Random Jottings

Blog Power

Dovegreyreader encouraged me to start a blog earlier this year. Elaine, you must, it's great fun, so OK, decided to give it a go.  Typepad give you one month's free trial so you can muck about with colours, designs, typelists and generally just twiddle about a bit until you have a vague idea of what you are doing.  The knowledge base is very useful for questions about where you are going wrong, but Widgets continue to defeat me, and I have decided that my blog will be widget free, for the moment anyway.

So what have I found since I posted my first entry?  Lots of surprises, I can tell you.  After I had posted a couple of times I clicked onto my Stats and was totally dumbfounded to find that I had had 13 hits.  Yes, thirteen!  I was ecstatic.  Who on earth would want to look at my blog or track it down?  Comments were left mainly by fellow bloggers/friends who were very good at giving me a boost and making me feel wanted and so I carried on and recklessly set up a standing order to Typepad of the outrageous sum of some $8  a month to allow me the use of their blogging facility.

I am now celebrating six months of blogging, and have to say that I simply love it. So many interesting people have dropped in and left witty, funny, encouraging comments.  In turn I have clicked onto their links and have found many lively, beautiful and interesting blogs which I now regularly visit. There is a list of these sites and blogs that I like to check out in the right hand column of my site, but there are many more I also dip into.

I have taken part in the RIP Challenge and am now half way through another such Challenge, From the Bookstacks, all set by book bloggers and all encouraging you to read/re-read/ discover new and old books. I note there is a Classic Challenge coming up in the New Year and I daresay I shall be drawn into that as well.  Starting a blog is like dropping a pebble in a pond and watching the ripples spreading out wider and wider with no end in sight.

I have belonged to on line reading groups who have a particular genre of book or authors to discuss and these are great fun, but I have found (and I know I am not alone in this) that sooner or later one member of a group (and there is always one) will fall out with someone or disagree and take offence and then it is downhill all the way.  This does not seem to happen in blogging and I have yet to have a visit or comment from someone that hasn't been anything but welcome.

Susan Hill  has recently got very cross with John Sutherland who apparently has poured scorn on bloggers in this week's Sunday Telegraph (though she does make it clear that he was pouring more scorn on the reviewers of books on Amazon) and the fact that their influence is spreading.  The thrust of her post is that why on earth shouldn't we write about books we love and how dare this literary critic turn his nose up at us mortals who, let us face it, are the ones who read and buy books.

Each time I read a blog, and read a review or reviews of one or many books, I am simply staggered at the wealth of talent revealed by dedicated readers.  No wonder bloggers are being taken seriously.  The Guardian does a trawl through the blogs on a Saturday and DoveGreyReader has been quoted by them not once, but twice and by the time I write this, it may even be thrice.  So Blogpower reigns and deservedly so.

I know that Litlove has also written about blogging and the friends she has made and how much she appreciates us all and she hoped that after reading her thoughts we were not nauseous but all 'warm and fuzzy'.  Well, I certainly was and I hope that all you great people out there who visit me and leave messages and kind remarks, now feel the same. 

I love you all.

Virago - Green

I notice that Karen has recently read One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes and  she has illustrated her post with a photograph of the 'old' Virago edition - those with the green background on the jackets  (By the way, this is the most gorgeous blog - do nip over and look and drool). This has encouraged me to pull up a very early post when I had just started and when I was not getting much traffic and had not met all you lovely people who now drop in.

I think the earlier editions of the Virago books are vastly superior to those that are now being issued, some of which look cheap and nasty.  These paintings look really classy and, whenever I am in a second hand book shop or at a sale, I always keep an eye out for those familiar green backs.  Quite often I will purchase the book even if I do not know the author, or have any idea of what the book is about, simply for the pleasure of owning such a beautifully illustrated jacket.  And, surely, that is the whole idea of a striking cover?  I have discovered many interesting Virago authors this way.

