Category / Reading & Writing

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

BitchBuzz: Pregnant? You Don’t Have to Evict Your Cat

My bi-weekly column about all things pregnancy, birth and babies will be up on BitchBuzz every other Wednesday. Here’s a taster from 3rd November:

If you’re pregnant and you have a feline presence in your house, you can guarantee that the first thing you’ll get asked is “what are you going to do with the cat(s)?”. The person asking is always a little purse-lipped when you say things like “erm, feed them, stroke them, take them to the vet when needed, you know, the usual…”. Apparently a cat is only considered a member of the family until another human member of the family turns up.

This is largely because of fear caused by misinformation, or at least a rather panicky take on the facts.

Read more: http://life.bitchbuzz.com/pregnant-you-dont-have-to-evict-your-cat.html

The photo is of one of our cats, Casper, who has taken to Ramona rather well, sniffing at her and occasionally flomping (the act of flopping down dramatically) nearby to watch her. She sometimes smiles at him.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

What’s going on: CAF presentation, BitchBuzz parenting column and more

A few quick bits of info.

1. My first BitchBuzz column about motherhood, kids and parenting is up. It’s called Are You Thinking About Having a Home Birth? The next few are likely to focus on money, cats, baby milestones and stuff like that.

2. Next Weds (27th) I’ll be heading to West Malling, Kent, to present to a CAF (Charities Aid Foundation) Market Insight session about technology. I’ll be covering Dogs Trust online in a nutshell. I don’t know yet if the presentations will be hosted somewhere online, but they might well be.

3. My daughter slept for nine hours last night. Okay, that’s not so helpful to you, but it is to me. And this is my blog, after all.

4. Ash (my husband) is still casting an eye out for any way that he can swap some design skills for events experience. He’s spent a week at Dogs Trust HQ and a day at a centre making himself useful and is chatting to a couple of other charities and individuals; please do step forward if you need him!

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Transworld Summer Reading Challenge Review #3: Prep – Curtis Sittenfeld

Prep is the story of a few years in the life of an insecure teenager navigating the pitfalls of the privileged community of Ault, an elite New England boarding school. Lee Fiora is just 14 when she arrives at the school and hampered by a combination of bitchy cliques and her own self-consciousness, she struggles to find a place where she belongs and deal with her feelings for the most popular boy in the year, Cross Sugarman.

Ridiculous names aside, you know going in that there are only three ways the unpopular girl lusting after the high school heartthrob can end. They get it together and she becomes incredibly popular, they get it together and it ends badly or they never get it together. I ruled out the first thanks to the book’s general tone, but to avoid spoilers I won’t tell you which of the other two it comes to.

Lee is extremely well-drawn, so naturally she’s deeply annoying. Frankly if most of us look back at our behaviour during our teenage years we’d probably find ourselves to be pretty irritating as well. She comments once that a particular friend “liked her before she became likeable” and it’s a very shrewd observation. Her self-absorption is inevitable and irksome, and her moments of introspection are on-the-money cringe inducing. Scenes with her parents, where their Indiana suburban simplicity is thrown into sharp relief against the rich, untouchable parents shepherding their Boston born and bred offspring around campus are particularly sharply observed.

To a certain extent, Prep is done a disservice by its book jacket, screaming with references to Salinger and The Secret History. While I could possibly accept a (limited) comparison to the latter in the way that Lee is the awkward outsider in the Richard role, I think trying to make Fiora into Caulfield is a huge error. And that’s not a criticism; Prep is much more enjoyable when you accept it for what it is and don’t try to pigeonhole it. I have a bit of a loathing for “if you like this, then…” recommendations, anyway. Authors aren’t cookie cutters and even within a particular genre there’s huge variation.

As a penetrating yet amusing take on teenage alienation it’s a worthwhile read that, if nothing else, ought to generate a few uncomfortable moments of self-aware reminiscence.

Find out more about the Transworld Summer Reading Challenge. Please note that opinions are my own and unbiased; I am not required to give the books a positive review.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Transworld Summer Reading Challenge Review #2: Amberville – Tim Davys

Eric Bear has a problem. Gangster Nicholas Dove has given him the task of removing the dove’s name from the infamous Death List, a task that might be impossible since no-one seems to know if the Death List even exists. If he fails, his beloved wife Emma Rabbit will be torn asunder by the dove’s gorilla goons, so he turns to the old crowd – simple Tom-Tom Crow, sly Snake Marek and sadistic Sam Gazelle – for help.

