it's (not) friday, but i'm still in love #9

Apologies for doing this on the wrong day, but although I was supposed to return on Friday, I was seeing my friends until quite late, and ended up missing the fast train by a matter of seconds. As a result, I didn't return home until after midnight. I was exhausted, but I'd also had a huge amount of alcohol (my friend Joe is currently earning ridiculous amounts of money, and as such is very generous with his disposible income!), so I wasn't exactly in a good position to write a coherent post anyway! I've also been sorting out my new room and indulging in various craft-related activities, which I shall undoubtedly share here at some point in the future.

 [Boy and cute puppy. Is there any better sight? Well, maybe if he were holding a kitten...but it's still adorable.]

At any rate, it's been a really good week. My boyfriend and I have gone from living together to living in the same city to living in different counties, and since we may end up doing our PhDs in different places, we might not be able to live together for the next four years or so. I will confess, I've been quite worried about the new long-distance aspect of our relationship, but going to stay with him for the last few days has confirmed that it's not really anything to worry about: we only live about 40 miles from each other, after all! Not having seen him for a few weeks has made our time together more special, and although I can't wait until I see him again, I know it's going to be fine.

I'm also eager to see him again for more selfish reasons. T'boyface's family have recently acquired a new puppy, a gorgeous brown cockerpoo who looks like a teddy bear made into dog form. He's incredibly young, and even though he can only be walked for 10 mins at a time because he's so little, he's full of energy and very excitable. He's a bit of a terror, as evidenced by his love of chewing on shoes, his wanton destruction of toilet rolls and his desire to treat the heather as his own personal trampoline, but he's utterly adorable, and he's made me appreciate dogs in a way I normally don't. (I usually regard them as inferior cats.) This was best proved when he tried to nibble on my favourite Converse and my reaction was to pick him up and fuss him. I think it's love!

Ever since I became aware of them a few years ago, I've loved the Cambridge Satchel Company
Their satchels are more known for being very neon and fashionable, but being an old-fashioned girl, I love their traditional brown ones. Unfortunately, they cost rather a lot, so I've been holding off on ordering one, but when this clearance sale was advertised on Facebook, I couldn't resist! This beauty has such a minor imperfection I can hardly see it (it's a missing stitch or two, it's practically imperceptible), and the huge discount I got as a result made it wonderful value. I did make my parents laugh though, since my main consideration when choosing a satchel was 'can I fit enough books in it?'

My grandmother's cat Polly is such an elegant little pusscat, and she rarely stays still enough for a photo. I felt rather honoured that she let me snap this picture of her (although she did disappear to frolic in the sunshine soon after!)

 

I've mentioned the Cambridge Botanic Gardens on here before, and I must urge everyone to visit there at least once when the weather is good, because it's utterly beautiful. I love living in a place with so much greenery, it makes everything better.

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Seeing old friends and sorting out my room has made me discover old music, and I was pleasantly pleased to find out that I had more PJ Harvey albums than I remembered! Appropriately for this post, my friend Joe introduced me to PJ, and I introduced him to Ani DiFranco, which I think is a fair trade. I started out with Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, which is a wonderful album, but I've grown to love her variety more and more as I've got to know her repetoire better. My current favourite is When Under Ether, a fantastic dark lullaby with a haunting piano accompaniment. I can't wait until she tours again, I'll be there with bells on (metaphorically or literally, I haven't decided yet.)

The aforementioned drunkeness with my boyface and friend Joe was part of a long day in London, which involved much bookshopping, alcohol and general frolicking. I miss hanging out with Paul and Joe a lot, so it's wonderful when we can all meet up, but perhaps my favourite part of the day was going to the London Review of Books Cafe for lunch. Not only is their Earl Grey delicious, but I had pea guacamole on toast with artichoke hearts and salad.

Oh, who am I kidding? The best bit of the day was bookshopping in Foyles, one of my favourite bookshops. These Penguin English Library editions are utterly beautiful, and surprisingly affordable (I got both of these for £9). I'm on an E. M. Forster kick at the moment, so I'm looking forward to reading Howard's End, and my friend Vic and I are going to be discussing The Monk soon when she starts studying it next year. Also making an appearance are my current read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which I can no longer read in bed because it's so heavy and stressful on my wrists, and my favourite childhood companion, Connie.

[My friend Joe and boyfriend Paul, posing with cider. Joe's comment on this photo was 'We look like a couple of gays', which sounds incredibly homophobic, but rest assured, he was kidding, and playing on the fact that whenever he and Paul meet, we joke that Paul's more physically affectionate with him than me!]

