Textual Tangents

Exploding The Canon - Conference

2008-01-24T21:29:00.000Z

Sorry it's been so long between posts. What with Xmas and the thesis it's been a little busy around here the last couple of months. However, this hasn't stopped me from agreeing to be one of this year's organisers for Stirling University's English Studies dept postgrad conference. This year the topic is 'Exploding the Canon' and it looks set to be a really great weekend (24th-25th May, 2008). We have two great plenaries, Darryl Jones and Bill Marshall, and we have another of our famous conference ceilidhs planned for the Saturday evening. Do check out the CFP and seriously consider submitting an abstract if you're a postgrad or at the start of an academic career.

Call For Papers
In the past three decades, the canon of “great literature” and “great art” has expanded, shifted and changed. No longer primarily a list of privileged, white men, the 21st century -canon has carved out spaces for women, gay, lesbian, working-class, postcolonial, and multicultural writers and artists. Even though the hegemony of canonicity is being dismantled by the inclusion of minor or subaltern discourses, the study of the “most important” or “most representative” works continues to anchor academic investigations of literatures and art. Yet what gets privileged and how, or, alternatively, what remains silent (or is silenced) in scholarly study? How do the choices made by educational, publishing and research institutions both maintain and deconstruct the canon? In what way are selection processes influenced by the cultural and socio-political context at a given time? And in which ways can academic research re-align and problematise the critical treatment of the canon?

This conference aims to foster discussion and understanding of canonicity in scholarly settings. While its overall focus is literary, we welcome contributions from a breadth of research areas including, but not limited to

Book History and Textual Culture
Modern Languages and Translation
Publishing Studies
Film and Media Studies
Religious Studies
Medieval Studies
The Gothic
Queer and Feminist Studies
Popular culture
Subaltern historiography
Postcolonial Studies

Papers that present problems and questions rather than absolute conclusions are welcome. We are looking for submissions from fellow postgraduate students and academics at the start of their careers. Please send abstracts of 250-300 words for a 20 minute presentation plus brief biographical details to Amy Palko, Kerstin Pfeiffer, and Brian Rock at explodingthecanon@stir.ac.uk by Friday 21st March, 2008.
Deadline for conference registration, whether presenting a paper or attending, is Friday 25th April, 2008.

Also, our website is now up and running and you can find that here. Any questions, do get in touch. Hope to hear from you!

Global Gothic Symposium - Stirling

2007-11-05T08:28:00.000Z

I've just had another paper accepted for a conference. This one is, as the title of the post suggests, the Global Gothic symposium at the University of Stirling on the 1st December, 2007. I'm going to be giving a paper looking at tv series Lars Von Trier's Riget and Stephen King's Kingdom Hospital. I've been meaning to do something on Kingdom Hospital for a while now, so this paper will give me that opportunity. Anyway, here's the abstract. As always, comments, thoughts and suggestions are all very welcome.

Authority and Authenticity in Lars Von Trier’s Riget and Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital
As Jerrold Hogle theorises, the tradition of the gothic is suspended in the hyperreal through its foundation in the counterfeit. It is the contention of this paper, that this key concept of gothic theory can bring us closer to an understanding of the adaptation processes which occur when gothic texts are transplanted from one culture to another. Their reinterpretation through repetition augments concerns surrounding issues of authority and authenticity, resulting in either articulation or effacement. To illustrate this, I shall be focussing on the Danish television series Riget, written and directed by Lars Von Trier, and its adaptation by Stephen King, as the American television series Kingdom Hospital. Riget, first shown in 1994, was the last project of Von Trier’s prior to the creation of the Dogma 95 manifesto in which Lars Von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg stress that ‘by using new technology anyone at anytime can wash the last grains of truth away in the deadly embrace of sensation’. In Riget, Von Trier begins the move towards some of the more extreme views expressed in the manifesto, and as such the series resides within the liminal space created through the juxtapostion of authorship and anonymity; authenticity and artifice. This is contrasted by the overt declaration of authority displayed in Kingdom Hospital as seen through frequent references to Stephen King’s textual fecundity, as well as the introduction of a supplementary narrative which bears a striking similarity to King’s near-death experience caused by his accident in 1999.
This paper seeks to explore both Danish and American approaches to the similar material, in order to discern the appropriations and re-appropriations of the gothic, and their influence on the representations of authority and authenticity.

