underneath the mango tree....

Over the last few months, I've been slowly working my way through Ian Fleming's James Bond books in chronological order. After finishing Ian Rankin's "Mortal Causes" in Canada, I started to read the sixth book in the series and the first one to be turned into a film: "Dr No".

Of course, everyone knows that the Bond of the books is a very different creature to the one portrayed by any of Connery, Moore, Lazenby, Dalton, Brosnan or Craig, but even though they are nearly all over fifty years old now, they remain superbly taut and effective thrillers. They are, however, very much a product of their time, and -- to the eyes of this reader, at least -- some of Fleming's language is positively eye-watering. Following hard on the heels of his bizarre assertion (in "Live and Let Die") that black people cannot whistle, consider this passage from "Dr. No", where Bond is having lunch with the Colonial Secretary in an exclusive club in Jamaica:

"It's like this." He began his antics with the pipe. "The Jamaican is a kindly lazy man with the virtues and vices of a child. He lives on a very rich island but he doesn't get rich from it. He doesn't know how to and he's too lazy. The British come and go and take the easy pickings, but for about two hundred years no Englishman has made a fortune out here. He doesn't stay long enough. He takes a fat cut and leaves. It's the Portuguese Jews who make the most. They came here with the British and they've stayed. But they're snobs and they spend too much of their fortunes on building fine houses and giving dances. They're the names that fill the social column in the Gleaner when the tourists have gone. They're in rum and tobacco and they represent the big British firms over here - motor cars, insurance and so forth. Then come the Syrians, very rich too, but not such good businessmen. They have most of the stores and some of the best hotels. They're not a very good risk. Get overstocked and have the occasional fire to get liquid again. Then there are the Indians with their usual flashy trade in soft goods and the like. They're not much of a lot. Finally there are the Chinese, solid, compact, discreet - the most powerful clique in Jamaica. They've got the bakeries and the laundries and the best food stores. They keep to themselves and keep their strain pure." Pleydell-Smith laughed. "Not that they don't take the black girls when they want them. You can see the result all over Kingston - Chigroes - Chinese Negroes or Negresses. The Chigroes are a tough, forgotten race. They look down on the Negroes and the Chinese look down on them. One day they may become a nuisance. They've got some of the intelligence of the Chinese and most of the vices of the black man. The police have a lot of trouble with them."

See what I mean? How many casually racist statements about how many different races can you make in one paragraph? Chigroe? Really?

But, eye-watering though it may be, does it follow that language like this should undermine the value of the book? No, it dates it, certainly, and is probably offensive to most modern readers, but a reader should nonetheless resist the temptation to assume that the words and opinions of Pleydell-Smith, the Colonial Secretary, are one and the same with the opinions of Ian Fleming, the author (Bond himself, for example, appears to be somewhat less flamboyantly bigoted). They may well have been Fleming's views, but we don't know that for certain. The historian in me also cautions against applying the (more politically correct) values of our own age to a book written in 1957. I'm sure that in 52 years time, people will find our attitudes and beliefs somewhat alien too.

It's a good book - it's very much a product of a particular era, but it's a good book nonetheless.

let's talk about it....

Unless you're one of those strange people who plans these things months in advance, if you are anything like me, then you're probably still on the lookout for Christmas presents for various people. I find the hardest ones to cover-off are often the smallest; that little token present for that person you're not planning on spending more than a tenner on. If you haven't been struck by a brilliant idea, then no doubt you've been browsing the tat tables in various shops in the desperate hope of receiving some inexpensive inspiration, even if that means getting somebody something that (barely) seems amusing at the time and after all the polite thank yous are done is quietly put away and never thought of again. Well, somebody must buy that stuff.....

I'm sure you've got your own ideas, but if you'll allow me to humbly make a suggestion.....

The Art of Conversation by Catherine Blyth.



"A guided tour of a neglected pleasure"

"Mixing philosophy with literature Catherine Blyth wittily encourages conversation. It seems we’ve forgotten how to talk. The art of face-to-face engagement has lost its allure as the world of facebook has seduced us. Catherine Blyth is on mission to convert us back to pleasures of good conversation in this charming, celebratory look at repartee. Wittily mixing up philosophy with literature, blending science with psychology, and with a nod to the great chatterers of history, she persuasively argues the case for banter and badinage - it’s free, its fun and it gets your brain cells firing like the prettiest of firework displays."

I can sense that you're on your way to buy yourself a copy or two as we speak, so perhaps I should declare a couple of things here:

1) I haven't actually finished this book yet. In fact, I'm on about the fourth page of the introduction (every page of which, to be fair, I have enjoyed hugely).

2) The author is an old friend of mine.

I first met Catherine when she had the great misfortune to be assigned to eat her meals in my boarding house back in the distant, sepia tinged days of 1990. It can't have been much fun being a girl at my school: joining a tightly knit bunch of institutionalised emotional cripples when they've already had three years to form deep bonds and who, even at the age of 17, have absolutely no frame of reference for dealing with the female of the species, having spent most of their lives in single-sex seclusion. Catherine must have been a conversational genius even then, as she somehow managed to pierce my outer shell of awkwardness and establish that we actually lived only a few miles from each other. We soon bonded over the number 33 Johnsons bus that we had both used to get into Northampton as kids, and we never looked back. I admired Catherine hugely for having the strength of character to walk her own path at school and not to be beaten into conformity like so many others, including me. Many people spent their school years trying to make themselves as inconspicuous as possible, but Catherine always seemed to remain true to herself, even when that made her stand out dangerously from the crowd.

