Bourbon and Branch and Books

I've just begun a six month world adventure so from now on I'll be posting various pictures and literary snippets that I discover on my trip. They'll still be about all things bookish, but in a travelly type of way.  If you'd like to read more about the journey itself you can read my travel blog here.

I will first tell you about a little speakeasy I have discovered in San Francisco. I spent most of my first day here napping (I can't sleep on planes) before stumbling dazed and soporific onto the street.  There I met a nice man who told me about a covert drinking establishment just up the road. When he mentioned the password to enter (yes a password!) was "books" I naturally had to try out this intriguing watering hole.

Bourbon and Branch hides inside a dull grey building called the "Anti-Saloon League" (an actual organisation that lobbied for the prohibition of alcohol in the early 20th century). Unfortunately it is now pictures that are prohibited inside the bar so I can't show you the gloriousness that confronted me when I was led through a secret passageway into a dim room simply crammed with books. And the door that opened this world of wicked delights? Why a book shelf of course. 

Once inside, candle light creates an illicit feel. It's complemented by wooden floors, wine barrels for tables, and cocktails named "revolver," "scoff law" and "French 75." I drank the latter - a tart concoction of lemon, gin and sparkling wine: mmm. The walls that aren't book-lined with old law tomes are covered in a decadent red velvet and a notice on the door asks guests to "speak easy" (a nod to the days of prohibition when such rooms were clandestine.)

Bourbon and Branch is situated on the corner of O'Farrell and Jones streets in the Tenderloin district. To enter, ring the bell, deliver the password and voila! You're transported back to the 1920s.

A Jaunt to the Hundred Acre Wood

Illustration by E.H Shepard.

About an hour south of London, in the county of East Sussex, lies Hartfield. Its one street consists of little more than a tearoom, a couple of shops, a pub and a bed and breakfast. But its size belies its importance. For it is the home of a bear of very little brain, a doleful donkey and a wise “wol.” A.A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh stories remain favourites with my dear friend Ange and me. Which is why one day when we had nothing else to do we thought we’d do something. So we tripped away to the Hundred Acre Wood.  

From London, we train to the pretty spa town of Tunbridge Wells. After a half hour stopover wandering through the public gardens we board a double decker bus that takes us down a meandering country road, past inns with names like “The Dorset Arms,” and houses called “Mole End” and  “Vine Cottage.” The shadows of overbearing trees dapple the road, their branches sweeping the bus windows. We look out at age-old stone fences coaxing paddocks into haphazard squares, the odd tractor complementing the drone of the bees as it tills the fields. With hills rolling up to the skyline, it’s a storybook rendering of the English countryside.

When we reach Hartfield it’s time for a little something. We decide upon a shepherd’s lunch at the local pub before a wander down the road to “Pooh Corner”. Once the sweet shop Christopher Robin Milne and his nanny frequented for treats (The Milnes lived at nearby Cotchford Farm from the mid 1920s), it’s now a lovely little café cum gift shop that sells Winnie the Pooh post cards and sketches of the Hundred Acre Wood, alongside smackerels and strengthening medicines.

Armed with maps showing us how to reach Poohsticks Bridge (where the game in The House at Pooh Corner was invented), we clamber over stiles, duck under overgrown hedgerows, and pass grand old homesteads as we make our way through public access farmland to Ashdown Forest, where the books are set. As we walk I almost expect to see Pooh around the next corner humming a little rhyme. There’s certainly an air of the fairytale here, especially when we look down to see a tiny door hidden in a tree root and a miniature pot of honey resting outside.

At the bridge, we spend a happy half hour throwing our sticks over the edge before wandering into the woods again where a real life animal, a fallow deer, eyes us through the trees. Perhaps it’s a descendant of King Henry VIII’s prey – Ashdown Forest was a favourite hunting ground of his.

We head back to Pooh Corner to sip tea in the honeysuckled courtyard and reflect on a most delightful day. Nearly 90 years after Winnie the Pooh was published one can still discover the North Pole, stumble into a heffalump trap, farewell a friend at Galleons Lap, and visit the six pines. It’s comforting to know that somewhere in the forest a tigger is being too bouncy, a gloomy Eeyore is looking for his home and Pooh and a brave little piglet are being much more friendly with two.