I am, therefore, quite shamelessly recycling (and aren't we all encouraged to do that) a blog of much much earlier in the year when I pulled out lots of my Virago editions and took a photo of them all. I had just purchased a new copy of Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther by Elizabeh von Arnim and it is interesting to note that they have retained the same cover as before.  So why not do the same with all the rest?

Don't you agree with me that all of these are simply beautiful?

Morning cuppa

I get up at 6 am in the morning and travel up to London on the 7.15 am.  As it is only an hour to Liverpool Street and I am not due at my desk until 9.15 am the mathematicians amongst you will work out that I have an hour to kill before I need to go to the office.

There is a lot one can do in an hour.  There are plenty of shops at the station, Torq, Lush, WH Smith, Books etc, Accessorize, Thornton's Chocolates, Boots, Body Shop et al so if I wanted to I could do all my Christmas shopping there, and probably will....  However, unless I need to get some toothpaste from Boots or grab a pair of tights, I will head off to Costa Coffee in Houndsditch.  I have been popping in here every morning for the last four years along with other assorted regulars who I see each day.  We don't talk to each other, dear me no, the Brits don't do chat, but we nod and smile and Nice day today, and Have a good weekend, and then retreat to our habitual seats.  I like to sit on the sofa in the window and get very annoyed if somebody else should take over MY seat and occasionally a one-off caller will do so and have to sit there drinking his coffee while I glare at him and wait for him to move.  They usually move pretty quick, can't think why.

The staff there know me well and a friendly, happy bunch they are too.  By the time I reach the counter my coffee is ready for me (skinny, primo cappo) and they know I like loads of foam (one barrista, Anna, can produce foam at least one inch high specially for me) and lashings of chocolate on top.  They also dive for the sound system as soon as they see me coming and turn it down.  They are all wonderful.

I sit there with my paper, do my Sudoku, watch the world go by and generally enjoy the quiet half hour before the work day begins.  I could not do without it and even if my train has been delayed or is late, I still have my half hour and if my boss has to manage without me for a bit, well, he will survive.

My elder daughter does the same only she is a Starbucks fan.  I do not like their coffee, find it weak and tasteless but she is a devotee and so we do have the odd heated discussion about the relative merits of each other's addiction.  Earlier on this year Costa had a refit and was closed for a week.  I was forced to go to the Starbucks opposite and hated it and greeted with joy the reopening of Costa the week after.

I also love visiting tea shops, as does Patternings, and enjoy tea drunk out of a fine china cup.  The addition of home made scones or fruit cake adds to this pleasure, but first thing in the morning, I need my caffeine shot.

Now, I am sure you are all intensely interested in the above (not) but just felt like writing about it and so I have.  It is the end of my lunch time at work now, so before I get back to the heap awaiting me, I think I shall go and put the kettle on.

Strictly Come Dancing - the Great Dane

Everybody loves Peter Schmeical, everybody.  He is just such a lovely man.  Always smiling and happy and so enthusiastic about the show.  He says that dancing has taken over his life, he has never enjoyed anything so much and it shows.  He is clearly having a wonderful time and everyone has warmed to him totally.

Last week he and his partner Erin, did a terrific performance of the Viennese Waltz where he twirled round the floor looking so elegant and graceful that even Craig Revel Horwood was moved to say 'how fantastic to see a great big bloke like you gliding round the floor'.

Sadly, this weekend Peter had to do the Samba and even his mother could not have said it was good.  He knew it himself and in pre-show interviews had said he was just going to go out and 'give it a go'.  Well, he did and the audience loved it and gave them both a huge ovation.

It was clear that he and Erin should be the couple to go, but as soon as the aforementioned Craig said his performance was 'heinous' you knew they would be back, and they were.  If you are judging this contest on dance alone then they should have gone and it was a simply dreadful shame that Camilla and Ray were eliminated (came down to a choice between them and Brendon/Claire and I know which pair I wanted to go), and also most unfair.  The judges were not happy with the result but somebody should tell them that if you pitch into someone, the British public, softies that they are, will vote them back.