As I mentioned, I spent a lot of time on Friday night drinking cider with my boyfriend and friend Joe. As always happens when we meet up, there was much ridiculous conversation, minor political squabbles and some incredibly sexually inappropriate discussion, but it was really good fun. I've missed this sort of ridiculousness since leaving my undergraduate days.

'I can believe things that are true and things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not.'

Looking back to my very first post on this blog, I anticipated that one thing I'd do lots of is talk about books I adore and indulge my total bibliomania with long rambling discussions. That hasn't materialised yet for several reasons: firstly, I read book reviews every damn day for my work, and considering that they're legitimate academic publications and take months to write, it makes the concept of spending an hour babbling about why I liked a novel seem rather trivial. Secondly, I didn't read a lot during my thesis, and when I finished, I read purely for pleasure without wanting to do anything else. Thirdly, I really didn't know what I'd say. Books like The Secret History conjure up such an aesthetic for me, I have half a mind to do an inspiration post based on it, whereas books like A. S. Byatt's The Children's Book left me wanting to have a long-winded academic discussion (once I'd read lots about the Edwardian era, naturally!) So this is quite experimental, since I don't really know what I want to say here, but I do want to share some thoughts on a book I really enjoyed.

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When flying back from Dublin in what I think was 2006, I had a delay at the airport and went on a hunt for any book which looked interesting. I walked away with a rather pretty copy of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, and managed to read most of it on the flight home, which tells you two things. One, I read fast. Two, I really enjoyed this book. It's a wonderful mixture of early Victoriana sentiment and dark, sharp faerie stories, which combine to make a twisted and irreverent vision of life beyond The Wall. I hestitate to describe it purely as 'dark' though, because it's not: one thing I really like about Gaiman's writing is that he's capable of describing dark things succinctly with a very British sort of black humour, which makes it very light to read. In an interview, he has commented that in the last half-century or so, the idea of a book as a 'page-turner' has become a negative thing, and that he wants to rehabilitate this concept. I completely approve of the sentiment, but I think it shows best with his epic American Gods, which is really rather a brick of a book, but is utterly wonderful and totally different from Stardust.

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I bought American Gods for my first year at university, and ended up reading it in the summer term post-exams when I had nothing to do apart from relax and wait for results. I'm very glad to have read it when there was nothing else pressing going on, because I was quite literally tied to that book day and night. It's stunningly compelling as a narrative, starting out enigmatically and revealing its truth in very small increments, yet it remains extremely satisfying. The concept of the Old Gods in America is one which could have been mishandled and turned into nothing but a cliche, but in my opinion Gaiman's depiction is both fun and really quite fitting to the scale of the piece. If you know your mythology you'll appreciate certain aesthetic choices more, but his depiction of gods fitting into modern American life is one which raises questions even as it is fitting. The gods, by and large, live in poverty, unloved and forgotten, whereas the new gods are abstract ideals of Technology, Media and other such modern obsessions. Given that Gaiman's an English writer living in America, I can't help but wonder if he's making a statement about the misguided nature of certain American values (or at least a satirical point about America as a 'godly' country). The author has made statements about the novel reflecting the 'immigrant experience' of America, and I think it says a lot of interesting things about how far culture can be absorbed, and whether cultures can coexist harmoniously. Yet, at the same time, Mr Ibis says, 'You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories,' and it's true, death in the novel is less absolute and more permeable than is usually supposed. As such, all definitions in the novel are multi-layered, and to put that within the concept of an 'American' novel composed of global refugee gods is particularly interesting.

[Carousel at the House on the Rock: link.]

Why do I like this book? It's quite simple really. It's an epic on a classical scale, there's a journey, a battle, ghosts and gods and sacrifice. (There's also a sub-plot which is rather reminiscent of Euripides' Alcestis.) But it's also the story of multiple cons, and is a hermeneutic adventure on a thrilling scale which slots into place neatly and exactly. It's both an easy, compulsive read and a novel which stays with you, and when you get a book like that, a page-turner and an enigma, it's definitely a special book. I would thoroughly recommend it, especially to anyone interested in mythology or fantasy.

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A final point: it's been rumbling round the interwebs for some time that American Gods will be turned into a TV show by HBO. Now, I love HBO, they do some of my favourite shows (The Wire, Oz, Game of Thrones...), and Neil Gaiman's writing the script, so it should be good, but there is some discomfort over the matter of the casting. It's not a book which insists upon race particularly, but it's clearly implied that Shadow is mixed-race. Considering how good the part is, it would be a shame not to honour the source material and give a mixed-race actor a chance, since there are so few parts specifically for such backgrounds. At any rate, I have faith in HBO to do the right thing, so I'm thoroughly looking forward to it. If it's anything like Game of Thrones, I'm sure I'll be thoroughly hooked.

