New phone

Just trying out my new phone. I have upgraded from an ancient iPhone to an iPhone 7 and am loving it. So, I played with the camera. I’m new to phone camera photography, so any hints/ ideas for Apps etc. would be gratefully received. I think I’ve sorted focusing, and am happy with the picture I have blipped, but I have a lot to learn.
 
Tomorrow we are off down to London for a family get together and we have a lot of things planned. One thing is for five of us to go to the Booker Shortlist Readings at the Southbank Centre on Monday. So, I thought for anyone interested I would just give my views on the shortlist, such as they are. These are views, not reviews – my personal opinion on the books I have read – and a few recommendations. Please feel free to ignore this next bit and the pile of books in the extra picture, if you are not interested.
 

Booker Shortlist 2017

Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1
Emily Fridlund, History of Wolves
Mohsin Hamid, Exit West
Fiona Mozley, Elmet
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
Ali Smith, Autumn
 
I have not read and don’t intend reading Lincoln in the Bardo – one look at it with its mass of ‘voices’ put me off and when I didn’t understand the blurb, well . . . I think one needs to know a lot of American history, as well as tune into a very strange way of writing. Of course this is the favourite to win and might do that, which will mean that for three years running I have been unable to read the winner. Such is the Booker! And the reason I read from the longlist – much more satisfying.
 
Similarly another American book, 4321. This is huge and I think ridiculously so. It is very well written and I did get a third of the way through, but life’s too short for such a book – why all the detail about Baseball etc. The premise of a life lived differently according to events has been done much more cleverly and succinctly by Kate Atkinson in ‘Life After Life’.
 
I read the third American book, History of Wolves, but did not think much of it. Too many flaws. Obviously a writer with potential, but why this first book is on the shortlist is beyond me, and is a mystery to other people too.
 
Elmet is another first book and the author, who is Yorkshire lass, was as surprised as anyone to find herself on the shortlist. An interesting, if rather bleak, book. The kind of story where you just know from the beginning that it is all going to end in tears and violence. Worth reading, if you come across it, but not a great book.
 
So, to the only two books I really liked and would recommend. If you like Ali Smith, you will like Autumn – I do and I did. If you don’t like her style of writing, then obviously you will not get on with it. I like the way she deals with time and memory and relationships. I would like this to win, I think it should and it might do. It will be good to hear her at the Readings Evening anyway, as she reads her own work brilliantly and is always interesting to listen to.
 
Exit West I would recommend. (It’s missing from the pile as someone in the family has it at the moment). I loved the writing and the way the surreal blends with the real. The portrayal of life during times of unrest and war, the horrors of finding oneself in a different, and often hostile, place and trying to make a life for oneself, the way in which such situations affect relationships. All these are brilliantly done. But then they are interspersed with the surreal - ‘magic doors’ that take one from place to place, bizarre changes in time. I loved this book and it will stay with me for a long time. This could win and I would love to see it win.
 
The extra book – Reservoir 13  by Jon McGregor – was a longlister that should have been on the shortlist. A brilliant book in my opinion. It starts out as a story about a girl who goes missing and everyone joins in the search – just like many other books. Then gradually you realise that it is turning into something very different. This is the book I would recommend to anyone – a good read with resonances that make you think and maybe look at the world in a different way. Isn’t that what a good book should be.