Song for a Sunday

I remember when I first heard Amy Winehouse sing - it was on some Saturday morning music show, and she had yet to release her first album. She sang something from it - I don't remember which song, and at the time I didn't even like the song itself all that much. But her voice. I couldn't believe it was coming out of her - that rich, soulful, jazzy voice. I think it is best shown-off in this beautiful rendition of 'Love is a Losing Game'.

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Hey folks! Hope you've had a good week. Mine involved making the ridiculous cake below, with my lovely friend Lorna. I'm off on holiday tonight, cat-sitting at home for a week, then off to Shropshire and Wales with my bro for a bit. I was going to have proper posts ready to pop up, and who knows, maybe I still will - but... Well, something will appear, but it might be on a somewhat rationed basis. Still time for a Weekend Miscellany before I board the train, though...


1.) The blog post - is a lovely photo post by Diana, being Part 1 of a multipart series documenting her recent trip to the UK. I'll come into it somewhere towards the end, but the first part is delightful - more general, about her 29 trips to these shores, with a great group of photos taken over the years. I swear, she knows Britain much better than I do.

2.) The link - so, the Man Booker longlist is out. I have read none; I own the Julian Barnes. This is the last time I shall mention anything to do with it...
3.) The book - had gone into a pile to go home: interesting enough to keep, but not to read for a while. It's Let Not The Waves of the Sea by Simon Stephenson, and I kept my review copy from John Murray mostly because I love the cover. And then I read this article from the Guardian, wept over it, and want to read it. Let Not The Waves of the Sea is non-fiction, about Stephenson's relationship with his brother Dominic, who died in the 2004 tsunami. My brother is the most important person in my life, and I love any book which cherishes the importance of siblings - even if this has a terribly tragic element, the blurb writes that it is 'more than a book about what it means to lose a brother: it is a book about what it means to have one in the first place.'

On Visiting Bookshops

On the topic of personal essay collections, I've just started reading Christopher Morley's Safety Pins (1925) which I'm loving so far. I'll write about it properly at some point in the dim and distant future, but I simply had to share this essay with you. Any one of us could write something under the title 'On Visiting Bookshops' - perhaps we should? - but here is what Morley had to say (you, like the previous owner of Safety Pins, would probably be tempted to pencil 'Yes' by the first sentence.)


It is a curious thing that so many people only go into a bookshop when they happen to need some particular book. Do they never drop in for a little innocent carouse and refreshment? There are some knightly souls who even go so far as to make their visits to bookshops a kind of chivalrous errantry at large. They go in not because they need any certain volume, but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them. Some wistful, little forgotten sheaf of loveliness, long pining away on an upper shelf - why not ride up, fling her across your charger (or your charge account), and gallop away. Be a little knightly, you booklovers!

The lack of intelligence with which people use bookshops is, one supposes, no more flagrant than the lack of intelligence with which we use all the rest of the machinery of civilisation. In this age, and particularly in this city, we haven't time to be intelligent.

A queer thing about books, if you open your heart to them, is the instant and irresistible way they follow you with their appeal. You know at once, if you are clairvoyant in these matters (libre-voyant, one might say), when you have met your book. You may dally and evade, you may go on about your affairs, but the paragraph of prose your eye fell upon, or the snatch of verses, or perhaps only the spirit and flavour of the volume, more divined than reasonably noted, will follow you. A few lines glimpsed on a page may alter your whole trend of thought for the day, reverse the currents of the mind, change the profile of the city. The other evening, in a subway car, we were reading Walter de la Mare's interesting little essay about Rupert Brooke. His discussion of children, their dreaming ways, their exalted simplicity and absorption, changed the whole tenor of our voyage by some magical chemistry of thought. It was no longer a wild, barbaric struggle with our fellowmen, but a venture of faith and recompense, taking us home to the bedtime of a child.