It will be lovely to see him in for another week, but really next Saturday should be his final show or else the judge's comments will be meaningless.  However, the beam on his face when he found out he was through was simply wonderful and we all love him!

Oh, dear here I go again

Apparently G W Dahlquist, was selected for jury duty in 2004 and was cocooned in a hotel room while New York was hit by a ferocious storm. He had a strange dream involving a dark Victorian building and prisoners in a creepy upstairs room without a door. He goes on to say that the next day he took out a notebook and began to write this story. By the end of the trial he had written the first chapter. (One only hopes that he was paying attention to what was going on in court that day). He finished the book one year later.

The story is set in Victorian London and opens with Miss Temple (who is referred to in this way throughout the narrative) being jilted by her fiancé, Roger Boscombe, who works at the Foreign Office. She decides to follow him to see if there is another woman involved, and finds herself on a train to a mysterious party at a country house, where she is forced to take part in a ritual featuring masked guests and two way mirrors.

Penguin books have taken the decision to market this book in serial form and readers have to pay up front and subscribe in order to have this dropping though your letter box once a week. Now, I have tried reading Dickens in the past in this way, as this was how his books were first published and always find that I read further than I should. With these weekly instalments my reaction is totally the opposite, I am having to force myself to read them as, quite frankly, I think this story is very wordy and over written.

It can be bought in one volume, 800 pages I gather, so it is not for the faint hearted and it was probably a good idea, as well as good marketing, to split it up like this. However, I cannot see me reaching the end of this particular adventure and I now have the lowering realisation that there is nothing to stop this endless stream of envelopes arriving until 2007.

There are no reviews of this book as yet on Amazon so I nipped over to Amazon.com and found quite a few there which reflect my feelings, good to know it is not just me, and this is a sentence from one of them:

“My late mother had a way of describing books like this: "There are too many words on the pages." Now I know what Mom meant. I forced my way through this seemingly endless novel, and it was like pushing a big rock up a long hill. The first-time author has vivid characters and a good sense of adventure, but, boy-oh-boy, is he ever long-winded! Buried somewhere in this 800-page doorstop is a really terrific 400-page fantasy novel, screaming to get out”.

Could not have put it better myself. I find myself in the Meaning of Night/Historian situation with this particular book about which I have already posted, no doubt ad nauseam, and sorry that I feel the same way again.

Bluestalking Reader bemoaned the fact that she had been going through a bad patch with reading recently and was trying to find something that would break it. I can fully sympathise as I find myself in the same boat. Fortunately, this happens very seldom, but over the last couple of months I have been disappointed in The Meaning of Night, The Observations, The Perfect Summer which I am reading as part of the Bookstack Challenge and which is proving a disappointment (History-Lite is the only way I can describe it) and am also having serious difficulty with the latest Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder. However, with the Atwood I know full well this is because of me and my current mood, not her writing, and if I leave it for a little while and come back to it, I am confident I will thoroughly enjoy it.

So this afternoon, I decided to abandon all pretensions to high literature and critical analysis and sat down with a cup of tea, obligatory chocolate biscuits, and read Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie. Took me two hours and I now feel mentally relaxed.

However, I still am not sure what to read to break this current mood, so I think it is back to an author who never, ever lets me down and who leaves me with the feeling that God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world.

Step forward Mr Dickens....

The END

I am not a musical snob, I am not a musical snob, I am not a musical snob....BUT I believe I have finally reached the end of my tolerance.  If opera singers wish to sing cross over stuff well, fine, that is up to them.  I don't have to buy it if I don't want to.  Some of it is great, I have Jose Carreras and Kiri te Kanawa in West Side Story (he's good, not sure about her) and South Pacific.  I have Bryn singing Carousel, and Placido singing Lehar.  All well and good.   If Streisand wishes to sing Kurt Weill again, I have no problem. 