Oh, and they’re all stuffed animals.

I have to admit, I struggled a bit with Amberville. On the surface of it, it sounded a little off-beat, clever, unusual – a fantasy universe in the same vein as Jasper Fforde’s Nursery Crime Division series or Robert Rankin’s The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse. I even loved the cover with its stuffed animal take on Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks (with Emma Rabbit as Jo Hopper, of course). But actually the stuffed animal world seemed at times a little gimmicky, although the reason for its use as a warped mirror held up against our own world became more obvious as the story progressed.

It’s really the second half of Amberville that makes it, but it’s very hard to talk about it without revealing rather too much about the twisty plot. Each animal representative deliberately plays to stereotype; for example, Eric Bear is your everyman, Sam Gazelle a “mincing” (yes, really) male prostitute, Archdeacon Odenrick is a penguin, in black and white clerical gear. To some extent this means a bit of predictability, but to give ‘Tim Davys’ – it’s a pseudonym for ‘a Swedish author’ apparently – credit, the plot still packs a few surprises. However, the underlying themes of life and death, good and evil, religion and afterlife are well-trodden indeed, and Amberville holds few revelations here. It is perhaps the kind of book that appeals most to those that already agree with its thesis on morality; for me it felt a bit tired.

But if the moral didn’t do it for me, Amberville certainly gets points for originality of setting, and the kind of gleeful, haunting darkness that drips through it. Despite being carried out by stuffed animals, there’s nothing funny or less unsettling about scenes of torture, madness and betrayal, and they certainly stay with you. If you can ignore (or embrace) the underlying theme, there’s always the sneaky mystery story and detailed setting to enjoy instead.

Find out more about the Transworld Summer Reading Challenge. Please note that opinions are my own and unbiased; I am not required to give the books a positive review.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Transworld Summer Reading Challenge Review #1: Bryant and May on the Loose – Christopher Fowler

It goes against the grain to pick a book from the middle of a series for me. I’ve read all 30-something Discworld books in order, I tackled Fleming’s Bond series chronologically; basically, I like to follow the development of a series from the beginning, logically. But with Bryant & May On the Loose I was plunged some seven books in to a series for which the next book – Bryant & May Off the Rails –  has already been released.

And that was just fine, as it turned out. References to earlier plot lines were swiftly explained without too much exposition for the latecomer, but with enough to feel quickly acquainted with the battery of faintly bizarre characters. The Bryant and May series centres on the eponymous detectives who make up the core of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

Something of a law unto themselves and perpetually falling foul of the Met because of it, the PCU brings together a motley but talented crew of detectives and forensic types who investigate the kinds of crimes the other departments can’t solve. In this book, there isn’t even supposed to be a PCU; they’ve been officially suspended, pending investigation which seems to be inevitably heading towards formal disbanding. Just as it seems there’s nothing left for the team but to find new jobs (and, in Bryant’s case, shuffle inexporably towards a lonely death from old age and lack of stimulation), a headless corpse turns up which leads them into a race against time to solve a murder, prevent chaos striking a huge development project and possibly even save their careers.

Of Bryant and May it is Bryant, an eccentric, highly intelligent officer with an encyclopaedic knowledge of London and it’s convoluted history, that is the more striking. May is his sensible fall guy, against whom he bounces his ideas and who keeps him on the path of what passes for sanity in Bryant’s world.  The rest of the team is a mixture of sensible, likeable types  – the almost disappointingly realistic ones – and the slightly odd; Jack Renfield, for example, who’s trying to simultaneously shake off a reputation for being widely disliked and the Dracula jokes that follow his name about.

The strongest highlights of Bryant & May On the Loose are the fascinating points of London history and the clever pacing. Although you’re essentially given plenty of the detail that’s usually revealed at the end from the start, the intricately wound plot leaves plenty of room for guessing – and, indeed, second-guessing – and leaves just enough unsaid to keep the reader turning pages eagerly. Fowler is also far too skilled to suffer from the excessive exposition problem that occasionally surfaces in mysteries based on a long-buried secret; he works the historical detail into the plot in digestible chunks.

