Two's company

An article here about couples reading aloud to each other.

We did try reading aloud in bed, but unlike one of the couples in the article, A Tale of Two Cities just wasn't the right book for us. It is remarkable how books can become entirely different beings when read to you by someone else. I remember reading High Fidelity, thinking how serious it was. I gave it to the Other Half, and chortled his way through the whole book. "What's so funny?" says I, perplexed. When he read it, the story went from seriously sad to blackly comedic.

I think I must try this again.

Titlepage

This sounds great - an online literary (talkshow? discussion panel?) programme is starting on 3 March. "Titlepage" will be streamed from titlepage.tv, where the former fiction editor of The New Yorker and four authors will have a "round-table".

100 Books Every Child Should Read

Over at The Telegraph.

On the Road

“If I am on a journey where I only have time to read one-and-a-half books, I never know which one-and-a-half I’ll feel like reading,” he said. “So I bring eight.”

Mr Stoppard shows us how it's done. There must be a market for these.

Get thee to a computer!

Forget music and travel, the number one thing bought online is books.

I give the gloom-mongers 24 hours before the Death-of-the-Independent-Bookshop-bell is tolled...

You Can't Tell a Book by its Cover...

... but can you tell the reader's IQ from the book? See what you think. (via Librarian.net)

What You're Reading

In one of my very first posts on this blog, I mentioned that I'm the kind of person who will read over your shoulder on the Underground, if I don't have anything on me to read at the time. I found myself in such a situation on Saturday, so I whipped out the notebook and jotted down what other people were reading. So in amongst about 30 copies of London Lite, there was Angels and Demons, The Interpretation of Murder and The God Delusion. Do I sense some kind of vague theme here? There was also a man a few seats down reading with his elbows on his knees, so the cover was face down. I studied him quite intently, but his face didn't give anything away about the subject matter (unlike the woman reading The Interpretation of Murder, who was smiling). There was another woman towards the other end of the carriage whose book, strain as I might (and clearly I was straining quite hard, since I got some very odd looks), I couldn't make out the title of. The lovely thing was though, almost everyone was reading something, and barely an iPod in sight.

"Shhhh! This is the Underground. People are trying to read!"

In which I have (somewhat more famous) company

See every book Art Garfunkel has read since 1968. I lurrrve these kinds of lists, it's like a little peek into someone else's mind.

My own humble offering is here.

Your House

This is gorgeous. A replica of Olafur Eliasson's house, inside a book. No tame pop-up books for this man.

It's everywhere!

But I really feel that I should post it here too. A. L. Kennedy has won the Costa Prize.

Book Podcasts

A lot of linking goes on between bloggers. This is not a criticism, (see the "Blogs I'm Reading" link), since blogging would be lost without its cohorts and myriads of sources. The blogs I read are 98% related to books, and 2% on F1 for something completely different.

What I've noticed is that not that many people link to Podcasts. I've been merrily downloading them for a while now, so thought I might mention they few that I subscribe to: The Book Panel with Simon Mayo seems to be a popular one, reviewing two new books and their authors weekly. The BBC World Service does a World Book Club and tend to interview "heavyweight" authors. The New York Times Book Review podcast also discusses new books, but with more of a US feel about it (as the list of authors often attests). Guardian Unlimited Books mainly focus on authors, but do occasional other topics, such as their Best of 2007. Finally, there's the Penguin Podcasts, both a US and a UK version.

Suggestions for more, anyone?
PS: Does anyone else think it's funny that the Bloglines spell-checker doesn't recognise "bloggers" as a word?

The Drowned Book

Asylum reviews Sean O'Brien's "The Drowned Book" (and reminds me just how good modern poetry can be). It's a rare thing - a review that actually makes me want to go and buy a book of poetry. Well done that man.

What I've Been Reading - December 2007

Though December is well over, I thought I'd take a look back over what I've read. I'm not sure that my reading follows any kind of pattern, and while I quite like that, it makes it almost impossible for people to buy me books without a list supplied by me in triplicate.

