Here are some things I should be doing:
- Brushing my hair, which is now so clumpy that I look like Wurzel Gummidge’s pre-’airdressin’ ‘ead
- Making lunch for my long suffering children
- Wresting my long suffering children away from the film they are watching and forcing them to do good, wholesome activity like basket weaving and finding their inner adult
- Finish cleaning the bathroom which I started at ten thirty this morning
- Reading a book by James Frey, the name of which escapes me, but which I am supposed to be posting a review on Amazon for
- Starting my Leonardo Course instead of just staring at the pile of books in wide eyed wonderment hoping that the knowledge will filter into my brain by osmosis
- Cleaning the kitchen windows, which is something I have been promising I would do for an entire week now. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is alarmingly weak (rather like the Pilsbury Dough Boy. He never cleaned his kitchen windows either)
- Helping Tallulah with her story sack, which is more like a small bungalow
What am I doing?
- Getting the jitters from some extremely strong coffee I brewed myself and stupidly thought I could handle
- Eating the last of the Malted Milk biscuits as a gesture of charity, so that nobody else will be tempted. I am such a saint.
- Arsing about on the internet, looking up randomly irrelevant stuff and going ‘oo-er’
- Ordering another book (Jason will kill me). I was reading something which had a quote from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 yesterday and suddenly realised that I had never actually read it, and that was surely a grievous oversight on my part, for it is a classic and how can I possibly consider myself well read if I haven’t read it? So I ordered it.
- Chatting to my friend who is foolishly taking her three children on a fly drive road trip to New York, Toronto and Washington in a few weeks and who wanted reassuring that everything would be fine. I said it would. I probably lied. She’s more of a mentalist than me.
On the subject of books, I am back to alternating between books I want to read and books I have to read. The James Frey is a have to read. I am then torn between Banana Yoshimoto’s Sleep and the last Ian Rankin which is calling to me from the shelf. After that I have another Amazon review to do, something horrible about serial killers I think (it was either that or Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. I like classical music but I am inept when it comes to reviewing it, so serial killers it was). I will also have a book to review for Penguin soon, which they are sending me. I joined their fansite on Facebook a few weeks back, and they sent me a jaunty little message which says if I signed up to their lovely website they might send me a free Penguin Classic to review. I got very excited, signed up, and then got even more excited when they sent me a note to say, ‘Hoorah! We’re sending you a book’. Then I got very depresssed because the book they’re sending me is ‘Sons and Lovers’ by D.H. Lawrence. I’ve already read it and I really didn’t like it at all. Sadly I can’t swap it, and I’ve promised to review it or else. I will do my best, but I’m not impressed. Don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of time for D.H. Lawrence. I loved Lady Chatterley, Women in Love and The Rainbow. I’ve even read his poetry and quite liked it, although he was somewhat exercised by the animal kingdom, which doesn’t really float my boat. Why did they pick a) something I’ve already read, and b) something I don’t like? Bummer!
There is a book I saw the other day in Waterstones called ‘1000 Books You Must Read Before You Die’. I want this book. I am really anal about things like this, and I like ticking stuff off a list. I also try to read quite widely because I am very stern about books. I think they’re important and it’s my duty to read as many of them as possible before I turn up my toes. I also think that if I’m going to do that then I have to have a justification for it, so reading worthy books is part of that cunning plan. Actually there are a lot of ‘must read’ books and authors that I have already read and actually like, so it’s not such a chore as some might think. I did meet a woman once who told me that she read books all the time, and that she couldn’t get enough of them. When I asked her what she read it seemed that she was using the term ‘books’ rather loosely and it was actually a long list of magazines beginning with Bella and Woman’s Weekly. I was horrified, bless her, and didn’t quite know what to say after that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a book snob. I will read anything, and I mean anything. I have read Jeffrey Archer, Jackie Collins and even Catherine Cookson. I love crime novels and am absolutely addicted beyond belief to the novels of Georgette Heyer, which I read whenever storm clouds are amassing and think of in much the same way one would a comfort blanket. I am just nosey and books are brilliant, and the more there are, the better life is. I am into lists at the moment again, as I’m sure you have worked out. So here are some literary lists currently swirling about in my brain: (these are not comprehensive you understand, just random pullings out of the branial cavity)
Worthy books/authors I have read and enjoyed:
- D.H. Lawrence (avoiding Sons and Lovers). I’d go for The Rainbow first. Avoid Lady Chatterley if you’re just reading it for the sex, it’s rubbish. The book itself is fine, it’s just the sex that’s rubbish.
