What I'm reading, and nothing more

I just want to make a note about the book I'm reading at the moment:

I'm really loving Diana Athill. In a sort of selfish way, I think. It's the way that she makes me feel better about my faults. She opens the book discussing why it is that she can't do some things - she's not sure if it's that she can't or won't, but regardless, she's incapable of doing things she doesn't want to do. It's nice to not be alone in that...though obviously, she managed to get into publishing several decades before I did, when it was seemingly quite interesting and she was afforded the opportunity to be engaged by it. I had no such luck, and came in at the business end of the whole sorry enterprise, way after books became nothing more than another commodity. So, yes, still alone, but only by an accident of history that had me born a good 70 years too late.

It's too far in the evening and the big glass of alcohol for me to be even trying to make it any clearer than that. You should read the book really. Also, it is incredibly funny! Literally laught-out-loud-on-the-bus-even-though-strangers-stare funny.


My absolute favourite part is where she describes something foolish, and then leaves a line of empty space on either side of:

This space represents a tactful silence.

There is nothing not to love about that.

Reading

OK, one more lovely thing found while enjoying the internet too much (also from My Modern Metropolis), I'm going to bed now:

Good friends, good food

I had the lovely experience of visiting the London Street Brasserie again yesterday. The food there is unbelievably delicious and they have a wonderful set menu that is more than reasonable in price. Every ingredient there is exactly what you'd want it to be - fresh and full of flavour, and they are combined in delightful ways. I normally tell people that I don't like seafood because I dislike it so much when it's done badly, but at the London Street Brasserie I confidently order things I would never normally eat, knowing that they'll do it well. If you are ever in Reading, you must visit it.

I was there with two of my very best friends from university. One of whom I now work with and one who lives on the other side of the world. It was a lovely combination, and I felt like I was my true self for all the time we spent together. It was the sort of lunch that I feel should be the standard, but instead it was a little jewel set amongst the rocks of too much work and too many other stresses, and I will treasure it.

And in that moment, I swear we were infinite

I have been sort of wanting to read The Perks of Being a Wallflower for quite a while, but I thought I'd left it too late to really appreciate it. However, the beautiful girl read it recently and I ordered it from Amazon on her recommendation. It arrived yesterday, which turned out to be just in time.
I got home today with this crushed and worried feeling built up inside me. It comes from lots of things, and it's been lingering for a while, but today while walking home from work the whole mess of it started to spill out and I felt kindof out of control.
I didn't really want to indulge the feeling (as it would have been so easy to do), and lose a whole evening to turning the same stressful issues over and over again in my mind. So I ran a bath and pulled out Wallflower to try and get carried away by it.
As the beautiful girl warned me, there are places where it seems a little tough to take and unbelievable. But honestly, it's wonderful. It takes me back so clearly to those feelings I'd forgotten of learning about life for the first time. I can actually feel the infinity Charlie writes about, I had let it get so distant from me and I hate that.
I hate that I'm so far away from the honesty he has. I remember being 16 and telling a boy that I liked him, even though I knew he didn't feel the same way, just because I thought it would be worth it to give him the good feeling of knowing that somebody thought of him that way.
I would never be so open these days. I feel like all I have is a jealously guarded handful of scrounged together happiness, and I'd fight to the death before I'd consider giving any of it away.
If I was 16 now and looking at my grown-up self I'd be so unhappy.

I think I've made too many compromises and protected myself too much. I think I want to find a way back from that, to feel a moment where I would swear that I was infinite.

Writing and Hair

Thanks to The Rejectionist for this cool site - it analyses your writing and tells you who you're most comparable to. I got Margaret Atwood, which is a nice compliment, but looking at Tea Berry-Blue's research into the site, it would appear that the person responsible for the coding may not be lovely sort of person you might hope.

Apart from generally procrastinating on the internet and watching 9-5 today, I have also finished One Day by David Nicholls (it's not without fault, but I did cry buckets at the end, which was exactly what I needed), and dyed my hair a shade of red that made the water I rinsed with look like a river of blood. Not sure that last part was the best idea ever, since I have to give a presentation at a very important sales conference with work in a couple of weeks. I need to look important and respectable in a way that blood-red hair may not quite enable me to do. I'm hoping that if I team it with a lovely green vintage dress, I will look charming and memorable, which is about the best I can ever hope for.