Zora Neale Hurston "Their Eyes Were Watching God"
Jonathan Safran Foer "Everything is Illuminated"
Penelope Fitzgerald "The Bookshop"
Paulo Coelho "The Alchemist" (Wanted to see what the fuss was about)
J. G. Ballard "Empire of the Sun"
Imran Ahmad "Unimagined"
Louisa May Alcott "Little Women" (One I'd missed as a child - wanted to see what the fuss was about)
Lian Hearn "Across the Nightingale Floor"
Louis Sachar "Small Steps"

To make things interesting, I'm attempting to read 100 books this year (last year was 89), and at roughly two per week, I'm behind already. I'm also slowly reading my way through the "1001 Books to Read Before You Die". Given that I'm only up to number 101, it could be a while. Does make me read some things I probably wouldn't have otherwise (as the list above attests).

Reading - the new deviant behaviour?

"Instead of just zoning out during a bus ride or spending hour after hour watching YouTube videos at night, Mr. Meyer, unlike most healthy males, looks to books for gratification," Schulz said. "Really, it's a classic case of deviant behavior."

You know, somewhere out there, a reader of The Onion is going "What's funny about that?"

From The Onion (via Bookninja)

Things to look forward to

I've lined myself up lots of things to look forward to this year, among which are the opening of two bookshops in London.

First, is Crockatt & Powell mark II, over in Chelsea. Hurrah - finally I can take leisurely stroll across the park, rather than the long trek down the Bakerloo line. Do you think they could ask Scooterworks to open a new shop next door too?

Second, is The Big Green Bookshop, which is going to be a bit more of a trek (sorry, I'm not a London native, and Wikipedia tells me Wood Green is 10.8km north of Charing Cross), but I won't let that put me off. It's been so long in the works it deserves a visit I'm sure.

iRead

Mediabistro point to this article in which Steve Jobs says (about the Amazon Kindle):

“It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”

People don't read anymore? I'm flabbergasted. True, I wouldn't buy a Kindle myself, but given the year on year rise in book sales, he must have (iPod shaped) blinkers on.

50 Greatest British Writers Redux

Over at Public Poems, Warwick Collins re-thinks The Times selection of "The 50 Greatest British Writers since 1945". It's a well thought out piece, and his justifications for the top 10 spots are particularly interesting. Especially making Phillip Pullman the greatest living British writer.

Nabokov's Dilemma

Slate have reported on the fraught case of whether Dmitri Nabokov should destroy The Original of Laura, Vladimir Nabokov's last unpublished work, in accordance with his father's wishes. Apparently a decision is imminent.

I don't think I could decide, and don't blame Dmitri for swaying to-and-fro over the years. I do have to wonder though, why didn't the great man destroy it himself?

What I've been buying - December 2007

December is always a source of reading delights for me, combining as it does both Christmas, and my birthday. My favourite way to celebrate getting one year older is to enter a bookshop, arm myself with a basket, and fill it up.

War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Walls and Piece - Banksy
The Pursuit of Love - Nancy Mitford
Death and the Penguin - Andrey Kurkov
Time's Arrow - Martin Amis
Answering Back - ed. Carol Ann Duffy
Swann's Way - Marcel Proust
Vertigo - W. G. Sebald
Accidental Death of an Anarchist - Dario Fo
Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Misanthrope - Moliere
Summer in Baden-Baden - Leonid Tsypkin
At Large and At Small - Anne Fadiman
Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges
A Home at the End of the World - Michael Cunningham
Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card
The Norman Conquests - Alan Ayckbourn

I'm sure there are a few others that have slipped the nets, as my LibraryThing profile says that I added 29 books in December. Yikes.

We apologise for the interruption to your service...

2007 was a year of changes, and for me, a year of being made redundant and starting my own business. I completely agree with those who say that running your own businesss is a learning experience. As well as acquiring a host of new skills, I've learnt a lot about myself. Now I won't go into details (that's not what this blog is about, after all), but suffice to say that I've missed the blogging, and it's back.

2008 is shaping up to be the year of travel, so along with doing a bit of commentating on the book scene (which continues to fascinate), I'll be doing a wodge of book-related travel blogging. Many moons ago (about 3 years, that is), we went on a fantastic trip to Egypt which was made all the more fantastic by bringing along a couple of Egypt-related books. This made me a firm believer in reading about the place you're travelling to. I've got rather a lot of ambitious travel plans this year (more on this later), so prepare to read about a good number of countries in the coming year.