Gothic Imagination Blog

2007-10-31T15:31:00.000Z

Just to let you all know, that I have started as one of the main bloggers for the new Gothic Imagination website at the University of Stirling. This is a really exciting project, and I urge you to go over and check it out. It has just launched today to coincide with Halloween, so it is still relatively new, but I think it's really promising, so subscribe to the feed, and you will receive regular updates on all things gothic.

Madrid

2007-10-27T11:13:00.000Z

What a wonderful city Madrid is! I returned home from the 5th Conference of the Book, which was held there, on Tuesday evening, having delivered my paper on Stephen King's e-book The Plant. I think the paper was well received, and certainly, it was well attended. Some of the best things about attending conferences, I think, is the people you meet and the conversations which are begun. I really do find that these events recharge and renew my own research, and fill me with enthusiasm. For those of you who are unsure as to the themes of the conference that I attended, here is a great clip from You Tube which addresses some of the concerns in both an accessible and entertaining way. In fact, it would also be a great clip to introduce ideas of the material text and textual culture in teaching.

Thanks to all those involved in the organisation of the conference, in particular Philip and Tamsyn of Common Grounds. I'm already looking forward to next year's!

5th International Conference of the Book - Abstract

2007-09-24T12:36:00.000Z

I first attended an International Conference of the Book last year in Boston, and I enjoyed it immensely. It sparked off so many new interests and lines of enquiry for me, and left me feeling completely enthused about future research. Earlier on this year I had the opportunity to become the blogger for the Journal of the Book (affiliated to the conference), and I have now been posting to their blog for the last 6 months. This year's conference is being held in Madrid, a city I have never had the pleasure to visit before, and it takes place in a month's time. My paper this year is on Stephen King's The Plant and I have included my abstract at the end of this post for anyone who is interested. It was such a great conference last year, that I am so looking forward to attending this one!

Concerning E-Books: Addressing Form and Content in Stephen King's The Plant
'[I] take an amateur's slightly crazed pleasure in the business side of what I do. I like to goof widdit, do a little media cross-pollination and envelope pushing.' Stephen King, Everything's Eventual (2002)
Stephen King has experimented widely with the material form of the text; he has published a serial novel, a pop-up book, many limited editions and, most recently, a series of comic books. However, the experiment, which attracted the most media attention, was the publication of his e-books. In 2000, King was approached by Scribner to provide a short story which could be published as an e-book. King complied by offering them 'Riding the Bullet' (2000), and the project went on to become phenomenally successful. He followed this first venture into e-publishing with a serially published novel, The Plant (2000), which he made available for download from his official website. Unlike Scribner's publication of 'Riding the Bullet', King chose to rely upon an honour system rather than encryption to protect his financial interest, and this, along with his decision to self-publish, caused a media storm. King's recurrent complaint throughout both e-publications was that the form had taken precedence over the content; he feared that no-one was reading the fiction. In this paper, I intend to re-evaluate King's e-publishing experiment, with an emphasis on The Plant, and I shall be weighting my analysis equally on both form and content in order to redress the balance. By exploring the text as a whole, I hope to show that the content is relevant to an understanding of the business decisions that were made, and that in analysing the form of the text, to the exclusion of the content, the bigger picture remains unobtainable.

Teaching Conference in Brighton

2007-09-24T12:03:00.001Z

It's been a week now since I returned from giving my paper at the Teaching Contemporary Women's Writing in the 21st Century conference at Brighton Uni, and I just wanted to write a short post about how I got on. I have to say that I got such a lot out of being there. I met so many lovely people, and I learned so much from the other speakers. I think my paper went well, although the first clip I wanted to show wouldn't play. My second clip played just fine, though, and that was the one that I particularly wanted everyone to see. I actually gave the paper again to the Teaching Assistants in our dept at Stirling, and we decided, in the discussion following the paper, that we would establish a Yahoo group which we could use to store links to digital media to use as teaching aids. I personally think this is a great idea, as there is so much rubbish on You Tube that surely if we were all on the look out for clips which we could use with this semester's texts, we're bound to significantly reduce the time we're spending as individuals sourcing materials. All in all, I have found the process of writing, delivering and discussing my first teaching paper really helpful. It's been a great experience, which I hope to repeat at some point in the future. Huge thanks to Gina and Lana for all their hard work in pulling off a really great day! Also I had a lovely time in Brighton, and I've posted up a few photos that I took here and here.
If you attended either readings of my paper and are looking for the 'Teaching With You Tube' post which accompanied it, you can find it here.

