A Bluestocking Knits

Would You Lie?

From last week's Booking Through Thursday --

Two-thirds of Brits have lied about reading books they haven’t. Have you? Why? What book?

Oh dear, oh dear.  I'm afraid I don't see the purpose of lying about what I've read.  To impress people?  Far more likely to be thoroughly mortified by being caught out when someone asks "What about that glass paperweight, eh?"

Here's part of the original article from Reuters:

The study, carried out on the World Book Day website in January and February, surveyed 1,342 members of the public.

Those who lied have claimed to have read:

1. 1984 - George Orwell (42 percent)

2. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (31)

3. Ulysses - James Joyce (25)

4. The Bible (24)

5. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (16)

6. A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking (15)

7. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie (14)

8. In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust (9)

9. Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama (6)

10. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins (6)

I admit that I have read none of these except, as it happens, 1984, which I was forced to do in high school.  This, along with Animal Farm, may have been the beginning of my dislike for post-apocalyptic totalitarian-world science fiction.  To be honest, though, what I have read of Orwell as an adult -- Keep the Aspidistra Flying and his essay "Why I Write", for instance -- intrigue me for his writing style.  (No, really, I just read him for the prose.)

I have read parts of the Bible, but not the whole thing.  Have never even heard of The Selfish Gene! that's embarrassing.

Booking Through Thursday: Recent Sadness

Booking Through Thursday asks this week: What’s the saddest book you’ve read recently?

Sometimes you just come across things accidentally at the library or bookstore that you pick up and think, "that sounds interesting".  I don't know why it caught my eye at the public library, but a month or so ago I came home with Cliffs of Despair by Tom Hunt, about the cliffs of Beachy Head in the south of England and the people who go there to commit suicide.  The author, an American whose brother-in-low shot himself, felt drawn to the cliffs in an attempt to understand not only why people kill themselves, but why Beachy Head?  What is it about the place that draws people there?  He interviews families of victims, taxi drivers who have unwittingly taken suicides to the spot, rescue workers, and coroners, acknowledging that he might seem something of an ambulance-chaser, this American come to ask such deeply personal questions, and so he takes care to remain gently unjudgmental throughout. Cliffs of Despair is certainly not a self-help book, either for those tempted by suicide or for families touched by it, nor does it even answer many questions.  Some questions have no answers.  But it does leave one somehow with a profound feeling of sympathy towards those who, for whatever reason, have found themselves on the edge of Beachy Head and either turned away or took the last, fatal step.

Booking Through Thursday: Just Wild About Harry

be sorted @ nimbo.net

Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?  I read the first two books when I was working at a high school library, and thought I should see what all of the fuss was about.  (Can you imagine a time when there was only one copy of The Sorcerer's Stone on the library shelf?  Not that long ago, either.)  To be honest, I thought they were okay -- not brilliant, but a fairly entertaining diversion.  Actually, I wasn't impressed by the first one, but read it again along The Chamber of Secrets when I realized that my husband was besotted with them, somewhere around the eleventh reading of the then-four-volume series!  I thought a bit better of them on second reading.

David is flying off to Florida on Sunday morning, and plans to snatch up a copy of the new one on his way to the airport, as it were -- he tells me he will also be taking the next few Aubrey/Maturins in the series.  (His favorite HP characters are the Weasley twins.)

If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties? If you’re not going to read it, why not?  I'm more interested in the series since I've gotten this far, but I can certainly wait until David gets home to read the new one! and I can't even think, realistically, of who it would have to be for me to stay up past midnight to see!  (The Queen, perhaps, but then I don't think she'd be up past midnight, either.)

I would, however, be tempted to dress up as a character for a Halloween bash.  Professor Trelawney, I think ....!

And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?  Putting myself in an author's position, I think that Rowling would have a hard time killing off a character that means so much to her, although I understand how the requirements of a storyline might compel one to do so.  If she does, I suspect that it would be something in the line of Gandalf's transformation into something more powerful, greater than he had been before. 