- Jane Austen – Torn between Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility as the best. Didn’t like Mansfield Park much, too drippy.
- George Orwell – 1984 is one of the scariest, most brilliant books ever. His others are pretty good too. Down and Out in Paris and London was great. Keep the Aspidistra Flying was a weak point, but you can’t always be brilliant.
- Charlotte Bronte – Cracking. Loved Jane Eyre, also Villette, top book, one of my toppest ever books.
- Emily Bronte – Wuthering Heights for the win, another toppest book.
- Anne Bronte – Surprisingly good
- Evelyn Waugh – everything is brilliant
- P. G. Wodehouse – Ditto
- Stella Gibbons – Cold Comfort Farm (hilarious)
- Tolstoy – Anna Karenina – made me cry like a baby. You do need to keep a map of all the names though. Bloody Russians
- Henry James – Turn of the Screw, Wings of a Dove and Portrait of a Lady are all top notch. Language is very dense. Makes your head spin a bit.
- Edith Wharton – Everything is good.
- Virginia Woolf – Ditto, although To The Lighthouse is probably my favourite, and Mrs. Dalloway
- Joseph Conrad – Heart of Darkness, a star, star book.
- Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird – much to my surprise deserves all the kudos it gets. The film with Gregory Peck is great as well.
- Charles Dickens – Everything is great but Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield are my favourites
- The Dice Man – Luke Rhinehart – Frighteningly good
- Truman Capote – In Cold Blood – A fantastic book which should be read and then watch the film Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman
- All Quiet on the Western Front – Eric Maria Remarque – Heartbreakingly brilliant
- Metamorphosis by Ovid – Terrific book, storytime for grown ups
- Anything by Thomas Hardy (except his poems which are rubbish)
- Anything by E. M. Forster
- Mrs. Gaskell – Ruth made me cry like a fool
Worthy Books I didn’t enjoy
- Middlemarch by George Eliot – in fact many things by George Eliot. Daniel Deronda and Romola were all right. How come I’ve read everything by her except Felix Holt when I don’t like her? I must have been forced at gun point. Weird…
- Ulysses by James Joyce – More of a chore than a pleasure. Took five years, started it six times. Finished it with gritted teeth. Proud of the achievement but can think of better ways to spend my time.
- Moby Dick by Hermann Melville – Started out cracking, but after four chapters on how to make a whale’s intestine into an overcoat, and the art of scrimshaw, I was losing the will to live.
- Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut – Sorry Kurt, I just couldn’t get into it. Loved the bits about Dresden, hated the bits about the Tralfalmadorians.
- The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Self righteous priggery and very, very boring.
- The Last of the Mohicans by James Fennimore Cooper – Was probably exciting in the days before television. Now episodes of Bonanza have been known to be more entertaining.
- Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe – How boring is this book? What a disappointment.
- Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift – Lost it when he got to Laputa and the Hounhyms or however it is you spell them.
- The Peloponesian Wars by Thucydides – Five billion pages on how we lost the war. Rubbish
- Swann’s Way, Volume One of A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu by Marcel Proust – There are six more volumes. I like cakes, but seven volumes about remembering a frankly disappointing bun. No, no and thrice no.
- Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis – Didn’t even crack a smile? What?
Books I must read before I cark it
- War and Peace by Tolstoy
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
- Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne
- A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell
- The Sword of Honour Trilogy – Evelyn Waugh
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding – I think it’s so horrible. I know exactly what happens and just can’t bring myself to read more than a chapter a year. Have been reading it now for six years. The Inheritors was very good though.
- Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
- Something by Norman Mailer
- Something by Anthony Burgess
- The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
