday Times Fiction Award and the Alan Paton Literary Prize were announced. Congratulations to:

High Low In-Between by Imraan Coovadia (Fiction Award) &
The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law by Albie Sachs (Alan Paton Award)




The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199571796
RRP: R220












High Low In-Between
Publisher: Umuzi
ISBN: 9781415200704
RRP: R200

Bookshelf Porn

If you are anything like me, a self confessed bookshelf pornographer and watcher, you will spend hours on Bookshelf Porn. Its purpose is to stimulate, inspire and feed the frenzy of your addiction...enjoy and try not to drool too much on your computer.



(image: swissmiss)

An act of betrayal

Byatt’s latest novel is an ambitious work that relives the end of the Victorian era in search of an explanation for World War I. What it finds, as well as delivers, is betrayal.

The Children’s Book by AS Byatt
Publisher: Chatto & Windus / ISBN: 9780701183905 / Price: R300.00

The Children’s Book, as indicated by the title, is about children and childhood. It begins when two boys, Tom Wellwood and Julian Cain, find a third boy, Philip Warren, squatting in the South Kensington Museum. This sets the scene for an intricate exploration of British society, and in particular the family unit, in the years leading up to World War I.

As one might expect, with this epic vision behind it, Byatt’s latest novel is nothing if not ambitious. It begins in 1895 as Philip is introduced to the Wellwood family and then apprenticed to volatile master craftsman Benedict Fludd. It follows these characters, their families and their acquaintances until 1915, when the war has decimated the British male population.

There is a common theme of children betrayed by the adults who love them and are supposed to protect them. These betrayals are sometimes inadvertent and unforeseen, sometimes the product of the passions and, most often, the result of pure selfishness. This theme is set against the cascade of events which led up to World War I, which, it is implied, was the selfish betrayal of one generation by another, too.

Its vision is its downfall. The Booker Prize-shortlisted The Children’s Book is perhaps too ambitious. It boasts what Publisher’s Weekly describes as an “unaccountably large cast”, and a web of plots and sub-plots interwoven with historical fact. This web and the characters caught in it could have filled out four or five different novels, in which the author might have paid more attention to the themes, the characters and the intricacies of plot.

Yet, The Children’s Book remains undeniably intriguing. Each of Byatt’s novels possesses the same compelling mix of intellect, empathy and insight, tracing themes such as the distinction between art and reality from one work to the other. In her latest work, the author’s preoccupations are thankfully not drowned by the scope of the task, only diluted. There can be no question why the novel was shortlisted for the Commonwealth’s most prestigious literary award, just as there can be no question why it lost.

If you enjoyed this book, you should read: other books by A.S. Byatt, including Bable Tower and The Biographer’s Tale, but not Possession; as well as other Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novels, particularly Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (the winner) and Summertime by J.M. Coetzee.

The Ark: Where Architecture and Books meet

Rintala Eggertsson Architects, Oslo and Bodø, Norway - Ark from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.

Did you also manage to spot Cloud Atlas?

Read The Guardian's report:
The bookcase you'll want to live in

African Booker

Olufemi Terry was announced as the winner of this year's Caine prize for African Fiction , aka the African Booker, for his short story titled Stickfighting Days. Terry was born in Sierra Leone and currently resides in Cape Town.

Click here to read his remarkable short story Stickfighting Days

(image: Caineprize.com)

Adaptation

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099512790

RRP: R126.95

What is it about Ian McEwan’s novels that lure and invite film makers to translate them into films? I could write an essay’s worth of reasons but won’t bore you with my personal groupie like tendencies towards his oeuvre. Whatever the case may be it has been reported that McEwan’s On Chesil Beach is going to be his third book that will be adapted for the big screen. The Daily Mail writes that non other than the amazing Carey Mulligan (who appears to have great taste in authors, next up on her list Never let me go) has been cast for the female lead and that Sam Mendes will be sitting in the director's seat for this highly anticipated version of the brilliant novella. I could hardly contain my excitement when I first read this. Sam Mendes did an astounding job at bringing to life Richard Yates hauntingly troubled tale about a young couple’s desperate actions against conformity in 1950’s America in Revolutionary Road. His direction brought out some of Kate Winslet’s and Leonardo Dicaprio’s finest performances in a story that was driven by tension filled dialogue and the on screen effectiveness of a lack thereof.