And yes, as you can see, I've "been sorted", into Ravenclaw House.  I suspect that the Sorting Hat would have had rather a time making its decision, wondering whether to put me with the other duffers into Hufflepuff!  David, as you may remember, would be in Gryffindor.

For more answers to this week's Booking Through Thursday question, visit here.

Booking Through Thursday: Encore

Booking Through Thursday asks this week,

Almost everyone can name at least one author that you would love just ONE more book from. Either because they’re dead, not being published any more, not writing more, not producing new work for whatever reason . . . or they’ve aged and aren’t writing to their old standards any more . . . For whatever reason, there just hasn’t been anything new (or worth reading) of theirs and isn’t likely to be.

If you could have just ONE more book from an author you love . . . a book that would be as good any of their best (while we’re dreaming) . . . something that would round out a series, or finish their last work, or just be something NEW . . . Who would the author be, and why? Jane Austen? Shakespeare? Laurie Colwin? Kurt Vonnegut?

David asked me last night, "Where are your mystery books?" and I pointed to a shelf in the living room.  He was gone for some moments, then came back with not a mystery but Master and Commander, the first in the novels by Patrick O'Brian chronicling the adventures of Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin in the early 19th-century English navy, and basis for the brilliantly atmospheric if somewhat hodge-podge movie of the same name.  We sat together for a while, David reading and I knitting, but I kept glancing over at his book, and before long put my knitting away and picked up The Nutmeg of Consolation, fourteenth in the series.  Why I've left it so long, I can't say -- it's been two years at least since I read the previous book.  What was I thinking?

I was rewarded nearly at once by this, as the marooned sailors take a respite, from their hard work of building a schooner from the wreckage of their frigate, in a game of cricket:

"What Stephen did not fully appreciate was the degree of pleasure that Jack took in this particular ceremony.  As a captain Aubrey was exceedingly worried by the shortage of food and marine stores, particularly cordage, by the near absence of powder, and by the coming total absence of arrack and tobacco; but as a cricketer he knew that close concentration was necessary on any pitch, above all on one like this, which more closely resembled a stretch of white concrete than any Christian meadow, and when he came in second wicket down, the yeoman of the sheets having been bowled by the sergeant of the Marines for a creditable sixteen, he took centre and looked about him with an eager, piercing, predatory eye, tapping the block-hole with his bat, wholly taken up with the matter at hand." (p.11)

A masterful paragraph.  It conveys something of Jack's charisma as a leader, his dedication to his men, his attention to detail (when it concerns his ship, at least) and his sportsmanship and raw energy, with a nice touch of humor, and also something of Stephen's obtuseness when it comes to cricket (shadowed by his even greater denseness when confronted with naval terminology, which despite knowing umpteen languages and impossibly arcane minutiae of medical and zoological terminology, not to mention having spent by this time some dozen years at sea with Jack, remains a blank to him).  And it is of course, bar the opening line, all one sentence.

("Nutmeg of Consolation" is an honorific carried by the Sultan of Pulo Prabang (in the South China Sea), who features in the previous book, whose title is borrowed by Jack to christen his newest vessel, "a tight, sweet, newly-coppered, broad-buttocked little ship, a solace to any man's heart" (p.80).)

Patrick O'Brian died, alas, in 2000, and I am reading the fourteenth book in a series of twenty (twenty-one, if you count the one unfinished at his death), but even though I can console myself with the thought that I can certainly read the whole canon over again from the beginning once I've finished, there is a certain wistfulness that there are no more to be had.  One of the things I appreciate most about these novels is that despite the nearly-interminable amount of naval jargon, it isn't really necessary to know much of it.  One can infer from context that a topgallants are a kind of sail, and so on -- and more information can be found at The Gunroom and the aptly-named Guide for the Perplexed, or in any number of O'Brian lexicons -- and quite a lot is explained to Stephen as things go along! -- but even lubbers such as myself can simply enjoy such passages as this, "Royal masts were sent up and their sails were set upon them, very fine and delicate canvas too; and since the wind, a good steady topgallant breeze, was now abaft the beam, studdingsails too made their charming appearance, four on the weather side of the foremast and two on the main, with a crowd of staysails; spritsail and spritsail topsail, of course, with all the jibs that would stand, a noble array.  Presently skysails flashed out above the royals, and all hands watched the water rise high at the bows, sink to the copper abaft the forechains and then race hissing along her side, leaving a broad wake behind, stretching straight and true to the west by south" (p.110), which creates a fine picture in the mind's eye but does not hinder the storyline if rigging is a mystery.

