West Virginia

I thought I loved poetry because I read so much of it at university. I was a rabid English Literature Major.

You know the type. Very serious. Dressed in black. Always with a book in hand.

(Actually, I’m still like that except for the  “very serious” part. That was always hard for me to pull off.)

I had it all wrong.  My love of literature, especially poetry, was there way before I became a pretentious English Major.

I learned to love poetry during the long summer days I spent with my maternal grandparents in the beautiful hills of West Virginia. I would go and visit them for a month or longer in the summer.

My memories of that time are dreamy ones, fragrant with the sweet peas from my grandmother’s gardens. There was a huge weeping willow in the side yard. Mr. Evans across the street kept chickens that I visited daily. There was an old fashioned soda shop and movie theater.

I had a best girl friend, Maureen, who lived across the street. Later I would have my first real boyfriend, Bob, who was movie star handsome and had a big swimming pool in his backyard. My grandmother caught us kissing in the den. I was mortified.

My grandfather was a doctor, the old fashioned kind.  He made house calls, some of them on horseback. He delivered all the babies in town. He drank whiskey and smoked smelly cigars. He was brilliant and gruff and I loved him.

My grandmother was sweet, smart, and cultured. She graduated from college in 1916. She played piano beautifully, and despaired at my lack of musical talent. I took lessons for years and still can’t play.

She insisted I call her “grandmother.” Once I called her “granny”  and she was not amused.

It was a different time then. Quieter. There were two channels on their TV, neither of which came in very well. We never watched it. I was never bored.

Their house was full of books, none particularly suitable for a girl my age, but fascinating nonetheless.

After I finished all the Nancy Drew books I brought with me, I would start on their bookshelves. First I sampled my mother’s old college textbooks, one of which was Bocaccio’s “Decameron”. If you haven’t read it, it’s very risque. Very.

This copy was graphically illustrated.

My grandmother never said anything to me, but she must have seen me reading it because it disappeared. Hasn’t been seen since.

Then I would start on the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. Wonderful for a kid. I read years of Best Sellers and remember many of them, especially “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson. I didn’t sleep for a week.

But my favorite book of all was a well worn paperback copy of “The 100 Best-Loved Poems of All Time.”  I read that thing over and over again.

I’ll wager almost every poem I’ve posted here was in that book.  It taught me to love poetry. There aren’t many books like that.

I’ve tried to find a copy, but I’m sure it’s long out of print. I did find a something similar and have ordered copies for myself and my grown children. I will insist they leave it around for their own kids to find. The best present a “grandmother” could give. 

Related articles

• Five Things We All Love About Poetry (nakanno1.wordpress.com)
• Words to Live By (rachelrhenry.wordpress.com)

Fae is a lovely lady with a multicultural background– having grown up with Persian parents, in Japan. She posts delicious recipes along with stories from her life, which make really interesting reading.

And here is the award!

I take this opportunity to recognize seasoned bloggers who have played a role in inspiring me to blog and other new bloggers who are still waiting in the wings for a huge audience.

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My Questions:

1. Who is your favorite philosopher?  — Swami Vivekananda

2. What is your favorite number?     — 9 or 13

3. What is your favorite animal?     — Dogs

4. What are your Facebook and Twitter?  — No Twitter, no Facebook

5. What is your favorite time of the day?  — Evening

6. What was your favorite vacation?   — Bali or Sri Lanka

7. What is your favorite physical activity?  — Visiting museums

8. What is your non-alcoholic drink?   — Bandung

9. What is your favorite flower?   — Gerberas

10. What is your passion?   — My kids, baking, travelling

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And now its my turn to pass on the award to others:

1. Zoe Bakes: A wonderful baking resource!  Zoe is who I go to now, for all my baking-related queries answered.

2. Aahaaram: Indian food at its spiciest! Do visit Aruna’s blog and celebrate vegetarian food.

3. Jo The Tart Queen: Jo’s blog is as visually beautiful as her recipes are yummy!

4. Frozen Wings: Lena was the first person to encourage me to blog. She was also the first person to leave me a comment

5. Mommy Om: Lisa is a yoga practitioner and chiropractor who juggles motherhood, blogging and a career.

6. Mama’s Gotta Bake: Sheryl captivates you with her tagline- “She’s bad, she’s bold…. and she likes sugar”

7. Adventures of a Cake Diva: Brooke is a fellow baker with a cake obsession.

8. Sweet and Crumby: Geni calls baking her solace, her fun and her passion. Check out her genuinely sweet blog.

9. Cooking Tackle: Ira lives in beautiful Bali and cooks the most visually stunning food. Unfortunately as a vegetarian I can’t try most of her recipes. But they are a treat for the eyes!