I hope I've inspired you to pick up the book, I really do recommend it thoroughly. Just a note: I'm away for the next few days, so I hope I'll be able to do a Friday post, although I can't guarantee it. Hope everyone's having a good week!

litterae et libri III

I haven't done one of these posts for ages, but admittedly during my thesis I was pretty much baning myself from any website that wasn't work related. This cuts out a lot of my web browsing, but going through my bookmarks I find I have actually been reading a lot of interesting things, I just have no idea how I found them!

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I will happily and proudly call myself a feminist all my life, but that doesn't mean I'm blind to the problems with the movement. This piece from Rookie about the dangers of anger and feminism is a really good read, and I'm impressed by the author's honesty in acknowledging her behaviour and freeing herself from its negativity.

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Anthony Andrews (Sebastian) and director Charles Sturridge discuss how they made Brideshead Revisited 31 years ago. It's a really interesting article: it was such a fraught production, but they made something wonderful out of it.

[Picture taken from article: link below.]

Magda Knight, excellent author and an all round wonderful person, has written a fantastic piece about the recent incarceration of anti-Putin band Pussy Riot. There's a link to an Amnesty International petition at the end of the article, please sign it, this is a terrible injustice and abuse of power. 

[Picture taken from article: link below.]

The new Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology reopened in Cambridge recently, and they've put back a wonderful display which inspired a Sylvia Plath poem. This article only makes me more excited to go (I haven't been yet, and I'm feeling guilty about it!)

[Picture taken from Billy Martin's LJ: link below.]

In my final bit of geekery, words cannot describe how happy I was to find this photo of two of my favourite writers, Billy Martin (formerly Poppy Z. Brite) and Neil Gaiman. I think this makes this the third entry in a row to mention Neil Gaiman, but I don't have a problem with that.

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Being a total bibliomaniac myself, I love reading about other people's obsessions with books. This interview with Julian Barnes is a sort of autobiography told through books, and that in itself is enough to make it interesting for me. Despite this, it stuck in my memory particularly because the raciest book he could find when he was young was the Satyrica, an ancient novel I study and one which is particularly infamous for being totally immoral and debauched. This line in particular made me chuckle: 'Foolishly, I assumed all his ancient classics must have similar erotic content. I spent many a dull day with his Hesiod before concluding that this wasn't the case.'

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This is a long read, but there's a reason The Wire is awesome, and this interview explores this really well. Pretty much all of the main cast have been interviewed, and if you know anything about The Wire you know that's a lot of people. Apparently they were so realistic at portraying drug dealers crackheads would try and buy from them, and the whole cast used to live together, smoke weed and go to strip clubs! I'm particularly impressed by their discussions of the racial politics at work here, since apparently Michael K. Williams (Omar) wasn't originally a fan of Stringer's death because it implied that two black men couldn't solve their differences without guns. I'd never thought of it like that, and I think it simplifies the scene rather, but it's still an interesting concern, raised by the actor of one of the most innovative black characters on TV.

[Picture links to here: apparently a still from a video.]

I've not been following the Olympics much, but I am very pleased that British cyclists are doing so well. One thing though that has really impressed me is that they seem to all be really nice people as well as amazing sportspeople (Chris Hoy's parents still always watch him compete and they look so proud of him.) The women's team pursuit riders have smashed the world recod for the sixth successive time, despite being very young (their average age is about 21). In addition though, one of their riders, Jo Rowsell, suffers from alopecia, and overcame low self-esteem in order to become a world-class athlete...again! It's incredibly inspirational, and I hope they continue their gold streak.

[Picture taken from article: link below.]

In other Olympic news, the weightlifter Zoe Smith responded to critics who tell her that she's unattractive with an incredibly clear and cogent argument, the gist of which is 'fuck you I'm awesome.' I'm still blown away by the fact that people even think they have the right to tell her she's ugly: how painfully entitled and chauvinistic is that? Thankfully she's more than capable of holding her own...