Well, I could go on, but this post is quite long enough already, I suspect!  Suffice it to say that I recommend these books highly as brilliant and entertaining historical novels, with great depth of characterization and elegant prose.  Cracking good reads, too.  Give you joy, as Stephen Maturin might say, if you've yet to discover them!

Booking Through Thursday: Bookless

Booking Through Thursday has a new home and a new button --

This week, BTT asks about inspiration.

It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again?

After I finished reading Linda Lear's excellent biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature a few weeks ago, I already had Judith Levine's Not Buying It in hand, thanks to Elizabeth of "A Mingled Yarn", who wrote a few weeks ago about the book, intriguing me enough to search out a copy -- that was easy enough!  Sometimes, all it takes to inspire me is a trip to the library, especially when I see a favorite author on the New Book shelf -- I came home with Claire Tomalin's book on Thomas Hardy the other day, and am looking forward to starting it this weekend.

Like with knitting, or with most things, really, I don't like to read when I'm not in the mood -- makes it seem like work, that way.  There are usually enough other things to either distract me for a while or keep me busy until the inspiration does come!

Booking Through Thursday: Location, Location, Location (Part 2)

Booking Through Thursday for today wants to know where we read --

Where do you do most of your reading? Your favorite spot?

I usually read on the sofa in our living room, a comfy two-seater in sagey-green velveteen bought at a huge discount when our local Laura Ashley shop closed some years back.  (Our loss was our gain, as it were, as we could not have afforded it otherwise.)  My second choice is the IKEA sofa in what we call the front bedroom, although it is in fact our TV room.  I try not to read in bed much, as I have occasional bouts of insomnia.   I don't think I have a favorite spot for reading, as such -- every spot for reading is a favorite spot! -- just a usual one.

I finished reading David Crane's Scott of the Antarctic a while back, and had to rush it back to the library some days late.  It is an interesting book, one that impressed me in a number of ways, and made me think, and want to linger over it.  I was delighted first of all by Crane's writing, with complex yet fluid sentences that made me realize how comma-starved I've become in these days of text messages and emails.  Here is one of my favorites, regarding Scott's meeting with his future wife, Kathleen: "Bernacchi [as an early biographer of Scott] reckoned that Scott had 'only a slender knowledge of women,' but it is fair to say that all the knowledge in the world would probably not have prepared him for the wonderfully tanned, determinedly virginal, twenty-eight-year-old sculptress with a passion for 'male babies' and a critical eye for a prospective father, just back from five months' vagabonding around Greece" (p.312).  How often does one actually laugh out loud at a book on Polar exploration? I ask you!  Subtle, humorous, and telling.

I was very impressed at Crane's ability to not only write interestingly and thoughtfully, but to balance the admirable and not-so-admirable aspects of Scott's character.  It did seem to be rather difficult at times, though, for him to tell enough of the story to keep the Antarctic-novice reader going.  I can imagine that it's hard when the writer knows the cast of characters so well to say, for example, "Crean" or "Lashly," and not realize that the reader has no idea who Crean or Lashly is.  (Even I wished for a little list at the back of the book.)  Crane at one point remarks on Scott's stomach troubles in a way that implies this was chronic, but it had not been mentioned to us before then.  On the other hand, Crane's ability to make the rather gorgonlike Kathleen Scott into a relatively sympathetic character can only increase my admiration for his abilities as a writer.  (In Kathleen's defense, I can only admit that most of my impressions of her come from the men's diaries, as biased and anti-feminist as most Edwardian men.) 