Much to my regret, we lost touch for a few years some time after University, but thanks to the magic of the internet and her very trusting husband generously forwarding on a speculative email from a complete stranger, we have rekindled our friendship. And look! She's only gone and written a proper, honest-to-goodness book. She's been on breakfast telly and met Rolf Harris and everything! The reviews have been excellent, but if she manages to distill a mere half of her wit, insight and droll humour into the book, then how could people not love it? It's hard to explain, but it makes me proud as punch to know that a friend of mine has managed to get something like this out into the shops. I waste my time writing nonsense on the internet, and she's gone and written a proper, published book that you can buy in an actual shop.

So, if you're struggling for ideas for Christmas prezzies this year, why not give someone you love the gift of conversation? You can pick it up for less than a tenner on Amazon, and it's included in the Waterstones 3 for 2.

Bearing in mind that I'm the kind of person who will deliberately and obtusely provide one word answers to small talk in the coffee queue, perhaps this is EXACTLY the kind of book I should be reading.....perhaps I should be more inclined to think of it less as a light and entertaining read and more as a self-help manual.

Beware: I might want to talk about this again once I've read it, so you might as well give in now and go and buy several copies. I'm only going to go on about it until you do..... (and actually, as I've already bought six copies, you may well be getting it from me for Christmas anyway).

monster mash....

I spent much of my Sunday sat quietly in front of an open fire working my way through the "Planet Hulk" and "World War Hulk" comics. The Hulk was one of Stan Lee's very first comic book creations, making his debut in 1962, six months after the Fantastic Four's first appearance in 1961, but fully six months before Spider-Man's arrival. Apparently he's been voted the 19th greatest comic character of all time (by Wizard magazine in 2008), but unlike Spider-Man, Daredevil, Wolverine, Batman and the like, I've never really been able to warm to him and have only really come across him in passing in the Marvel Universe.

Sure, I watched the tv show as a child (oops, with that haunting theme tune, there goes another earworm), and I loyally trooped off to the cinema to watch the first "Hulk" film (although not the second one - I wasn't going to make the same mistake twice). Ultimately, I just did not find the character very interesting.

The premise is fine: the Hulk is Jekyll and Hyde for the nuclear generation, and there is plenty of scope for both drama and melodrama in the constant struggle between man (Bruce Banner) and monster (the Hulk). Unfortunately, the heroes that I find the most interesting are also the most conflicted (Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, to name three); these are heroes who do not live in a world of black and white, and they face dilemmas with every decision they make and in the blurring of their private and professional identities. Although there is conflict at the very centre of the Hulk's existence, an internal conflict for supremacy between man and monster, the Hulk himself is ultimately very simple. His motives may be terribly misunderstood by the world in general, but essentially he gets angry and smashes stuff up. "Hulk smash".



After working my way through the "Marvel Civil War" comics a little while ago, my interest was piqued in the "Planet Hulk" series when a number of other Marvel characters (Iron Man, Black Bolt, Dr.Strange and Reed Richards) trick the Hulk and blast him into outer space to take such an unpredictable creature entirely out of the conflict. Their intention was to send him to an idyllic world with no intelligent life, somewhere the Hulk could finally be alone with himself, which was all he ever said he wanted. Of course, something goes wrong, and the Hulk ends up on a violent planet where he is forced to become a gladiator, fighting first for his own survival and then for his own freedom and the freedom of the whole planet.

Yes, it does sound ridiculous when the plot's set out like that, but it's a comic for heaven's sake... Sheesh.

So when I was in town on Saturday, I popped into Page 45 and picked up copies of both "Planet Hulk" and the follow-up "World War Hulk", where the Hulk returns to Earth to wreak his revenge upon those who sent him into space. They're both pretty hefty volumes, but what are Sunday afternoons for if not browsing through a little light reading in front of the fire?

Hmm.

In my opinion, the most interesting superheroes are the ones that, as well as being conflicted, are the most vulnerable. For me, Superman is amongst the dullest heroes ever created simply because of the sheer extent of his powers. A character like Wolverine will always be a more interesting character simply because his powers are so much more limited and this forces the writers to be much more imaginative and makes battles with more powerful villains all the more interesting. Where "Planet Hulk" really works is in removing the Hulk entirely from the confines of Earth and placing him in a completely different environment. This frees the character up from so many of the constraints he usually labours under, and gives the writers freedom to explore. It is, however, a story that is fundamentally flawed by the sheer extent of the Hulk's power. It's reasonably well established that the Hulk's strength is proportional to the extent of his rage - it is, after all, anger that triggers Bruce banners transformation in the first place. In "Planet Hulk", the Hulk's rage is so immense that he ends up being able to swim in magma and walk in space without needing oxygen or a suit. Not only that, but throughout the entire story, he only transforms into Bruce Banner for brief moments, and never in a situation where it might be interesting or to put him in any real danger. In short, he is invulnerable. This is dull. The story is okay, but as there's never really any threat to our hero, I didn't find all that much to get excited about. The return to Earth and the Hulk's vengeance in "World War Hulk" are also rushed and confused, with a constant flow of characters from the wider Marvel Universe and a hurried and unsatisfying conclusion. The moral ambiguities here could have been interesting: were the illuminati right to act as they did? Were their actions really in service of the greater good? These are the kinds of issues that were dealt with extensively in the "Civil War" comics, which uses the comic medium to explore some of the issues raised by the real-life "War on Terror", but here they don't feel properly explored, and are buried beneath the rubble caused by the Hulk smashing up New York.

"Hulk smash". Again.



Perhaps it's been done to death in the past, but for me the Hulk will only be really interesting when they explore his vulnerabilities, not his strengths. Bruce Banner should not be subsumed within the Hulk, he should be at the very centre of the story, just as he was in the original TV series, forever unable to form meaningful bonds with people because of the monster inside him that he is unable to control. Even the Hulk himself should be about more than just smashing stuff up. He's complex and vulnerable too: a simple soul who is cruelly provoked and misunderstood by the world who only see him as a monster.

That theme tune is still playing in your head, isn't it?