These albums are marketed ferociously through Classic FM, a radio station that I defended most strongly against the comments of my classical/opera singer/Radio 3 listener/then husband, who I accused of musical snobbery.  Over the years this station has gone from strength to strength, but I do wish it would rid itself of its penchant for Collection Albums (Music for Dinner Parties, Music for Lovers, Music for Babies, Music for Boy Racers ...ok I made the last one up), and its promotion of artists such as Russell "the Voice" Watson, Kathryn Jenkins, Andrea Boccelli, the Opera Babes etc.  They are all pushed as opera singers when they are NOT, they are singers who happen to record operatic arias.  Put them on an opera stage and they wouldn't last five minutes.

Anyway, despite all this, I am a huge fan of Classical FM and listen to it a lot, interspersed with Radio 3, but today I think that I have heard without doubt the worst performance of anything I have ever experienced (Florence Foster Jenkins apart) as I was driving to the supermarket this morning.  I actually pulled over to a lay by to listen to this rendition to the end so I could find out what, and who, it was.

Several years ago Michael Bolton (he with the waist length hair) made a recording of operatic areas.  I can truly say that to listen to his rendition of Nessun Dorma was simply toe-curlingly embarrassing and it was just so bad, that you had to laugh. What I heard this morning, however, was even worse.

They were songs by John Dowland performed by Sting Apparently, Sting adores Tudor lute music and has been fascinated by Dowland for years.  The fact that he is Sting, has clout and pulling power has deluded his record company - Deutsche Gramaphon no less - to allow him to record these songs and, at the moment, this collection is No 2 in the Classic FM Countdown.

I am going on record here and now as saying it is without doubt the most ghastly, dire, dreadful singing I have ever heard in my life, excruciatingly painful to the ear, and pretentious beyond belief.  I am finding it difficult to really really put into words what I feel about this, though you may think I have managed very well. 

I need to go and have a lie down.

West Wing - Final Series and Final Blog

I know how tedious it is when somebody blathers on about their particular addiction and I promise this will be the last time I write about West Wing, but I just have to say once more how simply wondrous, marvelous and stupendous it is.  There.

I sat up till late last night, secure in the knowledge it was Friday and I could have a lie in the next morning, so 1 am found me curled up on the sofa, tissue in hand, watching the final episode. I have watched this series since Day One and, as I have mentioned before, a lot of the time the characters spoke and moved so fast as they belted round the White House, that I could not understand a word they were saying.  Somehow, it did not seem to matter, the pumped up energy just crackled off the screen and into your living room.

This series has topped them all.  Tragically the actor John Spencer, who plays Leo McGarry, died of a heart attack during filming, a case of real life reflecting the imaginary, as his character had also had such an attack in the previous series.  This left the producers in a dreadful dilemma but they had no choice but to write this into the story line and, though it sounds a heartless thing to say, Leo's collapse and death on Election day, provided a riveting dramatic high. One feels that John Spencer would have rather liked it.

What amazed me was the clinical way the outgoing President is shunted out the back door.  During the Inauguration Ceremony, on the stroke of 12 noon as the new President is taking the Oath of Office, the movers enter the White House and clear out every vestige of the outgoing incumbent, so that when the new President arrives, everything is in place.  As the credits on this series bristle with advisors who once worked in the White House, you can be sure that everything is correct and this is exactly as it is done.

So, at the end we are left as the series started, with the new President sitting at his desk in the Oval Office, ready to start his administration.  Though the ending of West Wing was moving and sad, the writers had very cleverly placed characters from the previous administration, Josh, Sam, Donna and other assorted bit parts, in higher places in the new administration so that the viewers did not feel too disorientated.  They even had a scene in the last episode identical to one in the first series when Josh interrupted a meeting to haul out Sam Seaborn and get him to come to the White House.  It is rather sad in a way that I can remember that.....