'We don't lift weights in order to look hot, especially for the likes of men like that. What makes them think that we even WANT them to find us attractive? If you do, thanks very much, we're flattered. But if you don't, why do you really need to voice this opinion in the first place, and what makes you think we actually give a toss that you, personally, do not find us attractive? What do you want us to do? Shall we stop weightlifting, amend our diet in order to completely get rid of our 'manly' muscles, and become housewives in the sheer hope that one day you will look more favourably upon us and we might actually have a shot with you?! Cause you are clearly the kindest, most attractive type of man to grace the earth with your presence.'

it's friday i'm in love #8

This week has been a bit of a funny one: it's felt like the buildup to something rather than isolated accomplishments. Things are moving in the right direction for next year, as in I've only got admin to do rather than anything more involved, but it just emphasises how far away it all is. As I've got nearly eight weeks until I move in, so I'm trying to balance preparing for next year, relaxing, and doing fun things. As my post on the British Library proves, I'm doing well at the 'having fun' part of this, but the relaxation element is eluding me somewhat. Since I'm living at home, I'm not only living in very close contact with people I haven't lived with for about 10 months, but also in a house which is currently occupied by builders. Being woken up at 7:30am is not my idea of relaxation. Nonetheless, I'm still managing to enjoy myself, and it's rather a treat to spend time translating Greek, watching Red Dwarf and playing with a cat. Can't complain, really.

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A staple of my return home from university for the holidays is always the all-day meetup with my closest friends, comprising shopping, talking and coffee (with occasional culture thrown in). Sadly, one of my closest friends is in Switzerland at the moment for her MA, but another friend and I met up to wander around the Fitzwilliam Museum and discuss everything from Egyptian mythology, the trends in current archaeology and new boyfriends (hers, not mine!). When we were saturated with culture, we went for lunch at The Rainbow Cafe, which was as delicious as usual. It's been a long time since I've been able to spend a day doing whatever I fancy without having to dash off for work, so it was a real treat.

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One total joy of the last week has been going swimming. I used to swim socially, but I actually really like doing it solo so that I can push myself a bit further. I'd forgotten, however, how much further I have to cycle from my parents' house as opposed to my student accomodation, so I cycled three miles there, swam fifty lengths (about 3/4 mile) then cycled three miles back. I was so exhausted and achey the next day, but it was worth it.

Whenever I come home, I always spend a lot of time rifling through my bookshelves and rediscovering literary treasures which I haven't had for a year or so. A lot of my books are being stored in my wardrobe at the moment because of the building work, and going through the haphazardly-stacked piles has thrown up a lot of books I haven't read for years. I'm currently reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, which I last read in the first year of my undergraduate, and am falling in love with all over again.

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I never expected to watch the Olympics (apart from the cycling, obviously), but I thought I'd at least see what the opening ceremony was like, just so I could be appropriately scathing about it later. I'm happy to say I was proved entirely wrong: I really liked the ceremony, particularly the opening section, which I thought was frenzied and powerful and pretty unflinching in presenting the flaws in English history as well as the benefits. One of the things I truly adored though was the score: I'm a massive Underworld fan, and I had a suspicion the music would be epic. In my mind, it was a bit more than epic, it was transcendently so, and the opening music 'And I Will Kiss You', is being played at every opportunity. In addition, this interview with the band is really interesting: I'm impressed by how they focused on emotional response rather than nationalistic pride.

 
Waking up to discover letters and postcards from my friends is always a nice way to start the day. The top postcard is from my friend Rowan, featuring a photo of my friends Candy, Annis and myself from when we first met up. We pretended to be velociraptors, as you do, drank and played Scrabble. It's a lovely memory, and a great photo. The bottom photo includes a lovely letter from my friend (and lavender husband!) Ashley, as well as a beautiful view of Salzburg from when Vic and Bobbie were on holiday there. Receiving post is one of the great joys of life, and I love having people who will send me such thoughtful letters and cards.

'Among These Dark Satanic Mills?'

One of my absolute favourite places in the world is the British Library. It's the opportunity to look at books, then buy them. (Not the manuscripts, they have a very nice bookshop. If I could buy the manuscripts, I'd be bankrupt right now.) I haven't been properly for ages, however, so when I saw that they had an exhibition called Writing Britain: Wastelands to Wonderlands, I knew I had to go. Thankfully, some of my favourite bibliophiles were as eager as I was, so we decided to meet up, be intellectual, and then progress to copious consumption of cider. We definitely know how to make a plan, don't we?

The weather was absolutely stunning, but at about 29°C, going into the exhibition was wonderful because it as air-conditioned. This may sound trite, but as my friend Rowan pointed out, it's too hot for goths! Thankfully we forgot about the heat once we started looking at the objects on display.

 [Mss of Our Mutual Friend. Taken from the British Library Facebook page.]

It started off quite slowly because it's divided according to chronology and geographical location, so the starting exhibitions are pastoral, moving into the Industrial Revolution, then discussing the appeal of the wildest places to the Victorian psyche (Scottish moors, for example). It was interesting, but compared to the section on London, which housed some objects pertaining to my favourite books of all time, it naturally paled slightly.

