Ponderings

I just started reading Bess of Hardwick by Mary S. Lovell. It’s been on my TBR list for literally years, and last year I picked up a copy at Oxfam, and now I’m finally getting to it.

One problem I have, as a confirmed book addict, is that everything I read makes me want to read more. Reading Blink, which I finished this afternoon, made me want to read The Tipping Point and other sociological/psychological things. But Bess is insidious. Even after just reading the introduction, I want to read a ton of stuff.

None of it’s really related to the Tudors, though – they’re a little bit out of my period. No, what the introduction to Bess did is make me want to get back to my own research: music in Middle English literature. I have over 200 articles and many, many poems saved on their own hard drive, just waiting for my attention. And they’re always at the back of my mind, but what the introduction to Bess has done is bring them to the front.

Blink aided and abetted this as well, with all its talk of experts being able to hone their snap judgment ability. I found myself wanting to be an expert in something – and what am I an expert in? Middle English poetry and its connection to music. I also had lunch today with a PhD-student friend of mine, and that helped the motivation as well.

I have been telling myself that I will keep collecting and reading articles and poems (thank goodness for TEAMS) so that when I am financially able to do a PhD, I won’t be completely out of the loop. Maybe it’s time that I make a dedicated study plan and actually do it.

Cravings

I am a firm believer in the idea that you should give in to your cravings. Within reason, of course. I'm not a hedonist. But cravings are one way that your body tells you what you need. If you're craving fish and chips, it's probably because you need whatever nutrients and starches are in fish and chips, and you are perfectly justified in paying the 1.99 for a Sainsbury's ready meal even though you've told yourself that you won't buy any more food until you eat what you have in the house.

Reading cravings work the same way. They tell you what your mind and soul needs. And if you try to force a book on your mind that doesn't fit those needs, it can go very badly.

For example, I have 25+ books on my shelves that I haven't read and want to. I started reading one a few days ago. it's by a writer whom I like (at least, I liked his first book). But I can't get into it. It doesn't hold my attention. It doesn't fit my cravings. There's nothing wrong with the writing. It's just not what I'm looking for right now.

And then I went to the newly refurbished local library (which has beautiful new self-service machines) and came out with three books that I will probably finish in the next couple of days: one that I read about on a blog just recently, and two by an author that I've had a craving to reread for ages. I'm already further in one of the books I checked out four hours ago than I am in the book that I've been reading for four days. I also had a craving to sit in a coffee shop - or at least an aversion to sitting at home - so I did that too, and wrote a letter, a poem, and a journal entry as well as reading several chapters.

Give in to the cravings. Your spirit will thank you.

Desert Island Discs

My best friend and I did the “Desert Island Discs” game the other day. We created a shortlist of 10 and a finalist list of 5 for the music, movies, and books categories, with the added rule (stolen from the radio Desert Island Discs program) that the Bible and Shakespeare are already on the island. These are the books, DVDs, and albums that (at this point) we would want with us forever.

It was really difficult, and actually a little surprising. I’m a big fan of doing things like this every so often, to see how your tastes have changed over time – and sometimes how they haven’t, even if you think they have. Some of my favourites – most-played songs, most-watched films, books that I love – did not make the list. If they were songs, then the whole album wasn’t worth it; books were emotional in perhaps the wrong way (Hardy, I’m looking at you), films I’d watched so many times that even looking at them makes the whole thing play in my head.

It’s also quite challenging. Do you pick your “comfort” items? Things that you’ve been meaning to get to but haven’t had the time? A combination of the two? Is length a consideration? (For example, if it comes down to a choice between two books by your favourite author, do you pick the longer one?) Do series count as separate items, or one item total? What about “collected works” or anthologies or single-volume sets?

It was challenging, but here’s my final list. I say final, but really it’s just final as of last week when we did this. Lists like this are so dependent on mood and state of mind that it’s entirely possible that my list will change again tomorrow.

Books:

Finalists – A Room with a View (E.M. Forster), Bet Me (Jennifer Crusie), An Equal Music (Vikram Seth), Persuasion (Jane Austen), The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)

Runners-Up – Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery), The Robin Hood Handbook, Bellwether (Connie Willis), The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery), War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

Comments – I went with the comfort items on this list, for the most part. A Room with a View is my favourite book ever, and every time I read it I find something new in it. Bet Me is also one of my comfort books; I find it nearly perfect. An Equal Music is one of the best books I’ve ever read that shows what it’s like to be a musician. Persuasion is my favourite Jane Austen, even beating Pride and Prejudice, in part because of the letter at the end which is one of the most romantic letters in all of fiction. The Canterbury Tales makes the list for two reasons: I couldn’t go without something in Middle English, and I’ve never actually read the whole thing. So, in a way, it’s both a comfort book and a challenge book.

