The Olympics Hit London

This weekend I went off to my first Olympic event, Volleyball (don't cheer yet... it wasn't beach volleyball... and it was women's... so no hunky men in pants). Anyway, making up for lack of half naked athletes, I was lucky enough to have tickets to see my team of Great Britain take to the court. Although they won the beach volleyball yesterday, sadly Team GB lost their first match but it was so fun! 

I remember when it was announced that the 2012 games would be in London and my 15 year old self couldn't help thinking how OLD I would be... 23!!!! It was practically another century away. Now they're finally here and, as with any host of the Olympics, us Londoners can't help but moan about the resulting transport hell, venues across the city being made out of bounds and the general increased horror of the daily commute. That said, I've got to say that it is just a tiny incy wincy little bit exciting being in the middle of it... from my window I can see an olympics venue, olympic policemen (they've even brought in the Welsh for good measure - hoorah) and have even seen some terrifying missiles about...

Anyway, I couldn't really think how best to do an Olympics post (it had to be done) without making a long and rather dull list of books written by athletes. I hope this will suffice...

Since 2008 the Cultural Olympiad, a huge cultural celebration inspired by London 2012, has featured thousands of events attended by millions of people. As part of this celebration, poems have been selected for each of the 204 competing nations in the 2012 Olympics and ours has been written by Richard Price (happens to be my Dad's name so it's automatically going to be awesome...). The poem, entitled 'Hedge Sparrows', aired for the first time yesterday morning, read by actor Jim Broadbent, and has already picked up praise from poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy.

Anyway, I'm not about to do some kind of critical analysis of it you'll be pleased to hear, so here it is:

You don't see many hedges these days, and the hedges you do see they're not that thorny, it's a shame, and when I say a hedge I'm not talking about a row of twigs between two lines of rusty barbed wire, or more likely just a big prairie where there were whole cities of hedges not fifty years ago, a big desert more like, and I mean thick hedges, with trees nearby for a bit of shade and a field not a road not too far off so you can nip out for an insect or two when you or the youngsters feel like a snack, a whole hedgerow system, as it says in the book, and seven out of ten sparrows say the same, and that's an underestimate, we want a place you can feel safe in again, we're social animals, we want our social life back, and the sooner the better, because in a good hedge you can always talk things over, make decisions, have a laugh if you want to, sing, even with a voice like mine!

Sigmund Freud Museum

Sigmund Freud was a neurologist who is most famously known as the founding father of the revolutionary psychological and psychotherapeutic theory of psychoanalysis. He has written many books on the subject, many of which have become famous throughout the world and influenced many people, including writers of fiction and literary critics. At university there were occasions when we were told to entirely avoid Freud as he was just too popular a topic, both with students and critics, leaving little new to say.

Freud moved into his apartment at Berggasse 19 in the Alsergrund district of Vienna in 1891. At this time the apartment was newly built and would become his home, practice and the place in which he wrote many of his seminal works, including his Interpretation of Dreams. Of course, many will be aware of the appropriation of and amendment to this title by writer Jed Rubenfeld in his prize-winning historical thriller, Interpretation of Murder, which featured Freud and his theories of psychoanalysis in the context of a murder in Manhattan in 1909. You can read my review of this book here.

Freud lived in this apartment until 1938 when his Jewish background meant he was forced to flee the city for London in the lead-up to the Second World War. The house is now home to The Sigmund Freud Foundation and has been transformed into a museum, consisting of the rooms of his original practice and some of Freud's own private rooms.

A number of Freud's original furnishings and belongings have been donated and reinstated to recreate his famous practice, with the all-important couch very much a feature. There is an impressive exhibition with an incredible number of articles, books and photographs documenting Freud's life and work, including the 47 years he spent in this specific house.

The aim of the foundation is to expand the museum and its library so that it may become "an active research institute and thereby taking initiative toward providing an adequate home for the furtherance of knowledge once exiled from Austria".

It's really worth a look and the time you spend is entirely flexible. There is a lot to see but by no means do you have to read every single piece of paper on display. You could spend anywhere between half an hour and 2 hours here and really is a must-see if you are going to Vienna.

Sigmund Freud Museum
Berggasse 19
Vienna 1090  
Open daily
July 1 – September 30, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.
October 1 - June 30, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.  
T +43-1-319 15 96
F +43-1-3170279
office@freud-museum.at

Booker Prize Longlist 2012

Yesterday the longlisted titles for this year's Man Booker Prize were announced, the prize's 44th year.

