Tag: Bristol

Sunday Salon: Holidaying

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The Sunday Salon

It’s been a busy busy week. Amazing how much more you can do when you don’t go to work! Okay, so I’m on holiday for a week and a half, which we are filling with three short breaks in a row. We seem to have managed once again to coincide our plans with glorious sunshine, which is not strictly good for me but I love how happy it makes everyone.

Part 1: London
In London, we went to museums with Tim’s parents, watched fox cubs playing from a friend’s balcony and sat reading in royal parks.

Urban fox

Part 2: Bristol
Then we came back to Bristol and enjoyed our city at a slower pace, took in a film at the excellent Watershed and went on a day trip to see the amazing sand sculptures in Weston-super-Mare.

Grumpy

Part 3: Melton Mowbray
Finally, we hopped on a train to Leicestershire to chill with friends in the countryside, which is where we are now.

Red

I am relaxed, I have done lots of reading (you can read my reviews of Enduring Love and Mr Fox, posted earlier this week) and I didn’t have to dip into my savings. Who needs fancy foreign holidays? (I’m not saying I never want one again. Just to be clear, I still want to see the world. But this has been a good holiday. That is all.)

Apocalypse and trams

Future Bristol
edited by Colin Harvey

This collection of short stories was compiled by a local writer (who sadly died earlier this year) to showcase science-fiction writing from in or around Bristol, so all the authors either live here or nearby or have done at some point. Though the depictions of the future are very varied, there are some common themes that say something about both Bristol and the preoccupations of the present.

I must say that in general I was more impressed by the ideas in this volume than the writing. This is mostly a taste thing. I like to have good strong characters and will happily forego storyline if the characters are written well enough. This volume conformed to that common criticism of science fiction that character comes second fiddle to ideas. I don’t actually think that’s true of the very best science fiction, but it was certainly true here. If I haven’t got to know a character, how am I going to care when crazy future apocalyptic things start happening to them?

That said, I really liked all of the ideas in these stories. I preferred the subtler futures where the city has changed and future generations have slightly different words for places and landmarks, and only vague ideas of where a name like “the Circus” or “Canesh’m” has come from. Meaningless to an outsider of course but brilliant for anyone familiar with the city.

Futures varied but tended toward the pessimistic – manmade or environmental disasters, global warming, spiralling crime – and even the more positive ideas had negative aspects. There’s the hackers who use stolen nanotechnology for the common good, only the corporations are watching their every step. There’s the urban explorers who encounter aliens in Clifton Rocks Railway. There’s the flooded city where pirates are back in full force and the police must tread carefully (possibly my favourite visually, though obviously heavily reminiscent of The Drowned World).

I think my favourite story, or at least the one that I have kept thinking about the most, was the one written by Colin Harvey himself. It’s called “Thermoclines” and is about a future when humans have evolved into winged creatures because they cannot touch the ground for fear of “the grey”. From a small community in south Wales, young Garyn is a star hunter but is tested to the limit when a rare visit from outsiders takes him on the long journey to “Brisel”, or what’s left of it. I liked that this story doesn’t try to explain everything, its hints and suggestions raising more questions than answers. It’s also one of the better examples of characterisation in the collection.

This was an interesting project and as an adopted Bristolian I loved the insider’s views of the city (and indeed disliked the more touristy moments, lingering on Clifton and the suspension bridge). I loved that multiple authors mentioned bringing back trams to the city, or found uses for the derelict Parcelforce building next to Temple Meads railway station. This definitely answered my search for stories set in Bristol, but I’m not convinced I’ve found any great new voices here.

Published 2009 by Swimming Kangaroo Books.

The Split Worlds

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Today marks the start of a new project from local author Emma Newman – Split Worlds. For a year and a day, Em will be posting stories, games and puzzles in the urban fantasy setting of the Split Worlds.

I discovered Em on Twitter and managed to meet her in the real life last month at BristolCon, where we attended a reading of one of her short stories, from her collection From Dark Places. I’ve read two stories from the Split Worlds so far and really like the slightly sinister atmosphere.

Just sign up to receive the first short story and notifications of new content. Go, enjoy!

BristolCon11: reviews

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The discussions and readings at BristolCon were all excellent but I did particularly enjoy “Reviews: threat or menace?”. As the panel pointed out, the title suggests that reviews can only be bad or more bad, yet most of them were both reviewers and authors and had some interesting thoughts on the process.

