British Theatre is booming.

I read an excellent article this week through the Times Online Arts and Entertainment bulletin that I get e-mailed to me (along with the Times Literary Supplement Newsletter).
The article examines why theatre attendance in Britain has increased considerably in the last year or so. Statistics show that even from 2 years ago more of us are choosing to see live performances all year round, not just in the holiday season when Pantomime is popular for families of all ages. Many of us are booking tickets for other shows too. Unusual, especially as we are in the middle of a recession and everyone is watching their pennies.
The article explores many reasons for why this may be so.

• Are the theatres managed differently, opting for subsidised funding (once frowned upon) to ensure not only a wide variety of popular shows but productions by new writers and plays appealing to more specialist tastes?
• During these more thrifty times, are some of us abandoning expensive holidays and going for entertainment nearer to home?
• Are trends changing, as they always do, so that amongst so much home entertainment, do we crave community based activities?
• Publicity and advertising for live theatre has changed, with TV personalities such as Lenny Henry in Othello and David Tennant in Hamlet taking on the greats, ensuring stampedes for tickets out of curiosity/sensationalism and the rush of excitement at getting a ticket to the hottest show in town, as well as making Shakespeare more attractive to non-regular attenders.
• Do community based activities offer comfort when times are uncertain?

It could be some, or all, of the above are correct. You may have your own theories. It is great to see so many theatres doing well and so much on offer. My favourite theatres are listed on my sidebar.

My favourite productions this year have been...

A Midsummer Nights Dream by Propeller at the Liverpool Playhouse

Macbeth at the Manchester Royal Exchange

The Caretaker with Jonathan Pryce at the Liverpool Everyman

Prick Up Your Ears with Con O'Neill at the London Comedy Theatre

The poet Roger McGough at the Liverpool Playhouse

All of these have been brilliant and I have been fortunate enough to see many others too. What have you seen this year, or your most memorable plays and performances?

What are your theories on the theatre-going boom? Is America enjoying similar rises in numbers of theatre attenders?

To read the article Why British Theatre is Booming click the link and let me know your thoughts.

Writing America

I want to tell you about the course I am enrolled on starting in January. The course is over 4 evenings, one a month, and examines how 'history often plays a vital role in shaping American novels'.

The course is using 4 novels to examine this...

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, quite a substantial novel made infamous by the well loved film of the same name. I haven't read this yet but saw the film a long time ago. I'm looking forward to looking at issues regarding the American Civil War and how it comes into this story, and how it depicts those times.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, my 3rd Steinbeck novel and a book that I am 3/4 through and enjoying very much. My version is a lovely 2nd edition published in 1940 too, and clearly representing the Depression in America.

Beloved by Toni Morrison, which I reviewed in May 2008, a novel I have loved along with many other people, exploring Black American history and slavery.

Finally, one of my favourite books, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, which I read back in 1994 after a work colleague had recommended it.

So some fantastic titles to talk about. I am really looking forward to doing the course. I have noticed that a lot of American bloggers love to immerse themselves in English historical novels and classics. Maybe I am one of the English bloggers who loves the American classics as I do seem to have leanings in that direction and have chosen to read as many as possible. I also think that the film adaptations have encouraged this too.

As you can imagine this has shaped my current reading list to accomodate the texts of the course. I'll review the books as I finish them and also tell you about each evening as it happens in the new year.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

I picked this one up from the Bluecoat book fair a couple of months ago, wondering what the novel behind such a famous film was like. I saw the film years ago, and there are many iconic images from it that are regularly seen in the media. It was also pretty short at just on 100 pages.

Set during the 1940's in New York, the story is narrated by a man who is never named. He tells the story of an enigmatic and exuberant young woman who lives in the same building of apartments. The woman in question has passed into the mists of legend at the beginning, rumoured to be in Africa and just as infamous, making his friend Joe misty eyed with remembered affection. From here our narrator recounts how he met Holly Golightly and became entangled in her life for a short time and the effect that she had on all around her.

The story is an examination of Holly's character as a good time party girl, a charismatic character full of contrasts that are irresistable to all. Prioritising money but yearning for love, needing protection like a naive child but also a street-wise survivor. Holly hates feeling caged or trapped and yearns to be free. When anyone comes too close she closes up and becomes vague, adding to her allure. By the end everyone has a crush on her, is a little in love with her, or even more than a little.