The moment when one meets a book and knows, beyond shadow of doubt, that that book must be his - not necessarily now, but some time - is among the happiest excitements of the spirit. An indescribable virtue effuses from some books. One can feel the radiations of an honest book long before one sees it, if one has a sensitive pulse for such affairs. Its honour and truth will speak through the advertising. Its mind and heart will cry out even underneath the extravagance of jacket-blurbings. Some shrewd soul, who understands books, remarked some time ago on the editorial page of the Sun's book review that no superlative on a jacket had ever done the book an atom of good. He was right, as far as the true bookster is concerned. We choose our dinner not by the wrappers, but by the veining and gristle of the meat within. The other day, prowling about a bookshop, we came upon two paper-bound copies of a little book of poems by Alice Meynell. They had been there for at least two years. We had seen them before, a year or more ago, but had not looked into them, fearing to be tempted. This time we ventured. We came upon two poems - 'To O, Of Her Dark Eyes,' and 'A Wind of Clear Weather in England.' The book was ours - or rather, we were its, though we did not yield at once. We came back the next day and got it. We are still wondering how a book like that could stay in the shop so long. Once we had it, the day was different. The sky was sluiced with a clearer blue, air and sunlight blended for a keener intake of the lungs, faces seen along the street moved us with a livelier shock of interest and surprise. The wind that moved over Sussex and blew Mrs. Meynell's heart into her lines was still flowing across the ribs and ledges of our distant scene.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find. Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, 'I want you to love her, too!' It is a jealous passion also. He feels a little indignant if he finds that anyone else has discovered the book also. He sees an enthusiastic review - very likely in The New Republic - and says, with great scorn, 'I read the book three months ago.' There are even some perversions of passion by which a booklover loses much of his affection for his pet if he sees it too highly commended by some rival critic.

This sharp ecstasy of discovering books for one's self is not always widespread. There are many who, for one reason or another, prefer to have their books found out for them. But for the complete zealot nothing transcends the zest of pioneering for himself. And therefore working for a publisher is, to a certain type of mind, a never-failing fascination. As H.M. Tomlinson says in Old Junk, that fascinating collection of sensitive and beautifully poised sketches which came to us recently with a shock of thrilling delight:

To come upon a craft rigged so, though at her moorings and with sails furled, her slender poles upspringing from the bright plane of a brimming harbour, is to me as rare and sensational a delight as the re-discovery, when idling with a book, of a favourite lyric.

To read just that passage, and the phrase the bright plane of a brimming harbour, is one of those 'rare and sensational delights' that set the mind moving on lovely journeys of its own, and mark off visits to the bookshop not as casual errands of reason, but as necessary acts of devotion. We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to re-discover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul.

Large and Small

Here's a bit of personal trivia for you - the first new book that I ever bought on impulse was Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris. I was about 17, and didn't buy new books very often (and I still don't, actually - probably 95% of the books I buy are secondhand) but I had a book token, and this one called out to me. It's a wonderful, slim volume packed with delightful essays about books and reading - and, in fact, it's in my ongoing 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Heard About.


It took me another seven years to get around to read At Large and At Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist (2007) which my friend Clare got me for my 25th birthday last year. Part of me was worried that I wouldn't love it as much, and Ex Libris had been such an eye-opener, in terms of making me realise that my bibliophilia didn't make me strange. Or perhaps it did, but at least I wasn't the only one! It was a step towards the wonder that is knowing fellow book bloggers.

Well, despite 'Literary' being in Fadiman's subtitle, she has widened her net, rather. It does cover all manner of things - 'The title is meant to suggest that my interests are presbyopic ("at large") but my focus is myopic ("at small").' Fadiman's writing is still wonderful - utterly engaging, and personal without being cloying or unduly emotional. She is, indeed, championing the personal essay - a form that has very few authors practising it at the moment. That's not quite true. I suppose you could say that lots of bloggers write occasional personal essays, although for the most part we tend towards the 'review' end of the spectrum, which is quite a different thing. Some bloggers are absolutely brilliant at the personal essay type post (of course, we're all thinking about lovely Rachel - I can't say how often people say to me, when the topic of blogs comes up, "Oh, the one I really love is..." and they always say Book Snob. Quite right, too. I'm delighted to have been a small part of her genesis!)

Back to Fadiman. She really has spread her net wide - with the inevitable result that some of the essays will appeal, and some will not. Whereas all book lovers will probably also love Ex Libris, with its various chapters on different facets of reading, there aren't really any essays in At Large and At Small which are guaranteed to delight all. Topics like post (sorry, mail), ice cream, and coffee are all general enough to be very entertaining to even those who avoid dairy, caffeine, and, er, ink. I can't stand coffee, but I still found her ode to its joys incredibly fun to read - and Fadiman has a way of engaging the reader which classes her amongst the best of her art form. Here is the opening paragraph of the essay on coffee; I defy you not to be beguiled:

When I was a sophomore in college, I drank coffee nearly every evening with my friends Peter and Alex. Even though the coffee was canned; even though the milk was stolen from the dining hall and refrigerated on the windowsill of my friends' dormitory room, where it was diluted by snow and adulterated by soot; even though Alex's scuzzy one-burner hot plate looked as if it might electrocute us at any moment; and even though we washed our batterie de cuisine in the bathroom sink and let it air-dry on a pile of paper towels next to the toiler - even though Dunster F-13 was, in short, not exactly Escoffier's kitchen, we considered our nightly coffee tirual [EDIT: oops, I mean 'ritual', but I love the new word 'tirual'!] the very acme and pitch of elegance. And I think that in many ways we were right.