"Planet Hulk" lacks these nuances, and, as a result, I found it ultimately unsatisfying. Hulk smashing just doesn't do it for me, I'm afraid.

... and with that, I'm going to flounce back to Anne Brontë and "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall".

Well, straight after reading "Ultimate Marvel Team Up", anyway.....

all I wanted was a sweet distraction for an hour or two...

I've always been a bookworm. My mum often fondly remarks that, growing up, I would never go anywhere without a book. One of my earliest memories is of trying to wade my way through "The Hobbit", and I used to love nothing more than the trips we would make to a nearby bookshop. It seemed a magical place to me, and since the advent of the internet and book megastores, I don't think they even really exist anymore. It was a tiny shop off the main market square of a little town called Olney, and it used to have a little room in the back, a nook, where they kept all of their children's books. Unlike bookshops today, it was built to be browsed and even had soft seats to better encourage children to flick through the books on offer. I loved it. To enhance your impression that this shop was from sometime in the late seventeenth century, it was just around the corner from a toyshop where the toymaker would actually craft his own toys, and from whom we had bought such wonderful things as a proper wooden castle for our toy soldiers and a propeller on a serrated wooden stick that you could somehow make turn around, if you had the knack, by running a smoother stick along the teeth. Imagine that. No X-Boxes or Wiis in them days. I loved the fact that when you did buy a book from that wonderful bookshop, perhaps using one many book tokens I used to get given for birthdays and for Christmas, you used to get given a lovely thick paper bookmark too, with an sketch of a dwarf with a quill pen sat at a desk. I doubt very much that either the bookshop or the toyshop are still there, but I still occasionally stumble across one of the bookmarks when thumbing through an old book on my own bookshelves, and it always brings back happy memories.

I was one of those kids who would even read in the car on journeys, killing the time on the long car journeys to see one set of grandparents in Plymouth and the other set in deepest rural Wales by burying my nose in some book or other. I wasn't immune to the car-sickness that this sometimes brought on, but I clearly considered the escape it gave me from the cramped backseat I shared with my two brothers to be worth the risk.

I wouldn't say that I was an especially discerning reader, and throughout my teens I'm afraid to say that I voraciously devoured all kinds of Sci-fi and fantasy books: Raymond E Feist, the Dragonlance books, David Gemmell, David Eddings. In spite of what you may think, some of those books are actually pretty good (I loved Feist's "Magician" series, and the Eddings' "Belgariad" and "Mallorean" books were fantastic). As I approached my twenties, however, I discovered books by twentieth century writers like Paul Auster and John Irving, and I began to rediscover the joys of the penguin classics, with Alexandre Dumas being a particular favourite. It's a statement of the obvious, of course, but with so many brilliant books out there waiting to be read, I sort of regretted having read the entire Dragonlance series (well, the first 9 books anyway). Entertaining though it was, I felt that perhaps I could have spent that time more productively by reading a little more widely. Studying English Literature at school had done its best to put me off the cream-and-black covered Penguin Classics, but I was now starting to discover that, actually, some of them were pretty damn good. More importantly, I also realised that I wasn't expected to like them all; that no one likes them all. Once I'd grasped that simple truth, any lingering inverse snobbery about the books I was supposed to read disappeared. From then on I was determined that I would read what I wanted to read, whether that be a Don De Lillo, a Charles Dickens or a JK Rowling.

So with that in mind, I probably don't need to explain to anyone why my reading list for much of the last six weeks consists of a whole bunch of comics. I don't need to tell anyone that they're actually all very good comics, and I certainly don't need to attempt to justify them by grandly referring to them to anyone and everyone as "graphic novels".... Although, if you haven't already been exposed to them, might I just say that Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series is surely, in my opinion, one of the most remarkable, sustained feats of imagination ever captured any format? You know that already though, right?



I'm currently reading a collection of Ian Fleming's James Bond short stories, including the not-really-anything-like-the-films "From A View To A Kill", "For Your Eyes Only", "Octopussy", "Quantum of Solace" and "The Living Daylights" (my favourite so far is "The Hildebrand Rarity" though, which was apparently the basis for some of the superficial plot elements in "Licence to Kill", but is altogether more interesting). I had often read about how the literary Bond differed from the one portrayed in the films, but I wanted to form my own opinion and set myself the challenge of working my way through the novels in order. I'm a little under halfway through now, and paused to read this collection. I got off to a great start with the books when I discovered that "Casino Royale" was at least as good as the Daniel Craig film version, included the same hideous torture scene and that surprisingly the game of baccarat described in the book is much more gripping than the game of Texas Hold'Em they replaced it with in the film. The other books in the series that I have read so far, "Live and Let Die", "Moonraker", "Diamonds are Forever" and "From Russia With Love", bear far less resemblance to their film adaptations, but in every case this is because they are vastly superior. The books suffer a little from being products of their time, and some of the language used to describe the non-white characters is, to modern readers, a touch alarming, but they are cracking good reads. James Bond is also a much more interesting character than the one portrayed in the films: for all those pointless discussions about who is the best Bond, actually I don't think that any of them have got within a million miles of the one Fleming wrote about.

I've just read "Quantum of Solace". I have no idea what the forthcoming film with the same title is about, but the short-story is not actually about Bond at all - indeed, he only features as a guest at a dinner party listening to a story being told by the Governor of Nassau. The guts of the story are the Governor's story itself and doesn't even involve espionage of any kind or any kind of violence other than emotional. It's a fantastic piece of writing, and about as far removed from Roger Moore and a union jack parachute as it is possible to be. I like short stories generally, but these Bond stories by Fleming have so far been fantastic.

Ah, books are brilliant. I've still got a few Bond books left and several "Sandman" volumes waiting to be re-read, but I've a hankering for one of those Penguin Classics, and I think I might either go for a bit of Nabakov or perhaps "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall" next.

Well, there's nothing much good on TV and the nights are starting to draw in.....

you're not alone, you know....