On Chesil Beach in its turn tells of a couple in England who’s relationship and wedding night, in 1962, carries the weight of their inability to communicate their sexual fears, insecurities and expectations. It is a story rife with underlying tension of which Sam Mendes and Ian McEwan are undoubtedly the masters of portraying. McEwan has adapted On Chesil Beach himself. And seeing that the novella is a mere 166 pages long, hopefully they will be able to add every possible detail of the unfolding events into the film version, a critical point which die hard fans are always keen to judge on.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099481249
RRP: R145

Both Enduring Love (2004) and Atonement (2007) have been turned into successful movies although the former did not receive as much wide spread and critical attention as the latter. Even though the film version of Enduring Love made some criticised changes to original novel it remained a vivid, scary and beautiful portrayal that managed to capture the spirit of the original and was undoubtedly filled with all the trademarks of a McEwan creation and was incredibly well acted. The powerful use of colour in Enduring Love was very effective and as within his books left vital moments, important to the story development, forever imprinted in my mind.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 9780099429791
RRP: R145

For me personally, in both film and novel one of the most beautifully written scenes in English literature has to be the ‘fountain’ scene in Atonement. Watching it play out on film left me without a doubt that McEwan was indeed deeply involved in its adaptation. It was the scene which McEwan has revealed was written before he had written one word of the rest of the novel and from this scene sprung the inspiration for rest of Atonement as we know it. Filming Atonement was always going to be an epic attempt and the complex thought process and musings of Briony Tallis, one of McEwan's most interesting and thought provoking characters, was itself going to be the film's hardest obstacle to translate due to the genre’s inherent limitations where the story is primarily narrated by the camera. Nonetheless the film in its own right turned out an acclaimed and worthy success.

Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978009946968

RRP: R126

It leaves me wondering if Saturday will be soon to follow, I can almost imagine within my minds eye how powerful the ‘forced poetry reading’ scene could be on screen...

(image: Carey Mulligan via zimbio.com)

Apologies for the lack of post(s) this week

Due to maintenance on some fibre optic cables linked between Africa and India, our service provider had some problems providing frequent, if any access to the internet this week. This and the last week of football madness has hampered any attempts at writing and posting. New post and features should be up next week! Happy weekend from TPH

March of the Penguin

Happy belated 75th Birthday Penguin Books.



The influence of Penguin Books as a recognizable iconic brand on popular culture is as irrefutable as their approach to publishing and their impact on the paperback design as we know it today. The initial two and half cents editions with their three horizontal bands, colour coded to match to a particular series, have become sought after jewels for book collectors and lately a springboard for art and decor inspiration. Not only does Penguin Books publish great classics and new exciting, contemporary and award winning authors but they seem always as in 1936 one step ahead in their design aesthetic approach for book covers. Here is a small ode to the publishing giant and a demonstration of how the mighty Penguin has infiltrated art, design, culture and our everyday existence.

ART


Harland Miller, artist and writer, has approached the iconic Penguin classic in a rather humouristic, hard hitting satirical way which refuses to be ignored and is allegedly adorning the walls of one Sir Elton John. Browsing through them I can not help but snort with unapologetic laughter at some while simultaneously admiring them. Read more on Harland Miller at Whitecube, Millers London Gallery and his interview with The Guardian




COVER DESIGN
Penguin has taken cover design into a new direction with a collaborating initiative aimed at saving lives. They have partnered with RED™ in their ongoing effort to raise funds to eliminate AIDS in Africa. The campaign which reads 'These books saves lives' has commissioned designers to rejacket 8 of the Penguins' most well known classics to form part of the Penguin Red Editions series.

Some of my favourite of these designs are:


GREAT EXPECTATIONS
ISBN:9780141194363
Charles Dickens R140.00
‘The most nakedly haunting book Dickens ever wrote’ Guardian


THE SECRET AGENT
ISBN:9780141194394
Joseph Conrad R110.00
‘Elevated the spy story into literature in a way that would inspire Greene
and le Carré’ Observer

For more information on the Penguin Red Editions click here

MEMORABILIA


Postcards from Penguin is a collection of 100 postcards featuring some of Penguin's most iconic book covers spanning over seventy years. Mine has just arrived and it is hard to choose which ones will adorn my wall or be sent off to equally bookish friends.



Postcards from Penguin
ISBN: 978014104468
R 230

There are also coffee mugs and even deck chairs inspired by Penguin covers for the die hard fans, just reach for the Google search button.

(images: Remodelista, In between days, Apartment Therapy)