All good things come to an end however and, much though I would have loved a series of West Wing 2 all about the new administration, probably best to end it here after President Bartlet had served his two full terms. 

So, unless a new series is made or a super duper new Special Edition DVD with Scenes you Have Never Seen Before is released (which I will, of course, buy) this will be my last mention of West Wing.

'sob'.....

Did you know...?

Did you know where the use of the euphemism The Loo/going to the Loo comes from?  I have just found out.  I am currently reading The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicolson and am reading a chapter on the comings and goings of the landed gentry and their country weekends (or Saturdays to Mondays as they were called - use of the word weekend was regarded as 'common' apparently).

Lady Louisa Anson was a guest at the Vice Regal lodge in Ireland and, by all accounts, was rude and demanding.  She so upset the Viceroy's children that in revenge they stole the name card from her bedroom door and slid it into the holder on the door of the water closet.  The story spread and from then on people needing to visit the water closet would announce that they were off to visit 'Lady Loo' or as it became known, 'The Loo'.   Now not many people know that...

Movies and Mags

I love movies.  I love sitting in a darkened cinema, preferably on my own (I am a solitary viewer by choice) and becoming totally involved in the world being portrayed on the screen (and the bigger the screen the better as far as I am concerned).  This love of movies has been with me all my life.  When I was a little girl my sister and I used to be taken to the local flea pit every Saturday night by our mother.  We had a B picture, the Big Picture, a newsreel and a cartoon - all this for the equivalent of 10p in today's currency.  Ye gods!

This was the big weekly treat and rounded off by the purchase of an ice lolly called Orange Maid, from the usherette who came round in the interval with a tray slung round her neck full of ice creams etc.  There was always a mad rush as soon as she appeared in case your favourite flavour had vanished by the time you were served. 

I used to devour fan mags as well.  I read every word and believed them all. So you knew that Alan Ladd was 6 foot (in fact he was 5' 6"), that Rock Hudson was the biggest macho superstar around, that Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn were 'just good friends'. that John Barrymore only drank orange juice, and that Elizabeth Taylor was domesticated and loved nothing better than to stay at home cooking dinner for her husband (never specified which one). 

These magazines died the death when TV came in and the movie going public deserted the cinema in droves, though they came back once the novelty wore off, but in the last ten years more film magazines have begun to appear on the shelves.  Head and shoulders above any of these is Empire.  I have taken this more or less since Issue 1.  It has a Wow aren't we all super cool dudes style of  writing that can become a bit wearisome, but its enthusiasm and love of all things cinema shines through.  Some of its critics obviously have their likes and dislikes so reviews of all the films cannot be taken as gospel, but on the whole they are even handed and the analysis of the films scene is spot on and intelligent.

Empire has charted the rise/fall of video/dvd so that even the most technophobic of readers can understand the difference between the formats and quality of the latest update, and now has a section called At Home, which reviews the latest issues on the DVD front.  What is so great about this is that movies that have been consigned to history and never seen again, except at 2 am on the TV, are now being remastered and reissued and some gems can be picked up for next to nothing.  DVDs are getting cheaper and cheaper and you can now pop them in your supermarket trolley with your weekly shopping without a second thought.  Of course, the next big things is High Definition DVD but I will be letting this go for a while until the market settles down and they come down in price.

I am in the process of collecting some of my favourite musicals on DVD and getting rid of the recordings I made off TV some years ago.  These were never available before but now I can buy not only the better known musicals, such as Carousel, Oklahoma and the like, but those less familiar, You were Never Lovelier, Three Little Words, and dozens of others.  Most of them can be picked up for about £5 if you keep an eye out in the sales and on Amazon.  As I have bought so many Amazon now alert me to those I might like to buy which is very useful.

So, I will say it again - I love movies.

