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…. due to work pressures and the installation of a new kitchen, but things now calming down and new posts to follow shortly.
Stolen from Lady Bracknell who half-inched it from Funky Mango, a Wiki-meme:
1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. In the Search box, type the month and day (but not the year) of your birth.
3. Choose three events that happened on your birthday.
4. Choose two important birthdays and one interesting death.
5. Post it.
Bride of the Book God was born on 31 January, so:
Events
1606 – Guy Fawkes was executed for his role in the Gunpowder plot (see Antonia Fraser’s book on the topic)
1919 The Battle of George Square took place in Glasgow
1953 The North Sea flood causes over 1800 deaths in the Netherlands.
Births
1959 Phil Manzanera (of Roxy Music & 801 Live fame)
1959 Anthony LaPaglia (Without a Trace – never miss it)
Deaths
1788 Bonnie Prince Charlie
Nice to see I share my birthday with two of my absolute favourites!
I am sure that I have mentioned elsewhere how much I enjoy books about books, so it was no surprise that I would fall for How to Read a Novel by John Sutherland. Sutherland has produced a number of books on literary puzzles (such as Is Heathcliff a Murderer?) which, besides being enjoyable reads, sent me off in search of classic novels that I knew of but hadn’t read before. For that reason I had high expectations of a book designed (according to the blurb) to be a guide on how to read well, how novels work, and the economics and culture of publishing. I wasn’t disappointed. The Book God was very exasperated at the number of times I read bits out to him, but bore it well.
Sutherland works from two assumptions (1) novels are meant to be enjoyed, and (2) the better we read them, the more enjoyable they can be. He quotes Virginia Woolf, “The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading, is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.”
The main things I took away from this:
- know your taste
- use bestseller lists by picking up titles while they are near the bottom so that you don’t come to them too late (ie when everyone else is reading them – see the Da Vinci Code, which everyone seemed to be reading at the same time, at least on the Tube)
- you can gain a lot of context from looking at the date and publication history and then do a little digging
- if there is an epigraph it’s generally worth reading, for more context
I have also been putting the McLuhan Page 69 test into practice – if you aren’t sure whether you will like a book, flick to page 69, read that, and if you like it, you’ll like the book. It’s working so far!
Bride of the Book God 