Belated February Books: Summary and Reviews

Well, I suppose this makes me disgraceful, doesn't it? Nearly two months with no update - for shame, Anna! The up-side is that I haven't updated in so long because I've been so busy - and the busy has included reading and writing. But more on that in a moment (especially the latter).

For a start, here is my rather belated summary of my February endeavours for the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge:

February's Books:

6. The Business of Writing - Raymond Flower
7. Black Flower in the Sky - Chong Ki-Sheok
8. Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Not a prolific month for reading, I'll admit - but it is the shortest month of the year, so I'll now proceed to crank that out as an excuse. At least as far as genre is concerned, it was a more diverse month than January was.


The Business of Writing: I actually own quite a few books on creative writing. My late mother, a journalist, spent a lot of time trying to get into fiction writing, and I ended up inheriting a lot of the related books that she owned by default, because nobody else in the family is a word person. I'd flicked through them before, but this was the first one that I'd ever actually sat down and read from cover to cover.

I wasn't really sure what to expect - obviously I love to write, and I definitely want to improve my skills, but I wasn't sure how helpful I'd find a book on the subject. This apprehension was probably based mainly on my past experiences. I'd taken a couple of writing subjects as part of my Arts degree, and found them, for the most part, totally unhelpful. Neither of them taught me nearly as much as I've subsequently learned simply from experience (i.e. just writing, and then rereading over it with a critical eye and seeing what the strengths and weaknesses of the piece were). So I wasn't sure if it would be a similar story with this book. Thankfully, that wasn't the case.

The Business of Writing isn't particularly long, and I think that that works well - it doesn't spend hours lecturing you on the kinds of habits that you need to develop, or the particular technical skills that you need to cultivate. Rather, it gives some more general information on topics (some advice being more firmly suggested than others), and then talks about the strategies of various famous writers. The motto of the book, if it could be said to have one, seems to be "different things work for different people - go and find what works for you!" And I think that's a good approach to take - and perhaps this is the reason why I got so little out of creative writing classes that I've done in the past. It was a good read in its own right, a very practically-minded book, and I definitely enjoyed reading it, and found it useful! Yay!

Would I recommend it? Definitely - to writers, would-be writers, and more or less anyone who is interested in the writing process. I enjoyed this one a lot.


Black Flower in the Sky: This one was a book of poetry, written from the perspective of a Korean living in Hiroshima in World War II. Yep, you can see from the outset that this isn't going to be uplifting... The poems trace the main character's life, starting from his marriage and then moving through the events of WWII, and then the aftermath. I picked this one up in the library on a whim, because I've done a lot of research essays on the bombing of Hiroshima, and year before last I actually went there - definitely an amazing experience.

The poems themselves were interesting - some of them were a little lost on me (though that may have been issues with translation), but when they did "click" - they were amazing. I liked a lot of the imagery that was used. Ha - sorry, I've never been someone who's read much poetry, so I don't have very many intelligent remarks to make when it comes to the appreciation of verse. It was an interesting, very moving read at any rate.

Would I recommend it? Well, it's not for the squeamish, as you might imagine. Not that there's any explicit or gory descriptions in there, but there is a lot of material that some might find confronting. That said, I do definitely think that it's worth reading, especially if you have an interest in that particular dark corner of history.


Oryx and Crake - Disclaimer: I am a Margaret Atwood junkie. A complete and total one. I know that some people tend to find her an acquired taste, but I adore her and remain absolutely enthralled by her books, no matter how many times I pick them up. I tend to reread this one (as well as The Blind Assassin, which I'm sure will be reviewed here at some point) at least once a year, so much do I love it.

This is a prime example of a case in which I think assigning a genre to a book would be limiting rather than informative. I suppose that you would call Oryx and Crake 'science fiction' or 'futuristic' if you had to assign it a category, but there is So Much More To It than that, because it's as much about human nature and interaction as it is about future technology. The book basically consists of the main character (one of the few remaining survivors of a disaster that has wiped out most of humankind) relating the events that have led to the present while he continues trying to survive and make sense of everything that has happened.

I'm sure that this kind of plot has been used a million and one times, but I couldn't care less - this books pulls it off fabulously. I think for me it's all the social and cultural references and commentary that make this - all the little oberservations of the quirks, preoccupations, perversities and obsessions of humankind make it unnerving and endearing at the same time. If you're the kind of person who gets a kick out of laughing at advertisements (I most definitely am this kind of person, for the record), then you will likely dig this book in a big way. Even though it doesn't play a huge role in the story, I also love the way that language and the humanities are treated in this story - as an English lit/history major, and someone who deeply loves word-wrangling, I couldn't help but laugh and relish it.

Anyway, I could talk all day about this book, but I won't, because it's sunny and I want to go outside! Would I recommend it? Short answer: Yes. Read this book - it is awesome. Or it is if, like me, you're a cynic with a weird sense of humour who is thoroughly unnerved by some aspects of modern society.


So, that's February sorted. Not technically late I suppose, since March hasn't finished yet. But I definitely could have been more prompt. Oh well - I haven't been writing here because I've been writing elsewhere instead. But as I said earlier, more about that later...