10. Today’s Inspiration: I’m not sure how or when I found this enchanting blog featuring illustrators for books and magazines. But if you love water colours and read Women’s Weekly or Reader’s Digest Condensed Books in the 80s, you’ll love this!

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The rules of the award are:

1  Visit and thank the blogger who nominated you.
2  Acknowledge that blogger on your blog and link back.
3  Answer the same 10 questions given.
4  Nominate up to 10 blogs for the award, provide a link to their blogs in your post, and notify them on their blogs.
5  Copy and paste the award on your blog somewhere.

Happy New Year to you all!

R

The first illustrations come from a 1953 Reader’s Digest condensed book that contains the stories “Black Widow”, “The Silent World”, “East of Eden”, “Karen” and “The Curve and the Tusk”.  I love how the illustrations are rendered with mostly blues and browns, an unusual combination that is never the less very satisfying.

The cover of the Reader's Digest book

An illustration from "Black Widow by Patrick Quintin

another "Black Widow" illustration.

My personal favorite of the "Black Widow" illustrations.

An Illustration from "Karen" by Marie Killilea

I have a few of these condensed RD books and the lovely  illustrations are uncredited for some reason.  They even feel nice, the ink is somewhat thick, and smoother than the paper.  These types of bright lithographs would make excellent solvent transfers.  This technique, in which you apply a light coating of solvent, such as gasoline onto the image before pressing it onto another surface, will unfortunately ruin the book though.

The second book I would like to share with you, dear reader is a beautiful thick medical atlas from around 1919.  Entitled, “Health Knowledge” this book, volume II of an unknown number of volumes was published by Medical Distributors Inc.  It boasts “34 Departments Scientifically Illustrated”.  I was lucky enough to find this beauty for only $6 at Value Village, a bargain for a book with as many lovely full colour plates and black and white illustrations in the text.

The cover of "Health Knowledge"

Diseases of the teeth

The above illustration of the jaw and teeth is my favorite in the book.  The colours are so beautiful.  Wouldn’t you just love some stickers or a t-shirt of this image?

A close-up of the jawline

Diseased teeth

Look at those colours!  These diseased teeth are stunning through the eyes of this medical illustrator.  These old medical illustrations are so different from the type of digitally rendered illustrations and plastic models you see today.  Modern medical textbook illustrations are very sterile, the frailty of life, the reality of death, and the experience of aging are filtered through a scientific perspective to achieve a comforting emotional  distance. The old illustrations speak to a different experience with death and disease, a more visceral, yet more romantic connection to the body and aging.  During the Victorian era and into the beginning of the 20th century the notion of death was seen as more poetic, medicine was more of an art.  My sculpture thesis was inspired by the fusion of death, medicine and science at that time.  Take for instance the wax medical models that were produced during that era:

a wax model of a baby born with syphillis

This is a lithograph of a photo of a wax model of a baby with syphilis.  Notice how it’s mounted on a piece of wood painted black surrounded by white fabric.  Other wax models of this type can be seen mounted on fine stained wood enveloped in silk.  It’s presented like a little jewel, like a little sleeping doll.  Many full body wax models of women were presented in white nightgowns on purple velvet pillows.  It speaks to the body as the original site of entertainment, theatre and show business, which is also evidenced by the development of traveling sideshows that presented preserved body parts and medical oddities, and the dissections done in front of live theatre audiences that were offered to the public at the time.

Check out this colourful illustration of different colours of urine and what ailments they indicate:

a scale of urine colours

Now wouldn’t you just love that image on a shirt?  Perfect for any occasion, am I right?

the joints

And here’s a happy looking fellow:

The black and white illustrations within the text were also nice, my favorites being this skull:

and these two dapper looking fellows in an odd, almost  homo-erotic embrace (not that there’s anything wrong with that)(actually, I think everything is homoerotic, I just love homoeroticism, don’t you, dear reader?):

"Dont look now Edmund, it appears we're being illustrated into a medical book"
"mmm.. yes, quite."