Juliet McKenna‘s view was that both reading and writing reviews can give you a snapshot of what’s new out there. She is reluctant to trash a book in a review, as she knows how much hard work has gone into writing it. Jonathan Wright agreed that it can be too easy to slag off a book, that that style of writing can come far too easily. Paul McAuley continued that as a bright young thing, the easiest way to get noticed is to be funny and slag off the books you review, but he is now ashamed of having written damaging reviews, and that’s a large part of the reason he stopped reviewing regularly.

Juliet McKenna raised the point I have heard elsewhere about the responsibility of the reviewer to present a fair cross-section of what’s out there. Stats collected by Vida and Strange Horizons show that in the UK and US approximately 44% of books are written by women, yet less than 30% of books reviewed are by women. Although this bias is unconscious, once known about it should be acknowledged.

A quick check of my reviews index shows that to date I have reviewed 46 books by women and 76 by men (i.e. not quite 38% women). And apparently male reviewers have a much stronger bias towards reading male writers. (Incidentally, my current TBR is much worse, standing at 26 books by women versus 77 by men. If ever I needed an excuse to buy more books!)

But in general the views about reviews and reviewing were positive, despite the event’s title.

BristolCon11: the books

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I’m finally getting round to writing down some thoughts about Saturday’s adventures at BristolCon. There’s so much to tell that I will come back to this topic again. But let’s start with the spoils. These are the books that Tim and I came home with:

The spoils

That’s a combination of free, secondhand and new books. There were also badges and fridge magnets and goodness knows what else in our goody bags. The USB stick in the picture is yet another book, in digital form, by local author Tim Maughan. My TBR is most definitely up in three figures again!

I should probably mention that it will likely take me some time to get round to reading any of those books because this year I am taking part in NaNoWriMo, so all my November free time is going towards that. (Which also means that theoretically I will be blogging less.)

In general I loved the day and I’m torn between wanting it to be much better known and bigger next year, and liking it small and friendly as it was. The day ended with a quiz that Tim and I came last in, so despite thinking we’re pretty geeky, turns out we have a lot to learn!

October bookishness

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So I am breaking with tradition (my own self-imposed one-and-a-half-year-old tradition, that is) and actually taking part in a readalong! The Discovering Daphne season is a month-long Daphne du Maurier readalong hosted by Simon of Savidge Reads and Polly of Novel Insights. As a Daphne fan, how could I resist?

Also this month is the first ever Bristol Festival of Literature. It runs from 14 to 23 October in venues all over the city and features some fascinating-sounding discussions about publishing and writing, as well as all the usual author events.

With some crossover with, but organised separately from the literature festival, on 22 October it’s BristolCon11. It’s the third year for the science fiction and fantasy convention, which I only stumbled across thanks to Twitter but am now eagerly looking forward to attending. There will be some big names there including Paul McAuley and Justina Robson.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, this weekend the Royal Society throws open its doors for the One Culture festival where “some of the best novelists, scientists, poets and historians will explore the crosscurrents between science and culture”. I sadly can’t get to London for that – my weekend is busy enough already – so I’ll be looking out for reports on how it went.

Something new every time

We like to go to the zoo. Specifically, Bristol Zoo, which just happens to be our local one. Handy that. It’s a particularly good one in terms of conservation and breeding programmes and all that. The enclosures are big enough and full of enough foliage and whatnot that the animals can pretty effectively hide from view, which some of them do more often than not (no aye ayes for us on the last 2 or 3 visits) but somehow we still managed to take almost 1000 photos there at the weekend. Yup. 1000. Of which I have so far identified about 20 good ones.

While we like to think we know our zoo pretty well and can find our way around and show visitors hidden treats, there is always something new to see/do/learn. This time we saw lion cubs, learned about gorillas and fed lorikeets. Which was all very cool.

The lorikeets know that visitors are bringing them food so they land all over you, eager to be closest when you reveal the pot of nectar. It’s a bizarre feeling, birds’ feet on your bare arm. The keeper shooed off the bird that landed on my Mum’s head. Sadly I didn’t get a photo of that because we foolishly all fed the birds at the same time. So my photos are of complete strangers feeding the lorikeets.

They are very pretty and reasonably gentle if slightly frantic birds. My best photos of the day were taken in the Bug House but I figured they might freak some of my readers out, seeing as it freaked me out a little editing them. Zooming in on a locust’s head to check if the eye or the mouth is in focus – it’s making the hairs rise on the back of my neck just thinking about it!

I’m gradually adding the selected photographic highlights to my Flickr photostream so if you’re interested and ready to be slightly unnerved by/speed quickly past the insect macros, take a peek.

Local bookshops: Foyles

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Foyles Bristol

As bookshop chains go, Foyles retains the respect of booklovers by being a darn good bookshop. The Foyles in Bristol’s Quakers Friars was the first in the chain outside of London but I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I first came across Foyles when I was a magazine intern in London and I discovered this incredible series of talks run by Foyles. They have an author event almost every night. The only other bookshop I’ve known to equal it is Topping & Co in Bath.

