Still catching up on catching up

Life's just been busy lately. Busy at work, busy swimming (I'm doing a virtual swim down the River Usk - currently just past Talybont and heading towards Llangynidr), busy reading, busy with my youngest piano pupil having his first exam in a fortnight's time; so I've got seriously behind on blogging. I've also (as I just discovered) got seriously behind on comments, as I found 18 months worth of comments stashed away in Blogger that I'd never seen before, which I much appreciated - the comments, I mean, not the tardiness of finding them. Special thanks to Clothes in Books for your lovely comments, with honourable mentions to Clare Chase and I Prefer Reading.

I've been going through a bit of a Georgian patch, and have been driving everyone at work (and probably on FB and Twitter) mad with all things John Marsh related - you can now see my latest tweets in the sidebar of the blog. More on John Marsh and other things Georgian (including Northanger Abbey, the American War of Independence, and murder in Georgian London) anon; but for now, some more catching up...

In April I read the second volume of the Penguin Book of the British Short Story. Volume I deals with earlier material, and I really must read it, as I thoroughly enjoyed volume 2, which takes us in roughly chronological order from P.G. Wodehouse to Zadie Smith. Generally I prefer novels, but I do love the occasional foray into the short story, not least because I often find them surprisingly different. Authors I love as novelists sometimes fall short, or seem completely different in the context of the short story format, while other novelists, whose novels I haven't enjoyed can fill me with enthusiasm when writing more succinctly. The other joy too of short stories is that they can act as a taster menu for undiscovered authors, who you may want to explore more fully having snacked briefly in an anthology.

This was very true here. Bookhound regulars will know that I'm a P.G. Wodehouse fan, but his short story The unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court is one of the most peculiar Wodehouse's, I've ever read. Discussing it with a friend, she remarked that it sounded like one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the unexpected, and that's a very good comparison - as unsettling, and blackly comic a tale as you can imagine. Not one, you would have recognised as Wodehouse out of context.

Martin Amis, whose writing I've never really connected with, is stunningly good here with a clever short story Career Move, in which poets are treated like screenwriters, and screenwriters like poets. On the face of it, this seems relatively simple, why hasn't someone thought of doing this before? But the swapping around of two very different genres besides adding comedy, makes you think about the entire world of literature and how it is purveyed. It made me want to read more Amis, and look at him in a rather different way.

I loved Adam Mars-Jones' Baby clutch, a moving story of living with a terminal illness, and its effect both on the sufferer, and those that love them. Zadie Smith, another author like Martin Amis, that I have struggled with as a novelist, tells a stunning tale of modern day slavery in The embassy of Cambodia, while lesser known authors such as the Welsh author, Alun Lewis, and James Hanley tell of the horror of war, which blackened much of the 20th century. There are also several tales of horror (the short story form of which seems to be a bit of a British speciality), and science-fiction.

All British life is here from foreign holidays to parent and child relationships, dealing with new technology, and snooping on the next-door neighbours. There really is something here to satisfy any lover of fiction, whether you want to devour it in a few sittings, or have the occasional literary canape.