Although I’m not raving with excitement over the book, I couldn’t point out a specific criticism to level at it; a few things occasionally slightly grated(some uncomfortably unlikely dialogue, the odd overdose of eccentricity), but nothing that would stop me going on to read others in the series, which I now fully intend to do. All in all, it’s an enjoyably quirky, admirably pacy and interesting mystery, which is just fine by me.

Find out more about the Transworld Summer Reading Challenge. Please note that opinions are my own and unbiased; I am not required to give the books a positive review.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

I’m taking part in the Transworld Dan Brown Summer Reading Challenge

…without actually reading any Dan Brown.

Transworld Publishers have done a nifty piece of blogger outreach by inviting anyone interested in reviewing some of their books to either get involved on their blog or, if they don’t have one (or don’t want to use it for the reviews), writing Amazon reviews. There’s no pressure to write a positive review, they just want word of mouth out there about their books, and you can choose which four you want from a list of 15 and they’ll be sent to you.

It’s all explained rather better on Transworld’s Between the Lines blog, where you can also leave them a comment to get involved if you’d like to.

The four books I’ve chosen are listed below, so I’m looking forward to receiving the first (once it’s read and reviewed, I get the next one). Since reading is the most relaxing thing to do apart from sleep between Ramona’s feeds and I mentally review every book I read anyway, this is perfect for me.

Bryant & May on the Loose by Christopher Fowler (review now published)

Amberville by Tim Davys (review now published)

E Squared by Matt Beaumont

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (review now published)

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

The one in which I announce I’ve had the baby…

So, if you are a friend in real life or follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I gave birth to our first child, a daughter, almost two weeks ago. She arrived on her due date (probably just to show me up since I went on at length about how they’re all guesswork, etc etc), in a straightforward, natural home birth. It’s slightly amazing to stare at the living room floor of my mother’s house and go “you were born right there, lady”.

Her name is Ramona (with two middle names after her grandmothers’ mothers), with inspiration from the Beverly Cleary books. Not the Bachelors’ song. Which we didn’t know. And is a bit awful. I would consider it a Very Good Thing if Ramona turned out to be half so imaginative and clever as her Quimby namesake.

I’m very proud to say that the first thing she’s developed a fixation with (other than eating) is a book. Admittedly, it’s a book with a mirror in it, but she does really like the solid pages too, especially the picture of the baby. So here’s Ramona, enjoying her first book.

Normal service will be resumed… soonish.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Thoughts on Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy

This isn’t a review. Lots has been written about these books already. But there’s one element that persistently bugs me about the trilogy, and it’s to do with the treatment of women. If you haven’t read the books, you might want to skip this unless you’re not planning to. I haven’t gone all-out with the spoilers, but you will probably prefer to start with a blank slate.

Larsson doesn’t hide the fact that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is about sexual and physical abuse of women*. The stats quoted at the beginning of each section, the horrific scene of brutal sexual violence against one character, the twisted tale of sadistic murder; it’s pretty clear (and sometimes, I think, a little more graphic than it really needs to make the point). But then the trilogy starts to be about the abuse of a specific character, and her history and that’s where I think the point loses its way.

It comes to the point where every single unpleasant character – and they’re ALL men, the bad guys; the women are all either laughably perfect or appallingly damaged – is a violent misogynist. It’s not enough for them to be a bit of a turd; no, if you’re a man and a bad guy, you must also want to rape women, sexually abuse small children or think every woman who isn’t interested in you is a twisted lesbian Satanist (seriously, read it, you’ll see). Oh, or you’re a pimp.

The main male character, however, Mikael Blomkvist, is none of these things. No, he’s the perfect embodiment of journalistic integrity, and he’s disgusted by the pimps and abusers, murderers and rapists. As well anyone decent might be. But at the same time, he treats the women he actually cares about pretty shabbily, bouncing from bed to bed and refusing to renounce his lover for the sake of his marriage or subsequent relationships. He trundles from one sexual encounter to the other, assuming that no-one could possibly be any more emotionally invested than he is. This is not to say that women can’t be dispassionate about casual encounters at all; it’s just that Blomkvist never troubles himself to find out either way.

So on the one hand we have a bunch of cartoon bad guys who all want to destroy womankind, and yet womankind’s defender is at best a rather self-obsessed bedhopper. Oh yay; just what we need to save us. Of course, even the most independent and powerful of all the female characters – the dragon-tattooed girl herself, Lisbeth Salander – can’t free herself without his help. And even his lover, the irrepressible Erika Berger, is stalked by a man (of course) whose favourite epithet for her is ‘whore’.