Two books I will treasure forever.

Both books found at Valure Village, 1319 Bloor St. W., Toronto

I tune in every so often to his Life Today show just to see what he’s up to. So far as I can tell he’s mostly running a relief charity and helping people who are already marginally famous in some other field tell stories of drama in real life and occasionally sell books to Christian television viewers.

Unfortunately his ever-changing set is infested with Reader’s Digest Condensed Books [link], the bane of inexpensive television studios everywhere. In one of the more recent configurations one hovers just above and to the right of his wife Betty’s head in the Robison half of the basic two-shot.

In this episode, devoted to the heart-wrenching story of former beauty queen Natalie Nichols [link], one floats into view in the right half of the slow zoom at about 1:23. Others are visible during the opening montage, again above Betty’s head, during the shot of the two Robisons cuddling on the couch.

These books are ideal for shots like these because they’re cheap, squat, have goldleaf on the spine, and vary slightly in design from year to year. Sadly once you learn to pick them out you’ll never watch cut-rate television the same way again.

I really do wonder sometimes what the bookshelf behind the Robison’s is supposed to contribute as a design element. It seems to me to be saying “we’re wealthy enough to have extra space, and we’ve got family we’re not ashamed to have pictures of in our home, but we don’t read enough to fill our bookshelves with books.” Or something like that.

So, damn you all to hell, Charles Dickens.

It’s impossible to write about “that Christian holiday” without sounding like Ebenezer Scrooge. Or worse, Jacob Marley.

Let me just say that when it came to Christmastime, I had a happy childhood. In Indiana, baby brother and I were showered with gifts from grandparents to godparents. My first memorable gift was a car dashboard that lit up and honked its horn. Was so excited I pissed in my jammies.

Years later, after we’d moved to Minnesota—and I’d had more than enough practice controlling my bodily functions—there was one special holiday season that I shared with my high school girlfriend, Kim, in December 1976. We shopped together, went to church, all very festive and cozy. We were all smiles that Christmas.

So, I know it’s the season of giving and all, but as a kid it was the Season of Me. What’s in it for me? What will I get for Christmas? Me me me. I mean, this is how kids are hard-wired, right? Way short of being Samantha Smith brokering a peace accord with the Soviets, I’d wager I was like any other kid growing up in the 1960s: selfish, avaricious and often petulant—qualities that for the most part still fit the bill today.

But back in Maryland, our first winter there, after Dad had made the big job switch in Indiana, the folks decided to pull out all stops. In retrospect, December 1967 was probably the best Christmas ever. Looking again at the picture above, presents around the tree (a set of pastel paints for Brian and me, a book on Washington, D.C., and an LP recording of The Sound of Music, probably from Dad to Mom), brings it all back.

The decorations on the tree came with us from Indiana: colorful cloth-wrapped globes, aluminum bells and glass ornaments—even a green plastic star with an aluminum fanlike center than sparkled and spun when it was hung over a Christmas light bulb (I loved that ornament!) … on this tree there are paper decorations Brian and I likely made at school. And I’d nearly forgotten Dad’s aquarium, his pipe tobacco, our World Book Encyclopedia, copies of National Geographic and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books.

That Christmas morning was special; I just knew it at the time. Brian and I got matching portable AM radios, an Ouija board (wondering what possessed the folks to buy that now), and I received all-out science-geek stuff like a microscope viewer (which I’m holding, above in the red pajamas). At my feet is the amazing Visible Head. Guess Dad thought I was going to be a scientist or doctor, so he was covering all bases in my education. Jingles, our tabby cat, got a treat from her own stocking.

Those were the days when Christmas bubbled under your spirit, like an expectation that would surely be met and rewarded tenfold. It was a time to slow down, to enjoy things, to take stock of the year and look forward to what was ahead. My mother, at 32, was just learning to sew, so here’s her relaxing after the Christmas morning mayhem by tinkering with new patterns and material.