I don't really make a habit of plugging things on here, but I'm going to make an exception for this:



It's a compilation of stories submitted by various bloggers and compiled by Peach. I'm not expecting you to buy a copy of this just because I say you should, so I've come up with a list of reasons why you should consider it:

1) The book only costs £12.50, and for that investment you get an awful lot of entertainment out of other people's lives, with entries from over 100 bloggers.

2) Of that £12.50, a whole £6 will go directly to the Warchild charity. War Child is an international charity that works with children affected by war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. They work with former child soldiers, children in prison and children living and working on the streets giving them support, protection and opportunities. That's an extremely good cause. Think how *worthy* you'd feel. What's more, if you buy the electronic version of the book, then £10 of that £12.50 goes directly to Warchild, which is nearly twice as worthy.

3) Peach is lovely and has worked very, very hard to pull this all together. Buying it would help to make her feel happy and fulfilled that this was time well spent. Apart from anything else, selecting entries to go into the book must be a very time-consuming and frustrating experience. For every excellent entry that made the book, there are likely several equally excellent entries that haven't got in. Making those kinds of decisions can't be easy - and Peach has gone well out of her way to make sure that everything has been done as fairly as possible, with every submission being read and voted on by a fairly diverse panel and no entry going in on any one person's say so.

4) There are entries by some fantastic writers. Some are famous and published already and stuff, but some are people you know and love, including Cat....

5) Did I mention that the money all goes to charity?

Oh, and I'm in it too.

But don't let that put you off.

Buy it now and bask in your own worthiness.



Thank you.

That is all.

More details here.

nouns, and books, and show and tell....

I had my first stint as a volunteer reader this morning. Instead of dragging myself into work late and spending the first hour or so of the day idly perusing my email over the first coffee of the day, I made my way over to a local primary school and spent that time far more productively.

It was really good. I spent the first few minutes in the classroom chatting to the teacher and waiting for the children to arrive, admiring the pictures that adorned every wall. As they began to arrive and filed neatly into the classroom, the first thing that struck me was quite how small they all were - perhaps not so surprising really considering I've been assigned to year one, who are all between five and six years old - they're hardly likely to be giants, are they? You'd imagine that these kids would perhaps be a little wary of this hulking great big stranger in their midst, but although one or two looked a little shy, most gave me a friendly smile or gave me a cheery hello as they trooped in a stowed their bags in their trays. There were about thirty of them in all, and I stood and watched as they all took their places around the classroom and then acted along to a warm-up video that their teacher played on the big screen at the front of the class. They did a little bit of dancing and clapping and I was reminded faintly of all those ridiculous ice-breaker exercises that we always seem to do when we're on courses at work. Actually, I think I might suggest at the next one I attend that we do "Clap Around the Clock":

[both arms pointing straight up]
"O'clock" CLAP
[arms pointing right]
"Quarter past" CLAP
[arms pointing down]
"Half past" CLAP
[arms pointing left]
"Quarter to" CLAP

...and so on. Brilliant.

After that, we had the register, at which each member of the class was greeted in turn by their teacher, and replied everso politely. As well as me, there were three other adult helpers, and we were all introduced to the children. One of the helpers was there solely to support the teacher with an autistic child in the class, which I think shows how far our understanding of these things has come on since I was 5 years old, a mind-boggling 29 years ago. Needless to say, I wasn't going to be reading with this child.

Each member of the class is buddied up with someone of a similar reading standard, and with all the preliminaries over, the first pair were assigned to me for reading practice. We retired to a little nest of cushions just outside the classroom, where each child brought along their reading bag. The bag contained the two books they were reading and a reading diary that I was supposed to fill in to chart their progress. The standard of reading varied enormously, as did levels of concentration, although all of them were very enthusiastic about getting to read. The school uses the Oxford Reading Tree books, which are brilliant. They have bright, interesting illustrations with lots of detail, and they have easy to follow engaging stories featuring a regular cast of carefully multi-denominational and non-gender specifically named children and a dog called Floppy. The books come in several stages of increasing difficulty, and each child in the class seemed to be at a different level. I only had about an hour, and with all the to-ing and fro-ing, I only read with about 8 kids in all, but even in that little group, some were brilliant and read without any hesitation at all, whilst others struggled and sounded out the words, or even made wild guesses based upon the pictures. It was my first time there, and I don't have any kids of my own, so I imagine it will take me a few visits to really get a feel for how to get the best out of the time I spend with the kids, and I imagine it will take them a while to get used to me too.

I was asked when I got back to work if spending time with these children made me feel at all broody. Er.... no. It was good to help them with their reading for an hour, but it was also good to leave them with someone else for the rest of the week. They were mostly very well-behaved, to be fair, but I did witness one class member throwing an impressive tantrum that involved kicking, screaming and running around the school throwing things off tables and the like. Luckily, I wasn't expected to read with him either. The teacher in the class I was in was brilliant, and I can only take my hat off to the way she managed those kids: knowing when to be gently stern with them, but also knowing when to administer a good old-fashioned hug as she did to a child who has a relative in hospital and was looking a bit down. They all made a card for him to take with him on his next visit. I tell you, these primary school teachers are made of tough stuff and have the patience of saints. Now that's a difficult job. By comparison, this one's a doddle.

It's half term next week, but I'm looking forward to having another go in a couple of weeks time.

God, I'm so worthy.

A good day.

Reading, writing and arithmetic are the branches of the learning tree...

The other day, I volunteered to take part in a 'reading in schools' initiative. It's something I've been meaning to do for ages, and a couple of weeks ago I finally got of my arse and did something about it. It will involve going into a local school for an hour a week and spending my time helping and encouraging kids to read. Both of my parents are readers, especially my mother, who got her love of books from her father (and he loved books so much that he actually owned a set of library steps!). Not surprisingly then, I grew up surrounded by books and my very earliest memories are of reading. My mum always says that I never travelled anywhere without a book, and although you can now add an iPod to the list of things that I won't go anywhere without, that's still basically true. I still derive an enormous amount of pleasure and satisfaction from books and I try to read as much as I can every day.