Teaching With You Tube

2007-09-12T20:44:00.000Z

This Saturday, I will be giving my paper at the University of Brighton's conference 'Teaching Contemporary Women's Writing in the 21st Century'. This is the blog post which accompanies the presentation, which focuses on the incorporation of You Tube clips in university teaching.

The clips which form a part of the presentation are as follows:

These are the full versions of the clips which I show parts of during the presentation.

The other two clips, which I mention, are the two Lord of the Rings montages:

Finding clips for teaching can sometimes be a bit of a challenge, but if you make sure your search criteria is focussed and you make use of functions such as 'Related' clips and 'More From This User', you should ultimately find something you can utilise in class. I would also like to say, be flexible; look at the clips you find, and ask yourself if you can use them. If you rigidly stick to a set idea of what you want to use, you may never find it, as it may not exist. Keep your options open!

To download and embed the clips you find into your presentation you will require the application Tube Sock, which you can download from here. This application will not only allow you to download You Tube clips, but will also convert the file to an MPEG4 file, which can be viewed using iTunes. If you are using Keynote, the presentation software in iWork, you will then be able to embed this clip easily into your presentation. If, however, you are using Powerpoint, you may wish to burn the clips onto a dvd. My recommendation would be, use Keynote! It's far superior to Powerpoint and results in a much more polished presentation.

I'd just like to finish off by reiterating the point I express in my presentation that, I believe the possibilities for the use of You Tube as an educational tool are only just beginning to be realised and that, in the future, I believe it could play a much more important role. I would love to hear feedback on either the post or the presentation, so feel free to add a comment!

Teaching Contemporary Women's Writing - Conference

2007-08-24T07:37:00.000Z

I'm going to be writing a paper today called ‘Can a bird sing the only song it knows or can it learn a new song?’: Teaching Angela Carter’s ‘The Lady of the House of Love’. It's for a conference in Brighton on Teaching Contemporary Women's Writing in the 21st Century. I'm really looking forward to it as it will be my first teaching conference. It'll be so interesting to hear other people's approach to university teaching. I'm particularly interested to see how others are integrating new technology into their teaching. Anyway, I've included my abstract here for you to have a read of. Any thoughts please let me know! Oh, also, if you want to view the youtube clip that I'm going to show part of in my presentation, I've blogged about it at my new blog, Lives Less Ordinary.

‘Can a bird sing the only song it knows or can it learn a new song?’: Teaching Angela Carter’s ‘The Lady of the House of Love’
At Stirling University, I teach two first year courses, ‘Author, Reader, Text’ and ‘Text and Context’, both of which predominantly focus on late twentieth-century texts. Many of the contemporary authors I teach are women: from Sarah Kane to Arundhati Roy, Margaret Atwood to Carol Ann Duffy. However, this paper will focus on ‘The Lady of the House of Love’, from Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, which we teach as a gothic reinterpretation of the fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty. What I hope to illustrate is my technique of encouraging student engagement through extra-textual elements, such as Youtube clips, feature films and traditional oral narratives. I argue that, by using these extra-textual elements, not only can you pique your student’s interest in the text, but also facilitate them to form meaningful critique. During the course of this paper, I will show clips from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, clips from the short film Dysenchanted (available through Youtube), and I will also outline the group work exercise that I assign my students. As a teacher, I see it as my role to encourage students to see texts in new ways, to help them develop their skills as critical readers, and to support them as they gain confidence in presenting their ideas. This paper is an illustration of how I believe I am meeting those objectives, with the hope that it will be of some interest to those committed to similar goals.

A Parting of the Ways

2007-08-22T16:55:00.000Z

OK, so I've been a bit absent of late and it's been for a number of reasons. The first reason is that I have been insanely busy with the thesis. I've been manically reading tomes of literary theory trying to make sense of it all. Another reason for the absence has been that I have been feeling rather backed into a corner with this blog. I started it with the intention of blogging about education, academia and books, but this has gradually become too restrictive for me. I became so caught up with the idea of writing from within a niche, that my niche grew so small that I no longer derived any inspiration from it. So, I have decided that I am going to keep this blog on, but only on a professional basis. It'll be a place where I post about lessons planed, conferences attended and articles published. I have, however, started another blog for all things non-professional where I would love you to join me. It's called Lives Less Ordinary and it's basically about whatever is my current passion. It's still very new and shiny, but I would welcome any and all feedback! It won't be a continuation of Textual Tangents as was, but I hope that readers of this blog will still find something to interest them at the new blog. I won't be getting rid of any previous content on Textual Tangents, so it will still be available for any who want to revisit it.
Thanks to all of the readers of Textual Tangents, and I hope that you will enjoy the new version and the new blog.

