april 2025 books...

Pigs Have Wings (PG Wodehouse): Another ‘comfort’ book choice (first published in 1952). As the title suggests, the story is about pigs – and in particular a certain ‘Empress of Blandings’, who is endeavouring to win the renowned ‘Fat Pigs Class’ at the agriculture show for the third year in a row. As usual with Wodehouse, there are LOTS of characters (I get easily confused!); country houses; Lords and Ladies (and butlers); engaging (and disengaging) couples… and, of course, people with very strange names (eg. Gally Threepwood, Fruity Biffen, Puffy Benger and the like). Typically, Wodehouse’s colourful descriptive tales also contain ridiculous, complicated plots and LOTS of inevitable misunderstandings. Entertaining… but I now think I’ve had enough Wodehouse for a while.
Definitions Of Kitchen Verbs (Kenneth Wilson): I first came across Wilson’s poetry at Bristol Cathedral’s recent ‘Lenten Quiet Day’. I enjoyed reading his poetry (out loud to myself) as part of my daily early morning ‘discipline/reflection’ (as it happens, coinciding with the run-up to Easter Week). It’s certainly not a ‘religious book’ (phew), but I found it both thought-provoking and valuable… mixing happy memories, hopes, doubts and regrets. 
The City And The City (China Miéville): This is our next Blokes’ bookgroup selection (by Ian). As a rule, I like detective/crime mystery novels… but I’m afraid I didn’t like this one - with its sci-fi/fantasy scenario. Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad is faced with the corpse of a university student. The novel’s setting is complicated (understatement!): on the one hand, there is a once beautiful but now dishevelled city of Besźel and, on the other, there's the modernised Ul Qoma. These two cities occupy the same geographical space, but divided not by walls, but certain areas belong to Besźel, others to Ul Qoma, while some are ‘crosshatched’ between the two. Citizens from one city learn from birth to ‘unsee’ the citizens, vehicles, buildings of the other. Any crossing of these boundaries invokes a shadowy organisation called ‘Breach’, which exists to police the separation. The trouble (for me) was that the reader had to glean this information for him/herself… it wasn’t explained; you just gradually worked things out as the plot developed. I really needed this background to be explained from the outset. Yes, it’s an inventive, clever novel by a very intelligent writer (who I’ve subsequently seen described as a “leading exponent of the ‘new weird’”!) – but, sadly, rather too clever (and weird!) for me to appreciate fully. Sorry!
After The Apocalypse (Chris Goan): I’ve read this book of poetry (by my good friend Chris - and illustrated by another great mate, Si Smith) a number of times and have found it both helpful and thought-provoking. It’s a book written in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic (written in 3 sections: Before, During and After). I’ve been using the ‘After’ section (“poems that dare to look forward and imagine a world that is changing and re-shaping”) as part of my recent early morning reflections. It’s a special book that I know I’ll keep returning to.
The Liar's Dictionary (Eley Williams): This is our next Storysmith’s bookgroup selection (vaguely under the theme ‘humour’ – in an attempt to avoid the current, depressing World of Trump!). This novel follows two lexicographers 100 years apart – Mallory, who narrates in the present, and Winceworth, shown in 1899. Both work for Swansby’s New Encyclopaedic Dictionary, a somewhat lesser-known equivalent rival to the likes of the OED. Mallory’s boss, the last of a generation of Swansbys, sets her to investigate errors that had mysteriously accumulated in years gone by (as it happens, mischievous actions by Winceworth in connection with his romantic frustrations and loathing of his colleagues). Meanwhile, someone is calling the office issuing bomb threats on account of the dictionary changing its 1899 definition of marriage from “union between man and woman” to “between… persons” (Mallory wants to keep her sexuality private). Hey, it’s all quite complicated(!), but a very clever, charming, amusing and inventive book – full of a wonderful ‘word play’. An enjoyable read. PS: Reading this put me in mind of a non-fiction book (The Word Detective by John Simpson, former editor of the OED) that I read 3 years ago – which provided an evocative history of the painstakingly-slow work in producing and subsequently editing and updating the OED and it wasn’t until 1989 that the OED was published ‘from a computer database’.