Not everybody is as lucky as I was though, and many kids do not have a book filled childhood or parents who have passed on a love of reading. Basic literacy is a hugely important skill, of course, but it's also a source of great pleasure, and I find it awful to think that children might grow up without an opportunity to discover this for themselves. I'm told that even a little bit of time spent with a kid helping them with their reading can really help them come on in leaps and bounds..... so I'm giving up a bit of my time each week and I hope that some of my enthusiasm and love of books will rub off.

I had my training yesterday afternoon, and although we were shown the types of books we will be reading and given a few tips about what to expect and how to behave, the majority of the time was spent filling in police forms. Of course I totally understand why I need to have my records checked to make sure that I'm a suitable person to work with children... you can't be too careful and all that... but when we were taken through the bit about how we should not touch the children or allow ourselves to be touched and how we must never, under any circumstances, allow ourselves to be alone with any of the children, I felt a bit sad. Apparently this is as much for my own protection as it is for the kids, but I'm not sure that makes me feel much better about it. It's all very sensible and practical, I'm sure, but I still feel saddened that we live in a world where these precautions are necessary at all.

---

...and because that's all very dull and worthy:

My favourite author: Paul Auster

My favourite book: "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving

My favourite "classic" author: Alexandre Dumas

My favourite "popular" author: Terry Pratchett

The character from fiction I have been likened to: Holden Caulfield (more than once actually.... I don't really see it myself)

The fictional character I'm actually most like: Eeyore

The book I was told I simply must read as the voice of the narrator was so like me it was uncanny: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (... so of course, I slogged my way though that and totally failed to see that either).

The character from 'Lord of the Rings' I fancy I'm most like: Aragorn

The character from 'Lord of the Rings' I am probably actually most like: Elrond (particularly the really sulky, know-it-all version portrayed by Hugo Weaving in the films)

You?
---

I'm off to a wedding tomorrow.... so no earworms, I'm afraid (although my head has mainly been filled with "Me and Julio Down By The School Yard" by Paul Simon this week, if you're interested. I heard it in a vintage clothes shop on the Cowley Road in Oxford the other week and I haven't been able to shake it since).

Have a good weekend y'all.

Me? Well, I finally got home from work at about 10.00 this morning, after about 25 hours solid, so....more sleeeeeeeeeeep. Sleep is goooooooood.

Did I actually do or achieve anything in that 25 hours? hmmm.

going for gold...

What, as Henry Kelly might once have said, am I?

-> I was first published in 1864

-> I am now in my 145th edition

-> I'm highly collectible: my first edition sold for one shilling and now changes hands for upwards of £20,000

-> That first edition ran to 112 pages, but between my distinctive mustard yellow covers this year are 1680 pages, all of them dedicated to my chosen subject



My Wisden arrived this morning.

I buy this every year, and now have twenty-one different editions of the Almanack itself and each of the four accompanying compendiums. Why do I have hundreds and thousands of pages worth of cricketing statistics and other assorted nuggets of information on the game and the people who play it? I'm not sure really. I just love it. I might be in a minority of one here, but for me it is an intensely comforting book, one to be dipped into over the course of the next twelve months and for years to come. It is a keen reminder of times past, but it is also a harbinger of summers to come. It is a window into an older, more ordered and conservative world, but it is also fiercely independent and sometimes outspoken. You have no doubt already written this off as an incredibly tedious book, but for fans of cricket, it remains the bible. Far more than just a record of games gone, it is a mine of comment, information and - yes - amusement. This is not a book that takes itself - or its subject - too seriously: amidst its otherwise fairly sombre and straightfaced tributes to various people associated with the game of cricket, the 1965 edition contained the following obituary:

"CAT, Peter, whose ninth life ended on November 5, 1964, was a well-known cricket-watcher at Lord's, where he spent 12 of his 14 years. He preferred a close-up view of the proceedings and his sleek, black form could often be seen prowling on the field of play when the crowds were biggest. He frequently appeared on the television screen. Mr SC Griffith, secretary of MCC, said of him: `He was a cat of great character and loved publicity'."

Not funny ha-ha, perhaps, but if any of us provoke as fond a tribute when we pass on, then I think we'll be doing pretty well.

As a result of the book's longevity too, it provides us with a uniquely slanted perspective on the history of the last two-hundred years. One of the hardest editions to find is the one from 1919 (which actually features Statue John's grandfather as a cricketer of the year). That year's book contains the lists of war dead; those cricketers killed during the First World War. It is as moving and eloquent as almost anything else I have seen on the same subject. The names of the perhaps great cricketers of the future that were never allowed to fulfill their potential are somehow painfully emblematic of the human tragedy of war. Another famous edition is the copy of the 1939 edition belonging to E.W. Swanton, the distinguished cricket writer. It was the copy that he had with him when he was taken prisoner by the Japanese. It proved so popular with the other Prisoners of War that it had to be reserved in advance like a library book, and could be borrowed for no more than 12 hours at a time. It was stamped "Not subversive" by the guards and became so heavily thumbed that it was rebound by two prisoners using rice paste as glue. Swanton died, aged 92, in 2000 but that very same copy of the book is now on display in the museum at Lord's.

For these kinds of reasons, and for many others besides, Wisden is special and it's somehow more than just another book. It's magical, and I'm very much looking forward to getting stuck into my new copy.

Well Helmut. Will you play or pass?

Hmm. You just can't quite get past that bit about it being a 1,600 page book on cricket, can you?

the book I read...

