5 posts tagged “reading”
I enjoyed what I'm assuming is this deliberately provocative piece by Nicholas Lezard on what he calls crapsheets - the free papers that you are accosted with when wandering through central London. On the one hand I agree with him, and usually take something to read with me on the train or tube; on the other hand, sometimes at the end of the day my brain is just full and has had enough, so the literary equivalent of candyfloss is all I can cope with. Anyway, if the comments are anything to go by, he's done a great job of baiting his readers.
How a person arranges their books is a complicated thing, and people get surprisingly het up about it. If you don't believe me, just ask Callie.
Having already been highly impressed by Sandra's beautiful new room, I was then greatly entertained by her account of how she organised her books into their new home. She really had me when she described a dilemma I also have:
Of course the ideal plan fell apart the moment I perched on the top of my step ladder with the first armful of fiction. I could not bring myself to include the contemporary unread fiction (and goodness knows there's plenty of it) with the stuff I really have read.
But it clearly all worked out in the end.
Fascinating piece in last Saturday's Guardian Review discussing the booming business of 'nostalgia-lit', as represented by The Dangerous Book for Boys and now The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls. Jenny Turner suggests that these are "what the publishing trade calls "gift books", for people who don't much enjoy reading to present to people they don't really know or like." She continues:
It's important, though, to understand that there isn't, and never was, any such thing as a 70s childhood, really - it was always fantastical and composite, for parents in the 70s had nostalgia too, and so on, back and back. In the 70s, I remember longing to be a child of the 50s - a longing I picked up from my parents, though they were wartime children. Except that our version of the 50s was about the 30s, too: "The years between the wars are generally regarded as a golden period by those who lived through them", as the Igguldens write, evocatively but nonsensically. "The Boy's Own Paper gives an idea of the attitudes of the day, valuing attributes of manliness, fair play, decency, honour and an ability to play cricket . . ." No Nazis, then, no Great Depression. Just as the 50s was a time of absolutely no drugs or sex.
Neil Gaiman has suspiciously good hair. It's true. Time says so.
Good hair or not, this reminds me to get a wriggle on and read my copy of Stardust quickly, before the film comes out.
Ooh. Now. I have previously had my doubts about the strange crossover area between books, reading and chairs. But these might just change my mind.
Would I prefer chair-as-bookshelf:
Or will it be chair-as-mobile-bookcase-lamp-and-secret-compartment:
I think it has to be the Bookinist. It might just be love.
(via librarian.net)
