Category: Reading

Do audiobooks count as reading?

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Sometimes I find it easier to listen than read but it still feels like cheating

I love a challenge to motivate me and so for the last few years I have had a Goodreads account annual challenge. In 2020 over half the books I read on there were manually added as they were audiobooks that I finished and don’t register automatically. It’s pretty obvious I have wanted to escape. And frankly be soothed by wonderful narrators like Stephen Fry.

In fact the audiobooks have had a unique place in my life during the pandemic. Spending so much time either inside (and trying not to hear youtube all the time – my son is obsessed) or walking around my neighbourhood, I have wanted things that are easy for me to do. And often I could not concentrate long enough to read, either because my anxious brain has been on overdrive or my fatigue has made concentration harder. Remember when I used to complain about not having a room of one’s own. The irony has deepened in the last year. The age of the headphones in our house.

I have read some amazing books in 2020. But I have also needed to forget myself in a book. Recently I listened again to The Discovery of Witches, having just watched the Sky series and being sure they missed important parts! It may be the familiarity of these books that helps bring some small measure of certainty. Phoebe Reads a Mystery was another favourite. Often mysteries in particular follow a formula to some extent, driving towards a usually satisfying conclusion. Offering an odd sort of stability to these odd times.

Part of me (probably the part that studied English,) thinks I am cheating on “real” books. But I find that I remember in much more depth what has happened in a book when I listen to it. Most of these books I had read the book first. I have a terrible habit of skipping over names when I read. And speed reading means I may miss the finer points. I probably am more of an aural learner, always finding lectures a good place to learn at University. I just wished it had occurred to me all that time ago that I could listen to books. Particularly those texts I found so arduous such as Paradise Lost (still haven’t finished it) and Shakespeare. For some reason though there is still this snobbery that reading a book is superior to listening to it. Odd when both these were written to read aloud.

In the Bored and Brilliant project which I tried earlier this year, Manoush Zomorodi explains how reading online all the time has changed our ability to concentrate and take in information. It may be that our brain takes in information differently from physical texts than scrolling. One reason is that you are even more likely to skim read online, apparently. So in comparison, it may be that I take much more in when I am listening to audiobooks.

There is something to be said that there was clearly at time in relative recent history where storytellers would learn swathes of texts or poems and recite them. In China, there would be a tradition of relaying a story and a complex commentary. Feats of memory we cannot imagine now. This though does suggest that there is something about how our memory is fired up when listening to a story.

I have set a challenge again for 2021 but I think it’s time I cut myself some slack and count listening as reading.

Do you prefer audiobooks, ebooks or the real thing?

REVIEW: The Eagle Tree

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The Eagle Tree by Ned Hayes

The Eagle Tree is a heartening novel by Ned Hayes about opening your eyes more fully to the world around you. Peter March Wong is a teenager on the autistic spectrum with a deep passion for trees. He learns about a local ‘old growth’ tree, nicknamed “The Eagle Tree” and plans to climb the behemoth. As he gets closer to the tree and his goal, he learns this magnificent tree and its surrounds will be felled for housing. This is March’s story of trying to climb to the highest tree and reach new heights in many areas of his life.

Told from March’s perspective throughout, Ned Hayes does an amazing job of capturing the cadence of March’s distinct voice, obsessively observing the trees around him. What struck me was this author has really understood the depths to which these special interests, though often learnt by rote, preoccuopy the thoughts of the person. Though it may seem like a bundle of facts, as we see throughout this novel, a person’s passion can lead to deep connections. I loved this about this novel. We talk about repetitive behaviour and special interests often as if they are a problem to be solved, whereas they can be really be celebrated.

In this novel March’s obsessions allow him to make new relationships, and as he meets others who are interested too in saving the environment, we start to see how the world opens up for him. But also that he widens the world for others, both his vicar and therapist have moments where they show how much they have learnt from him. This positive note is so heartening, as a mother of a child on the autistic spectrum I do appreciate the hopeful message of the novel. It’s impossible not to think too of Greta Thurnberg when I read this novel and her amazing work. A young woman also on the spectrum, she has used her passion to ignite the world on these pressing environmental issues. Both this fictional character and real life person achieve so much because of their neurodiversity, rather than inspite of it which is more often the story told.