Perhaps for the first time since he sang a song about some rabbits [warning - do not click this link unless you are prepared for tears], I have been somewhat inspired by Art Garfunkel. It turns out that Garfunkel has been keeping a list of all of the books that he has been reading since 1968. Book 1 was "The Confessions" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and was finished in June 1968, and Book 1023, the most recent, was "The Magnificent Ambersons" by Booth Tarkington. Inbetween he's read all kinds of things, although most of them sound very serious indeed (Goethe, Jung, Darwin, Proust... stuff like that).

I'm going to start my own list.

I've already got a list of the gigs that I attend around here somewhere, which I originally started partly out of a sense of regret that I had long since thrown away the concert tickets that I had been collecting since I saw the Cult at Wembley Arena in about 1988. Those tickets provided solid, documentary evidence of all those ropey metal gigs I attended in my youth, and at some point I chucked them all away....

Anyway.

Keeping a list of the books that I read is something else that I've been meaning to do for ages and have never quite got round too (I've not found Shelfari terribly satisfactory in this regard). This isn't going to be the next Alphabeticon or anything like that, and I'm certainly not about to wander around my bookshelves detailing what I've read. This isn't going to be retrospective, it's simply going to be an ongoing list of the books that I've currently got on the boil.

I'm afraid it's not going to be as highbrow as Mr. Garfunkel's list by any stretch of the imagination, but I think my reading tastes may be as broad a church as my musical tastes.... perhaps broader.

So, here we go, listed by the date when I started them.

#	Dates:	Title:	Author:	Pub.
	TBR
59	October 2009	Resurrection Men	Ian Rankin	2002
58	September 2009	The Falls	Ian Rankin	2001
57	September 2009	Set in Darkness	Ian Rankin	2000
56	August 2009	Last Seen Wearing	Colin Dexter	1976
55	August 2009	Last Bus To Woodstock	Colin Dexter	1975
54	July 2009	Dead Souls	Ian Rankin	1999
53	July 2009	Goldfinger	Ian Fleming	1959
52	July 2009	Beggar's Banquet	Ian Rankin	2002
51	June 2009	The Hanging Garden	Ian Rankin	1998
50	June 2009	Wisden 2009	Scyld Berry (ed.)	2009
49	May 2009	The God Delusion	Richard Dawkins	2006
48	May 2009	Black and Blue	Ian Rankin	1997
47	April 2009	Let It Bleed	Ian Rankin	1996
46	April 2009	Dr No	Ian Fleming	1957
45	March 2009	Mortal Causes	Ian Rankin	1994
44	March 2009	The Black Book	Ian Rankin	1993
43	March 2009	Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part In Its Downfall	Luke Haines	2009
42	Feb 2009	Provided You Don't Kiss Me: 20 Years with Brian Clough	Duncan Hamilton	2007
41	Feb 2009	Strip Jack	Ian Rankin	1992
40	Feb 2009	Tooth and Nail	Ian Rankin	1992
39	Jan 2009	Hide and Seek	Ian Rankin	1991
38	Jan 2009	Knots and Crosses	Ian Rankin	1987
37	Dec 2008	The Art of Conversation	Catherine Blyth	2008
36	Dec 2008	Britain in Revolution 1625-1660	Austin Woolrych	2002
35	Nov 2008	Wolverine: Origins	Bill Jemas, Paul Jenkins, Joe Quesada	2001-2
34	Nov 2008	The New Avengers 2: Sentry	Brian Michael Bendis	2005
33	Oct 2008	The Graveyard Book	Neil Gaiman	2008
32	Oct 2008	Kingdom Come	Mark Waid & Alex Ross	1996
31	Oct 2008	The New Avengers 1	Brian Michael Bendis	2005
30	Oct 2008	Weapon X	Barry Windsor-Smith	1991
29	Oct 2008	Ultimate Marvel Team Up Ultimate Edition	Brian Michael Bendis	2001/2
28	Oct 2008	World War Hulk	Greg Pak, John Romita Jr	2007
27	Oct 2008	Planet Hulk	Greg Pak	2006
26	Oct 2008	Snuff	Chuck Palahniuk	2008
25	Sept 2008	The Tenant of Wildfell Hall	Anne Brontë	1848
24	Sept 2008	Quantum of Solace: The Complete James Bond Short Stories	Ian Fleming	variously from 1960
23	Sept 2008	Sandman: Fables & Reflections	Neil Gaiman	1991,92,93
22	Sept 2008	Sandman: A Game of You	Neil Gaiman	1991/92
21	Sept 2008	Sandman: Seasons of Mists	Neil Gaiman	1990/91
20	Sept 2008	Sandman: Dream Country	Neil Gaiman	1990
19	Sept 2008	Sandman: The Dolls House	Neil Gaiman	1989/90
18	Sept 2008	Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes	Neil Gaiman	1988/9
17	August 2008	Batman: Dark Knight Returns	Frank Miller & Klaus Janson & Lynn Varley	1986
16	August 2008	Civil War: Front Line (vols 1 & 2)	Paul Jenkins	2006/7
15	August 2008	Civil War	Mark Millar	2006/7
14	August 2008	Civil War: Road to Civil War	Brian Michael Bendis & J. Michael Straczynski	2007
13	August 2008	Batman: Killing Joke	Alan Moore & Brian Bolland	1986
12	August 2008	Batman: Dark Victory	Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale	1999/2000
11	August 2008	Batman: Long Halloween	Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale	1996/7
10	August 2008	Batman: Hush (vol 1 & 2)	Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee	2003
9	August 2008	Daredevil: Yellow	Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale	2002
8	July 2008	Batman: Year One	Frank Miller & David Mazzuchelli	1987
7	July 2008	No Country for Old Men	Cormac McCarthy	2005
6	July 2008	The Road	Cormac McCarthy	2006
5	July 2008	Once Upon a Time in the North	Philip Pullman	2008
4	June 2008	You're Not the Only One (you can buy it here - it's for Charity and everything)	Sarah J Peach (ed)	2008
3	May 2008	Devil May Care	Sebastian Faulks as Ian Fleming	2008
2	April 2008	Wisden 2008	Scyld Berry (ed.)	2008
1	March 2008	Life: A Users Manual	Georges Perec	1978

Um. And that's it for now. Nothing else to see here for now. I'll just add this to my sidebar and keep it updated, for my own entertainment if for nobody else's.