I enjoyed reading about her, once I had got over the fact that she has short, blond hair. She still continued with Audrey Hepburns voice though, such is the endurance of the film. This is a story about one of the most memorable female characters (from a book or film) and I think that it is because Holly is so unpredictable and charming. She gets away with more than most women of her era simply because she is so likeable. You are aware of her materialism, her shallowness, her dubious relations with men, but she is also very alluring, and beautiful, causing men to be entrapped by her personality, like moths around a flame. I couldn't decide whether she really was so in the dark about the mess she becomes entangled in, but the question adds to her mystery.

The abiding theme of the story is that you cannot trap a wild thing. Indeed, the narrator is first aware of her before he meets her, by a notice on her mail box, 'Holly Golightly, travelling' and it seems that she never stops long, anywhere. When Holly buys the narrator a birdcage he had admired, she makes him promise not to put anything in it. She also likens herself to her nameless cat saying they are both homeless.

A series of events ensure that Holly is off travelling again at the end, and appears to still be so fifteen years later where the story began. You can be sure that adventure will always follow her and many more will recount the days in ber presence with a rosy nostalgia that accompanies days spent in a hedonistic hormonal kind of bliss.

The enigma that is Holly Golightly will ensure that this book will be held high, as a classic story about an unforgettable female, for a long time, and will provide lots for readers groups to discuss too.

There is a dedicated website to all about Breakfast at Tiffany's. Click the link.

Also there is a Breakfast at Tiffany's study guide.

October Roundup

Hope you all had fun over Halloween. This lovely drawing was created by artist Jeff Ward and you can check out more of his work on his website thepaintingplace. Perfect for the spooky month of October.

Read - 1 and a half books

Completed - Breakfast At Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Currently Reading - The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

TBR pile - currently at 71 (according to GoodReads) with 2 new ones added...

Accordion Crimes by Annie E Proulx

Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Challenges - completed all twelve of the 2009 Mini Challenges started in January. You can read my challenge wrap up here

Wishlist Additions - none this month, probably just as well considering how huge my TBR pile is.

Discoveries - Oxford University has distance online courses in lots of subjects, including 10 in literature. Check out the Oxford University Continuing Education department for more details.

Events - attending the one day course The Hour for Loving: Texts in Time at the Liverpool University Continuing Education Department.

The wind has been blowing all of today, blowing us towards winter and into November...

2009 Mini Challenges: Wrap up

I signed up to this challenge when I saw it over at Caribousmom in January and 10 months later they are all completed. Here is how each one went...

1. Read a collection of short stories and blog about it.

I read Jigs and Reels by Joanne Harris. Click the link to read the review.

2. Read a play and blog about it.

I read Three Jacobean Witchcraft Plays (a bookcrossing find in Liverpool).

3. Read a non fiction book and write a review on your blog.

I read Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill. Click the link for the review.

4. Read two essays from the same collection and blog about it.

I read essays by Helene Cixous and Edward Said, both from Modern Literary Theory. Click the links to read the posts.

5. Go to a book event and blog about it.

I went to a one day course called The Hour for Loving: Texts in Time at the Liverpool University Continuing Education Department. Click the course title for the post.

6. Borrow a library book and blog about it.

I borrowed A Vegetable Gardeners Year by Dirty Nails. Click for the review.

7. Read a book by a new to you author. Blog about the book and the author.

I read The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Click either the title or author for respective posts.

8. Make a donation, either a contribution to a literary organization or donate a book.

I made a bookcrossing donation. Click the link to read about it.

9. Promote literacy in some way and blog about it.

I organized a bookswap in work. Click the link for the post.

10. Participate in a buddy read or group discussion and blog about it.

I took part in a discussion about The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. Click the link to read how it went.

11. Read a book that is outside your comfort level or from a genre that you don't normally read.

I read The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. Click for the review.

12. Read a classic and write a review on your blog.

I read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Click to read the review.

I deliberately picked this challenge because I am not a fast reader so did not want a whole list of books to read on top of the mountainous TBR pile I already have. This challenge enabled me to use some of the books already there as well as put some energy and thought into some events such as the course or the bookswap at work. I have really enjoyed all of it and got to do some things I may not have, had I not taken the challenge up.