A Tiny House in a Tree

The Book Blues

I’m struck with envy each time someone asks me for a book recommendation. I also unfailingly forget anything I have ever read and usually come up with something like: “ummm ... I hear The Hunger Games is quite good?” The reason I’m green is because for some time now I have been in the throes of a deep anxiety about the number of books I haven’t read. At present I have four on the go because reading just one feels indulgent when there are so many screaming for my attention.

The thought of finishing a book, with no idea what’s next would be utterly liberating. I yearn for a single novel to move on to. But currently my inner monologue runs like this: “The Rum Diary is at the movies soon so I’d better read that, but I want to read the Miss Fisher books before the TV series finishes - that can be one of my Australian Women Writers Challenge components. I should read more works by women too, my quota is abysmal. But I need to make sure I read authors from the countries I’m visiting on my world trip this year…oh and I need to look at travel guides.” That’s all without mention of my goals to read every Man Booker winner and keep ploughing through the classics.

Enid Blyton

My problem is that I am hampered by choice. What I need is an apocalypse (the end of the Mayan calendar should do it.)  Then I can hole myself up with plenty of canned food and just the books on my shelf. There will be no online orders, no kindle downloads or trips to the local bookshop. Only those books I can pilfer from the long abandoned houses next door will be mine (the neighbours would, of course, have been vanquished; I, the sole survivor, free to devour their libraries and their pantries.) 

My reading memories are of visiting the school library, obsessed by a single author. When I was very little it was Patricia Coombes’ Dorrie the Little Witch stories. Enid Blyton, L.M Montgomery and Jostein Gaarder followed. But once I’d exhausted their respective canons, or if all their works happened to be out that day, the joy of perusing the shelves, choosing books randomly based on the sound of the title or the look of the cover was delicious.

I’m still enamoured by those finds, but paradoxically, my growing literary obsession has put paid to the careless joy of immersing oneself in a story with no thought of the outside. I blame the Internet. Without that wretched device I wouldn't read so many blogs with their glowing recommendations and I wouldn't be able to order a book at the touch of a button. This is not what the pleasure of reading is supposed to be about. As a youngster I would read and re-read with abandon. Now, there are many books I would like to re-visit, but the impassable line of those I have never read prevents me. Have I become the ultimate literary consumer, never satisfied with what I’ve got, always wanting more? Do you suffer from book anxiety too? And if so how do you control it?

The Passage

The Passage by Justin Cronin

I am what you could call a Twilight anti-fan. The first film left me cold, and despite constant entreaties from my “Twihard” friends, I refuse to waste valuable reading time on the books. However, I am an unashamed Harry Potter lover and The Hunger Games is quickly moving its way up my list. So after finishing Justin Cronin’s The Passage, I’m amazed it hasn’t occupied the imagination of the zeitgeist in the same way. It’s got all the makings of a media monster (excuse the pun): vampire like beings, an electric plot and loveable characters. And like the aforementioned supernatural/futuristic heavy weights, it’s part of a series so the goodness keeps coming.

Imagine an orgy between Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Francis Lawrence film I am Legend and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Their love child is The Passage. A post-apocalyptic world over run by zombies isn’t an original premise, but Cronin’s fabulously written characters and suspenseful narrative are sensational enough to squeeze new zest out of an arguably overdone genre.

Vampire-esque “virals” have virtually wiped out humanity. They’re the result of a U.S government experiment with a new infection discovered in the South American jungle. Hoping to produce indestructible “super humans” invaluable to the country’s security forces, the result is instead, a mass of dark-loving, flesh tearing monsters that feed off warm blood and make every tenth human victim one of their own. Only six-year-old Amy Bellafonte, snatched by the FBI after her mother abandoned her, remains quintessentially human after infection.

First Colony, settled when the outbreak begins, is mankind’s last bastion. Surrounded by high walls and protected from their photophobic nemeses by oversized night-lights, humans have been living here in relative safety for almost 100 years. But the batteries that power the lights are failing and it’s up to the colony’s bravest to save them.