Excellent.

That's another pointless list started then.

will soon be gone...

[I've tried to make this spoiler free, by the way]

JK Rowling has apparently now sold 325 million books worldwide. The last four books in the Harry Potter series have sucessively been the fastest selling books in history. She is estimated to have a personal fortune of something like £545m. So I suppose it's fair to say that she's done reasonably well since she first sat down in 1995 and hammered out "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" on an old manual typewriter.

I jumped onto the band wagon at around about the time of the third book, when I quickly devoured "The Philosopher's Stone", "The Chamber of Secrets" and "The Prisoner of Azakaban" and joined the growing throng waiting for the publication of "The Goblet of Fire", which is where it all seemed to go absolutely crazy.

I finished the seventh and last book ("The Deathly Hallows") a couple of weeks ago now and to be honest, I'm fairly glad it's over. I was always going to read my way through to the bitter end, but since the high watermark of book 3, some of the magic and charm was gone and the books have got longer and longer and the writing has seemed flabby, as if the publishers now felt that it was more important to get the book out quickly and to milk their cash cow than it was to make sure that the text was properly edited. When C. finished the last book, I asked her if she thought it was any good, and she paused for a moment before saying "No". Clearly this wasn't going to stop me from reading it, but did I agree? Yes, I suppose I did. Sure, it was interesting in places and it held my attention, but I found it largely unsatisfactory and felt mildly confused and a little bit cheated by the ending. By contrast, when I finished the last of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" books, I was in tears.

The world of wizards and muggles, of Hogwarts and Gringotts, of Dumbledore and Voldemort is - without question - beautifully conceived by the author. The stories are (in the main) engaging and the characters appealing. But in the end, what is Rowling's legacy? Are these stories that are going to stand the test of time? Rowling would probably be quick to agree that she's no C.S.Lewis, but her handling of the characters and their adolescent emotions was sometimes appallingly clumsy and the dialogue stilted. Consider Hermione for a moment: she was one of the three major characters, and yet after seven books, did she ever become anything more than a crudely drawn cipher of the class swot, sitting in the front row of class with her hand straining in the air to answer every question? Was Ron ever really more than the loyal but slightly dim best friend?

To my mind, the answer to both questions is no. We never really find out about Voldemort either.... yes, yes I get the parallels with Nazism and purity of the blood and all that, but are we supposed to believe he was just born bad? Is that how we explain Hitler?

Is it fair of me to fault Rowling because she doesn't have the grander ambitions of a writer like Philip Pullman? Pullman's "Dark Materials" books are aimed at an older audience, it's true, but the scope of his imagination seems so much grander, his references wider and his writing so much more artful....

Perhaps I'm being too critical. I am thirty-three years old and the books are, after all, intended for an audience at least half my age. Rowling's crowning achievement simply has to be that she got children to put aside their computers and their playstations for a little while whilst they sat quietly and read a book.

For that alone, I salute her.

Just don't get me started on the ending.

What?

What?

Eh?

Pffff.

funny clothes, tinkling bell...

C. finished with the new Harry Potter whilst I was at the cricket yesterday (where I noticed that lots of other people were reading it with the test match as their backdrop). We've only got the one copy in our house, so I was waiting for her to finish before I can get my teeth into it.



So, what did she think? Is it any good?

Well, without wanting to spoil anything for me, she gave me a one word answer:

"No."

Oh dear.

Rather than just drop everything to read this, I reckon I might just carry with on with the book I've currently got on the go.


It's about Lance Armstrong and the 2004 Tour de France (which was to be his record-breaking 6th win). In the light of all of the scandals that have erupted in cycling since, some of the sections writing about Michele Ferrari, Alexander Vinokourov, Tyler Hamilton, Bjarne Riis, Floyd Landis and the like can only be read with a strong sense of foreboding and sadness about what we know happened next... positive drugs tests, mainly.... followed by vehement denials and often court cases.

Was Armstrong clean? I don't know.

I'd love to believe that he was, but I'm not sure I completely can.

Does it matter? Surely he's a hero anyway?

Hmm.

As for this year's Tour: well, congratulations to Alberto Contador, but with the best will in the world, that's not going to be what the world remembers, is it?

The Tour will endure, I have no doubts about that.... but the riders are going to have to change.

Anyway, wizardy nonsense can wait for another day.

I'm a man with a mission in two or three editions...

I love books me.

So when the Ultimate Olympian sent me a link to this with the words "Saw this, thought of you", what the hell else was I supposed to do?

[I'm dumping this flash nonsense. You can see my shelf here]

I think I'm going to use this little baby to try and keep a list of the books on my "To Be Read" (TBR) pile. Not just books that I abstractly want to read, but books that are actually sat in a pile next to my bed waiting for me to pick them up and read them. That kind of a TBR pile.

Well, the ones nearest to the top anyway.

If I can work out how to do it, I'll embed it in my sidebar too. That way you too can see how long that Henry James stays there unread as I plough my way through sport books....

Won't that be fun?

Go on.

Sign up.

You know you want to.

(and where can I get one of these for records?)

---

and for reference, of the books listed above, I am actively reading:

-> the biography of Keith Miller
-> "The Master" (no, it's not a Doctor Who novel...)
-> That book on the Tour de France.)

Although I did have a brief diversion on Monday when I read "Elektra: Assassin". That's literature too, right?

stepping outside she is free...

Do you remember Wandering Scribe?