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Everyone found me a bit hilarious because I became so over-excited when I discovered that they included Alan Moore's From Hell, the graphic novel of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, adapted my Mike Carey, and Neil Gaiman's Sweeney Todd, a parody of a penny dreadful which I've never seen a copy of before. All three are some of my favourite storytellers, so to see them recognised as writers who exemplify London was really thrilling for me.

 [Mss of Jane Eyre. Taken from the British Library Facebook page.]

My friends did not hold back in telling me what a geek I am, but they all found their own things to obsess over: Vic over the original manuscript of Jane Eyre,  Rowan over the 10th-century Exeter Book and Candy over BS Johnson's Albert Angelo, a rare book she'd used in her undergraduate dissertation, and one of the first books to use cut-out pages. One of the most wonderful things for me is finding people who love to read as much as I do, but it's even more wonderful to find people who both love to read and just love books as ornamental objects of beauty.

[Mss of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Taken from the British Library Facebook page.]

Some of my personal highlights would be the first draft manuscript of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which was a lot racier than the published book, and Dickens' manuscript of Our Mutual Friend which was rescued from a train crash (and it shows, as you can see in the photograph above.) It was wonderful seeing original manuscripts of some of my favourite classics such as Tess of the D'Urbevilles and Wuthering Heights, but it was also excellent that they included much more recent works. Seeing Virginia Woolf's handwriting in her original pages of Mrs Dalloway and E. M. Forster's in his A Room with a View was quite a thrill for me, but a particular highlight was seeing John Galsworthy's own family tree for his epic The Forsyte Saga, as it's entirely necessary to read the book, let alone write it!

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One of the things I particularly admired about this exhibition was the juxtaposition of well-known and obscure, and the opportunity to delight in one's own knowledge of obscurity was also something which appealed strongly to the geek in me, as I do love seeing books I like acknowledged. I studied The Beetle at my undergraduate, since one of my lecturers had an interest in Victorian fiction and it's a text very indicative of classical resonance on fin-de-siecle culture, so he invited a scholar working on the text to give us a lecture on it. It was published in the same year as Dracula, and initially out-sell it, but it has since fallen out of favour because it's become dated in a way which Dracula has not. It's a wonderful, oft-overlooked book and it's great that it was mentioned in this exhibition. Dr Victoria Margree, who gave me a lecture on the book at Warwick, also gave an interview about the book here, if anyone's interested.

[Mss of Wise Children. Taken from the British Library Facebook page.]

Much has been made of JK Rowling's manuscript of the first Harry Potter novel, but there were also manuscripts from Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and Angela Carter's Wise Children. Rowan was very happy to see Tolkein's The Hobbit, but it was especially good to see it surrounded by other wonderful works, such as Brideshead Revisited, Stella Gibbons' hilarious Cold Comfort Farm, Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest and Alan Hollinghurst's latest novel The Stranger's Child. What made this collection particularly fun to view was that there was a nice mix of manuscripts, visual imagery and first editions, and it was a very full experience. I'd thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in books and writing.

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 Having spent a few hours at the exhibition, we left in search of tea and cake, although not without a quick trip to the gift shop. It sounds incredibly trite to recommend a museum based on its gift shop, but I do love the BL's, since it's a cross between a bookshop and a shop which celebrates literature in items which aren't books. They sell lovely jewellery and postcards and all sorts of glorious things which make me realise that my future house is going to be very well-decorated indeed! I bought this poster of The Master and Margarita, which is both one of my favourite books and also a gorgeous design.

We also discovered this book, which spoke to us all. We're all grammar obsessives, at the end of the day!

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Having indulged in bibliomania, we went into Bloomsbury to visit the London Review of Books Cafe, which is both a wonderful bookshop and a lovely cafe. Their cake is sublime, their coffee excellent, and on such a hot day I definitely appreciated being given a glass of ice water the second we walked through the door. I'm so tempted to get a subscription for the LRB for my birthday, just for the discount in the bookshop.

['The sock gap never dies'!]

This was followed by an evening in The Cider Tap in Euston, drinking delicious alcohol and discussing many strange things, including Vic and I having a similar dental issue in our families, Candy and I making geeky Coupling references at each other, and Rowan getting us to write a group poem based on Judi Dench, and all terrible rhymes thereof. ('I lost my wrench, when I loosened my clench in the stench of Judi Dench's trench...')

[Candy's doing her sexiest pose in front of a gorgeous house in Bloomsbury. I'm aroused.]

In short, the BL exhibition is a wonderful display of literature and culture, the LRB is a delicious cafe with many excellent books, but what makes them even better is spending time with people who make you laugh, indulge your geekiness, and occasionally blurt out 'Oh my god...I just imagined we were different types of chaffinch!'