Author: Hilary Webb

  • Christmas haul and Review: Scrappy Little Nobody

    Christmas haul and Review: Scrappy Little Nobody

    A bit late for the festive season I know, but before I head back to university and scatter my books across the UK I thought I’d give a little haul of the books I got for Christmas. I was really lucky to get all the books I asked for and a load I didn’t and I’m already stuck into devouring this collection.

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    Virago

    A selection of the books come from my mum’s recent discovery and love for Virago press. She insisted a couple of months ago that I watched the BBC documentary about the publishing house. I watched it and messaged her throughout saying ‘hey I have all these books,’ and ‘that’s in my dissertation, and so is that, and so is that…’ etc. I then looked at my bookshelf and realised that Virago’s little apple logo was scattered across the majority of my books. I don’t know how I’d never made the connection that all these wonderful women writers shared the world’s coolest publishing house. So Father Christmas this year filled my stocking with four lovely Virago books, and my sister added another to the pile:

    Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne du Maurier – I love Rebecca so I’m excited for more du Maurier.
    Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl – Carrie Brownstein – This was on my list after Emma Watson recommended it.
    My Ántonia – Willa Carter – I haven’t the foggiest about it but time will tell!
    The Paying Guests – Sarah Waters – I love Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith are excellent so I’m looking forward to this.
    Fifty Shades of Feminism – edited by Susie Orbach, Rachel Holmes, Lisa Appignanesi – I know nothing about this book but it certainly sounds like my cup of tea (thank you Sally!)

    It’s not Virago but my mum wanted me to finally read Germaine Greer‘s The Female Enuch so that found it’s way into my stocking, super stoked to read this at last.

    Broadening my horizons

    My old friend (she’s actually younger than me) Mads and I have a habit of buying each other books and because we have such different taste this means I often get to try something new. Really looking forward to these two:

    The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden – Jonas Jonasson
    The Five People You Meet in Heaven – Mitch Albom

    To physically broaden my horizons my aunt bought me the Lonely Planet South America on a Shoestring guide to help me plan for a post-graduation adventure… EEK!

    Random Requests

    Goodbye, Colombus – Philip Roth – My first read of 2017! I finished this last week and really enjoyed it. As with most books I read, I wanted it so I could understand a reference in Lena Dunham’s GIRLS… and now I do.

    The next three I wanted to read after I found a Guardian article about the best contemporary women’s writers:
    Beloved – Toni Morrison 
    White Teeth – Zadie Smith
    Americanah – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (I have heard nothing but praise for Adichie and this book).

    Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – My current read. I wanted to read this to see if I just like Tolstoy or if Russian literature is my thing, though after listening to three dissertation presentations about it I think I’m in for a twisted time…

    The Cossacks and Other Stories – Leo Tolstoy – No justification needed, though apparently it was a nightmare to track down… sorry Gran!

    Himself – Jess Kidd – Honestly, I wanted this so I could scope out a literary agent who has now rejected me… I’m sure it’s wonderful nonetheless! Not bitter at all…

    FOOD

    I thought this had been my first Christmas where I hadn’t received a cookbook… until I got a package from the US from Melanie (also known as queen of the world and best gift giver ever). In the run up to the Gilmore Girls revival I came across Kristi Carlson‘s Eat Like a Gilmore recipe book in the weird world that is Gilmore Instagram. I even tried to get my hands on a copy but at that point it wasn’t shipping to the UK. I’m so excited to gain several stone from this book. It’s fabulous because it’s sorted into each cooking character’s kitchen so now I can really pretend I’m having a Luke’s breakfast. I promise I do have a firm grip on reality… sometimes.

    Scrappy Little Nobody – Anna Kendrick

    Big thank you to Sally for getting me this. I read Scrappy Little Nobody in three days and it was a perfect book for some light revision relief. Last month I though the reason I loved Lauren Graham’s autobiography so much was because I worship her. And while I do, of course, worship Anna Kendrick, I wasn’t sure what to expect from her as a writer. Now however, I think I just have a thing for actresses’ autobiographies. Kendrick, like Graham, writes how she speaks which makings reading it fun, but also is just a total hoot and bizarre human.

    Not only do I seem to be really enthralled by the will-she-won’t-she have a big break chapters (spoiler: she does) and her experience as a child actress, but Kendrick has some really interesting ideas and musings about fame, work ethics, relationships and the monumental task of being a woman. Her chapter on award shows had me laughing out loud (very different from LOL-ing).