What work it took to orchestrate this for two active boys! Dad was practically giddy hiding presents, and he loved to tell the “Santa came in the middle of the night” tale to get me and Brian to bed at a decent time. I get it now. That “work” translates as love. My parents weren’t perfect people, but they believed in what they did. And they hoped for the best for their sons by giving freely and joyfully.

1. transistor radio.  This now obsolete device was mentioned in exactly one blog post about waiting for a hurricane, and 31 nostalgic people found my blog because of it.

2. Mia Michaels.  Nine people with nothing better to do were searching for info on this ditzy dance diva, who appeared in this post because she used entirely the wrong word to describe a dancer’s performance on So You Think You Can Dance.  Mia’s catty claws were out last season…a lot of her comments were nasty and unwarranted!  Please bring back Mary Murphy (believe me…I never thought I would say that!).

Mary...we want you back!

3. how were readers digest condensed books.  Two poor souls typed this into a search engine.  Hmmm…how were they?  Heavy.  Expensive.  Good fire starters or doorstops.  The boxes they came in are handy for mailing other books though…

4. price to put cat to sleep saint john, nb.  This one mystifies me…yes, my blog is called Herding Cats in Hammond River, which is near Saint John, but it really has nothing to do with cats, and I don’t remember ever talking about putting a cat to sleep in any of my posts.  I have no idea how much that costs, and I don’t want to know.  And yet, two people found my blog this way…go figure!

5. the dog eat my homework.  This search had to have been typed by someone whose first language was something other than English (at least I hope so).  It got me two hits on this post about my Schnoover (Schnauzer/Poodle/Hoover) who eats everything in sight, including things not normally consumed.

Jake's favourite things to eat...

6. sock pile.  How bored does one have to be to Google “sock pile”…twice???  I wish I had their phone number so I could invite them over to sort them…they obviously have more time than I do…

7. deviated septum how to fix ontario.  I talked about Jim’s deviated septum in this post.  I have never tackled the issue of ”how to fix Ontario.”  I don’t live there any more for a reason…

8. tapioca cheese steak like made in school.  That lunch lady needs to be fired…if she’s putting tapioca in the cheese steak, she’s doing it all wrong!  I don’t remember them ever serving cheese steak of any sort in our school cafeteria…tube steak, yes!

Hold the tapioca please...

 9. dirty girl sneaker.  Okay…this is just wrong.  I write an innocent story about a family trip to Hopewell Rocks, and this is how they find it?

10. muddy kids.  See #9.  Ditto.

11. blue jay cheerleading.  I’ve written about blue jays, and I’ve written about cheerleading, but I’ve never seen a blue jay cheerleading (it’s tough for them to find spankies small enough to fit).  Maybe some poor sap hoped that major league baseball games have cheerleaders now?  Not happening…

12. huge bean pod.  This person wasn’t just looking for any bean pod…it had to be a huge one!  Apparently, size does matter!

P.S. Did you notice how I put all the terms into the tags, so people could find them again?  Never let it be said that I’m not Internet-savvy…

I’ve been travelling through space and time a lot this week.  I’ve been to the desert planet of Arrakis, 8000 years into the future.  I’ve been to late 19th century England and Narnia (again) to watch the world’s beginning and the entrance of evil before it was even 5 hours old.  And now, I’ve just returned from a frightening not-to-distant future United States.  Oddly enough, they have more in common than just time.

In all three books, Dune, The Magician’s Nephew, and Fahrenheit 451, there is oppressive rulers and the reaching into the minds of people to control their very thoughts.  With Dune, the Bene Gesserit wish to control who gets knowledge and sight, who marries whom, and even what sex a child will be.  The Harkonnens and Sardukars viciously hunt and kill the Fremen in a pogrom, because the Fremen are independent and refuse to kiss the perverse butts of the disgusting Harkonnen “rulers.”

With The Magician’s Nephew, the Witch destroyed her own world in a bid to control it and take the throne from her sister, using the deplorable word to kill all life except the one who speaks it.  Then she tries to take over England, but without her magic, she’s just a violent nutter on a thieving rampage.  Once in Narnia, however, she’ll hide and bide her time… then make the move to enslave and opress the land for her own pleasure.