Trip to Montolieu

2007-07-14T16:56:00.001Z

These are a few of my photos from my trip to Montolieu, an international book town just outside of the medieval town Carcassonne. I posted a little while back about international book towns, but now I have had the pleasure of actually visiting one. What a wonderful, special place! It's one of these places where you are continually suprised by what you find round every corner. Also it is just packed full of bookshops, all specialising in different texts. Our rummaging turned up some beautiful modernist magazines local to the south west of France, with some truly spectacular woodcuts (which I'll maybe post separately about, because, unfortunately I couldn't fit it into my suitcase along with a few dozen other items, which my dad is bringing back for me next week), a braille edition of Chopin's nocturnes, and a selection of ladies fashion magazines from 1907! Well worth the trip!

Also we went to Les Anges Au Plafond, which is the most lovely restaurant/tea room/ b&b. I had such a wonderful lunch, which was finished off with poppy seed cake served with rose ice cream. It was truly divine! If you ever find your way to Montolieu, you must go to Les Anges au Plafond.

Reporting Back from the IGA Conference

2007-07-08T17:45:00.000Z

Last week I arrived home from my trip to the south of France to attend the International Gothic Association conference, Gothic N.E.W.S. The IGA hold a conference every two years, with the one in 2005 being in Montreal, and this year's in Aix-En-Provence. In 2005 I presented a paper on the gothic pedestrian which focussed on Mervyn Peake's wonderfully sinister villain Steerpike, whilst this year I presented on Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon which focussed on the gohic victim. The fascinating thing about this text is that it has been re-released as a pop-up book, so I included that in my paper too. If you want to read the abstract you can find it here.

I just love going to the IGA conference. I always meet such lovely people who are engaged in such interesting research! I saw papers ranging from gothic tourist attractions to gothic soundtrack, postmodernist gothic to frontier gothic, Edgar Allan Poe to Martha Stewart. Truly a diverse and wonderful selection! The other thing, that I so appreciate about this conference, is that I always find it to be a very supportive and nurturing space to present research. I have heard that some international conferences can be quite combative, but I have never found the IGA conference to be like that. I can't believe that I have to wait till 2009 for the next one!

So when did you last feel galvanised following an exchange of ideas? What is your experience of academic conferences? Did you attend the IGA conference?

Bonjour!

2007-07-04T08:33:00.000Z

For those of you who follow this blog regularly, you probably realised that my absence from the blog was due to my trip to the south of France. The rest of you could have safely asumed that I had disappeared, never to be seen in the blogosphere again!

Well, I arrived home from a truly wonderful trip late Monday night, and took yesterday to write emails and generally try to catch up a little bit. Today, I'm just going to give a little taster of what posts you can expect over the next wee while, before launching myself into the writing schedule I have set myself, in order to make progress on the thesis. So, in no particular order, here's a list of forthcoming posts:

*International Gothic Association Conference in Aix En Provence
*Montolieu, the book town just outside Carcassonne
*Expandable travel journal
*Edinburgh book festival plans

And, as usual, I'll be blogging about anything bookish which catches my eye. If anyone has spotted anything interesting, feel free to leave a comment.

Ok - till the next time (which will be a lot sooner than the last time)!

Spell With Flickr

2007-06-11T12:53:00.000Z

OK, I know I've been a bit remiss with my blogging lately. In my defence, the weather has been great in central Scotland, and, if you know Scotland at all you will know that we don't get good weather all that often. When it comes along you have to make the most of it! Yesterday wasn't such a nice day, however, and so I spent a long day preparing my presentation to go along with my paper for the IGA. I leave for France a week on Friday, so now I'm completely prepared - well, conference-wise I'm prepared. Packing-wise is another question altogether!

So, anyway, it was not just my own blogging that has slacked off a little, but also my blog reading. I've been trying to make up for it, but at the moment I've only make it to 'K' on my feed reader, and I've been at it quite some time already! One of the things that I have come across, however, is Spell With Flickr which I discovered over at Kate's Book Blog (Thanks Kate!). Basically, it's a tool which generates photographs of letters to spell out words of your choosing.
For example:

What do you think? It's pretty great isn't it? It reminds me of a great blog which I keep up with called Ace Jet 170 which specialises in found type. Ace Jet encourages you to send in your own photos of found type, and I have to say I'm tempted. Since reading his blog I have become much more conscious of type in and around my everyday environment. Great blog - well worth a look!