My first experience of the Capt. Scott story, as I've said before, was from the Roland Huntford book and television series -- definitely unflattering towards Scott -- and so my opinion of Scott was quite low for a long time, but after reading Crane's book, I think that Huntford is too hard on Scott, or at least unwilling to show the good side.  I wonder if our taste for gossipy, warts-and-all biographies (did the gallant Captain Oates really father a child at the age of twenty, with an eleven-year-old girl?) these days make us underappreciate the loyalty Scott inspired -- sadly lacking in so many of our public figures now, to our great cost.  Talking of the great Memorial Service at St. Paul's, Crane writes, "There are few things that more poignantly signal the remoteness of Dean Inge's age from our own, because while nothing is more inevitable or healthier than historical revisionism, what has happened to Scott's reputation requires some other label.  It might seem odd from this distance that neo-Georgian England should find in a Darwin-carrying agnostic of Scott's cast the type of Christian sacrifice, but the historical process that has shrunk the rich, complex and deeply human set of associations that once clustered round his story into an allegory of arrogance, selfishness and moral stupidity is every bit as extraordinary" (p.11).

While we can't forget that, as Huntford reminds us repeatedly, ponies and manhauling in the Antarctic lacks a great deal of common sense (to put it mildly), and that by association this lack is transferred to Scott himself with tragic results, we also must remember, as Crane points out not only elegantly but tellingly, that "In such a climate of doubt and self-questioning [as that of post-Industrial Revolution and pre-WWI England], the outpouring of national pride over Scott was no demonstration of imperialist triumphalism but its reverse, its militancy the militancy of weakness, its stridency the stridency of a country desperate for assurance that the moral qualities that once made it great were still intact" (p.9).  Huntford sees the mistakes -- huge mistakes, certainly -- while Crane sees the mistakes in context, which, while it doesn't excuse them, does go some way towards explaining them.  "The most tempting answer is suggested by the cultural and political overtones implicit in Trevor Griffiths' use [in "The Last Place on Earth" series] of the word 'Englishness,' because if Scott was once celebrated as the incarnation of everything an Englishman should be, he is now damned as the sad embodiment of everything he actually was" (p.12), in other words, an Englishman.  We do tend to lash out at the characteristics in other people that we most despise in ourselves, don't we.  The qualities that "made England great" -- duty, self-sacrifice, discipline, patriotism, hierarchy, as Crane lists them -- are now seen as less than admirable.  It's an interesting thought.

Booking Through Thursday: TLC

Booking Through Thursday wants to know what kind of care do we take of our books?