I was torn between The Canterbury Tales and The Robin Hood Handbook – Robin is my historical fictional boyfriend, after all – but ultimately decided that Chaucer had more variety. The Montgomery books are also wonderful, and comfort books for me, but not quite as meaty as the finalists. Bellwether is my favourite Connie Willis book, and there to satisfy the sci-fi/specfic side of me. And War and Peace is on the list purely for length – I liked it a lot when I read it and it would keep me entertained for quite a while. But it doesn’t come up to the personal emotion of the finalists.

Films:

Finalists – Singin’ in the Rain, Bend It Like Beckham, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Pride and Prejudice

Runners-up – North and South, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lion in Winter, Ratatouille, Beauty and the Beast

Comments – This is a list that changes almost every minute. It’s like picking your favourite child. It was actually harder to narrow this list down than it was for the books! But the first three are my all-time favourite films, than I can, have, and will watch over and over and over again, sometimes in the same day. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the “funny one” of the Indy movies, plus it features Sean Connery. And it doesn’t matter which of the (more recent) Pride and Prejudices it is. I adore both Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen.

Any of the runners-up could easily make the list on any given day, depending on mood and how recently I’ve seen or been reminded of that particular movie. And there are many more that could make the shortlist, again depending on day, mood, and proximity.

Music:

Finalists – Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev), Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), Wicked, Carmen (Bizet), Revolver (The Beatles)

Runners –up – Amahl and the Night Visitors (Menotti), Abbey Road (The Beatles), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles), Led Zeppelin IV, Joshua Tree (U2)

Comments – This is where I surprised myself. I thought I was moving away from classical music and more towards pop/rock/alt stuff. But it turns out, when picking the albums to go with me onto a fictional desert island for the rest of my life, I go back to my roots. Romeo and Juliet is my favourite of the Prokofiev ballets, or really orchestral music in general. Beethoven’s 9^th is, without a doubt, the most perfect creation of musical structure, themes, instrumentation, and just everything that has ever been performed ever. Carmen is my favourite opera. Wicked is currently my singalong musical, although depending on mood it could easily be another one; I do need something in my range to sing along with, though. And Revolver is my current favourite Beatles album.

I really debated between the three Beatles albums that I had on the shortlist. All three of them are amazing, and are the three that I listen to all the way through, without skipping. Sgt. Pepper is even my stated all-time favourite Beatles album. But for some reason in my subconscious, possibly because it has one of my favourite tracks, Revolver was the one that I chose to come with me. Led Zeppelin IV is partially on the list for my rock interests, but as it turned out it didn’t hold a candle to the others. And Amahl is wonderful, but very occasion-specific. I sometimes listen to it when it’s not Christmas time, but I listen to Carmen all year long.

As previously stated, these lists are only valid for the day and time that we did them; they are subject to change based on mood and experience. But it’s an interesting exercise nonetheless. Have you ever done the Desert Island Discs game?

Jasper Fforde is awesome, and random encounters

Last night I went to hear Jasper Fforde speak about his new book, Shades of Grey. It was fantastic. I'd also let one of my friends know; we didn't exactly go together, but there was still an empty seat next to me when he arrived, so we hung out during and after.

The book's been on sale this week at Waterstone's - half-price - and the ticket price for the event could go toward the book, so I only paid six quid on the night for the book. Which I was very excited about, because (a) I don't have an income right now, and (b) I doubt that it'll even be that cheap in a year or so when it comes out in paperback.

Jasper Fforde was very personable and funny. He talked about his path to becoming a writer, about the book (including a few passages), and answered questions. Some paraphrased quotations:

"After stealing - sorry, paying homage - to other people's ideas, I decided to write my own story with my own characters."

"Writing is a series of challenges or dares - a bit like Scottish cuisine."

"Because I'm the author, and I can do whatever I want, I generally do."

"Writing is never finished, only abandoned."

He also mentioned his publication schedule, which is a book every year for at least the next three. He didn't say a lot about the sequel to Shades of Grey, but the next Thursday Next book and especially the next Nursery Crimes Division book (which isn't scheduled until 2013) sound fascinating. The most recent NCD book, The Fourth Bear, also sounds fascinating ("How is the porridge different temperatures when it was poured at the same time?"), and it's the only other one of his that I haven't read yet.