Book Towns

2007-05-30T18:44:00.000Z

I was just over at Victorianitas where September Blue has the most wonderful photographs to accompany her account of her trip to the famous book festival at Hay on Wye. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Hay on Wye, it is a modest sized town whose numbers swell during its enormous annual book festival. It is home to almost 40 bookshops and hold the status of 'book town'. According to the International Organisation of Book Towns - 'A Book Town is a small rural town or village in which second-hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated. Most Book Towns have developed in villages of historic interest or of scenic beauty'.

Whilst I have never been to Hay on Wye, I am planning a trip to the french book town of Montolieu, which is close to Carcassonne in the south of France. It's not long now before I cross the channel to attend the International Gothic Association conference, which is being held in Aix En Provence this year, and I'm hoping that I'm going to get a chance to visit Montolieu either the weekend before or after the week of the conference. My mum, who lives part-time in Carcassonne, was there recently and stayed over at this lovely B&B. While we won't be staying over when we visit in June, we may be able to stop in for afternoon tea. Book browsing is thirsty work after all!

One interesting thing which I've noticed about book towns is that there doesn't appear to be any outside Europe. Does anyone know of a book town in other parts of the world? Have you visited a book town before? What did you think of it?

Books Read Us

2007-05-28T14:58:00.000Z

I've been reading Gail Sher's One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers, which is (ironically, what with my inconsistent blogging of late) about establishing a regular habit of writing, and I came across such an interesting chapter called 'Books Read Us' which I thought I'd share with you.

'A good book is you. That's why you can't put it down.
A good reader co-writes every book she reads. You and your friend can never read the same book because what you make up behind and during the reading will be entirely different from the imaginings of your friend. If you try to reread the same book, you can't. You will have been changed by the first run through.'

Isn't that an interesting thought! I think this underpins one of the reasons why I read collective blogs such as Slaves of Golconda, A Curious Singularity, and Tilting at Windmills, which all focus on a central text and encourage their members to blog on it. It also approaches why I enjoy teaching literature in tutorials; I love hearing different experiences of the same text. We all come to literature in different ways, and to hear (or read) the attempts at articulating that experience is completely fascinating to me.

I want to share another extract from that same chapter.

'Therefore the value of rubbish. We can't always be reading King Lear. Our psyche needs rest and afterwards to prepare for the feat. Junk reading, like junk food, can be adventurous, morale-boosting.
Ephemera are 'the dressing-rooms, the workshops, the wings, the sculleries, the bubbling cauldrons, where life seethes and steams and is forever on the boil'. Trashy novels, run-of-the-mill mysteries, obscure biographies, the latest 'zines' plunk us down in a public reality that cushions and offsets the rare, exotic, exquisite yet painfully isolating masterpiece.'

As much as I enjoy beautiful literature which shows passion for language, I also love a really good, racy plot!

So what was your last 'trashy novel'? What are your thoughts on re-reading? Do you enjoy discovering others' approaches to the same text?

Catching Up On The Book Blogs

2007-05-21T14:26:00.000Z

This last week has been crazy! What with end of semester marking, our dept's postgrad conference, and writing up my paper for the IGA, I have not only let my own bloging slip, but I've also neglected my feed reader. The Guardian feed was showing that I had 200 unread posts! Oh dear. Anyway, now that I have made my way through all the new posts, I thought that I would share some of them with you.

Autumn Rain has a beautifully thoughtful post on the theatre, and as I'm going to see some drama later this week, it really appealed.

50 Books and Bibliophile Bullpen have both blogged about attending 2nd hand book fairs. I'm particularly envious of them both, as last week I missed the HUGE 2nd hand Christian Aid book fair which is held annually at a church on Edinburgh's George St, as I was too busy. Ho Hum.. There's always next year, I suppose.

Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie has some extremely beautiful bookplates to peruse.

I caught up on the ongoing clash between bloggers and print media over at Baby Got Books and Conversational Reading.

Flavia, over at Ferule and Fescue has blogged about the fishbowl effect of rare book libraries.

I added to the list of books I want to read after reading the post on Me and My Big Mouth about Sebastian Beaumont's Thirteen, and litlove's post over at Tales From the Reading Room on Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.