1. Are you careful with the spines? Or do you crack your books open to make them lay flat? From years of working in a public library -- shelving, processing, cataloging -- I've developed a little routine, although it's really just more a habit, for opening new hardcover books, that I find myself doing automatically, even at bookstores with books that I don't intend to buy.  I open the front cover, gently but firmly, as far back as it will go, then repeat this with the back cover, which loosens the stiffness that comes with the gluing of the spine.  I usally riffle the pages too, although this is difficult with books from those publishers (like Knopf) who don't trim the edges.
2. Do you use bookmarks? Or do you dog-ear the corners? If you do use bookmarks, do you use those fashionable metal ones? Or paper? I use paper or thin cardstock to mark my place, although they are usually not official "bookmarks" as such, but handy scraps of paper or index cards if I'm taking notes -- those subscription cards from magazines that we perpetually find under the chairs are very handy, for instance!  I don't like the bookmarks that clip over a section of pages, as like paper clips I think these will either crinkle the pages or discolor them eventually.  I really dislike the magnet kinds, as clever as they are, because I don't want to put anything thick inside a book, being too hard on the spine.  I knew a librarian once who had a collection of things that she'd found in books, things that people had been using to mark their places -- leaves, dollar bills, old letters, a boxed deck of cards, bits of string, and such (I didn't really believe her about the strip of bacon, though).
3. Do you write in your books? Ever? If you do, do you make small marks, or write in as much blank space as you can find? Pen or pencil? Highlighter? Your name on the front page? I found it extremely difficult to get into the habit in college of writing in my textbooks.  I think it took the gradual dawning on me that either my notes would be helpful to me in the future (!), or that my used textbooks would to be honest not get used again by anyone else, to get me to put pencil -- not pen! -- to paper.  I sometimes, although rarely, make light Xs in the margins at passages I especially want to remember and find again, but on the whole I don't write in books.  This is somewhat ironic, as I love to find old inscriptions on the flyleaf of a good book (I always laugh at the part in 84, Charing Cross Road when Helene chides FPD for not writing an inscription in a book he sent her from the shop staff, how she would have enjoyed and valued it but their booksellers' aversion to "damaging" the book has prevented them.)  The only time I use pen is to write my name or a gift inscription.
4. Do you toss your books on the floor? Into book bags? Or do you treat them tenderly, with respect? Er, define "toss"!  That slip from bed to floor (for I as yet have no nightstand)?  Does that count?
5. Do you ever lay your book face-down, to save your place?  Only paperback cookbooks -- otherwise, never!  Certainly not hardcovers.  (I had to laugh when a few months ago I heard Laura, then aged six, say sternly to her little sister, "Not that way, you'll break the spine!")
6. Um--water? Do you bathe with your books? Hold them with wet hands? Read out in the rain? Anything of that sort? There is a certain category in my mind that I call "bathtub books" -- generally romances or light mysteries in paperback that would be no great loss if they were to be dropped into the tub and ruined (which I have done, I confess!).  Many of Barbara Michaels' books are this kind.  I generally don't read the Harlequin/Mills & Boon kind of stuff, but those would also qualify.  I'm careful not to read with wet or dirty hands, not even magazines.
7. Are your books lined up on a bookshelf? Or crammed in any which way? Stacked on the floor? Well, frankly, some of each, although this is more from lack of space than from any disregard or thoughtlessness!  Most of my P.G. Wodehouse collection (I adore P.G. Wodehouse) is stacked up next to the bookcase in the hallway, having been crowded out by the DVDs -- the reasoning being that the DVD boxes are slippery and the stacks fall over far too easily, whereas the books make a fairly sturdy pile which hasn't fallen over yet, despite being whacked now and then with the broom when I sweep.  (Pathetic, isn't it.)
8. Do you make a distinction--as regards book care--between hardcovers and paperbacks? Not usually, no.  It's more the book itself that qualifies it or not -- but even with books I don't like much, I am not careless.  It's either "careful" or "more careful"!  If I don't want it, it goes to the library booksale.
9. And, to recap? Naturally, you love all of your books, but how, exactly? Are your books loved in the battered way of a well-loved teddy bear, or like a cherished photo album or item of clothing that's used, appreciated, but carefully cared for? This question is making me think -- it's not the same as a comfort object, the way that Julia, for instance, carries her Lambie around by the tail, thoughtlessly but with a certain basic need -- it's not the same as clothing, in the way that some people have rooms dedicated to their wardrobe, climate-controlled and organized by color or purpose -- it's more like close friends, that you enjoy having them around, you are considerate of their "comfort" (having a good chair for them to sit on, and tea, or a sturdy shelf), you enjoy their company when they are around and think about them when they are not, you even introduce them to others because you think they'll get along well together.  You think all of a sudden one afternoon, "I haven't seen X in a while, I must call her!" or "Eva Ibbotson! I need to read her again!"  My books are in some ways extensions of myself, too, not just like friends who are the world coming to and interacting with me, in that the books that have spoken deeply to me at different parts of my life are in a way like my diaries, except with experiences that I didn't actually have myself.