He signed books afterwards. James and I started off in what turned out to be the buying line, but switched to the signing line once we realized. We were chatting when one of the three girls in front of us asked if I was American. I said I was, and asked where they were from. Minnesota, Chicago....are you the Luther group? And they were. We talked the whole rest of the way to the front of the line.

Jasper Fforde in person was very friendly and cheerful, even after almost an hour of signing. I can't wait to read this book (I got to chapter three before the talk started).....and everything else that he ever writes.

In which I play with books

Well, my last few posts were depressing and horrible. Or, rather, horribly depressing. Good news! I went to the doctor, I got happy pills, I got my appetite back, and I feel like I can do things again.

Like enter a short story contest.

One of the things I do with my time is play with books. That sounds facetious. I volunteer at a charity shop (Cancer Research UK) and organize their book donations. We try not to have goods on the shop floor for more than a couple of weeks – after that, they get “culled” and go to one of the other shops in town, to get to a new customer base or something like that. So after I sort through the donations, I go through the books on the shelves, pulling the old ones. Then I price and set out new books from the donations.

It’s quite the process, really. I have so much power over these books! I decide whether they are in good enough condition to go out on the shelves (if they’re not, they get recycled in some way), or recent enough. Fiction isn’t a problem, of course, but textbooks and travel books especially – if they’re not from the 21^st century, I toss them. I tossed one today that was a guide to Windows 95. I’m assuming that no one needs a user’s guide to Windows 95 for anything other than nostalgia value. Sometimes I feel bad about some of the travel guides, especially – it can be really interesting to see the differences in tourist advice, or popular areas, or prices over the years. But there’s a point when it’s interesting and a window where it’s too recent to be interesting, too old to be relevant. That window is when I put them in the big white bag.

I have a system of sorts for the storage room, too. Most of the books we get are, of course, fiction. They go on the built in shelves on the outside wall. They’re organized by size rather than anything else, purely for ease of stacking and access. Mass-market paperbacks are on the lowest shelf, just under eye-height, then trade paperbacks (slightly bigger, with slightly harder covers), and then on the top shelf are the large paperbacks – the ones that I’ve seen now as “airport editions” and things like that. Also on the top shelf are some of the non-fiction paperbacks: history, biography, etc. Basically that wall is for anything that you – I – would check out of a library.

Hardcovers are on the other wall, kind of in the same way. Fiction in one area, non-fiction in another. And then we have the reference/specialty books. Diet books, cookbooks (so many cookbooks), gardening books, bird-watching, languages, basically anything that doesn’t fit in with the other categories. They get a shelf of their own, with cookbooks getting a stack on the shelf right by the door. (Seriously. So many cookbooks.)

Kids books are separated into the ones that can go in the 50p bin (picture books, etc.) and the ones that are more for tweens and young adults, which are priced about the same as adult books are. We got a box a couple of months ago that was stacked full to overflowing with teen-girl type books. Some of them are still in the box. I’m shifting them as quickly as I can.

I’m shifting all the books as quickly as I can, really. We have five and a half shelves on the shop floor for books – three of them usually have paperbacks of various sizes, one has hardcover, and one has miscellaneous non-fiction, with a half-shelf near toys for the tween/young adult books. We sell quite a lot of books, and cull quite a lot on a regular basis, but the storage room never seems to diminish.

And some of that is because of days like today. I walked in today and I could not enter the book storage room. We’d gotten so many donations over Christmas (the last time I was in was December 22) that there was literally nowhere else to put the books. It took me at least two hours just to get things sorted, and I was absolutely ruthless about recycling books. If there was any doubt about condition or suitability, into the white recycling bag it went. I then put something like 60 books on the shelves – and one of my fellow volunteers had already done two shelves.

There were three or four boxes full of books today, as well as the mass of bags. I think they were part of an estate sale or something like that. They were nearly all older books, with quite a lot of cookbooks and gardening books and wine-making and things like that. This was one of the times that it was difficult for me to be ruthless when throwing them out (or not), even though I knew I had to be. I kept thinking of my grandparents’ house, which was, and I’m sure is still, crammed to the rafters with books. The collection reflects so much about my grandparents: their interests, hobbies, activities, and so on. I could tell, going through these boxes, what the person who’d had this collection was like in a similar way. I could picture my grandparents’ books going through the same treatment (once the family has pulled out the ones we personally want of course) – sorting through my grandparents’ lives with only minimal consideration for the emotion and history of the books, only looking at how saleable they are. I know it’s necessary, but it’s still difficult.