Fahrenheit 451, though, is the one I’ve most recently finished, so the thoughts about it are still tumbling around.

The fun thing with Fahrenheit 451 is that it’s been on Mt. TBR since before there was a Mt. TBR, way back when it was just an “I’m gonna read that soon” pile, when there were maybe 20 books on that pile.  I have NO idea how many books are on Mt. TBR now. Library Thing says I have catalogued almost 1000 books, but some of those are books I’ve read, or books I’ve mooched away and NOT read.  I have tagged 493 books either unread or TBR, but I’ve gotten lazy and haven’t been tagging any of the books I add, so I’d say Mt. TBR is well over 300 books (simply “unread” don’t count as TBR books).

So, some of my thoughts on Fahrenheit 451… 

One of the things that Guy Montag has to do is to decide which book he’ll sacrifice.  Captain Beatty knows he took a book and tells him if he turns it in within 24 hours, it’ll be forgiven.  Montag’s not sure if Beatty knows he has one book, a hundred books or which title, so he figures if he brings him one book, any book, he’ll pass without suspicion.  But how can he choose?  He decides not to turn over the last known surviving copy of The Bible, which was a funny moment with his wife, who asked him:  Which is more important, me or that book?  Der, easy answer… 

*SORTA SPOILER ALERT*  After running from the police, Montag finds a group of men hobo’ing who have memorized a chapter of a book, or even entire books, and burned the hard copies, and now wait for a time when society will return to it’s senses and want literature again.  They half-jokingly introduce themselves as the particular book title, i.e. “Hi!  I am Plato’s Republic, and Simmons is Marcus Aurelius.”  Knowing how the statement “I am” is an affirmation, and also that the more you say it, the more it takes hold and becomes a truth about you,  I wonder who they’ll be in 20 years.  Their personalities, and such.

In Fahrenheit 451, Mildred, Montag’s wife, is very attached to her “family,” the people on the television.  These “relatives” yell at each other, call each other names, act the fool, and are otherwise “entertaining”.  They have a device that allows the owner to hear their own name in messages and shows, and the picture is even adjusted to make the actor’s lips appear to say the name.  So that for her, the announcer says, “Mrs. Montag, wouldn’t you love to try Denham’s Dentifrice?”  And their living room, or parlor room, has wall-sized screens (remember, this was written in the late 40′s – early 50s), and when you had all 4 of your wall-screens installed, it would be just like being in the show… surrounded by your “family”.  Creepy!  and sad…

Clarisse McClellen is the oddball neighbor that sets Montag’s feet on the road of awakening.  She tells him of how kids her age frighten her.  They enjoy killing each other and themselves and destroying things.  They go to the “amusement park” and break windows in “Vandalism Town” or drag race legally, as long as they have enough insurance they can destroy whatever they want. 

One of Mrs. Montag’s friends tells how she thinks it was nice having kids, and she does her best to accommodate them the 3 days out of a month she has them (the rest of the time they’re away at school… grade schoolers, btw).  She just plopped them down in the parlor with the “relatives” as soon as they got home from the hospital.   But, she doesn’t know why they hate her.  Hmm…

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And now for something completely random and different  (because the vid clip I wanted to post is embedding disabled).

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So, If you had to sacrifice one of your books to save the rest, which one would go into the fire?

I’d be tossing the Babysitter’s Club ones… maybe the stray Captain Underpants one I think’s somewhere around here. The Reader’s Digest condensed books could be chucked, too… if they’re still here.

If you were one of the books (which was the vid clip, btw… Montag meeting the Books), what book would you be and why?

It’s a book I’d re-read mentally and recite every day… it’d become a part of me and eventually I’d become that book to an extent…. I think I’d pick the book of Proverbs (Montag was the Book of Ecclesiastes) because it’s wisdom. Everything you need to know about dealing with people, living life, psychology… everything…. is in Proverbs.

Your turn! What book would you sacrifice? Which would you be? Why?

I’m right in the middle of a book I could probably finish as well, which is a bit of a temptation, although I’ve already read the end, so it’s not quite so pressing now (The Rose of Sebastopol by Katherine McMahon).  I have  that ‘When Harry Met Sally’ thing going on.  No.  Not the having to sleep with all the men who are your friends (Yuk! Say I.) The having to read the end of a book first thing. 

