Library booksale haul

The local library had a book sale on Sunday, and I spent a happy half hour browsing through seven tables of books. So much more satisfying than receiving a delivery by drone. I picked up these 6 titles.

I’d read  The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, the Le Guin and the Nancy Drew before, and thought it might be nice to own a copy of each. And I didn’t remember a word from The Sign of the Twisted Candles, which I  last picked up almost three decades ago. It was apparently first published in 1933, but I had little context when I read the series as  a child, and thought they took place in 1970s America. Ha.

The cover on the left is the 1933 original; look at Nancy’s puff sleeves and her hat. The cover on the right is from the 1968 edition and continues to this day.

I’m going to start with The Floating Girl by Sujata Massey, featuring the half Japanese, half American Rei Shimura–I enjoyed her escapades in Zen Attitudes very much. And I’ve always struck out with de Lint, but perhaps Wolf Moon will prove the exception?  I’ve only read The Flanders Panel by Perez-Reverte, which I remember as good but not great, but I picked this one because of its killer first sentence: ”The telephone rang, and she knew she was going to die.” Ahhh. Can’t wait for the weekend.

The A to Z bookish survey

Via my favourite food blogger (and all-round star) Nupur of One Hot Stove, here’s a bookish survey that originated over at The Perpetual Page Turner.  Be sure to check out their answers, and please share your preferences in the comments if you like!

Author you’ve read the most books from:  Kidlit series authors such as Enid Blyton and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. In more recent times, Agatha Christie.

Best Sequel Ever: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers. I know it’s not exactly a sequel (more an example on how to up your game midway through a series), but I love it to death and beyond.

Currently Reading: Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson. Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman.

Drink of Choice While Reading: Tea and coffee.

E-reader or Physical Book? Physical books, always. I do own a Kindle, but I love books as objects of beauty.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School: I’ve always had a thing for the Enid Blyton animal whisperer heroes. You know, like the boy who dips his hand into a jar of treacle and gentles a bunch of enraged bears. (I think he’s in Mr. Galliano’s Circus?)

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance: The Bloodstone Papers by Glen Duncan.

Hidden Gem Book: The Mapp and Lucia books by E.F.Benson. 

Important Moment in your Reading Life: Most recently, watching my son turn into a reader.

Just Finished: If You Give a Moose a Muffin by Laura Numeroff.

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read: Self-help, new-age, religious, spiritual. I won’t touch chick-lit, though I happily read romance (with the usual caveat of no douchebag hero/ T00-Stupid-T0-Live heroine).

Longest Book You’ve Read: I have lots of omnibus sets with teeny tiny print. Like this one, which comes in at 1332 pages.

The longest stand-alone book is probably Atlas Shrugged, which I read as a teenager. Someone get me a Time-Turner, quick.

Major book hangover because of: Reading Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy in two days. 

Number of Bookcases You Own: I got rid of three bookcases and their contents for the move to California, and I also have books boxed in storage.  As with my books, my bookshelves are simultaneously too many and not enough. 

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times: William by Richmal Crompton. 

Preferred Place To Read: Bed. But I’ll read anywhere–I don’t own a purse or handbag which can’t fit a standard paperback.

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:  Well, I really like “He had the look of one who had drunk the cup of life and found a dead beetle at the bottom.” — P.G.Wodehouse.

Reading Regret: I wish I were truly fluent in an Indian language so I could read original regional literature.

Series You Started And Need To Finish: None I can think of–I’m pretty obsessive about reading every book in a series if I like it.

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books: Oh, this is impossible to answer.

Unapologetic Fangirl For: Richmal Crompton, author of the Just William books.  She wrote tight, unsentimental prose about children, for children and adults. She’s written 38 books about the same character, in a very controlled setting (a small village in England), and each of the stories is magnificent. One of the best writers I’ve ever read, and definitely the funniest. 

Very Excited For This Release: I don’t track new releases, but I’m a-quiver for my library hold to materialize for The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.

Worst Bookish Habit: Despite owning at least a hundred bookmarks, I use whatever I can find (spoons! couch cushions! Lego!) to mark my place.

X Marks The Spot (Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book): Watership Down by Richard Adams in fiction. The Other Side of Silence by Urvashi Butalia in NF.

Your latest book purchase: Mohsin Hamid’s Moth Smoke, bought last week  for a friend.

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late): Hmmm, hasn’t happened for a while. Probably Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon last Christmas.

Random bookish things: Project Bookmark, Charles Darwin, Captain Marryat.

Have you heard of Project Bookmark? It’s a Canadian charity that places “text from stories and poems—on plaques, called Bookmarks—in the exact, physical locations where literary scenes take place. The charity has a total of 12 Bookmarks in three provinces, and envisions a national network of sites and stories so that residents and visitors can read their way right across Canada.”

Like this.