    While at times it does mimic how she speaks a little too much so that  it becomes a bit of a confusing (but still funny) stream of consciousness, I think that’s an important thing to have in an autobiography. It gets a scrappy little 4 out 5 from me.

    Following Carrie Fisher’s death and Graham’s praise of her books in Talking as Fast as I can I think those will the actress autobiographies I hit up next.

    Some favourite snippets:

    On being nice but saying no to a drink or a date: “if you don’t, someone might strip you of an adjective you’ve been convinced has value, and label you as something else”.

    On commitment: “I can’t imagine what would drive a person to get out of bed in the morning if you knew you’d never have that drunk new-crush feeling again or ever dance on a table, or get so drunk you try to fight a stranger”. (Spoiler: she feels differently in a few pages time). 

    On something I’m certain she took from my own brain: “I wish people could tell the difference between the ‘leave me alone’ vibe I give off all the time by accident and my actual ‘leave me alone’ vibe”.

    I’d also like to blame Anna Kendrick for my use of ‘super stoked’ earlier, that was all her influence. 

  • 2016 favourites

    So to get the ball rolling on this book blog I thought I’d look back over my favourite books of 2016. Apologies for the categorisation of my favourites, it’s very Hilary-specific. Actually it’s my blog, so #sorrynotsorry.

    Non-Fiction

    2016 is definitely the year I began to appreciate and enjoy the non-fiction genre more than I ever had before. That is perhaps because in February I broke the spine in what was supposed to be a joke Christmas present from Santa. The book was Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography. Not to sound too cliché or melodramatic (nor to quote a character in my own book) but this book changed my life. I know Wolf is a journalist, not an expert of female reproductive health, and that the book is heavily scrutinised by feminists and scientists alike; but Vagina opened my mind to several entirely new and different ways of thinking about female sexuality. So much so that it inspired my dissertation topic and my first novel. While I don’t take anything in the book as fact or at face value, Wolf’s own experiences and those of the people she interviews enlightened me to realise that sexuality, especially female sexuality, is not as analogue as I had previously been led to believe. Vagina made me think, and that’s exactly what a book, especially a non-fiction book, should do, in my opinion.

    Favourite Sci-Fi

    As tempting as it is to say Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy since 2016 was the first time I sat down and read the first book, I had already discovered Douglas Adams. Chris Beckett’s Dark Eden took a while to capture my attention when I read it in 2015 but the sequel Mother of Eden, which I recently read in December, dragged me back into a world I hadn’t realised I had been missing. I mostly loved how Beckett explored how a brand new society somehow ends up in the same messes as our 21st Century planet Earth does but Beckett and Starlight give me far more hope than planet Earth ever does. This is particularly true in relation to the function of gender, the sexes, and sexuality in society, but maybe that’s just because ever since my first year of university I haven’t been able to take off my ‘gender goggles’. I highly recommend the Dark Eden series, and can’t wait to read Daughter of Eden.

    Favourite Biography 

    No surprises to anyone that knows me well but Lauren Graham’s Talking as Fast as I Can storms this category for me (especially since I already gave Wolf to best Non-Fiction). A Gilmore Girls fan to my stone-cold core, 2016 was a pretty exciting year for me with it returning for its revival and Graham writing another book, this one all about her and the show. I listened to Someday, Someday, Maybe while running a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, but not as much as I enjoyed this biography. What’s lovely about Graham is she writes how she talks, and when you’ve watched as much Gilmore Girls as I have her voice is a pretty special one. Graham doesn’t just write about reprising Lorelai Gilmore though, she tackles her childhood, finding her feet as an actress, writer and woman and writes a bloody lovely ode to being single, the latter of which hit pretty close to the mark. Graham manages to make everything and anything, no matter how sad or uncomfortable, funny, something I myself aspire to do.

    Favourite in the French language 

    I started the year reading Madam Bovary back to back, once in English and once in French. While I love the story, Flaubert’s classic missed the top spot just because of how sick of the poor old Bovaries I was by the time I was done (twice). Though I’ve read some really classical and ‘racy’ French literature for a university module (love, lust and the meaning of life: a theme in French literature) my 2016 favourite in French probably goes to a Czech-man. Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being landed in my lap and in my heart in 2015 (I love it especially because it led me to read Anna Karenina) and I had read it in English. Just before leaving Lyon though I grabbed a few books from Decitre including Milan Kundera’s La Fête de l’Insignificance. The biggest reason this is my favourite French Language book of 2016 is because I was amazed at how Kundera’s voice sounded the same in French as it had in English. I don’t know how but it amazed me, that the voice in my head for The Unbearable Lightness of Being returned for La Fête de l’Insignificance. Isn’t language cool?!