I always, always read the end of the book after I’ve read the first few chapters.  That way I can almost guarantee that I will never die disappointed because I didn’t know what the end of the book was before I pegged it.  My friends all think I’m mad to do this, and ask me if it doesn’t ruin the book for me, but to be honest it doesn’t a bit.  Can you tell that I’m a bit of a control freak?  You wouldn’t honestly think so today if you were to look at my hair.  I look like I’ve rubbed up against a thousand balloons in the night, and I can’t do a thing with it, except contemplate a career as a Kate Bush impersonator.  Either that or I could be an understudy in The Lion King.

I never feel cheated by knowing what’s going to happen in a book.  I read really, really quickly, and if I know the end it means I slow down a little, which gives me time to savour the book more.  It also means that I am in the privileged position of picking up threads and hints in the book which would otherwise be lost on me.  I’m not a great one for re-reading things anymore, so if I don’t pick it up the first time I never will, unless it’s a book I’m going on to study.  I simply don’t have the time, as I have about a billion unread books clamouring for my attention.  I read books like I eat cake, quickly and with a poverty mentality.  More is most definitely more in these situations.

I have friends who reread and reread their favourite books over and over again.  I have one acquaintance who only reads books by authors she likes.  I find this odd, as how can she know she likes someone until she’s read the book?  She has never adequately explained this to me.  It’s probably very quantum and my failure to understand it is just me being incredibly dense.  It’s usually the case.

She can quote huge sections of books to me, and knows the characters like they are people she is related to.  One of her favourite books is Lord of The Rings, which I think is unmanageable and vastly over-rated.  I loved The Hobbit, and felt that if LOTR was about the same length it would have been a corker of a book.  As it is, it is flabby with too much poetry.  I know, I know, it’s a bit of pots and kettles here, coming from the world’s most long winded blogger, but what can you do?  We’ve already clearly established that I have terrible double standards.

She is so knowledgeable about LOTR that once when we were playing LOTR Top Trumps with the kids she went mental because they’d got some of the character’s ages wrong, and the horse that Gandalf rides wasn’t accurately represented!  Now that’s dedication to the cause.  My memory is just not that good.  Even with books I’ve read over and over my memory is appalling.  For one reason and another I must have read Wuthering Heights at least six or seven times in my life, and I’d still be hard pushed to tell you in any great detail what happens, and I’ve seen the films (all of which were shit by the way).  I’ve even written essay questions on it for the good lord’s sake. 

My memory is absolutely shocking, and I don’t even have the excuse of a life of drugs and rock ‘n’ roll to blame for it.  I do wonder if too much chocolate fudge cake can have the same deleterious effect however.  It might be worth testing the hypothesis.  I am willing to put myself forward for the clinical trials, as long as I don’t get the placebo and end up with carob cake.  I’d only be doing it for the greater good, naturally.  A life of sacrifice, that’s me all over!

I can kind of see the attraction in this reading your favourite books over and over, rather like having a very good comfort blanket, but for me there is just a world of new things out there waiting to be explored that I can’t wait to get my teeth into.  My one regret is that I will die not having read every book on the planet!  Jason is hysterical with my attempts to even try.  He doesn’t mind me reading them, it’s the buying he’s not so keen on.  After the buying it’s the storing books he gets hysterical about.  As he so rightly says, books create a lot of dust, and when we move house they up or removal bills considerably.  When I get my own personal library though all will be well.  Jason says we will have spent all the money on books and won’t be able to afford to build our own library.  I’m thinking we could build it from books and thus be very energy efficient and recycly.

By then I will probably be blind and have to listen to everything on book tape.  This, by the way is my idea of hell.  I don’t mind audio books, but what I do mind is abridged audio books.  If an author has written the words, the reader should read them, and that’s that.  Listening to abridged books is like buying The Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, heresy, that’s what it is.  That’s what would be in my Room 101, along with Anthea Turner.