The new Bristol Foyles store feels spacious and yet full of books. There is a fair selection of related paraphernalia – notebooks, diaries, games, postcards – but these are so well chosen, not to mention well designed, that I’ll forgive them using up floorspace that could have gone to books.

Pretty things from Foyles

This is not the place to go to get the latest celebrity autobiography or 3 for 2 chicklit. The “top ten” and “staff picks” bookcases showcase mostly literary fiction, including a few titles I’d never heard of. There is a surprisingly large cookery section, including a display of the new Penguin Great Food series. In fact, there was a certain emphasis on this current trend for beautiful books, which I am all in favour of. I picked up a few pretty tidbits for forthcoming birthdays in addition to some books for me.

I’d still like to see more independent bookshops out there but I do think Foyles is a welcome addition to Bristol.

Foyles, 6 Quakers Friars, Cabot Circus, Bristol, BS1 3BU

In her head

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Wish Her Safe at Home
by Stephen Benatar

This book surprised me. It had been on my wishlist for a long time but when I saw it at the library and recognised it from this discussion, the only detail I remembered was that it’s set in Bristol. Which seemed as good a reason as any to pick it up. But sadly, Bristol is not the focus of the book; really it could be set anywhere. Thankfully, the book has other things going for it.

It’s the story of Rachel, a middle-aged spinster living a dreary life in London until, out of the blue, she inherits a house in Bristol. On a whim she decides to move into it, giving up her job and abandoning her flatmate for a suddenly impassioned restoration project. As the book goes on it becomes clear that Rachel’s newfound giddy happiness and occasional sudden lows signal increasing mental instability.

It’s very cleverly done. The story is narrated by Rachel and at first you accept the complete change of attitude, her newfound confidence and ability to make friends. But the hints get stronger; the version of events changes from one telling to the next, and you start to question everything – not just whether it happened the way she first described, but whether it happened at all.

Conversely, I liked Rachel more as the book went on. Initially I found her a bit of a cold fish, possibly on the autism spectrum if her awkward encounters with strangers were anything to go by, but then she would reveal an awareness of being distant, possibly deliberately, that didn’t fit with that assessment. But later on, Rachel tries so hard to be happy and good and charming that when you see the cracks you feel bad for her, or at least I did.

One of the forms of Rachel’s mania is a tendency to quote or, more often, sing snatches from classic books, films or plays. She displays great knowledge on this score and often lost me (as indeed she would lose her audience, when she had one) as she jumped from one character to another. But through these quotes she sometimes expressed a truth that she couldn’t in her own words:

“‘I’ll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell the truth. I tell what ought to be the truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!'”
[From Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire]

In the end , this is a very moving account of mania from a time (1981) when people weren’t so familiar with terms like bipolar disorder and manic depression as we are now. I wonder if Benatar was a little ahead of his time, because this book deserves to have become far better known. I think this would make a fantastic book club read – there’s so much to discuss that I can’t raise here without revealing too much of the plot.

The edition I read (a 2007 reprint) includes an excellent introduction by the eminent John Carey, an illuminating essay that is far more insightful about this book than I could be. But I would still recommend you save that for after reading the book itself – let yourself enjoy the guessing game before you unravel it.

First published 1982 by Bodley Head. Reissued by the New York Review of Books.

SEE ALSO: review by Stuck in a book

Local bookshops: Bloom & Curll

Bloom & Curll

Bloom & Curll is so close to being the perfect bookshop for me that I feel I should apologise for not being a regular customer. It has a quirky, arty feel and look but is still most definitely all about the books.

They are piled everywhere, almost higgledy piggledy yet meticulously organised. Old and new sit side by side, with some classic Penguin editions serving as both booklover lures and eyecatching art. Section labels epitomise the style of the shop – they are either handmade paper cutouts in classily chosen colour and pattern combinations, or bright childlike magnetic letters. The book selection leans towards the literary end of fiction, with some specialised areas for philosophical, theological and sociological works. The shop is small enough not to overwhelm me with choice, while still stocking more books that I want than I can afford.

I love the location of Bloom & Curll, nestled among the indie stylings of Colston Street, Christmas Steps and nearby Upper Maudlin Street, but I worry that that also works against it – on my every visit I have been the only customer. However, the shop window promises chess classes and apparently this Thursday they’re hosting a book launch, which looks worth checking out. Hopefully such events will keep attracting new customers through their doors.

Bloom & Curll, 74 Colston Street, Bristol