Like father and son in The Road, Cronin’s characters are battling for almost hourly survival on their journey back to the source of the outbreak.  However, while McCarthy’s post apocalypse is so desolate it’s as if one of J.K Rowling’s death eaters has sucked all that is good from the world, Cronin’s is full of promise. There’s hope they’ll come across other humans, hope they’ll find new batteries for the lights, and hope they’ll discover a way to destroy the virals.

McCarthy’s abrasive realism too is lacking. We’re often required to suspend our belief, especially in the action scenes where characters, who realistically, would swiftly cark it from horrific wounds, not only survive, but destroy the baddies with the use of just one arm and a knife. Even when said baddies are creatures who move at the speed of light and possess demonic strength.

But the story isn’t so fanciful that you can’t imagine a similar occurrence. In fact it was sometimes a relief to stop reading and realise I wasn’t in imminent danger of death by viral, so utterly engrossing is Cronin’s prose. The way he presents academic discussion about the outbreak 1000 years hence (like Margaret Atwood’s technique in The Handmaid’s Tale), effectively weights the novel in reality, as well as reassuring us that humanity does make it, although in what form we don’t know.

As for the virals, Cronin explicitly compares his creations to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, when his human characters watch the movie of the same name. During the film, protagonist Peter muses about the similarities between Count Dracula and the virals, namely their shared aversion to light, their immortality and their partiality to human blood. It didn’t resonate with me however. Cronin’s creatures are far more bestial and futuristic than Stoker’s intelligent and charismatic Count. Their glowing eyes, sharp claws and animal instincts are more zombie-like. Although former death row prisoner, and leader of the virals, Babcock, certainly shares Dracula’s purely evil nature, he also resembles Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort.

Generally, the idea of reading about a zombie apocalypse doesn’t excite me, so I’m pleased I had little knowledge of what The Passage was about before opening its pages or I would’ve missed a brilliant story. It’s the type that makes you want to pull a sickie to finish and yet you wish it’ll never end.  Justin Cronin is a word-master and suspense building guru, creating a fantastic start that leaves one hanging for the next instalment in the trilogy. Thankfully we don’t have to wait too much longer as the second book is out this year and a movie is on its way.

European Book Lovin'

I covet a visit to each of Flavorwire's 20 most beautiful world bookstores. Here are some of my favourite European bookish haunts, stumbled upon during a recent trip.

The Old Town Bookshop. Edinburgh, Scotland.

Book Market. Belgrade, Serbia

The Old Children's Bookshelf. Edinburgh, Scotland.

Kafka Bookshop. Prague, Czech Republic

Secondhand Book Market. Brussels, Belgium.

Atlantis Books. Santorini, Greece.

Berlin, Germany.

Gaston Leroux's Cellar. Paris, France.

Alice's Shop. Oxford, England

The Phantom says Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Here's a lovely present from the Edinburgh book phantom.


A Book For Xmas from a book for xmas on Vimeo.

Christmas Bookish Frivolity

A couple of years ago I took Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children on holiday. The two of us did not play nice. The daily beachside readathon became torturous as I battled to concentrate on the many complexities of character, language and plot, simultaneously working on my all over tan and attempting to hold a conversation about celebrity weight gain. Oh I was green as I watched the carefree way my loved ones skimmed the pages of their trashy mags.

The very deserved king of the Booker obstinately refuses to mix with the latest fad diet designed to whisk away those pesky yuletide rolls. It demands a focus that’s wont to retire to the same place as your resolve to say no to another Christmas mince pie. It's the sort of read best left for say, July, when you’re feeling inspired and intellectual rather than ginned up and giddy. I’m an obsessive-compulsive reader so I couldn’t rest it for a more appropriate time. Instead, I did it a great injustice by labouring through regardless.

As you bask in a festive season food coma, barely able to lift your hand to turn the page, a book that requires the power of thought is about as desirable as Great Uncle Stan’s lingering kiss on Christmas day.

So here are my criteria to stop this abomination forever:

1. Must be readable (always controversial for a book I know). The aim is to put a dent in my unwieldy pile.

2. Must either be funny or boast a great plot.

Murder mysteries usually do the trick (minus the laughs). Here’s the pile I’m planning to get through this summer (some of which I’m confident will go against everything I've just said.)

What do you look for in a lazy waterside read? And what will you be perusing these holidays?