Schubert's glasses - The Glassblower's Daughter another year on

Schubert's glasses

Why does having a book published seem unreal? I know The Glassblower's Daughter exists but the book I'm working on is the only one that feels real. And it's too difficult to write so I'm stuck. So I don't take any notice of any of them and months go by. Then yesterday someone pointed out a really sweet review of it (Glassblower's Daughter) to me and on the same webpage I found that loads of other people had been reading it and 20 or so of them had reviewed it (oh yes-  VERY mixed!) And then I found out it is stocked in the Apple ebook store and so is Unusual Salami.  I was  touched to find that the readers are out there, reading. So I went online to view my sales figures and I am heading for 3000 downloads. As my heroine Charlotte Bronte might have said - Thank you, dear readers.
Well, let that be a lesson to me. Just because I'm stuck it doesn't mean that everything else to do with me is. Here's hoping that with that small flash of comprehension I will from now on see more clearly - as though I were looking through the spectacles of Schubert, let us say, as I am doing in this picture.

Too Asian Not Asian Enough

The stories in Too Asian, Not Asian Enough are brilliant. The whole vibrant collection is published by the estimable Tindal Street Press and I am currently exploring the insides of people's houses with the intrepid Mrs Sharma - a pensioner who has turned cat-snoop (as opposed to cat-burgler) to while away the lonely hours. She has just discovered (she's hiding under his bed) that the builder opposite, who has come home unexpectedly, trapping her inside his house, is a transvestite...

In her introduction, editor Kavita Bhanot laments the way that mainstream representations of South Asian immigrants and their descendants offer '...the same few narratives again and again, stories about generational and cultural conflict...'. She describes the cliched perspective which has bred the idea that  all Asian parents force their children to wear suits, have arranged marriages, abstain from alcohol and avoid the pleasures of western life. In publishing terms many Asian writers have been held back and they all have stories of agents and publishers who frame rejections of their work in the words used by the book's title.
It has been a while since I read a work of fiction published with such a thoughtful  and intelligent introductory essay. I hope it catches on. Anyway, as I began by saying - the stories are brilliant. The authors are: NSR Khan, Gautam Malkani, Divya Ghelani, Niven Govinden, Kavita Jindal, Rajorshi Chakraborti, Rajeev Balasubramanyam, Madhvi Ramani, Bobby Nayyar, Nikesh Shukla, Ishani Kar-Purkayastha, Harpreet Singh Soorae, Reshma Ruia, Sushayl Saadi, Dimmi Khan, Azmeena Ladha, Anoushka Beazley, Amina Zia, Kavita Bhanot, Bidisha, Rohan Kar. And that is the order the stories appear in the book. Just buy a copy and read them. I have not read them in that order. I began with the one by Kavita Bhanot and then allowed the titles to dictate which I read next. And now, finally, I am reading about the foolhardy, the agile and the undeniably intrepid, Mrs Sharma... sounds are coming from behind the half open bathroom door. The door opened and...

Dissent With Modification

Here is a brilliant book to read if you are interested in archaeology but also like the novels of H.G.Wells and don't mind learning a bit more about how anthropology developed as an academic subject of study.

The author, John McNabb,  Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the university of Southampton, has an engaging style of writing and such an invigorating enthusiasm for his subject that you will be swept along learning all about it despite your previous unfamiliarity with all the technical terms.

If you become seriously interested there are thousands of references to follow up and this book will be an invaluable text for anyone either doing or about to start on an archaeology degree.

Dr McNabb is an academic who inspires great devotion in his students and at the event to launch Dissent With Modification the largest lecture theatre on the university's Avenue Campus was packed. The book is that pretty rare object - an academic work that is also a very good read.

A Mouse Appears

The mouse made its way over to the speaker and then sat on its haunches and looked at me. It was very healthy looking and attractive. But maybe it was not happy. Why do a thing like that? It can't have had any reason to believe I am mouse-friendly. Maybe it construed the absence of a cat as mouse-friendliness - or assumed, due to the cheese 'n biscuit crumbs from  the snacks people consume  while watching TV that it was open house. But to revert to my first theory... So the suicidal mouse sat there and looked at me and twitched its surprisingly large ears and blinked its shiny black eyes. I called a witness to come and behold the astounding recklessness on display. The arrival into the room of said witness caused the mouse to decide it would stroll back the way it had come - no hurry - and it disappeared alongside the sofa. Next morning, the little tray of blue grain I had set down at the sofa's corner was empty. Another, next to the speaker, was half empty. Oh dear. Stop making me into a murderer, mice! Here is a wonderful discussion of how to catch rats and mice.  I can't say exactly that it cheered me up - though I laughed - but at least the mouse, if he/she could have read it, would have had to agree that it expressed sound scientific reasons for culling its murine ass. (Still feel bad though).