    Favourite Fiction

    Since Vagina opened my eyes, books about female sexuality have been pouring into them. From Erica Jong, to George Eliot, and the likes of Kate Chopin, D. H. Lawrence, Sarah Waters and Jeanette Winterson in between, 2016 has been full of licentious literature as well as the mammoth task that was reading War and Peace, some more Orwell and my first Victor Hugo. No doubt about it though, discovering Doris Lessing and The Golden Notebook was my favourite fictional treat of the year. I don’t think it needs explaining and I’m not sure I even could, I just love this book and could talk, read and write about it all day, but I’ll save that for my dissertation, or maybe another blog post.

    A personal favourite

    I couldn’t talk about books that I read in 2016 without giving a shout out to a family friend who wrote and published his own book. It is Interleaving by Richard Hopkins. It made me miss London when I was stuck in a miserable classroom in Isère and is nothing like anything I’ve ever read before, although perhaps that is because I haven’t read any Dr. Johnson, who’s pretty major in Interleaving. It’s available on the Kindle store for £2 and the proceeds go to charities supporting homeless people in London – so there’s no good reason not to read Interleaving!

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    By some miracle I ended up on the back of the copy of Interleaving that Gill and Richard gave me for my birthday!

    There are a few other books I’d like to ramble on about here but I fear I’ll just start making up categories for the sake of it if I don’t stop now. So before I go, here’s a quick shout out to a few others that I enjoyed in 2016:

    How to be a Writer – David Quantick
    Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
    L’immeuble des femmes qui ont renoncé les hommes – Karine Lambert

  • Reading Resolutions

    Two years ago, after an awful year,  I vowed to make 2015 a better one by reading one book a month. Somehow that one book a month escalated into reading 26 books in all of 2015. My reading speed, even as a literature student, had been embarrassingly slow, but by the end of 2015 it was faster than ever. Come New Year 2016 I set myself the monumental task (to me at least) of reading 30 books. When I surpassed 30 books in September I was gobsmacked, but bucked up and carried on reading. Which leads me to today, 31st December 2016 when I’ve just finished my 42nd and final book of the year.

    The actual logistics of reading 42 books this past year are lost on me when I consider that for the last four months I’ve been doing my final year of university, that I didn’t read at all in June, that one of those books was War and Peace and that I wrote an 100,000 word novel in the midst of it all. But then I remember, where and how I started the year. This time last year I was living in Lyon, with a… shall we say, ‘calm’ social and work life which left me with a lot of free time and a hellish commute to kill. I was also training for the Paris Marathon and audiobooks are always a pleasure when running long distance. And yet somehow, I read 27 of those books since returning from my year abroad.

    The other reading resolution I set myself for 2016 was to read six books in French. Not many, but it can be quite tedious trying to comprehend as well as enjoy a text. And yet I surpassed that too, reading ten books in French this year.

    The instinct is to say 50 books in 2017, with half of them in French, but I am very aware that 42 was a hell of a lot and may not be realistically achievable in this next year, since I’ll be graduating and then busy crying about graduating and then probably crying about the fact I’m unemployed.

    This tweet also sums up why there might be less time for reading this year…

    So I’ll keep the resolutions calm this year.

    In 2017 I plan to read 36 books including 12 in French, at least. ‘At least’ being the crucial words. My logic with this one works out at three books a month, one in French, but I don’t want to too rigidly bind myself to a monthly reading schedule as you never know what’s going to crop up, but equally, no skipping June this year, Skippy.

    There’s one other crucial reading related resolution, and that is to blog about reading. Ah yes, that’s why you’re here. Fictitiously Hilary will now be home to my literary blog. I suspect it will mostly be about books, reviews and such, but there is the possibility that I might share some creative writing or rants about how difficult creative writing is, among other things. I really enjoy blogging, I did it for the London Marathon and my year abroad but those things both ended. This one, my love of reading, I can’t imagine ending any time soon.

    I have several blog posts already planned, including a round up of what I read, loved and hated in 2016 and I’m yet to set my writing resolutions so watch this space! (I think I’ve ended every blog I’ve ever started with those three words).

    Top Tip for achieving reading resolutions: Short books can still be good books and bumping up that tally in the back of your diary feels just as good whether it’s Anna Karenina or Animal Farm.

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    Happy New Year from my reading companion and me. LOL JK he tries to eat any book that distracts the attention away from him.