I’m really not sure where Larsson was going with all this. They’re well-written and gripping books – the murder mystery, the family saga and the post-Cold War spy thriller – but this relentless casting of women as victims is frustrating.

That, and the fact that no-one seems to be able to do a damn thing without hourly infusions of coffee and sandwiches.

*Update: I now know a little more about Larsson’s history and why violence against women was such a preoccupation of his (look it up); the casting of Lisbeth as a victim that is saved by Blomkvist makes a certain kind of cathartic sense (I wish I’d known the book’s Swedish title was Men Who Hate Women. However, the whole trilogy wasn’t called that, much though it felt like it). And I’m afraid it doesn’t stop the relentless one-sidedness – man = bad, sexually violent – being annoying; it would have been even better had Lisbeth had the strength to save herself.

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Maternity leave has turned me into a zombie…

No, really. Well, okay, it might be the pregnancy and the bizarrely persistent unusually hot British Summer (note to God: this is not a complaint. Keep it comin’…).

There are so many things I want to be doing, but my head can’t seem to get it together. I want to write some posts for BitchBuzz because it is an awesome site that Cate Sevilla has worked her arse off to make a success. I want to get back to writing the damn novel I’m 20,000 words into, but somehow when I try it all comes out sounding wrong and then I get dispirited. I know that is exactly the point at which I should continue to write, not give up, but I’m scared I’ll end up so irritated that I’ll scrap the whole lot. Although I think my husband might go mad if I did that; he actually enjoyed reading it. I want to plough on and finish before I go back and edit because otherwise edit is all I’ll do, but I can’t take my mind off a continuity slip I know is festering in one of the earlier chapters.

I want to review the mighty Keris Stainton’s excellent book, Della Says: OMG! but the words are Just. Not. Coming.

On the flipside, I have filled up the freezer with meals and baking to be enjoyed after Octobaby makes her appearance, and I have got almost everything ready for her room, etc. I have an appointment with the consultant next week to ensure I’m still low risk and can keep planning for the birth I’d prefer (on the understanding that ultimately it’s Octobaby that decides). I do need to step up the hypnobirthing practice a bit but I haven’t let it slide completely either. Octobaby is currently forcing us all into a guessing game by refusing to reveal to the midwife which end is up (or down) – perhaps she’s re-enacting the tale of the Grand Old Duke of York – which is making me slightly nervous. Yes, I’d rather have a planned Caesarean than an unplanned breech birth, but I will be a little bit gutted if it comes to that, because surgery was the one thing I wanted to avoid, and I have had back surgery that makes me worry about the effects of an epidural.

I now feel huge but am apparently still not carrying that prominently considering that on Saturday I’ll be a full eight months gone. But then, it’s a novelty having clothing clinging to my stomach and not feeling self-conscious about it!

Mr. G. is taking a couple of days off – tomorrow and Monday – to help get the final bits and bobs ready to welcome our little wriggler into the world, so I’m hopeful this will fill me with renewed purpose, so that I’m not wandering around the house reading baking books and wittering to the cats. Because I have my retirement for that. (Joke! I have very active parents and in-laws; I am not being ageist. Promise.)

by Alexandra Roumbas Goldstein

Attention social media professionals…

1. “Media” is a plural term.

2. The singular is “medium”.

3. “Mediums” should only be used as a term if you’re talking or writing about more than one psychic.

4. “Social media” is a plural term. Think of it in the same bracket as “social tools”, “social platforms” or “social channels” if it helps.

I know we don’t speak Latin anymore. I know that there comes a time when the language inexorably changes and you just have to go with the tide (check out the double possessive rule; if it’s been in operation for centuries, it’s time to give up the fight).

I just can’t help being driven slightly insane by the huge number of articles I read every week entitled “social media is [insert insightful comment / occasional platitude here]”.

I will now go back to being sweetness and light. I’m even planning some baking blogging* for you soon.

*While we’re on the subject of unbelievable pedantry… When you mean “I want to write a post about this”, try not to say “I want to write a blog about this”. You’re probably not writing an entire blog about that subject, just one post. I reckon we have probably embraced “to blog” as a verb, though, so you could try “I want to blog about this” as well.