Blog | Nose in a book

Book spine poetry

August 20, 2013 2 Comments

I know, I know, book spine poetry was big back in 2011. But I didn’t get round to it back then and I had a sudden urge to have a go, so here are my rudimentary attempts.

Poem one

Boy missing, after dark
A child in the forest
Snow, winter’s bone
Fear and trembling
Don’t look now

Poem two

I, the divine,
The historian, the joke,
The outsider, the liar,
The dispossessed

Poem three

As I lay dying
Kiss kiss
A handful of dust
And now you can go

So have you ever tried creating poetry from book titles? Please do share links to yours or your favourites from other people.

Sunday Salon: Mooching

August 11, 2013 8 Comments

The Sunday Salon

I don’t know about you, but some weekends I just need to switch off and relax. But how I relax might mean different things at different times. For instance, I had planned to spend this weekend reading solidly, maybe even treat it like a read-a-thon with goals and a little stack of pre-selected books. But when the weekend rolled around I found that I needed something else. So I have read for maybe an hour or two total, but I have slept a lot, eaten good food, watched TV and films, listened to music, sat outside in the sunshine, laughed with friends and with Tim. And now I feel rejuvenated.

How do you relax? Do you need different types of down time?

Incidentally, this week is Bristol International Balloon Fiesta, so there’s been a lot of this:

Plus the roar of various stunt planes overhead, the pounding bass of the music every evening, fireworks that we can just about see over the rooftops. It’s one of the things I love about this city.

And now that my brain is back online, I have a backlog of reviews to write, not to mention another Graham Greene book to read for Simon of Savidge Reads’ wonderful challenge Greene for Gran, in which he encouraged us all to read some Graham Greene in honour of his recently departed grandmother, as Greene was her favourite author. It’s such a lovely idea and great to be reminded how brilliant Greene was.

What are you up to this weekend? Have you rediscovered any authors lately?

July reading round-up

July 31, 2013July 31, 2013 5 Comments

Is it this time again already? The month started so well, with our lovely lovely holiday in Cornwall where I did a whole lotta reading. But since then I have finished just one more book. One. In two and a half weeks. It’s like I overindulged on holiday and needed to lay off for a while! And I’ve not got through many short stories either because I usually listen to them at the gym and, well, I’ve not been to the gym a whole lot this month. Truly, I am disappointed with myself. I’ve also been a bit rubbish at posting reviews.

Clearly I need to buck up for August. My stack of books for next month’s reading is pretty big already, but on the plus side I’m looking forward to every single one. (And I’m already partway through two of them, which may help my goals a tiny bit.)

August book stack

Books read

The Wine of Solitude by Irène Némirovsky (review here)

Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill (review here)

Ashes by Sergios Gakas (review here)

Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman (review to follow)

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey (review to follow)

Short stories read

“The children’s grandmother” by Sylvia Townsend Warner (New Yorker fiction podcast)

“Cryptology” by Leonard Michaels (New Yorker fiction podcast)

“Special delivery” by Emma Newman (read by the author here)

“A fair exchange” by Emma Newman (read by the author here)

“The quiet librarian by Emma Newman (available online here)

“Wilderness” by Sarah Hall (online here)

Sunday Salon: Women on banknotes? Oh my.

July 28, 2013 2 Comments

The Sunday Salon

So there’s been a bit of controversy lately about women on UK banknotes, or rather the lack of them. It began in April when the Bank of England announced that from 2016, Winston Churchill will replace Elizabeth Fry on the £5 note. This caused a bit of an upset because Fry is currently the only woman on any of the four UK banknotes. In fact, the announcement led people to take a look at the full list of figures ever featured on our banknotes and notice that women have always had pretty low representation. Which started a whole equal representation campaign.

Following this campaign, this week the Bank of England announced that the next £10 note will feature Jane Austen (also in 2016). So that’s alright then, isn’t it? They’ve picked a historically significant woman, and a writer to boot. I should be thrilled!

The thing is, Jane Austen is not the woman I would have chosen. She’s not even the writer I would have chosen and I’d probably have leaned toward woman scientist over woman writer, to be honest. Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, Dorothy Hodgkin – they all have a much stronger case for how much they contributed to the betterment of society and as role models than Jane Austen, surely?