Although I really felt that this novel reaches to represent living on the autism spectrum well, there are moments of incredible sadness in the novel. Perhaps because we learn of them in drips of information via March, it is upsetting to see in some areas of his life, he is not helped to understand why his actions are dangerous or could harm him. In the final chapter, in particular, I was at once incredulous and frustrated by the jeopardy in the novel.

Overall I really feel this is a positive novel which will uplift and inform people. I am passionate about trees too and learnt so much from March that I can forgive some of the sensationalism near the end. I think this was the perfect book to end the year on. It is hopeful about human endeavour and speaks to the climate emergency which should preoccupy us all.

If you like this, I also recommend another book about a neurodiverse character Elvira Carr The Seven Imperfect Rules of Elvira Carr by Frances Maynard

The place for escapism

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Often I hide how superficial I am but, no more, we all need to escape sometimes…

I have written before about the distractions I find on Hayu, mainly keeping up with ridiculous antics of Housewives, mouth open. I mean there’s something just truly satisfying about slobbing in your pajamas while you watch women in amazing clothes argue about the same thing for weeks on end. Unfortunately there are also Instagram accounts and Twitter feuds you can follow so that you can be embroiled in the stories for months before you see an episode. As I find myself this week trying to establish a timeline of exactly when RHOBH ladies went to Italy, I drew back a little. I had gone in too deep.

When your rubbish tv habits leads you down an internet rabbit hole, it’s time to put your phone down and pick up your kindle/book. Well that has been my solution. Here are some places I went in the last few weeks. A list of escapism fiction I would recommend if you are lucky enough to be away for a staycation or just staying at home.

Social Creature by Tara Burton Isabelle

A hit debut a few years ago this thoroughly nasty book about living your best life (online at least) is about two new friends Lavinia and Louise. Louise idolises her new friend, they live a lavish life around Manhattan, partying and drinking hard. The pure escapism comes in watching their friendship unfold with plenty of hashtags along the way. The tales twists darkly as Louise morphs her identity and eventually her life into the supremely narcisstic and fascinating Lavinia. This was a fast-paced novel that felt a bit like binge-watching You or Gossip Girl.

If you like this you would also like: Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth, I don’t why but I do enjoy a novel of hard partiers – vicarious living as a stay-at-home person, even in pre-pandemic times. This goes much deeper than Social Creatures and digs into female friendship in an equally fascinating way.

So Lucky by Dawn O’Porter

I was excited to read this novel having enjoyed The Cows by the same author. We follow the lives of three main characters. Women whose lives are entangled with the online world of a model Laura, about to get married to her millionaire boyfriend in an extravagent wedding. It is part farce, to watch various things go wrong in each woman’s life, but also part commentary about the shallowness of living life online. I think that O’Porter, who has herself a large following on Instagram and watched the destruction of her close friend, Caroline Flack, writes so well about the myriad of social issues caused by projecting our image all the time. It’s a novel that make you think, is of the present moment, but is also just really funny. I think the way she brings her characters together at the end speaks to a positive and uplifting womanhood.

If you like this, you’ll like: My Thoughts Exactly, Lily Allen. I loved the heart at the centre of this memoir about the star’s life of mistakes, lived outloud and online. I think the honesty of this book is what appealled to me.

I hope in some way you get a chance to escape this year, even if it is just in the pages of fiction.

Keeping up to date

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It’s hard not to get bogged down in recent history in contemporary fiction

How do you write in the contemporary space? I have been struggling of late. The huge seismic shift of all-consuming Brexit, the Olympics which unexpectedly filled Brits with optimism, the knock on effects of years of recession and austerity. The impossible thought of presidencies and premierships that could never happen…but did. These things swirl round in the back of the world I write in. And then there is now. Pandemic times

In my mind there are now clear before times. I thought I felt this about the Brexit vote but now I know that was nothing. There is a before. Maybe there will be an after. Landscapes are shifting and changing around us. And I feel there is also great movements in politics which are shaping our world. Too much to write about.

So if you write in the contemporary space you have to take great leaps of faith. Get specific enough about setting and know it well enough that it rings true to that backdrop of the world’s rapidly changing climate. (And climate change too, how can that not be in our narratives).