That’s Michael Ondaatje with a Bookmark celebrating a scene from  In The Skin Of A Lion, on Toronto’s Bloor Viaduct. Pretty cool, right?

Project Bookmark has just kicked off an innovative month-long fund-raising campaign. Each day in April, a different reading personality will champion the cause, and offer prizes to everyone who donates to the campaign that day. The champions include Margaret Atwood and Guy Gavriel Kay and many other literary heavy-weights. Do check out this video by Project Bookmark’s founder Miranda Hill for more about the campaign. And don’t forget to donate your $$ for a shot at all these prizes!

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I’m reading this over and over again: Charles Darwin’s List of the Pros and Cons of Marriage.  Here are some pros.

“Children — (if it Please God) — Constant companion, (& friend in old age) who will feel interested in one, — object to be beloved & played with. — better than a dog anyhow.– Home, & someone to take care of house — Charms of music & female chit-chat. — These things good for one’s health. — but terrible loss of time. –

My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working, working, & nothing after all. — No, no won’t do. — Imagine living all one’s day solitarily in smoky dirty London House. — Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire, & books & music perhaps — Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Grt. Marlbro’ St.”

And some cons.

“Freedom to go where one liked— choice of Society & little of it. — Conversation of clever men at clubs—Not forced to visit relatives, & to bend in every trifle.— to have the expense & anxiety of children—perhaps quarelling— Loss of time. — cannot read in the Evenings— fatness & idleness— Anxiety & responsibility— less money for books &c— if many children forced to gain one’s bread.— (But then it is very bad for ones health to work too much)”

Read the whole thing, and much more, here. Oh, and Darwin did marry, and went on to have ten children.

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From Amitav Ghosh’s blog, here’s a fascinating piece on Captain Frederick Marryat and the British Museum Buddha. I read Captain Marryat’s sea-stories as a child, though I never really warmed to them, partly because I had zero context for his work and partly because I’d much rather have lived in Malory Towers than on the Coral Island.

Here’s an excerpt from the blog post, where the art historian Rupert Arrowsmith writes about the provenance of this statue.

“…this Buddha-image was not bought from anyone in Burma, nor was permission ever given for its removal.  It was swiped during the anarchy following the British invasion of Lower Burma between 1824 and 1825.

The person who swiped it, and then handed it on to the British Museum, was Frederick Marryat, a high-ranking naval officer who later became the author of popular sea stories.  The sculpture can only have occupied a monastery or temple, and it is unimaginable in the context of Burmese Buddhism that its pious custodians would have let it go without a fight. [...]

The Buddha-image wasn’t the only souvenir of Burma Marryat brought back with him from the war of 1824-5.  He is now thought to have acquired more than 120 artifacts, including an important royal carriage.  He later wanted to donate all of this to the British Museum in exchange for a lifetime position on the board of trustees, but the Museum said no.  They didn’t say no because they were worried that there had been something unethical about Marryat’s methods.  In a typically British twist to the story, they said it because they thought he was the wrong class, and would probably lower the tone of the boardroom.”

Do read the whole post here.

Calvin and Hobbes–and Bacon

Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes strip stopped running (almost to the day) seventeen years ago, leaving behind a giant Calvin-and-Hobbes hole in the universe.

BUT.

Pantsareoverrated.com has done four of these strips, and though they aren’t officially endorsed by Watterson, I think he’d approve.

Go to Pants Are Overrated for the other two strips. And if you find a way to send these guys money, let me know.

Have a happy holiday season, y’all.

Happy Roald Dahl Day!

Were he alive, Dahl would be celebrating his 96th birthday today.  Events galore at www.roalddahlday.info, and here’s a lovely episode from Letters of Note for you to enjoy.

“One rainy Sunday afternoon in 1989, with encouragement and much-needed help from her father, a 7-year-old girl named Amy decided to send something to Roald Dahl. Taking inspiration from her favourite book, The BFG, and using a combination of oil, coloured water and glitter, Amy sent the author a very fitting and undeniably adorable gift: one of her dreams, contained in a bottle. “

Go to Letters of Note to read Dahl’s reply. He wasn’t a perfect man, but his response to this child is perfect in every way.

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The London Review of Books reviewed George’s Marvellous Medicine back in 1981 in a piece titled “Sweet Porn”. The LRB blog has re-posted an except today under the title “Emmanuelle and the Chocolate Factory”. I don’t subscribe to the LRB, so I can’t read the full piece (for which I am mostly thankful), but here’s an excerpt.

