Category: Blog

Growing out of it

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Back in my early twenties I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being and other books by Milan Kundera and loved them. But a few years later, when I read more of his books, I struggled – I found them dull, monotonous, samey.

The same happened with other authors I’d loved during and just after my degree course: Chuck Palahniuk and Orhan Pamuk spring to mind. (Okay, no-one could call Palahniuk dull but I haven’t really enjoyed any of his books since Diary.) I had decided that I loved these authors only to change my mind shortly afterward. Did I just read all the good ones first and save the crud for later or did I grow out of these particular authors?

This has happened before of course. The first series I can remember falling in love with was Colin Dann’s Animals of Farthing Wood, shortly followed by Brian Jacques’ Redwall. I continued to buy those books as they came out well into my teens but the last few were left unread, as my interest had petered out. In my teens I loved the works of Victoria Holt/Phillippa Carr and anything in the Point Horror series but (thankfully) I grew out of those as well.

And I expected that. To grow out of those books was part of growing up. But I never expected to grow out of adult books, for there to be authors who only appealed to me for a few years of my adult life. It seems bizarre.

But then maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s more that my taste in books is in flux and I have to wait a few years for the vibe of my early 20s to hit again. Maybe when I hit 40 or 50 I’ll pick up a Kundera or Pamuk and love it. In fact, maybe when I hit middle age I can stop buying new books altogether and re-read all the ones that I have kept because I enjoyed them the first time around. As I’m something of a book hoarder, I hope so.

Hobbyist

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Bristol

When we moved to Bristol we didn’t really know anyone here, I had a mysterious as-yet undiagnosed illness that was sapping all my energy (and a fair wedge of my confidence) and we were leaving the comfort zone of our university town, with its familiar faces and watering holes. I like to think we’re friendly types but it took us a while to make friends and we had rather a lot of “just the two of us” time. One thing that helped us both continue to enjoy each other’s company without getting bored and meet new people was joining Flickr.

We had been toying with digital photography for a little while already but wanted to move on to a digital SLR and improve our skills. The examples, experience and advice on Flickr were immensely valuable but the big step was when we joined the Bristol Flickr Group (affectionately known as the BFG) and, after a few months of conversing with increasingly familiar avatars, braved a real-life meet-up. And I do mean “braved” because it was a little scary, but what we found was a wonderfully friendly group, with a range of different ages, careers and backgrounds and a slightly higher than average tendency to geekery, which suited us down to the ground.

We have made some great friends through the BFG and improved our photography skills immeasurably. The biggest step, I think, has been our rediscovery of film. Obviously, we grew up with film cameras and our parents had SLRs, but neither of us had owned a film SLR before. Thanks to charity shops, eBay and friends/family we now (mostly Tim) have several, plus a heap of film stored in the fridge. I have stepped into this world very tentatively, but this week I got my first black and white film processed and I am so so pleased with the results.

There’s more on my Flickr photostream.

Lupus fashion

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So maybe today was just a freak, and tomorrow we’ll be plunged back into wintry greyness, but it’s getting to be that time of year when I have to start covering up when I go outside to prevent all that UV from triggering a flare of my lupus symptoms.

“Covering up” entails wearing high-factor suncream and covering my head and shoulders (at this time of year, at least; in midsummer I try to hide as much skin as possible). I have an array of hats and scarves with which to achieve this and I have mostly gotten over the embarrassment of looking like a twat, or at least standing out from the crowd. What I have not yet perfected is how to wear headscarves properly. Why don’t they teach us this stuff at school?

I can do your basic piratical tied round the head with ends trailing at the back look. When I haven’t had all my hair chopped off recently I can do a decent hair in a bun with scarf tied round in a sort-of cottage loaf thing. What I can’t do is anything remotely elegant. I want to look like a 1950s film star when I put a headscarf on. Or a mysterious Arab beauty (except showing my face so not all that mysterious).

Is there anyone out there who can provide me with some much-needed guidance?