A panel of judges, headed by chair Sir Peter Stothard of the Times Literary Supplement, selected the 12 novels, all the authors of which will receive £2,500 and compete for the final prize of £50,000.

This year's panel features Amanda Foreman, Dinah Birch, Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey fame and Bharat Tandon.

The 12 novels were chosen out of a staggering 145 other titles, so this is no mean feat by these longlisted authors.

The titles are listed on the Man Booker website as follows:

Nicola Barker, The Yips (Fourth Estate)
Ned Beauman, The Teleportation Accident (Sceptre)
André Brink, Philida (Harvill Secker)
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)
Michael Frayn, Skios (Faber & Faber)
Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (Doubleday)
Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories)
Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)
Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)
Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)
Sam Thompson, Communion Town (Fourth Estate)

Fourth Estate have an impressive four titles in the long list this year with Bloomsbury, who stole the show at the Orange Prize, has well-regarded Will Self and his latest novel, Umbrella. Rather more pleasingly, three small independent publishers and four debut novelists have been selected with only one previous winner, Hilary Mantel, whose sequel to Wolf Hall, Bringing Up the Bodies, seems to be following in the same vane.

The shortlist will halve this list yet again and will be announced on September 11th 2012, with the winner being awarded on 16th October, the ceremony for which will be broadcast by the BBC.

www.themanbookerprize.com

@ManBookerPrize

Bond Books Bring Sexy Back

Everyone always says not to judge a book by its cover but I do exactly that every time I pick up a new book. Why would I want to read something that looks boring? 'Oh but it doesn't matter what it looks like, it's the inside that counts, the book's soft centre and GSOH'. Pfft.

Vintage Classics always take the shelves in style and the new Bond editions are no exception: aren't these deliciously cool? They will be on the shelves in September and I can't decide which one I'll go for first... any thoughts?

For more on Bond, see what I thought of Ian Fleming's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
Or for more pretty book covers to look at, see this post: Judge a book by its cover?.

Cafe Central - Vienna

Located in Vienna's Innere Stadt at Palais Ferstel on Herrengasse 14, Cafe Central stands out from the street with its grand facade. Inside it is like stepping into a time machine; the high ceilings are in keeping with the cafe's general magnificence and the pianist playing in the centre of the room, it feels like somewhere from another century. The smiling waiter (who was polite enough not to laugh at our appalling German), the peacefully cheerful piano music and the two Aperol Spritz were just what the doctor ordered on our first night in Vienna.

It's charmingly archaic feel made it far from difficult to imagine what it would have been like at its opening in 1876, when the cafe and restaurant drew in much of the Viennese intellectual scene. In 1913, many of Europe's political elite became patrons of the establishment, including Tito and Hitler as well as regulars, Trotsky and Lenin.

It wasn't just the politicians that appreciated Cafe Central's relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, many famous writers did too, including Sigmund Freud, Robert Musil and Friedrich Torberg.

Critic and journalist Friedrich Torberg, known largely for his satirical writings, both fiction and non-fiction. Torberg wrote in both Vienna and Prague but was forced to emigrate to France in 1938 due to his Jewish heritage and, later, to the United States where he worked for Time magazine and as a scriptwriter. He later returned to Vienna in 1951.

Austrian writer Robert Musil's novel, The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften), although unfinished at the time of his death, later became regarded one of the most important modernist novels. The novel is described as 'a story of ideas' and takes place in the final days of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Despite it being considered so important, the very long novel is considered difficult to read and has not been widely read.

Well-known in Vienna, this place isn't hard to find so do pop in if you get the chance for breakfast or a drink! They do dinner as well should you have a budget of a few more euros than me!

Cafe Central

Herrengasse 14
http://www.palaisevents.at/en/cafecentral.html

The First Forty-Nine Stories by Ernest Hemingway

A slight diversion from Vienna today, because it is Ernest Hemingway's birthday - he would have been 113. To celebrate, I thought I would do a Hemingway-themed post. For my A Level English coursework I studied Hemingway's short stories and absolutely loved them. Having read The Paris Wife I thought I ought to go back to at least some of them and now I feel I have that little more insight into Hemingway's mind and it shines through his stories. Themes of war, giving birth, adultery, new places, new faces all come out in these First Forty-Nine Stories. I've provided links to some of the stories below so you can have a read. They really are very short... Indian Camp, Up in Michigan and Hills Like White Elephants are particularly so.

