What I've been reading

The Accidental Tourist
by Anne Tyler

narrated by Joe Barrett

"After the loss of his son and the departure of his wife, Macon neatly folds his anguish back into place and adapts the household on to more efficient lines. But with the arrival of Muriel, an eccentric and vulnerable dog trainer from the Meow-Bow dog clinic, his attempts at ordinary life are tragically and comically undone."

The sort of book I have been looking for on the Classics list - not 'clever', not 'original', but with a story that has some pace, characters that can be distinguished from one another, and a structure to the book that makes sense. In that regard I was very pleased to have read it; the only problem was that I didn't find the dilemma at the heart of the story plausible. Should he return to the wife who had left him or stay with the woman who had taken her place? I didn't warm to either of them so his eventual choice became arbitrary.

Nights at the Circus
by Angela Carter

"Fevvers is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, journalist Jack Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia."

What a ride this book took me on, alongside a menagerie of exotic and flamboyant characters led by the earthy Fevvers. When I was at university someone recommended reading Angela Carter's stories based on fairy tales, and I did, but didn't really understand the appeal back then. This book and the fact that I still remember the other one forty years later is tempting me to try reading that other book again, with forty years of life experience and love and loss and pain and joy. That's what this story has done, and it was a wild and wonderful ride.

Pachinko
by Min Jin Lee

"A club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then a Christian minister offers a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife."

I do like a family saga, and this was particularly interesting because of the setting in Korea and Japan from the first world war onwards. I didn't have any prior knowledge of the relationship between these two nations, and learned a little alongside the main story of the family's fortunes over this period. A good read, but not outstanding.

Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening
by Stephen Batchelor

"What the Buddha taught was not something to believe in, but something to do. The book demystifies Buddhism by explaining, without jargon or obscure terminology, what awakening is and how to practise it. "

My enjoyment of this book was significantly diminished because the previous owner had added their own extensive notes to every page and almost every paragraph. I had no interest in their views, and it's hard to focus on the printed words with such distracting annotations. It's probably worth another look at a clean copy because the author had some useful things to say.

The Good Husband of Zebra Drive
by Alexander McCall Smith

"As winter turns to spring across Botswana's red earth and slow green rivers, all is not well on Zebra Drive. Mma Ramotswe has plenty of work, ranging from thefts at the printing works to suspicious deaths at the Mochudi hospital. But when Mr J.L.B. Matekoni - trying to prove himself as a worthy husband - has to go at a little detective work, disaster looms."

I picked this up from a train station book swap shelf because I'd run out of my own reading material, otherwise I wouldn't have chosen to add another to my collection of Ladies Detective Agency books. It's OK though - you know what you're going to get, and he evokes the atmosphere of Botswana so well.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time and How to Use it

by Oliver Burkeman

"We're obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, the struggle against distraction, and the sense that our attention spans are shrivelling. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the question of how best to use our ridiculously brief time on the planet, which amounts on average to about four thousand weeks."

This book was given to me by the leader of the retreat I went on in July. He gave each of the team members a different book so some thought went into the choice. I am a perfect match for this book because it turns out (according to the author) that I, like him, am a 'productivity geek'. And during this very retreat, I had come to the same conclusion that the author proposes: it isn't helpful to imagine that everything one wishes to do can be done, and acknowledging this fact makes life much easier.

The Minnipins
by Carol Kendall

narrated by Lola II

"In an isolated valley, the Minnipins minded their jobs, dressed simply, and never questioned the leading family. Then five rebels are exiled to the mountains and find that the deadly Mushroom tribe is coming to attack their countrymen."

A children's book written in 1959, this has been my bedtime story whenever Lola II and I have been in the same place with the book and we haven't been too tired. So it's taken a considerable length of time (probably more than a year?) compounded by the fact that the early chapters contain a lot of detail and many names so at one point we had to start again because I'd forgotten who was who. After all that, I hate to have to say that I don't think it's a particularly good story, and character development is particularly poor. Of course the Minnipins survive, rifts are healed and there's a happy ending, but at the expense of too much violence - not fairy tale violence, but heaps of dead bodies of the Mushroom people graphically killed by the sword-wielding Minnipins.

The Ten Pillars of Buddhism
by Sangharakshita

"In a world marked by rapid changes, shifting lifestyles and values, how can we be sure that we are making the best choices for ourselves, others and the world? This small book explores ten basic Buddhist ethical principles and the liberating view of ourselves contained within them."

Lectures given in 1984 have been transcribed and edited into this book, which I've been going through with my Buddhist friends who have also asked for ordination. We've looked at one principle at a time so it's taken a while. As an 'ordinary' Buddhist there are five guiding precepts, and this adds an extra five which are mostly around communication, building on the idea of truthful speech and advocating the avoidance of harsh, frivolous and slanderous speech and the cultivation of tranquillity and compassion as well as wisdom. Of course there's much more to it than these headlines or the lectures or the book can convey, but it gives a flavour that we've been discussing very fruitfully.