Diane Setterfield - 13th Tale revisited

As I had received a copy of this book pre-publication and posted about it a few months ago, I am now editing my previous blogs as I have come across several book groups who are currently reading this, so thought this might be a good time to revisit The Thirteenth Tale.

"I was captivated by this book from the moment I read this paragraph:

"A is for Austen, B is for Bronte, C is for Charles and D is for Dickens.  I learned my alphabet in this shop" and later "At school I kept all this shop reading to myself.......sometimes history lessons would touch upon one of the deep but random seams of knowledge I had accumulated by my haphazard reading in the shop.  Charlemagne?  I would think. What my Charlemagne"

This resonated with me completely as I read in this way as a child.  In my teenage years I reckon I worked my way through every historical fiction book in my library, and many years later amazed my history teacher with my knowledge of Catherine D'Medici and Lucrezia Borgia  (thank you Jean Plaidy).  Recently, I answered a question on Charlemagne on University Challenge on TV and wondered how on earth I knew that? 

Fellow bloggers who know me well will remember that last year I read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell by Susanna Clarke, and for a week was up till 1 am every night reading this book as I could not bear to put it down.  It totally took me over, as has this one.  Sadly, it is not so long as Jonathan Strange et al which, let's face it, is of door step size, but it has had the same impact.

I am not going to give away the story or plot spoilers, except that it features an isolated house on the moors, twins and abandoned children, but suffice it to say that Diane Setterfield is a woman after my own heart.  Her passions and influences are those that I adore:  Jane Eyre, Woman in White, Rebecca (one of the main characters is Vida Winter-not dissimilar to Mrs De Winter), Henry James (think Turn of the Screw) and, in the descriptions of the garden and one of the characters, John Digance, The Secret Garden.  The general decay of the house, Angelfield, and the behaviour of its inmates reminds the reader of Wuthering Heights.  I could go on and on. It appears that the author lives in Yorkshire and if her house is not an old stone one set in the middle of a deserted moor, I will be most surprised."

I have re-read the above and still stand by it after the initial excitement has died down.  It is so easy to get carried away by hype and rush out and buy a book that on mature thought you might not normally purchse (have to fight this impulse during the January sales), but this book is my kind of book.  I think the test is to return to a book one has bought in this way a year or so later, when all is quiet and the next best thing has come along, and see how you feel about it.  If you still like it, then you have chosen wisely.  If you don't, then you have to admit that you fell victim to the publicity.  We have all done that.  I know I have. 

A prime example as far as I am concerned is Captain Corelli.  Gave in to the Gosh you must read this brigade, and found, after a shaky start, I was gripped.  By the end, I was not a happy bunny, thought it dipped and the denouement was a sad disappointment.  Looked at it again a year later, found it unreadable, so off to the charity shop it went (to join, I might add, quite a few other copies already there). 

I recently read The Historian by Kostova.  Again, fell for all the publicity and hard sell.  It started off really promisingly, the story based on the premise that Dracula is alive and well and probably living in a street near you, was a good one and for the first 150 pages all went swimmingly.  Then, sadly, the familiar feeling of Do I really want to be bothered with this crept up on me, I started skipping, read the end and that was that.  My daughter bought this book, called me to say how wonderful it was (I did not say a word, promise) and then later on found her reaction was the same as mine.

If this is not getting too tedious, another one.  The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox about which I have already blogged.  Followed the same pattern, for me anyway, and this was sold back on Amazon marketplace.

Now, I know that not everybody likes The Thirteenth Tale and I also know that various of my friends disagree with my view of The Meaning of Night.  This is what makes reading so fascinating.  Nobody can guarantee that a book you love and rave about will be appreciated in the same way, and we continue trying books on the premise that we may find with each read, a life affirming, entertaining, riveting, exciting (choose what ever adjective you like) story that will make book buying worthwhile.

Incidentally, it is worth noting that while The Thirteenth Tale shot to the number one slot in the USA best sellers, it has somewhat languished over here.  Make of that what you will.