Hemingway has an amazing way of establishing tone and atmosphere and in throughout these stories, there's a definite eerie feel. For instance, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, first published in 1936 by Esquire, tells of a man named Harry on safari in Africa who is horribly awaiting death after a wound becomes severely infected. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, based also on safari, is similarly disturbing. Hemingway manipulates the reader by mixing up the chronology so that during the later events, you aren't always armed with the preceding context, whereas earlier moments are sometimes affected by the reader already knowing what will happen in the future.

One of my favourite stories is Indian Camp, first published in 1924 in the Transatlatic Review. This was one of the first stories to feature his famous recurring character, Nick Adams, who is thought to be semi-autobiographical. Nick is just a kid in this story when he travels with his father, a doctor, to the aid of a Native American woman giving birth. Adams describes the event as horrific and gives some idea of the fear that Hemingway must have had for his own impending fatherhood. What I love about this story is the description of the setting as 'They walked up from the beach through a meadow that was soaking wet with dew, following the young Indian who carried a lantern.'

Up in Michigan brings Hemingway's writing back home to Horton's Bay, Michigan, close to where he grew up. This story is, again, controversial in topic and beautifully written, instantly transporting you to a specific place, emotion and situation. Hemingway always provides just enough information; he doesn't destroy your own imagination. This story in particular really asks you to bring your own thoughts, beliefs and morals to the forefront and decide what really happens. Read it here.

There are a lot of stories in this compilation (49 to be precise, funny that...) but the last one I'm going to talk about is a story where Hemingway asks even more of his reader. I don't mean it's hard to read, so don't get put off! What I mean is that when it came to talking about Hills Like White Elephants in class, it became clear that we all had different ideas as to what had just happened. This is all part of the enjoyment of reading, so lease don't Google it before you read it! It's very short and you can read it here.

Shakespeare & Company, Vienna

Over our long weekend in Vienna it's fair to say that my sister and I regularly got a little lost but it was the best kind of lost; rather than finding yourself in Knockturn Alley, you instead stumble across quaint antique shops, spectacular churches or small bookshops. The whole of Vienna seemed full with bookshops and not the Waterstone's kind, the sort that doesn't have more than one copy of any book and they're all piled high on shelves that look like they are about to fall over. There was one bookshop, however, that I deliberately set out to find - Shakespeare & Company Booksellers. After some research, I don't think this is the same company as the one in Paris but it was just as much of a pleasure.

Hidden up a flight of cracked stone stairs, down a cobbled street in Vienna's Inner Stadt, this lovely independent English bookstore could be hard to miss but I'm so glad we didn't. You walk in and you are instantly hit with that wonderful smell of paper. At first it looked entirely empty of people but as I walked in I noticed hidden behind piles of books was the shopkeeper - almost as easily missed as the shop itself. It had everything as well - not just battered 2nd editions of Graham Greene or your grandmother's copy of Little Women. There was even, and you can see to the bottom left of this image, a full collection of the beautiful Waterstones fabric classic editions.

If you go to Vienna, you really must check out the bookstores and this one in particular. Desperate craving for Oliver Twist or Ian McEwan's Atonement, you need look no further than Shakespeare & Company at Sterngasse 2 in the oldest part of Vienna.

Shakespeare & Company Booksellers
Sterngasse 2, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43 1 535 5053
http://www.shakespeare.co.at/ 

Ben Miller at The Royal Institution

When I was a kid, about 8 or 9 I'd say, my mum took me to the Christmas lectures at The Royal Institution. For anyone who doesn't know about the Christmas lectures at the RI, they are basically fun packed science events for kids that are televised every Christmas. The theme changes every year but there are always experiments, audience participation etc. I hadn't been back to the RI until last night when I had the pleasure of sitting in that same lecture hall to see the hilarious and hugely talented, Ben Miller, talk about science and his new book, It's Not Rocket Science.

Interviewed by Roger Highfield, author, journalist and Science Museum executive, Ben talked through his love of science from interested parents, a fantastic teacher in primary school before going on to tell tales of his time at Cambridge and his subsequent PhD.

In the book, Miller goes through all his favourite bits of science without the hard boring stuff to create a truly fun science book for adults who may still have a black hole in their lives where the Horrible Science series by Tony de Saulles used to be.

More than being stupidly bright, rather satisfyingly Miller managed to get the mass of the Higgs Boson right in the book, despite it being sent to print before any confirmation surfaced in the media!

For anyone who has enjoyed Ben Miller's comedy sketches or performances on Primeval or Death in Paradise, you will know both how funny he is and how genuine. The evening was a real pleasure, made even more so by the hilarious experiment he did by mixing hydrogen peroxide with potassium iodide, as seen above. It brought back the fun memories of science at school... i've tried to forget moles, momentum and sedimentary rock...