Wandering Scribe was the blogger who was homeless and living in her car in a laneway in a wood.

Here's how she described herself:

"Feb, 2006. For the past five months I have been living alone in a car at the edge of the woods — jobless and homeless and totally unable to find a way out of it. I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't scream loudly enough, all I can do is write. So here I am laying down tracks...hopefully the start of an online paper trail out of here."

The thing that grabbed me first about her blog was not her situation (although that seemed remarkable enough) - I was grabbed by the writing. I don't think I have seen any other blog with such a high and sustained level of quality. I was absolutely gripped by it and the way that the author managed to hang onto her dignity in some of the most difficult of circumstances. I particularly remember her description of how she found somewhere to have a shower in the bowels of a faceless hospital. The way she is certain that she looks out of place and will be caught and thrown out, the way she describes the feeling as the hot water cleans her body and helps wash some of the kinks and aches out of her muscles. The way she is completely thrown by a stranger's small talk..... it's desperate stuff, and very moving.

"Parked car in hospital carpark and hurried the long way round, around the back, into the toilets, where had a long, hot shower and hairwash. Been going there to wash for months now. Most days it's easy to slip in unseen among all the patients and visitors and doctors and nurses hurrying urgently about up and down the corridors. It's like a small city, with its own laws and rules, all those smells and sounds. In my head I try to imagine I am rushing in there to visit someone who has just been rushed in — which could account for my just-jumped-out-of-the-wrong-side-of-bed look. People seem to make allowances for that in a hospital, don't stare so much, or judge.

I weave in and out among all the moving trolleys and wheelchairs and stunned-looking patients in dressing gowns shuffling about attached to drips. Make my way, fox-like, down to the toilets with the showers in — threading my way through the crowd, head down, the way I see the foxes do at night, slinking in wet through the trees. Some mornings it is busier than others, often it's like walking into an episode of Casualty. Would be easy to imagine myself as an extra, part of the crowd scene. But don't allow myself to think like that, slipping off into fantasies — dangerous thinking.

Though it's getting more and more difficult to merge into the crowd unnoticed these days. Lots of the staff seem to recognise me now, and must know I'm not working or visiting — walking in there creased and unwashed first thing in the morning — or at least every other morning — dishevelled, disorientated, more and more down at hill. Nowadays they give me very hostile, cold looks, or the two black security men who tower above most of the others follow me with cold, suspicious eyes, which makes me want to break down and cry. Which is what everybody seems to want to do, break me down, get me into a loony bin. But I won't be broken, I am not mad, and I will not be made to go mad."

Wandering Scribe was "discovered" by the media and was featured in a number of high profile places like the BBC News website (here and here)and the New York Times. Inevitably, the trolls soon appeared and seemed to make it their mission to crush her. I have never seen such a sustained campaign of hatred against anyone on the internet. They took this to sometimes extraordinary lengths and seemed hellbent on destruction. It was horrible to watch, but I felt powerless to help. Maybe she was a fraud, but even if she was, would she deserve all that vitriol?

I left supportive comments and sent the odd email of solidarity, but it really didn't feel like much, and before long she seemed to be drawn back into her shell. Updates to the blog became less frequent and comments were disabled.

I was worried, but Wandering Scribe's life was changing. There was a book deal and enough money to move away from the laneway and into a flat. There was a story to write.

Well, that story was published yesterday.



...and bless her heart, it turns out that my occasional comments and my ridiculous profile picture cheered her up from time to time. She emailed me to tell me that she's sending me a copy of her book. It's a lovely gesture, but I would have gone out to go and buy it anyway. This girl is talented and she has a story to tell.

Seriously.

Well done Anya. Here's to the next chapter.

F Scott Fitzgerald: baa bababa baa....

---
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

And so ends "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Is that the greatest last line in the history of American literature? Well, according to that renowned literary authority, the Director of IT in my office, it is.

Quite how this came up in conversation at all, I'm not entirely sure. He barely talks to me. Given that I consider him to be slippery and insincere, this is not a situation that troubles me greatly. So how did we end up talking about great works of American literature? Well, the truth is that we didn't really talk about American literature at all. He wandered over to me and told me that the last line of "The Great Gatsby" was the finest in American literature. Fact.

Nothing is surer to get my back up than by telling me that something is a fact. I have a Masters degree in history; I know that there is no such thing as a fact. History also taught me that whilst everyone has a valid and unique perspective, if they expect me to share in that opinion, then they're going to need to show their working.

"What's the line?"
He couldn't remember it, so I looked it up on google. I read it out to him.
"Yup. That's it. The finest final line in American literature. Have you read it?"
I admitted that no, I'd never got further than the first page. It's not a long book, so it was on my "pending" pile waiting for a gap in my reading schedule. "Is it good?"
He looked at me and ducked the question. "It's got the best last line in American literature".
He clearly hadn't read it. I looked at the line again.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Even read out of context it looked like a decent line, albeit one with the faintest whiff of pretension about it. I could easily imagine that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that line and then sat back in his chair with a sigh of self-satisfaction, took a drag on a cigarette and reached for his martini. I thought about the line for a moment. Was it really the greatest final line in American literature?

"What about Steinbeck? "The Grapes of Wrath"? Huck Finn? "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? "The Scarlet Letter"? "Moby Dick"? "A Farewell to Arms"? "The Catcher In The Rye"? Nabakov? Kerouac? Heller? Vonnegut? De Lillo even?"

He looked at me for a moment, blinked and shrugged. "It's "The Great Gatsby"." Then his mobile phone rang and he wandered off, denying me the chance to ask him why.

It's not that I think that "The Great Gatsby" doesn't contain the greatest last line in American literature, it's just that I'm not going to believe it just because someone told me that it did. The only way to know for sure is to read every single work of American literature and make up my own mind.

I'm starting with "The Great Gatsby".

So far so good.