For pre-pubertal Westerners, sweets fill the vacuum later to be occupied by sex. It is unnerving to watch an otherwise decent child being temporarily demoralised (in the literal sense of being morally corrupted) by a desire for sweets as an otherwise decent adult may be by sexual need. In both cases, the overwhelming lust for immediate sensual gratification destroys habitual scruples, yet is itself tainted by a guilty awareness that fulfilment may collapse into satiety, shame and physical discomfort. The whole animal being is involved. A three-year-old with a chocolate-smeared face can wear the hangdog look of a man whose wife surprises him in adultery… Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is thus, in effect, a piece of soft pornography, with Charlie in the Emmanuelle role: ‘as the rich warm creamy chocolate ran down his throat into his empty tummy, his whole body from head to toe began to tingle with pleasure, and a feeling of intense happiness spread over him.’

***

Get rid of that icky feeling by visiting writer Kristen den Hartog’s lovely mother-daughter reading journal Blog of Green Gables, where she details their “mission to read all of [Dahl's] kids’ books in a row.” Her post on the BFG is doubly interesting because the protagonist of Hartog’s last novel And Me Among Them is a girl giant.

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Over at the Huffington Post, there’s a juicy collection of his funniest quotes from his children’s books.

“I understand what you’re saying, and your comments are valuable, but I’m going to ignore your advice.”

And and and

“And Charlie, don’t forget about what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted. He lived happily ever after.”

The End.

I’d like some e-marginalia, please.

I am now the proud (if somewhat apprehensive) owner of an e-reader.  So:

From Raincoast books.

Things I’ve learnt today: a new Nancy Drew, e-cigarettes, and repurposed Walmarts.

1. Nancy Drew is a vampire slayer.

From amazon.com:”Vampire-mania has gripped River Heights, with teenage girls going wild over the new “DieLite” novels and movies. But what happens when a supposedly “real” handsome young vampire arrives on the scene? Will Nancy expose him as a fraud — or fall under his dark spell? As if that wasn’t enough– there’s something dark and sinister happening while everyone’s distracted by the vampire madness. Could this possibly be linked to what’s happening in Bayport, home of the Hardy Boys?”

2. There is such a thing as an  e-cigarette.

From Wikipedia:”An e-cigarette is an electrical device that simulates the act of tobacco smoking by producing an inhaled vapor bearing the physical sensation, appearance, and often the flavor (with or without nicotine content) of inhaled tobacco smoke, without its odor or, ostensibly, its health risks.”

3. An abandoned Texas Walmart is now a library.

From Slate: “Minneapolis-based architects Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle, Ltd. breathed fresh life into the [Walmart] warehouse, about as big as two and a half football fields, late last year, when they repurposed it as the country’s largest single-story public library.”

Wordless Wednesday

The philosopher J.Krishnamurti.

(Picture from missrosen.wordpress.com )

Literary and not-so-literary link goodness

Oh, yeah. From Hayibo.com,  Africans shocked by uncivilized antics of European savages.

Africans say they have little hope that Europe will ever become civilized, after a week in which Spain’s King Carlos went on an elephant-killing spree and the Swedish Culture Minister was entertained by a racially offensive cake. “You can take the European out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the European,” sighed one resident of Kinshasa.

August Mwanasa, of Libreville in Gabon, said the latest atrocities didn’t surprise him as Europeans were still “savages”.

“I don’t want to sound racist, and some of my best friend are white, but let’s be honest: violence is hard-wired into their DNA,” said Mwanasa. “I mean, Europeans killed over 20 million other Europeans in the 1930s and 1940s. That’s barbarism on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Jenkins Odumbe, a Nairobi milliner, bemoaned ingrained attitudes of entitlement in Europe.

“If they’re not going on the dole they’re asking for bail-outs,” he said. “Why can’t they just get up earlier and work harder, that’s what I want to know?”

Liberte Aidoo,  a Ghanaian travel agent, said she had been “shocked and disgusted” by what she found on her first trip to Spain.

“The brochures promise sea and sun, but they’re still incredibly backward in Spain,” she recalled. “Basically they all live in mud huts called haciendas, and they sleep for two hours in the middle of the day. In Europe they call it a ‘siesta’. In Ghana we call it ‘being fucking lazy’.”

Read the whole thing. Really, you’d be crazy not to.

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From the blog Night Deposits,  On the Waterfront 2.

H/T Professor Batty.

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Author Jim C. Hines posed like women on the covers of fantasy novels, and got his wife to take pictures.  Like this:

He says: “In all seriousness, I spent the rest of last night with pain running through most of my back. [...] Trying to launch my chest and buttocks in two different directions a la Vicious Grace? Just ow. [...]  posing like these characters drives home exactly what’s being emphasized and what’s not. My sense is that most of these covers are supposed to convey strong, sexy heroines, but these are not poses that suggest strength. You can’t fight from these stances. I could barely even walk. “

Jim C.Hines, my HERO. His follow-up post about posing like male heroes is also worth reading, if not quite as photolicious.

On banning books

From Letters of Note, here’s a 1973 letter from Vonnegut to the head of the school board who banned (and then burnt) the school’s 32 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five.

“If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes–but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the eduction of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books–books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.”

Full text here.