I think the reason these sorts of essays work is that Anne and her friends and family are the main focus - or at least a point to which all the tangents are tethered. However, any reader of At Large and At Small, I suspect, will find some of the collection uninspiring. The first essay, on moths and suchlike, was not an auspicious beginning for me. I ended up skimming through the chapter on arctic explorers. And yet I was enthralled by what she wrote on Charles Lamb - an essay I can imagine others would hurry through with the same speed that I dismissed Vilhjalmur Stefansson.

It would be impossible to give you a proper taste of every chapter without making this post enormous, and it would spoil the surprise of reading them. So, I intend to give a warning - Anne Fadiman gives this collection the subtitle 'Confessions of a Literary Hedonist', but it is not that. A love of the literary will not carry you through every essay in At Large and At Small. This book is the Confessions of a Polymath, and it is more than likely that Fadiman will leave you cold with some of the essays. She will, however, delight you with others. And so few people write this sort of book this well, that I think it deserves a place on your bookshelf (and mine) for the half or three-quarters of it that you will (and I did) love.

A Day Out with Diana

I mentioned the other day that Diana Birchall was coming to Oxford, and of course I wanted to meet up with her. We met on her previous visit to the UK (the current one is her 29th, I believe) and had a fun, fairly speedy chat with her. This time I was determined it would be a little longer.

I hoped I'd be able to attend a talk Diana was giving to various writers groups in Oxford, on her (utterly fascinating) career as a story analyst for a major Hollywood studio, as well as her grandmother Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna's life. And, indeed, it turned out that I could - a rapt audience heard Diana's wonderful talk, and asked many questions.


But this was only Part A of my time with Diana. When we'd been emailing arrangements, Diana had said that she would love to see me on Saturday, but wouldn't be able to see me on Sunday. I railed and stormed, protested and raged - all behind a computer monitor, of course - and *insisted* that she come with me to Jane's Teas. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Diana would love it. Well, with that sort of storming, what could she do but capitulate?


If you haven't heard of Jane's Teas before, have a look at my first blog post about it - and the amusing story behind how we found it.


And Diana loved it, of course. She very kindly treated me and my housemate Debs to scones (for Debs) and the most delicious caramel and date cake (for me) - and herself had an enticing fish 'smokie'. And if this generosity weren't enough, Diana sent us home with some gorgeous-looking honey, and copies of her books about Winnfred Eaton and Emma's Mrs. Elton. Looking forward to them!


Such a wonderful place, and such a wonderful day out. The weather was beautiful, the cake was delicious, the company was literary and fun. A lovely Sunday! How was yours?

Song for a Sunday

A successful, productive day with my thesis yesterday - so let's celebrate with a cheerful, upbeat song. Step forward 'Something in the Water' by Brooke Fraser. It's a fun video too. Happy Sunday!

Stuck-in-a-Book's Weekend Miscellany

Happy weekend, everyone. My week has included maximising the number of books I can fit in the shelf above my bed - which calls for horizontal shelving, rather than vertical (see below). My Saturday won't be very weekendy, as I'll be heading into the library to try and meet my chapter deadline next week - but Sunday has several fun events planned, one in particular I'm looking forward to - Diana Birchall will be visiting Oxford!


It seems to have been quite a while since I did a Weekend Miscellany - has it? - but I'm ready and waiting for a book, a blog post, and a link.

1.) The link - I found the idea behind this article fascinating, even if I haven't read many of the books mentioned: it's authors famous for the 'wrong' book. I.e. they've written better ones than the one which everyone knows about. I'm going to mull this over, and probably come up with a blog post myself about it... (Oh, and I can't remember who pointed me in the direction of this article, but I suspect it was someone on Twitter in one of my brief sojourns there. Thanks!)

2.) The blog posts - are a wonderful series, recommended to me by a fellow blogger at the TV Book Club outing, of Weird Things That Customers Say in Bookshops. That link should take you to all the posts the blogger, Jen Campbell, has labelled in this series, although you may need to scroll down a bit to get to one of the listy-posts. They're HILARIOUS.

3.) The book - and if you can't wait til Jen's book of these gets published, there's always this one to hunt out: Bookworm Droppings (awful title, but fun contents) by Shaun Tyas. (Sample: "Do you have Anne of Clark Gables?") Basically it's the same idea as Jen's proposed book... still, a good idea is a good idea. You can get it for 1p plus p&p on Amazon.co.uk at the mo!