Later, I will be baking cookies for a party at work and doing some more crafting. All in all a lovely weekend, but it is conspicuously missing any time spent writing. I cannot even consider writing anything without shuddering with revulsion at the thought of my output. I think I may have to ease my way back into this with a resurrection of a fiction journal.

Diversify Your Reading

Following up from a previous post on diversifying my reading, I've also been recommended this site which collects together 'blog reviews of books by authors underrepresented in English-language publishing today.' It looks like a really good site so I thought I'd pass on the recommendation.

Another thing to recommend is a new exhibit starting at the Imperial War Museum North soon. It runs from 6th Feb to 13th June. It's called Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin. It looks really interesting.

Travel by books

The Rejectionist is still crusading to bring to light the racist actions of major publishers. As part of their most recent post on the issue they put in several links to sites promoting books by and about people of colour. For some reason though, a lot of the links were aimed at YA readers so I asked for something similar that's meant for adults. One of the comments led to a really great blog - the author's 2009 wrap-up post made a map of the world and all the countries in it that she'd visited through books that year.
It's so easy to read in a very narrow vein, you want to read books similar to other ones you like and you're friends with people who have common tastes. But I'm going to be doing some more travelling by books this year and try to read outside of my norm.

I have been posting, but not here

This is not an excuse for neglecting my blog, but I have been posting to the new blog I have with the beautiful girl.

Though, in fact, I'm a post behind on that as well. But I have got in 5 posts this week, which is uncommonly good for me, and quite distracting.


As for other things I've been doing (in a list because it's that sort of mood):

I learned how to do some Scottish country dancing. It was at a party, I was drunk and won't be doing it again. I was not good.

I've been asked to sell my felt in the lovely gift shop of John Rylands Deansgate.

I've made a big to-do list to stave off the mental breakdown that came scarily close earlier this week.

I took a break from the excessively long We were the Mulvaneys to read I, Robot. The second of those was better, but did have some really really awful snippets of prose sometimes. It's interesting that even though it's incredibly dated (since lots of the 'future' is now in the past and we still don't have robots with positronic brains of hyperdrives to travel to the far reaches of the universe) lots of the issues it raises are still very interesting. I didn't realise it would be lots of short stories, but I liked it, I enjoyed the suspense of each story and I loved the ending of the whole thing. Read it.

I've cleaned the entire house. Don't know what's come over me. My dad's away and I tend to let the house get really messy when he is, but not this time. Weird.

I've booked my tickets to get to London for the Elaine Feinstein book launch next week.

I've been reading lots of stuff in the archives at John Rylands. I've been reading up on the past of Madagascar, there were lots of English missionaries there is the first half of the 19th century. They had some very funny ideas about primitive natives. But they are often useful as well - it's good to see the changes in the country, makes me feel a part of it and hopefully it will help me figure out the plot points missing in my novel.

Listen to Elaine Feinstein

Joel Feinstein commented on the last post with a link to hear his mother reading. I'm re-posting it here for those who don't read comments. Click here to listen to Elaine Feinstein read her poems and a couple of her translations of Marina Tsvetaeva's poems.
I saw Elaine read a few months ago and she is absolutely wonderful. I'm much more of a prose person than a poetry one and I often find it difficult to get into that mode of listening to poetry. But Elaine's reading was so incredibly engaging that I was riveted. I enjoyed her reading so much that I bought a book of her poetry at the event. I never do that, I couldn't even really afford to do it then, but I was just so in love with the poetry after hearing it read that I couldn't help myself.
Do listen to her read by following the link. It is a real treat.

readings and felting

Something about writing

Last night was the March outing of the incedibly popular No Point in Not Being Friends. Thanks to Chris Killen we had a slot for readings from Bewilderbliss, which went down well. If you want to read more about the night visit my blog ManchesterWriting.


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Something personal

This is the first thing that I want to collect onto here - my etsy site:








I've been felting for about a year now and though I do a lot of crafts (to keep the creative part of my mind ticking over when I'm struggling to write) this one's my favourite. Maybe it's got something to do with how much I'd love to paint but how frustrating I find it to spend ages dabbing watercolours onto paper just to come out with something that looks like a five year old did it. Felting's a lot like painting in relation to the importance of colour and composition. It's also a lot more fun and hands on so I can work out the tension of writer's block.
If you want to know a little more about felting click here.