7 x 7 Award

I’ve been tagged by Caroline for this meme – woo-hoo, haven’t done a meme in ages!

1: Tell everyone something about yourself that nobody else knows.

2: Link to a post you think fits the following categories: The Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, Most Pride-worthy Piece.

3: Pass this on to 7 fellow bloggers.

 

 

 

1. Something people don’t know about me – tricky, after almost six years of blogging. I think everyone knows everything there is to know. Is there anything you want to know? I mean, seriously, we have no secrets.

 

The Most Beautiful Piece

Probably dates back several years now to another meme that went around my corner of the blogosphere, entitled I Am From.

 

The Most Helpful Piece

That’s difficult because I always try to write (what I think of as) helpful reviews.  So I’ll plump for something completely different, which is this piece I wrote about meditation. Not least because I find meditation very helpful myself, when I put aside the time to do it and don’t get up halfway through because I’ve remembered something vital that needs to be done….

 

Most Popular Piece

My most popular post is in fact Best Book Club Books, which was a dreadfully quick and careless thing I wrote one day when I hadn’t finished a book. It seems to attract masses of search engine queries. But the second most hits for a post goes to Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety, which remains at the top of my posts list pretty much every day.

 

Most Controversial Piece

I admit I’ve never written anything that has sparked off something like an argument, and I would be horrified if I did. So again, I have to go for something different, which is this post I wrote when a graduate student was a bit over persistent in asking me out for dinner. The upshot was that he retracted the invitation somewhat huffily about a week later – so someone, somewhere showed him this post, I have to conclude.

 

Most Surprisingly Successful Piece

I suppose this one probably goes to What is Existentialism? Which also features near the top of my all time top posts page. It’s nice to know people still care about Existentialism – although a significant percentage are probably students struggling to write essays.

 

Most Underrated Piece

It’s always the posts that I pour my heart and soul into that fail to get hits, particularly when I do a lot of critical analysis (I love analysis, even about books I haven’t read). I really enjoyed writing about Willa Cather’s novella My Mortal Enemy a couple of weeks back but not a lot of people read it.

 

Most Pride-worthy Piece

This post on Nature vs Nurture was picked up and mentioned in the Washington Post. I was absolutely delighted.

 

Name seven other bloggers to pass this award onto:

Stefanie

Danielle

Courtney

Emily

Simon T.

Arti

Doctordi

Enjoy!

Another Top Ten

Top Ten Books I’d Hand To Someone Who Says They Don’t Like To Read

This comes from The Broke and the Bookish, but I thought I would add a few teeny distinctions here, by adding categories of people who tend not to read (or only read certain kinds of books).

 

Teenage Boy

Oho, I know all about this one, having wracked my brains over my own son. Recently, though, I have finally cracked it. You have to go the graphic novel route, or at least comic book compilation route:

Showcase Presents: The Flash

Everyone wants to be the Flash, goodness, even I want to be the Flash. What a superpower! Lots of fast and furious retro fun to be had here and no upsetting violence.

The Walking Dead by Robert Kirkman

All the teenage boys I know are watching this television series, and the series of graphic novels it comes from goes into far, far more depth. For all those zombie lovers out there, who long to have a machete by their bed, just in case.

Watchman – by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons

Not my cup of tea, but by all accounts one of the best, intellectually challenging, gory graphic novels out there.

 

Teenage Girl

Supposing you want to tempt a teenage girl away from an endless diet of Twilight-type books? Or persuade one to read at all:

Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan

The ultimate disaffected teenager novel, or rather novella, as it’s a short, sharp little thing. Love and betrayal on the beaches of the South of France.

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier

I almost put Rebecca, but this is a shorter, tighter novel with just as much suspense and intrigue.

Love In A Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford

Witty, bittersweet novel that may remind teenagers that their parents (and probably their grandparents by now) went through the same trials and tribulations in love as they do, only without the benefit of central heating.

 

Man Who Thinks Reading Stories Is A Waste of Time

Of course, the non-fiction route may be the simplest way to go, but as an alternative:

The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles

This Victorian postmodern pastiche about a love story between a rather righteous young scientist and the moral outcast of a small town doesn’t sound on the face of it like something anyone would like. But it’s briliantly done, and the men I know who’ve read it have really enjoyed it.

The Rumpole Stories by John Mortimer

These acid sharp little capers around the law courts feature everyone’s favourite curmudgeon, the grumpy but ethically reliable Rumpole. Very funny, deceptively easy to read, but intriguing about the law.

The City and the City by China Mieville

A clever novel defying categorisation but drawing from science fiction, fantasy and crime fiction. The body of a murdered foreign woman causes a headache  for Inspector Tyador Borlú, whose realm of investigation turns out to be far more complicated than we suspect. Not at all a pretentious book, I should point out,  but imaginatively rich.