Headcover

Podcastery

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So life continues to be hectic. It feels like I’m completing a series of to-do lists (or not completing them) and I have to remind myself that I’m doing things I chose to do, I’m exactly where I put myself. But I still need the occasional breather.

And generally reading is my breathing time, my “me time”. But I can’t always read, either because I’m walking somewhere or I’m too tired or I have to prioritise doing some exercise to maintain the gradual improvement to my health that is my major goal this year. So the other thing I have been filling my brain with is podcasts.

What a great invention! Seriously, being able to pick and choose the best radio shows from all the channels and listen to them when it suits you? Genius! I use the humorously named MyPod app on my Android phone to manage them but there are no doubt other ways. I can listen on the walk to and from work, at the gym, in the kitchen while making dinner, in my library while sorting books into alphabetical order (yes, dull I know but I have a lot of books and I like to be able to find the right one).

I do feel that I’m not making the most of this wonderful new world, though. I have five podcasts that I follow – The Naked Scientists, Radio 4 Open Book, Excess Baggage (another Radio 4 one, discovered thanks to Liz of Eliza Does Very Little), Wittertainment (Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s 5 Live show) and the Guardian Books Podcast – plus I will of course eagerly download the Adam and Joe show when it finally starts back up. But what am I missing? Any and all recommendations gratefully received!

One year in

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“Happy blogoversary to me,
happy blogoversary to me!”

Today is a ridiculously busy day for me, with bridesmaid dress arrangements, furniture moving, book unpacking, filing and other useful things to be done. However, I am hoping to find time to do some exercise and to bake a blog birthday cake. And post a picture of it here, of course.

UPDATE 1: A fair few things ticked off the list, which is satisfying. Here is a sneak peak at the library project that has been keeping us busy for weeks:

Books books books

I’ll do a proper post about it when it’s complete, with before and after pics and all that jazz. But it’s already looking good, no?

Also, forgot to say earlier, happy World Book Day! All sorts of fun things seem to be going on. Twitter is full of updates on book giveaways and other projects. BBC2 has some special programmes about it on tonight that I can’t watch live because I’m going out but I’m recording them to watch tomorrow.

Right, now for that cake…

UPDATE 2: Well, I baked a carrot cake that smells amazing but it fell apart a bit so…not so photogenic. But I’m still feeling celebratory because I won a copy of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie from Little Interpretations for World Book Night! What a day!

Down time

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All of two days back at work and it feels like we didn’t have a holiday at all, but the photos say otherwise! Here are a couple of snaps I took during our chilled not-quite-a-week in France. (I took more but mostly on film, which I will probably get developed in several months’ time.)

There were chilled walks in town,
Jumbled

and chilled walks in the country.
Mood lighting

Mostly, though, we sat around a log fire doing nothing much at all. That was great.

A reader reads

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Inspired by Wallace of Unputdownables‘ lovely post about how her mum was her biggest reading influence, I got thinking about people who were important to me in that respect. One of my big reading influences was my third-year infants teacher, Mrs Barkley.

She quickly cottoned on to the fact that I was not only way ahead in reading the official school reading scheme books, but I was bored and unchallenged by them. So she introduced me to her special book cupboard. That place was amazing! A lifetime’s worth of children’s books, mostly suitable for kids in exactly my situation. That’s where I discovered Mrs Pepperpot and Supergran and countless others.

She retired at the end of that year and we held a special assembly for her, with lots of ragtime classics, including “Any old iron”, “She’s a lassie from Lancashire” and the specially written masterpiece “Knees up Mrs Barkley” (to the tune of “Knees up Mrs Brown”, if you didn’t get that). I remember that for “Here am I waiting at the church” we dressed up in bridesmaid dresses (or the closest equivalent we had) and I discovered to my horror on returning to the classroom to change for the next number that I’d gone out on stage with my ordinary dress unzipped and hanging around my waist, underneath the frilly frock. I was lifted by the success of playing Jennifer Eccles in “Lily the Pink”, particularly because I was deemed not freckly enough and had huge freckles drawn on my face. (At the age of seven I was a little self-conscious of my freckles.) But the highlight was when we sang Mrs Barkley’s favourite song “When you’re smiling” and she cried. It may have been the first time I saw someone cry with happiness.