Booking Through Thursday: Keeping it Simple

Booking Through Thursday writes, "Let's keep it simple today":

1. What are you reading right now?  I went to the library yesterday morning, and found on the new book shelf Scott of the Antarctic: A Life of Courage and Tragedy by David Crane.  I first learned about the story from watching "The Last Place on Earth", based on the book by Roland Huntford, and then from reading pretty voraciously almost everything I could find on the subject, I learned that the truth, as so often happens, was probably somewhere in between Huntford's inept bungler and the glorious hero of popular mythology.  (One of the best books that I read this past year was Sara Wheeler's Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a fairly minor member of the Terra Nova expedition who afterwards produced one of the most lyrical works on polar exploration, The Worst Journey in the World.)  Crane is obviously, from the subtitle of his book, in the Scott camp, but he does have some interesting and perceptive things to say, in the first chapter alone, about the English character and its need for heroes in the early days of the twentieth century, with its inexorable slide towards the hell of the First World War.

I'm also well into Reading Like a Writer, by Francine Prose, a literate and elegant guide to the appreciation of great literature.

Booking Through Thursday: But Enough About Books --

But enough about books (for a while at least) -- Booking Through Thursday wants to know what else do you read?

Magazines? Newspapers? Professional journals? Cereal boxes? Phone books? Purchase invoices? Homework? (Please be specific. There may be a test later.)

My extra-book reading is rather staid.  I subscribe to a number of magazines, with a special fondness for what they call "shelter magazines" for some reason -- a less-inspiring name could hardly be found.  I get "Better Homes & Gardens", "Cottage Living", "Interweave Knits", "Martha Stewart Living", and "Real Simple", and I buy occasional issues of "Country Living" and "Natural Home" and other things that catch my eye here and there, if something in it is worth saving.  I have quite a weakness for the UK edition of "Country Living," too.  My mom gives me her old copies of "Sunset", which is one of my favorites.  Nothing literary, alas -- I keep hoping that "Civilization" will start showing up again.  I don't read parenting magazines anymore -- not that I know everything, I just don't have the time! -- although I did pick up "Wondertime" the last few months and found it very appealing.  I am very disappointed -- and told them so -- that Martha Stewart has decided to cease publication of "Kids," which I thought was a wonderful magazine and one of the few that I save whole.  I also read David's "National Geographic" and the "Westways" that comes with our Auto Club membership, and the girls' "Ladybug" -- we'll be adding to their list as birthdays roll by.  I'm looking forward to my Christmas present to David of "The Economist", for which we unexpectedly found a discount coupon in Laura's Brownie fundraiser!

I read the Los Angeles Times every morning, although to be honest I usually have time only to browse the front page, and read the local and Calendar sections, although I do love the Food and Home sections on Wednesdays and Thursdays.

I use to read cereal boxes a lot when I was a kid (Quisp! Cap'n Crunch!), but I usually eat homemade granola or toast for breakfast these days, so no boxes --

Booking Through Thursday: Men and Women

Booking Through Thursday asks a rather provocative question this week --

1. Do you tend to read more books written by one gender over the other? I haven't ever considered this!  Upon reflection, the last three books I've gotten from the library -- assuming that cookbooks don't count, although in the strictest sense of the issue, I suppose they should -- A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by William Shapiro, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton by Kathryn Hughes, and Anne Boleyn: A New Life of England's Tragic Queen by Joanna Denny makes it two to one for the women. 
2. If so, which one? Men? Or women? Is this a deliberate choice? Or just something that kind of happened?  I am glad to say that I do not choose books on the basis of their author's gender, but instead on the interest said books may hold for me, the recommendation of another reader I trust (as a personal friend or as a professional reviewer), or on other writings by the author.  The only situation I can imagine where this might happen is that of encouraging certain categories of author, such as regional, cultural, maybe even occupational.  It doesn't seem to me, thank heavens, that women authors need that kind of promotion much these days.  That said, one of my favorite subjects is women's issues, but I don't consider the author's gender in the choosing, but whether he or she writes well, knows the subject, teaches me something that I didn't know before, and so on.
3. And (without wanting to get too personal), is this your gender?  I am in fact female.

As a postscript to this question, looking at my short list above, I did notice that of the three books I checked out from the library a few weeks ago, I bought the one written by a man after reading merely the first two chapters, finished reading one of the two written by a woman (the biography of Mrs. Beeton), and am seriously considering dropping the second of the two written by a woman (the Anne Boleyn biography) due to clumsy writing and egregious scholarship.