 

People Who Fear The Classics

For those people who say, oh but I only like a bit of escapism and I couldn’t bring myself to read one of those awful heavy books from decades ago.

A Room With A View by E. M. Forster

Could there be a sunnier, funnier, jollier novel than this? And Forster’s perfect prose elevates the story to classic heights.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Who says there are no books about happy marriages? Two marriages become the focus of this novel, set in an American university and following the life journeys of these four friends. Hand over to the reader with a bumper box of tissues.

A Lost Lady by Willa Cather

In her crystalline prose, Cather charts the obsession of one young man with an older woman, the wife of the local railroad magnate.  From youthful idealisation, he follows her through her social downfall and beyond.

 

People Who Never Read Non-Fiction

Because it’s too hard, dull, boring, etc.

Married to Genius by Jeffrey Meyers

A series of biographical portraits of authors and their significant others. I’ve read several books like this but Meyers is still the best, I think. The life stories are enough to make your toes curl up, and Meyers draws on the fictional stories with a light touch, avoiding making claims that seem excessive.

Fierce Attachments by Viven Gornick

One of the best memoirs I’ve read, this concise and gripping book concerns Gornicks love-hate relationship with her overbearing, controlling, courageous mother.

The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten

When he accepted the job of food writer for American Vogue, Jeffrey Steingarten knew he would have to renounce any long-standing food fads. Once he’s got over his distaste for clams and anchovies he travels the world, eating all manner of things from Korean pickled cabbage to french fries in horse fat.  Funny essays that are quietly informative and challenging.

Ok, so that may be more than ten, but it’s in a good cause! Plus, I use gender distinctions here, but there is no necessity to do so. Teenage girls may be more interested in The Walking Dead than Nancy Mitford, for instance. But one has to start somewhere with categorisation. And if there are still problems with formatting, well GAH! WordPress drives me nuts the way it ruins my formatting when it saves.

Scenes From A Week

1. On Monday, walking back to my car from the bookshop, I fell over. I haven’t done this in years. It was my own fault, really, for being so curious about the couple on the other side of the road. The woman was hollering out for ‘Alvin!’ and I couldn’t see whom she was addressing. Was it the rather dour young man further down the road, loitering in someone’s gateway? Then I saw, emerging from behind a parked car, a little dot of a toddler, clearly in la-la land, as toddlers so often are, with no real clue that he was being summoned. It was at this point that I tripped over the upthrust root of a tree forcing its way through the pavement, one of the roots I described so enthusiastically in a post last week. If that’s not irony, then it jolly well ought to be. I thought I would save myself, but I ended up flat out in a pile of leftover autumn leaves. They, and the multiple layers I’d been wearing to withstand the chill of the bookstore meant that I was not hurt, although Mister Litlove is trying to persuade me I am such a featherweight that I reached terminal velocity and floated the last few feet.

In fact, as I was going down, I had enough of the stretched-out time that characterises accidents to hear the couple over the road going ‘Oh! Owwww!’ This ensured that the time I spent actually prone was about a nanosecond, as I shot bolt upright calling out ‘I’m fine! I’m fine!’ ‘Are you sure?’ the woman called over to me. ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘Although I feel a bit stupid.’ ‘Aw, come on,’ the woman replied. ‘The number of times I’ve fell over!’ I was rather touched by her kindness. I wish I’d had the presence of mind to thank her properly for it. Anyway, I wasn’t hurt. I had sore arms this week but not a bruise or a scratch on me, luckily.

 

2. On Wednesday evening I went to my real-life book club. It was a bitterly cold night, and we met in the middle of nowhere, in a cute little rustic sort of house with a huge blazing fire and a resident ghost. This was most appropriate as we were discussing Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger. I love this book club. We had a solid hour and a half of excellent book chat, and it astounds me again and again how very differently a bunch of people will experience a novel. Some thought the book was dull and boring, others that it was set to be a modern classic. Opinions about the narrator, Dr Faraday, ranged from a loyal if slightly pathetic romantic to a cold fish who made one’s skin creep. Some really liked the supernatural element and found it frightening, others not so much. One person actually thought it was more of a love story than anything else. Those of us who plumped for the psychological explanation of unconscious forces at work completely bamboozled the rest who hadn’t seen anything like that in the narrative at all. And it would have been impossible for one reader to persuade another to change  his or her mind. What do we do when we read? What screen do we throw up between ourselves and the words on the page? To read is to track the unconscious paths of our desire, I recall from days gone by of reader response theory. Can that really be so – that we only register what we want to see? We rounded the evening off with people recounting some real life ghost stories, appropriately enough. I’ve never seen a ghost, not even a whisper of one. Plus, I think that real, living people are infinitely scarier; I’ll take my chances with the supernatural.