My gran was registered blind towards the end of her life, and her big gripe about audio books was Kenneth Branagh.  There was a phase when our Ken made a fortune from narrating audio books, seemingly the type of books that my gran listened to, i.e. Douglas Reeman and Dick Francis presumably.  She hated Ken’s voice and was driven to despair by the fact that if she wanted to hear the latest book, she would have to be read to by Ken’s dulcet tones.  I’m sure that’s why she was an insomniac.  He just wasn’t soothing to her.  I don’t have that much of a problem with him, so I shall be fine, although I’m not keen on Douglas Reeman.  I’ve decided that by the time I’m on audio only I shall be so rich that I shall be able to pay my favourite voices to come and read to me, the unabridged versions naturally.  It will be my great indulgence (along with all the others…)

When I was a kid I used to read and reread, but I had a lot more time then.  I also read a lot of new things.  I was forever trying something odd.  My parents are big readers, so there was always stuff to get my teeth into.  We went to the library at least once a week, and when I was nine I borrowed The Castle by Kafka, because I thought it looked ‘interesting’!  I never made it past the first fifty pages.  I just found the whole experience completely overwhelming.  I’ve never managed to finish it since either, although it’s on my list of things to do.  I did manage to finish The Trial, which was horrible, which is probably why I’ve never made it past listing The Castle on my to do list and not actually read it.

I’m not a book snob.  I don’t really care what I read, as long as I can read.  I read across every genre and am equally happy with non-fiction, although I do think it’s a lot harder to write decent non-fiction.  With fiction you’ve always got the narrative thread to help you out if you get stuck.  It’s a bit like a bannister on the stairs.  Generally it’s quite useful to stop you falling down.  Non-fiction doesn’t always have that bannister, and so if it’s crap it is quite often unreadable.  I find it a lot easier to put down non-fiction to come back to ‘later’, i.e. never.

I’m in a bit of a listy mood today, so I will be a Nick Hornby mini-me and list some of my top books that every fule no, should be read immediately if not before.  In no particular order, because I keep changing my mind:

1. Skellig by David Almond
2. Northern Lights Trilogy by Philip Pullman
3. Love That Dog by Sharon Creech
4. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
5. Friday’s Child by Georgette Heyer
6. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
7. Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle
8. Three Men in A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
9. Villette by Charlotte Bronte
10. Justine by Lawrence Durrell
11. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
12. Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich
13. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
14. Smiling in Slow Motion by Derek Jarman
15. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
16. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
17. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
18. A Summer Book and A Winter Book by Tove Jansson
19. Thank You Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse
20. 1066 and All That by W. C. Sellar & R. J. Yeatman
21. A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett
22. The Collector by John Fowles
23. On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill
24. The Complete Saki by Saki
25. The Falls by Ian Rankin
26. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
27. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
28. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
29. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
30. Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
31. The Plague by Albert Camus
32. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
33. The Princess Bride by William Goldman
34. Across The Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
35. Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas

There.  That should keep you busy for a while.  Read, inwardly digest and then come round for tea and buns and we’ll chat.  Of course, that’s a very abbreviated list which doesn’t include poetry (try Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Ted Hughes, Brian Patten, Roger McGough, John Hegley and Neil Rollinson for starters), or much non-fiction (the OUP Very Short Introduction To, series are usually excellent), or the ancient classics (Suetonius, Herodotus and for more up to date stuff Robert Graves), or the more up to date classics (Trollope, Austen etc).

In fact I could easily compile a top one hundred.  I won’t however, as I’m sure you’re already bored to tears.  I will, just for the hell of it, compile a list of books and/or authors I wish I had never read, but feel vindicated that I have tried, much like trying local cheeses, which you know you should like, but feel that on balance you’d like to spit into your hanky with a kind of ‘Gaaaahhh’! sound.  Again in no particular order:

1. Anything by Jeffrey Archer
2. Anything by Catherine Cookson
3. Anything by Jackie Collins
4. Anything by Stephen King
5. The Magician by Raymond E. Feist
6. A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu – Marcel Proust
7. Ulysses by James Joyce
8. Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan
9. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spencer
10. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

So.  That’s it today.  No laughs, just lists.  No mention of Celine, although her autobiography was on sale for fifty pence in the library last night, and I was sorely tempted.  I decided against it because I thought it would spoil the surprise.  As it is now, we have years of mutual discovery ahead of us.