James Dewar lecturing in 1904

 If you're interested in science and haven't already been, do go along to the RI. Lectures for the general public have been going on there for centuries and the original 19th century wallpaper still covers the walls. 14 scientists attached to the RI have won Nobel prizes and some of the most fundamental findings were announced and/or demonstrated there, such as the discovery of 10 important elements, including Sodium. You can visit the RI at 21 Albemarle Street in London.

Poll of the Week: Fifty Shades of Grey

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Literary Vienna

My sister turned 18 this year and I really struggled to think of a present I could get her to mark the occasion. Something told me that an inflatable spiderman or a Harry Potter mask wouldn't quite spell 'special day'... She had been going on, though, about how she wanted to travel and so the obvious thing was to take her away somewhere. Having just finished Edmund de Waal's The Hare with Amber Eyes, I thought Vienna sounded quite interesting, so booked 4 days away for the 2 of us, staying at the Hotel Rathauspark.

Vienna is, first and foremost, a beautiful city filled with history, art, music and a hell of a lot of delicious cake... Being a book blog, though, I'm naturally going to focus on the literary side of things. Vienna has been at the centre of its fair share of books, most recently William Boyd's latest novel, Waiting for Sunrise - another one for the reading list...

There's so much to see in Vienna - you can barely stroll five minutes without running into a beautiful church topped with now-turquoise roofs and gleaming white walls, a flowering garden, a towering monument or a bursting fountain. Vienna is very proud of its composers, as you would imagine with the likes of Mozart and Strauss to its name, but writers have their place too. Goethe and Schiller, for example, both have very impressive statues on the city's famous Ringstraße. So impressive that my sister really couldn't resist imitating the former... Excuse the blurred photo, must be the snorting laughter...

Sigmund Freud may not be known for his weighty novels, but he is arguably Vienna's most famous writer in modern history and so it's no surprise that one of the city's many parks is named after him.

Palais Ephrussi

Not far away from Sigmund Freud Park, on Universitätsring, I spotted the Palais Ephrussi, one of the central locations in The Hare With Amber Eyes. Having read the book, the stunning building reminded me of the terrifying presence of Fascism and Anti-Semitism in Vienna in the lead up and during the Second World War. Of course Vienna was at the centre of World War One as well, as part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire whose Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's assassination triggered the start of the war.

Hof-Bibliothek

The Hofburg Palace, once home to many emperors including the Habsburgs, now houses the city's Imperial Library (Hof-Bibliothek) - the largest in Austria, housing almost seven and a half million items.

Anyway, I thought that instead of filling this post to bursting point I would do a few different posts staggered throughout the next week.

See my review of The Hare with Amber Eyes here

Drummer Hodge by Thomas Hardy

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

Uncoffined -- just as found:

His landmark is a kopje-crest

That breaks the veldt around:

And foreign constellations west

Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the drummer never knew --

Fresh from his Wessex home --

The meaning of the broad Karoo,

The Bush, the dusty loam,

And why uprose to nightly view

Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge for ever be;

His homely Northern breast and brain

Grow to some Southern tree,

And strange-eyed constellations reign

His stars eternally.

This is one of my all time favourite poems and I wanted to share it. In my first year at uni when the bleakly beige walls of my little room were looking pretty bare, my friend wrote out this poem for me to stick up on the wall. It's horribly sad but so delicately written and the combination, albeit probably not the right reaction, makes me smile.

The Waste Land for iPad

Warning: geek post. T.S. Eliot's classic poem, The Waste Land has now been made available on iPad - "hoorah" shout the literature nerds! A whole new generation of students can now interact with the poem via their iPads and I've got to say, I'm a bit jealous. The poem is brilliant but it's fair to say that it's more than a bit of a challenge at times and this is bound to lend a more than helping hand. It's not exactly cheap as far as apps go but for £9.99 ($13.99) you can now download 'a wealth of interactive features' that 'brings alive the most revolutionary poem of the last hundred years for a 21st century audience'.

Although fans of Crazy Birds and Temple Run might think the price tag is a little steep, it was claimed that Faber and Touch Press earned back its costs in six weeks after it jumped up the Apple chart following rave reviews.

The new app provides interactive notes for the reader, indicating a number of references and allusions to the reader. The original manuscript is also there for the reader, written in Eliot's own hand. Six recordings of the poem by the likes of Ted Hughes and Alex Guinness give you that little bit extra but apparently there is also a reading by the poet himself! To be honest, if I were ever to buy this app, it would most likely to be for that feature.