 

3. You should have seen my face yesterday, though, when I finished reading Cees Nooteboom’s novella, The Following Story. I hadn’t got a clue what had happened. Three-quarters of the way through the book, confused and bewildered, I’d gone online seeking reviews in the hope of enlightenment. Lots of readers love this book and rate it really highly. They assured me that the last few pages made the whole set-up finally come clear. It remained stubbornly shrouded in mists of opacity for me. Can anyone please tell me what is going on? Is the narrator dead? Is he dreaming? It concerns a former Latin teacher, now a writer of rather tepid travel guides. He became caught up in a love triangle between two married teachers and a beautiful star pupil who was having an affair with the husband. In an act of revenge the wife took our narrator as a lover, the only woman ever to have a relationship with him, but who belittled and scorned him all the time they were together. The novella opens with our narrator waking up in a hotel bed in Portugal, which surprises him as he could have sworn he went to sleep the previous evening in Amsterdam. The hotel bed is highly significant, though, as it’s where he came with the biology teacher at the height of their affair. Writing it like that makes it sound quite straightforward, and the first half of the book that details the romantic entanglements is relatively clear, although it’s one of those narratives full of classical allusions and digressive comments. But that’s okay. I quite like that. It was getting to the end, anticipating a full explanation and then being totally stymied that was annoying. Clearly I am being stupid. If anyone can explain, I would be SO grateful!

P.S. I am behind again with comments and visits! I’m so sorry – things are just so busy at the moment. I promise faithfully to catch up on the weekend.

Midweek Mishmash

I’m just back from seeing my first student of the term, a charming young French woman who wanted a bit of help with her English. Is it wrong of me that I preferred her errors of idiom to the correct expressions? Her statement that something had ‘completed to convince her’ gave me pause for thought. It wasn’t really the case that she had ‘finally’ been convinced, because in the context that seemed to imply a mental struggle, and that wasn’t it. No, it was like something had been the ‘last straw’ but that was no good either, because it is only used pejoratively. In the end we just left it that she had been convinced, as we don’t really have a phrase that implies conviction occurring at the end of a process of accumulated impressions. Then she delighted me by saying about another topic that ‘this interested her, being European peoples.’ I think she meant ‘as a European citizen’ but it sounded so sweet, being peoples of Europe, that I was very loathe to correct her.

Anyway, I am wittering on as I am in the middle of three large books and have nothing left over to review. Things have been so busy lately. I’m back at the bookstore again after the Christmas break, propping up the counter with Ms Thrifty as we attempt to withstand the chill of the store. We were both dressed like Michelin men last Monday and still we were hopping up and down to keep warm by the end of the shift. Then I’ve been catching up with a lot of friends, with more sociable engagements to come. I don’t know how anybody gets anything done at all if they have people coming round or social calls to pay on a regular basis. It’s fun but it all takes up so much time.

Still, I can tell you what I am in the middle of reading. I’m three-quarters of the way through The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, which I’m loving. She is such an amazing writer. You feel so safe in her hands, and the story unfolds in front of you, perfectly realised in a way that only narrative could achieve. That’s for my real life book club and I’m looking forward to discussing it. Then I am only a fifth of the way through a big biography of Agatha Christie. I’ve read biographies of Christie before, but I am still waiting for the one that explains her character in a way I can actually visualise. She seems to have been a complex but ultimately elusive person, tucked away behind a shield of charm and good manners. At the moment she is in her late teens and attracting a lot of suitors; she was clearly a fun-loving, bright and jolly girl, sweet and pretty and easy-going, artistic but totally unschooled. Yet only a year or two later, she’d be writing her first detective story, and then six or seven years later, she’d be staging disappearances and claiming nervous amnesia. Evidently the disaster that was her first marriage has a lot to do with all this. I’ll be interested to see how the author, Laura Thompson in this case, deals with the transition.

Then I have literally just begun George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda. This is a chunkster, isn’t it? I said I’d read more 19^th century literature last year and although I began well, I didn’t exactly follow through. And ahead of me is another large book, The Selected Works of T. S, Spivet by Reif Larsen, the pick for the Slaves of Golconda book group this month. I have to admit, this book is scaring me. It’s the outsize format for one thing; it is about the size and weight of one of those hefty instruction manuals for performance cars. I feel very reluctant to pick it up. Then the text is strewn with diagrams and pictures and long side notes in the margins that sort of makes me fear for the quality of the writing in the main text. This is pure prejudice and not sensible at all, and probably enhanced by reading someone like Sarah Waters, who does the straight novel and does it brilliantly, no tricks needed. Is anyone else reading this yet from the Slaves? A word of encouragement would be a marvellous thing. And at this rate, I can see that February will be the month of the novella!