But that’s not to say that literature can’t contribute to society. Clearly I don’t believe that. Perhaps it’s because I’m not an Austen fan, but she’s just never seemed particularly revolutionary to me. She was a woman, yes, and that in itself was unusual for the time. But that can’t be enough to make her an admirable figure. She wrote about a very narrow section of society. I hate to repeat the trope that she only wrote about money and marriage, but there is something in that accusation.

So which woman writer would I choose? Obviously she must be British and meet the other Bank of England criteria (which are currently under review, following the whole Churchill debacle). Well, I’m not the biggest George Eliot fan either (I loved Silas Marner, was less thrilled with Silly Novels by Lady Novelists and gave up on The Mill on the Floss – but that was a long time ago so please don’t judge me!) but she certainly seems to have covered a lot more of British society than Austen. I am a fan of Virginia Woolf and she was central to an artistic movement (Modernism), co-founded a publishing house (Hogarth Press) and contributed a lot to the growth of feminism. However, she might be considered too controversial for the Bank of England, between her bisexuality, depression and suicide. I hope not.

Which British female historical figures do you think deserve to be honoured on our banknotes? Do any novelists rank up there for you? Do you think this is even a debate that needs to happen or do you shy away from positive discrimination? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Holiday in pictures

July 20, 2013July 20, 2013

I have been meaning to blog about our very lovely holiday in Cornwall for a week now, but getting back to real life has been super busy. So here are a few nuggets and some photos. Hope you’re all enjoying lovely weather wherever you are.

The colours of sea and sky were impressive. The British seaside rarely looks this…tropical.

Typically, I had black and white film in my camera, but I got some nice shots with it.

We finally made it to the Eden Project, which is brilliant.

And we generally chilled out with good friends and a great location.

Astonishingly I didn’t entirely melt in the heat and I managed to read four books in a week! Which totally justifies my packing five books, even if one of the books I read was borrowed from the holiday home, right?

If you want to see more of my holiday photos, they are in a set on Flickr.

Happy July, folks.

June reading round-up

June 30, 2013June 30, 2013

This has been a pretty good month, reading-wise. I’ve got through more books and short stories than previous months, but I’ve also squeezed in some other book-related stuff. I went to see Neil Gaiman talking about his new book, which was pretty awesome. I went to see the new Joss Whedon film of Much Ado About Nothing, which is completely amazing (in fact, I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD so I can watch it all the time). And I took part in the Literary Giveaway Blog Hop, which is always fun.

I’ve also found some time to enjoy the summer so far, including having a whale of a time with Tim flying our new kite yesterday, although I did manage to sunburn for the first time in several years, which I am enjoying a lot less.

Books read
A Tiny Bit Marvellous by Dawn French

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell (review here)

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (review here)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (review here)

Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto (review here)

31 Songs by Nick Hornby (review here)

The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli

Short stories read
“The gray goose” by Jonathan Lethem (in the New Yorker, May 6, 2013)

“Axis” by Alice Munro (New Yorker fiction podcast)

“Eveline” by James Joyce (Guardian books podcast)

“On exactitude in science” by Jorge Luis Borges (Guardian books podcast)

“The story of my dovecote” by Isaac Babel (Guardian books podcast)

“Summer of ’38” by Colm Tóibín (in the New Yorker, March 4, 2013)

“Unwelcome reminders” by Emma Newman (available online here)

“The drinking problem” by Emma Newman (available online here)

“The first time” by Emma Newman (available online here)

“The delivery men” by Emma Newman (read by the author here)

“The unburdened heart” by Emma Newman (available online here)

“Made-up” by Emma Newman (read by the author here)

“Sea story” by A S Byatt (available online here)

“The swimming pool” by Jekwu Anyaegbuna (available online here)

“The River of Lost Souls” by Isabel Greenberg (available online here)

Literary Giveaway Blog Hop – the winner

June 27, 2013

And the winner is…

Wendy Reniers

Congratulations Wendy! I’ve dropped you an e-mail and a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale will be on its way to you shortly.

I want to thank Judith again for hosting the blog hop. It’s always a lot of fun to be part of. Until next time, folks!