Saying that, reviewers of the app can't help praising Fiona Shaw's filmed performance of the poem that is cleverly synchronised with the text. The footage was 'specially-filmed by Adam Low, director of the BBC Arena documentary on Eliot'.

I don't have an iPad but would any of you GlamTech people buy it?

If the answer's 'yes', you can download it via the Apple Store. Then tell me what it's like...

The Paris Wife

Chicago 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity. Ernest and Hadley's marriage begins to founder, and the birth of a beloved son only drives them further apart. Then, at last, Ernest's ferocious literary endeavours bring him recognition - not least from a woman intent on making him her own...


I have just finished reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. It's an English literature student's dream, really - full of authors and artists and about the trials and tribulations of writing and being with someone who writes. I never fail to be sucked in by the Jazz Age and the new lease of life it seemed to give the otherwise war-ravaged world.

For anyone who has seen Midnight in Paris (see my MIP post here) and enjoyed it, this is the same time period, same people, but with a more personal touch as the whole book is told through the eyes of Hemingway's wife, who until now has been largely ignored. Hadley Richardson, however, almost becomes every 'average' woman's idol in this. She's not conventionally attractive, she isn't 'cool', and yet she somehow she gets adopted by this bunch of interesting, albeit slightly eccentric, group of trendy intellectuals and ends up marrying the man at the very centre, who just happens to be hot as hell. She gets whisked off to Paris, Rome, Madrid, Austria and taken to glam absynthe-fuelled parties and now I just want to be desperately cool and smoke expensive cigarettes in quaint Parisian cafes.

Paula McLain certainly gets across the spontaneity of it all with the first few chapters in particular moving very quickly. Cleverly, McLain slows everything down when it comes to the less exciting reality of this almost nomadic existence. Loneliness, jealousy, exclusion all creep up and the pace drops so that the reader can take it all in and live through it with their protagonist. There's a desperation to the characters in this book that is endearing and yet frustrating as you see it expressed. The end is far more touching than frustrating, though, and I found myself caring for both Ernest and Hadley in their own ways and together.

There's a lot to talk about with this book, be it gender, war, love, marriage, culture, fashion, responsibility, right and wrong... the list goes on. Probably would be a good book club book, should anyone want to try.

All in all, as you can see, I feel positively about this book but while I was expecting to fall in love with it, I just didn't quite get there. The scene with the missing suitcase, however, genuinely made me panic. Some of my friends will laugh at this because I'm known to have 30 second panics where I'm convinced I've lost something - namely my phone - so I sympathise with Hadley here!

Despite the slight disappointment, it gets a very credible 7/10

The Great American Novel Tournament

Wimbledon has come to an end in a flood of tears and a whole lot of rain but don't you worry! There's a whole new tournament you're going to want to follow across the other side of the Atlantic. The race is on to find The Greatest Great American Novel or GAN. Matthew Spencer, aka Tenuous Fives, began the big debate on the Guardian website, calling for the help of other avid readers as he was 'about to embark upon an epic American adventure'.

He is looking for 32 novelists and the rules are that each author must be an American who has produced four 'great' novels over the last century (1912-2012). Gathering together his own thoughts and those of other people, he has put together a list of 16 seeded players and 16 unseeded, the latter of which are subject to change after considering the views of his readers.

At the moment the top 16 stand as:
1. Philip Roth
2. John Steinbeck
3. William Faulkner
4. Saul Bellow
5. Ernest Hemingway
6. F Scott Fitzgerald
7. Edith Wharton
8. Toni Morrison
9. John Updike
10. John Cheever
11. Richard Yates
12. Thomas Pynchon
13. Carson Mccullers
14. John Dos Passos
15. E L Doctorow
16. Norman Mailer


The final 16, which are subject to change, are:


17. Richard Russo
18. Jim Harrison
19. William Maxwell
20. Cormac Mccarthy
21. Jonathan Franzen
22. Truman Capote
23. Willa Cather
24. Stephen King
25. James Baldwin
26. Don DeLillo
27. James M Cain
28. Richard Ford
29. Michael Chabon
30. Anne Tyler
31. Kurt Vonnegut
32. William Kowalski

I'm thrilled to see so many greats up there and some of my favourites but the question is, which of these do you think belong there and is there anyone missing? The feminist in me is wondering why so few women? Toni Morrison and Edith Wharton are representing the female race in the top 16 but can we get Anne Tyler up there? 

You can follow this tournament through Matthew's blog (http://tenuousfives.blogspot.co.uk) or through his Guardian posts: http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/user/tenuousfives