Thank you to caribousmom for setting it up.

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Bought on a 3 for 2 deal at Waterstones, this novel saved me from my recent reading crisis. It is my third Toni Morrison, having previously read Song of Solomon and Beloved and enjoyed both. Its also quite short at 165 pages.

Set in the 1600's we are told an account of a plantation and of how some of the people who live there came to be there. Some of the chapters are 1st person, some are not.

Florens is taken there as payment for a debt at 8 years old, as a slave, leaving her mother to a harsher existence on another farm. The place is owned by Jacob, an ambitious but fair master, and his hardy wife Rebekka who has escaped a life of poverty in England. They have a Native American servant called Lina, who is protective and suspicious. There is also a young pregnant slave girl called Sorrow, wayward and quiet, she was rescued from a shipwreck.

Each of these people, including two male farm hands, have a chapter or two to tell pieces of a story that knits them all together. The different voices of the characters or the narrator keep the narrative fresh and interesting.

The writing is very typical of Morrison's style, non-linear, elusive and poetic, it often feels as if you may have missed something, as if it assumes a fore-knowledge of events while starting in the middle. You feel that the story is much bigger than what is actually written on the page. It is why Morrison is hailed as a truly great writer, but it is also why some find her novels difficult to connect with. Thankfully I am in the former category and gain a lot from her books. I found some of the passages beautiful and intriguing, and I really feel that Morrison loves the people that she writes about.

I think that a novel written in this style by a less accomplished writer could alienate and distance its readers, but this one, though not quite as moving as Beloved, still raised a lot of emotion in me, especially towards the end, when we hear Florens's mother speak. I also found it a little easier to read, maybe because of the short chapters.

Although the characters are not quite as quirky and memorable as the other books, I really enjoyed it and recommend it to Morrison fans, naturally, and anyone who likes their narrative to be less straight forward and 'spoon-fed'.

You can see Toni morrison discussing A Mercy here.

There is a reading group guide for A Mercy here.

'The Hour for Loving': Texts in Time

Last weekend I attended a one day course at the Liverpool University Continuing Education Department. I have taken part in many courses here before and I enjoy the discussion and variety of subjects that they offer. This one was called The Hour for Loving, concentrating on whether there is a right time for love, using the works of Shakespeare, Austen and Hardy among others to explore this.

Looking at Middlemarch by George Eliot, the timing is wrong for Dorothea and Lydgate. The expectation is there but she is already married. When her husband dies Lydgate has married. Their regard for each other is subtle but prompts the reader to ask 'What if...?'

In Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope her love follows a defined path but there is a lack of fore knowledge in the narrative and it claims that men do not plan their future marriages, it just happens.

We then concentrated on Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, and how there is a sense of doom throughout the novel, brought about by the narrator who tells the story in retrospect and alludes constantly to the tragedies to come. It is as if Hardy has a ghost plot that runs alongside the actual plot, a story of what may have happened had the timing been right. Hardy's characters have a pre-written destiny which is off set by circumstances, a decision wrongly made, that disables what should have happened. Had Angel Clare asked Tess to dance that very first meeting, everything might have been different. Had the letter not gone underneath the carpet by mistake...etc.etc.

We then went further back in time, to the time of Shakespeare and some of his sonnets (XII, CVI and CXVI). When life expectancies were short we can see references to the immediacy of the timing, when death can come at any moment, so the time is now. If not the death of life, then the death of beauty, although some sonnets tell us that love cannot be confined by time or death, proving that the issue of life expectancy was a prominent issue.

We examined some more characters from Trollope, and also the unrequited love in The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, before spending some time discussing Jane Austens characters, particularly in Persuasion, but nearly all of her heroines have to wait some time before getting together with their true loves, usually changing a little or growing up and accepting those changes.

Obviously this is a very condensed account of everything that came up during the day. There were no set texts for the course because of the wide nature of the subject, and I came away wanting to read some of the books that I hadn't encountered. I got most from the texts that I was familiar with though, Tess, Middlemarch, and I've seen films of Persuasion and The Age of Innocence. It was an enjoyable day and a nice way to spend my day off. Anything that encourages listening and talking about books.

This course counts for #5 of the 2009 mini challenges, to attend a book event.