In 2018 I was lucky enough to listen to Salman Rushdie’s talk “From Midnight’s Children to Trump’s America” at the Southbank Centre. This article reminds me of what he said about writing in the near present,

‘The thing that is weirdest about this book is that, when I started writing it, no one was thinking about Trump. […] When the phenomenon on Trump started, I realised that I had a character who was a corrupt billionaire, […] who liked to have his name very big on buildings and had a much younger Eastern European trophy wife. I thought – what? It’s as if the thing had jumped off the pages from my book into the real world.’

Salman Rushdie

I have been reading Rushdie’s The Golden House this week and thinking about the rifts in America that it addresses, and over here, and everywhere of course. It is a hard novel for me to read, a character with Aspergers is explored but through quite a negative lens which jars with my outlook on neurodiversity. But then, as we become entwined in the Golden family, no-one is particularly likeable. An unreliable narrator on the fringes of their life, it is hardly surprising that Rene, the auteur, does not paint any of the family in a positive light. So far, it is a fascinating depiction of money and power. And yes prescient too.

N-W by Zadie Smith

Alongside this, I have been reading N-W by Zadie Smith , circling around the lives of various people in Northwest London. It is a challenging read, much like I wrote about Girl, Woman, Other it seems almost like a series of vignettes, where you snap away from characters you have invested in to see others around them and many voices and styles of narrative are used. The intention seems to be to offer a “polyphonic” world that reflects the nature of urban life.

The novels tell the series of stories of very different people. (As I found White Teeth when I was studying Rushdie I have always paired these novelists in my head! ) I feel these two urban sagas, though very different, have been playing through my mind that there is a choice to lean in to the politics of the place. The writing then that seems to “jump off the page” into real life, in fact gives us a place to explore and appreciate the fault lines in the worlds they write about.

It’s been fascinating to spend a few months within the space of urban and contemporary fiction although on my reading list now are some fantasy and historical works to balance it all out. After all my current work-in-progress is about escaping to the countryside.

While I ponder which era I best like to read in, I wonder most how this year will end up being written?

A new reading list

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I haven’t posted here for a while but I have been reading, trying to educate myself

I am so saddened by George Floyd’s murder. And Breonna Taylor’s. And so many more. I have been learning too so much more about the problems faced in the UK.

I have watched the news, listened to many people talking about these deep-rooted issues and seen some remarkable activism as part of a larger conversation. I haven’t felt safe enough to protest. so I have tried to think of other ways to engage. I have really taken the chance to think about what the Black Lives Matter conversation means in the UK.

Being me, this has meant reading of course. These are all books that have soared up the Amazon charts. I am clearly not the only one trying to support more black authors. By adding these powerful voices to my life I hope to understand and learn more.

Read this month

Queenie by Candice Carty – Williams

This book had been on my list for a while. It discusses in a joyful way really what it is to date in the modern world. But particularly for Queenie, a woman of Carribean descent, the way her body and black life is understood by others and herself. She is a witty and fascinating character and you really root for her as she tries to navigate the pitfalls in her life. But underlying all the problem she comes across in work and dating life is a darker and political edge that has an important message. Ultimately an uplifting book with a powerful message.

Why I stopped talking to white people about Race by Reno Eddo-Lodge

An essential guide in the move towards becoming Anti-Racist. I have learnt so much more about others experience over this last month and this well written report on where we are has helped. It feels important. It includes a sweep of history that is oft ignored and shared insights into the systematic inqualities of now. I don’t read a lot of non-fiction but this feels like a necessary part of the conversation.

Reading now

Girl, woman, other by Bernadine Evaristo

Another one that has been on my list for a while, last year’s Booker Prize winner does not disappoint. I am part way through and fascinated by the women I have met so far. A series of vignettes about different women’s lives it speaks to many different aspects of British culture and exploring black lives from different backgrounds and perspectives. It discusses race, political difference, and womanhood in a lively and thoughtful way.

And Next

N-w by Zadie Smith

White Teeth is probably one of my favourite novels in modern times but I haven’t read any of her work for a while so this book, about to be adapted to a BBC Drama seemed like an essential read.

If anyone else has reading suggestions, I would love to hear them.