On the Beat

Last summer, frankie_ecap and coughingbear signed me up for the blog a Penguin classic scheme: I had to read a book, write a review of it, and post it on the Penguin classic blog.

It took me many months to get around to finishing it; and now the blog refuses to recognise me. Maybe it will be working tomorrow.

Edit: I have now submitted it - only to find that once posted, reviews are selected at random to be displayed. So I can't even direct you to it!

( In the meantime, I am going to show willing by posting my review here! (Although this is significantly longer than I posted, since the charater count is only 2000... )

I found this on frumiousb’s journal.

( These are the top 106 books most often marked as  )

Courtesy of coughingbear, I have been signed up with Blog A Penguin Classic to review a book. The book allocated to me is Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.

I can't remember if I have read this. I know I have read other Austen - Emma at a minimum - in my teens. And I have of course been enveloped in other media depictions of the book - the films, the TV series, and the paraodies.

I can't help wondering how easy it will be to remove my knowledge of the book to actually review it (hopefully, intelligently, though I am going to assume that!).

I am also curious about just why Penguin are giving out copies of their books to get people to write about them. This isn't what publishers usually do. Usually, they sell books. (Although all the books that they are including are, I guess, long out of copyright, so they can give them away at no great cost.) These books must have volumes written about them already - there are huge Jane Austen industries working away.

I can only think that Penguin are hoping to gain publicity (and they have already got a lot of people on my flist talking about it), cashing in on the boom in children's books (courtesy of Mr Potter and his earthbound creation, "JK" Rowling) by getting interested adults talking about the classics - and making people think that they need to catch up with classics they missed, or re-read ones they loved.

I often find books hard to write about. (Like many other things!) I am sceptical what I will have to add to the volumes already written about Pride and Prejudice.

Never mind. I'll add another book to the pile to be read!

I like this one a lot. And I said I never wrote fanfic?

My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is: Hermione Granger gets addicted to crack in a very sexy scene Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

And again...

My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is: Draco Malfoy burns down Hogwarts, and everybody celebrates with a nuclear weapon Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

Surreal moment of the week

Last night I was sitting watching TV; strangely I found myself watching Gardener's World. I don't have a garden, and while I am passionate about some plants, gardening has really never been my thing. But I rather like watching gardening shows on TV.

Last night's programme was mostly about protecting plants from drying out during the heat of the summer.

And after hearing about floods throughout central England, three motorways (the M4 M5 and M50) closed because of rain, trains unable to run in case the tracks were washed - well, the idea that there were gardeners around Britain thinking how they could stop their garden plants drying out seemed quite quite bizarre.

They are probably thinking how to stop them drowning.

Seagulls in Aberdeen

The story, from the BBC Scotland website

Video of the BBC footage, on YouTube

Dramatic U-turn of the week

I was standing in Sainsbury's, waiting to pay. And they had a pile of the new Harry Potter book, at half price. So I bought one. Largely because I couldn't think of a reason not to - I know I am going to buy it at some point (though I was intending to wait for the paperback), and at half price it just seemed to make sense.

You may already know that I am a fan of Patti Smith, and in particular Horses. Her first three records - Horses, Radio Ethiopia and Easter - are amongst my favourites,

I recently read Break It Up: Patti Smith’s Horses and the remaking of rock and roll. A biography of the album in much the same way that Ashley Kahn’s books on A Love Supreme and Kind of Blue are, this was a very interesting - and rather exciting - book.

( the days of love and torment - the nights of rock and roll... )

white_hart has written a post about children’s book prize winners. I have read a lot of children’s books, and not just when I was a child. Tey are quite interesting lists; like white_hart I am sure I have forgotten some, and it might always be possible that I have recognised some names and think I have read them when in fact I haven’t.

If you are interested, I have read 28% of the Carnegie winners, only 7% of the Newberry winners, and 35% of the Booker winners.

Plus I knew Frank Cottrell Boyce at university (though he was just plain Frank Boyce back then; we did plays together) [And I just Googled him to make sure he was who I thought he was. And he was!]. And I met quite a few of these authors at one time or another. (But that is a whole other story, which I really should get around to telling. One day.)

( Lists, lists and more lists )

I went into Waterstones yesterday. I didn’t mean to, of course, but I had my brother staying, and he wanted to go shopping, and I refused to go into HMV (strange, since of course HMV own Waterstones), and Waterstones was next door. So I went into Waterstones.

I picked up three new books to add to my pile of books I have but haven’t read yet.

Whilst I was there I picked up a leaflet – Waterstones’ choice of the 100 top books from the last twenty five years, to celebrate their twenty five years in bookselling.

The list can be found on the Telegraph site.

( Here’s the list in full. )

Everyone else seems to have produced lists of the books they have read - or started to read - during the last year. As well as a list, though, I want to say a bit about what I thought of them, too; otherwise, for me, it would be like trainspotting - ticking books of a list. I want to remember what I thought when I read them.

And I can't remember everything I have read (though this may be because this is all I have read, or it may be all I can remember).

( Not just what I read; but what I thought about it, too. )

I was in a quandry this evening. I was very close to finishing the book I have been reading for the past day or so - the very brilliant Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. I think it is a work of genius - truly - a very powerful, affecting book, that has had me laughing and crying.

But it is also - well, kind of traumatic. I shall write more about it later, but take it from me, brilliant though it might be, it is isn't light.

And here I was close to finishing it, knowing that I would have a whole lot more reading time this evening in between concerts and on the tube and stuff, and I was wondering how to fill it.

So I went into Foyles on the South Bank, since that was where I happened to be. I wanted somethnig fun, light - frothy even. A quick kind of throwaway book, something to make me smile, not too deep.

I looked for the humour section. There wasn't one. I looked for the table of three-for-two offers - usually full of that kind of stuff. Not a sign.

I trawled the fiction section - and could see nothing that grabbed. Many non-funny, serious, even suicidal volumes; these were jumping out at me, but no! Not for me, not tonight.

f4f3 and white_hart have both been raving about the Princess Bride, in both celluloid and print versions; I asked at the desk, but they didn't have it. (And the woman behind the desk raved about it, too.)

Someone was going on about Terry Pratchett - but they didn't Small Gods, which seems to be the usual recommendation. I even looked at the Neil Gaiman, but again, none of the books they had were ones people had tried to get me to read.

I settled on a book about Italy by Tim Parks - and so far it is just what I wanted.

All this took me a lot longer than I had expected; such that the time I was looking to fill had been filled, and I had to go to my concert. So I needn't have bought a book anyway...