Thoughts on ideology

June 24, 2013

“Democracy is an experiment the goal of which is to keep the experiment going. The purpose of democracy is to enable people to live democratically. That’s it. Democracy is not a means to something else; there is no higher good that we’re trying as a society to attain. When we compromise with democracy in order to achieve some other purpose, even when the purpose is to defend democracy, then we are in danger of losing it.”

This quote from Louis Menand in the New Yorker (Mar 4, 2013, p71) really got me thinking. It’s such a basic point and one that should be blindingly obvious, yet I’d hazard it’s a subtlety that’s often lost on politicians.

The piece in the New Yorker, incidentally, was a review of a book about the New Deal. Menand was arguing that Franklin Roosevelt’s success as a politician was rooted in his being “a political pragmatist, someone who is less interested in the ideological provenance of a policy than in its effectiveness” – which sounds like a good thing to me. But it must be pretty rare to rise to the top in politics without a strong ideology, right?

I don’t pretend to know enough about politics or philosophy to be able to say more myself, but I like what Menand has to say.

It’s that time again! Literary Giveaway Blog Hop (22–26 June)

June 22, 2013June 27, 2013 75 Comments

**This giveaway is now closed. The winner will be announced shortly.**

Hello lovely people who might want to win a free book! I am offering up a choice from my favourite books of recent years:

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I genuinely loved all three books and look forward to sharing one of them with a lucky winner. Just leave a comment saying which book you want for a chance to win.

This competition is open to anyone from 22 to 26 June 2013.

This blog hop is run by Judith of Leeswammes. To find out more check out the blog hop announcement. And do take some time to visit some of the other participants, listed below.

Linky list:

Sunday Salon: the week of awesome

June 16, 2013 5 Comments

The Sunday Salon

I have been looking forward to this week for a long time, and though life threw a bit of a spanner in the works it still turned out pretty great.

The thing is that we had tickets to not one but two awesome events and our dear friends H and G were throwing a big party for their wedding anniversary. We were pretty excited. Then at the last minute Tim had to go away on a work trip Monday to Friday, missing the first two evenings of fun and being pretty jetlagged for the last one. However, I still got to have all the fun, just with a teensy bit of guilt about Tim missing out.

But what were these amazing events we had tickets to? Well, Thursday night I went to the first UK performance of Hugh Laurie and the Copper Bottom Band. Who were brilliant. Here is a terrible photo I took from up in the gods of the Colston Hall.

Copper Bottom Band

This group are possibly the most amazingly talented musicians I have ever seen perform. Hugh Laurie plays piano, sings (though not for all the songs) and acts as band leader. Which he of course does with humour and grace and loveliness. I had such a wonderful night. And I really badly want to go to New Orleans and hang out in jazz bars now.

Then Friday night I went to the first event on Neil Gaiman’s promotional tour for his new book The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which actually comes out next week but attendees were able to buy the book early. It was held in Bath, hosted by Topping & Co Bookshop, although I can see why it wasn’t held in the bookshop itself as there were I’d guess a couple of thousand people there. Neil Gaiman has a lot of adoring fans. Understandably. He was charming, funny, intelligent and interesting, as you might expect, and clearly an old pro at this kind of thing. I don’t have any photos from the event itself (my friend T took some photos that she said I could have copies of but we have yet to co-ordinate on that) but here is what I came away with:

I should add that we queued for two and a quarter hours for our brief meeting with Neil and narrowly missed our train home, so had to get a taxi but that just added to the adventure! And the queuing was fine because we had this great new book to read… My brother (who I gave Tim’s ticket to), T and I were all about halfway through the book by the time we got to the front of the queue and then a very nice lady offered us chocolate by way of apology for the long wait!

(I realise that I haven’t really said anything much about the interview Neil gave, mostly because I am rubbish and didn’t take any notes, but I will roll what I do remember into my review of the book. And if you want to know more, Gav of Gav Reads actually did take notes and blogged about the evening over here.)

And that was just the start of the weekend. I then headed to London, met up with Tim, very briefly checked out the new Alan Turing exhibition at the Science Museum, then went to H and G’s party, which was brilliant but I think I shall choose not to share any photos of drunken me on here. Suffice to say there was a lot of fun and then there were hangovers.

So…what have you all been up to?