My parents also, of course, had their part in my love of reading. I am fairly certain I could read before I started school, which must have been down to them, mostly my Mum, but I also fondly remember Dad reading us to sleep (for some reason the only title I remember specifically being read to us is Danny the Champion of the World). They also read for themselves, though not voraciously, and there were always lots of books in our house. In later years I took to reading to my older sister when we went to bed, because I wanted to share my favourite books with her. I have no idea if she actually liked this or was just indulging her little sister.

In fact, my whole family reads. But there is a definite step change between them and me. I was always the bookish one, even if everyone had a book on the go. I would read while walking to school, while eating my meals, with a torch under the bedcovers after lights out. I would read the same book a dozen times and make a diagram of the characters’ relationships or a timeline of events. And for some reason I attribute this extra level of obsessiveness, this need to devour every book in sight, to my favourite primary school teacher. So thank you Mrs Barkley!

48-hour TBR read-a-thon – it’s a wrap

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48-hour TBR read-a-thon

It’s now roughly 48 hours since I turned off the TV and started reading on Friday evening. I’ve got a lot of reading done – two full books, the last quarter of one and the first half of another – and I’ve been thoroughly reminded of the pleasure of putting reading before everything else, of spending hours on end absorbed in the pages of a book, so thank you to Wallace of Unputdownables for the challenge.

I haven’t read entirely solidly, of course. Besides a couple of long nights’ sleep, I also did some housework, ran some errands, met friends for lunch. And I’m not stopping right now either, though I do have evening plans that will prevent me getting much more reading done this weekend.

In total, I finished off Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book, read Saturday by Ian McEwan (on the back of a recommendation from Kath of [Insert suitably snappy title here…]), read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut (as recommended by Gusset and several others on Twitter) and made a good start on reading Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (recommended by Amy of Amy Reads).

All the books I’ve read this weekend were really good, excellent even, and full reviews will follow when I get a chance to write them out! I hope all my fellow read-a-thoners have enjoyed/are still enjoying their weekend reads.

(If you missed my previous posts and are wondering what all this is about, Wallace of Unputdownables challenged her readers to join her for a 48-hour TBR read-a-thon this weekend. I look forward to the next one!.)

48-hour TBR read-a-thon – halfway point

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48-hour TBR read-a-thon

So, an update on my progress so far in the 48-hour TBR read-a-thon. Yesterday I started well, finishing off Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book (which I was already three-quarters through) before reading Saturday by Ian McEwan, on the back of a recommendation from Kath of [Insert suitably snappy title here…]. That turned out to be an excellent choice, keeping me so absorbed that I was awake until 1 a.m. when I finished it.

Today I decided to tackle Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut, which I’ve been eager to read for a while but then I mentioned this to a friend on Thursday who said she thought it was horribly hard-going, so that put me off. Some encouragement via Twitter put me back on track and I am definitely liking it so far. I’m only halfway through, partly because it’s not a quick read despite its short length, but also because I wasn’t able to entirely ignore the rest of the world today.

I’ll write proper reviews at a later point, but for now some quick summaries:

The Graveyard Book is an evocative, imaginative adventure with intriguing characters and, in true Gaiman style, doesn’t shy away from tough subject matter. However, I just wasn’t absorbed by it and kept putting it aside to read other things instead.

Saturday, on the other hand, was all-consuming and brought together politics, self-discovery, brilliant characterisation and outstanding writing. My only complaint would be that the main character is so irritatingly, snobbishly upper middle class; but that’s part of the point of course.

And now I’ll get back to the reading. I hope all my fellow read-a-thoners are enjoying their weekend reads!

(If you missed my last post and are wondering what all this is about, Wallace of Unputdownables challenged her readers to join her for a 48-hour TBR read-a-thon this weekend. I am still intending to read the Southland Tales books by David Kelly, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Double Fault by Lionel Shriver. Or at least, that’s the slightly unrealistic aim.)