Ward 6 had a couple of interesting posts - the first one on teaching reading using non-fiction rather than fiction, the second on what makes a good story collection. The second post caught my eye in particular as I am just reading some story cycles at the moment. I'm just about to finish John Updike's Too Far To Go, and I'm just about to start on Eudora Welty's The Golden Apples. I also found a post by Robin over at A Fondness For Reading about Welty's lecture about reading as a listener. So that was a nice bit of synchronicity!

Anyway, writing this post has made me wonder why there isn't a litblog carnival? Or is there one, and I just don't know about it? Any thoughts on starting one up? If I organised it, would you post to it?? Let me know!

Great Bookish Links

2007-05-16T09:37:00.000Z

I have posted before about my dad, who writes the blog Heroes Not Zombies, but up until now, I have not mentioned my mum. My mum makes beautiful books, such as journals, wedding guest books, as well as artist’s books, which you can see on her Flickr account. The picture at the top of this post is one of mum’s which is called La Naissance des Couleurs. You can see the Flickr set of this book here.

Due to her interest in the material form of the book, she frequently finds wonderful things on the internet, and just the other day, she emailed me some links which I thought readers of this blog would enjoy. The first one is a blog post about a bookshop in San Francisco, called the Adobe Book Shop, which arranges its books on the shelves in order of colour. Some of you may remember that I wrote a post back in February on The (Dis)ordered Library, in which I looked at my own ordering of books in my personal library. I have a feeling that ordering according to the rainbow may be beyond me, but it looks just incredible. There is actually a Flickr set of more photos of books ordered by colour, which you can check out here.

Another link that she sent me took me to these amazing photographs of Abelardo Morell. These stunning black and white photographs really seem to celebrate the materiality of text, displaying them as not only beautiful objects, but also emphasising how incredibly tactile books actually are. Here’s another to whet your appetite!

The last link she sent was on how to make a hollow book to store your Ipod. If you fancy having a go yourself, click here for instructions.

So what are your favourite sites for book images? What do you think of the selection here? What would you store in a hollow book? Happy surfing!

The Joy of Being Read To

2007-05-12T12:26:00.000Z

I want to share a post with you that I discovered the other day, as I trawled the blogosphere. It's from Robin over at A Fondness for Reading, and in it she discusses her enjoyment of audio books. I am just in the process of rediscovering audio books at present, and so greatly enjoyed what Robin had to say about them. She explains that

'listening to a book is a different experience than reading the book, and is much like theater. If you don't like the dramatization of the story, or how the narrator interprets the words (right down to the emphasis on certain syllables), then don't listen to it. But I have found that listening to the beautiful writing of an author, read by a talented narrator, just gives me another reason to love the genius of the book. Many of those works were written to be shared aloud.'

I love this idea that listening to a book, is akin to a theatrical event! Being read to can be such a magical and memorable experience; some of my best childhood memories are of being read to. There are so many reports out these days that state how important it is for parents to read to their children (information on the report for the The Family Reading Campaign run by the National Literacy Trust and the BBC can be found here and here), but I wonder how many parents are that actively engaged in their children's reading. A couple of years ago, we went camping up to Orkney, and we took along my beautifully illustrated edition of The Hobbit, with the intention of reading a chapter every evening of our holiday. There was a family in the adjacent plot to ours, who had children a little older than our three, and seemed nice, if, perhaps, a little too loud (as we all know, canvas doesn't do a particularly great job at sound-proofing!). One day their little girl came over to our tent and was looking at The Hobbit, and she asked me if I read to the children every night, to which I replied, yes I did. "Even at home?" she enquired. "Yes" I told her. She looked at me and said, "That must be nice". That conversation has always stayed with me, and I imagine it always will. Now, whenever one of my children ask me to read something to them, before we settle down to our book, I'm reminded again of the little girl at the campsite who was never read to. "Once upon a time..."

So what are your experiences of being read to? Do you read regularly to your children? Are you as big a fan of audio books as Robin is?

My Top 5 Reading Ladies

2007-05-08T08:13:00.000Z

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry --
Emily Dickinson

Inspired by the above poem, I have decided that, as part of the Problogger group writing project, I would give you my top 5 Reading Ladies. So, here they are:

1. Young Woman Reading by a Window - Delphin Enjolras

2. Girl Reading - Charles Edward Perugini

3. The Reader - Jean-Honore Fragonard

4. Woman Reading - Pierre Auguste Renoir

5. Young Woman Reading - Mary Cassatt

One of the things that I like about these paintings is that all the women look so absorbed by what they are reading; they have been transported by the simple act of picking up a book. Many of my posts to this blog are book related as one of my great joys in life is being so absorbed in a book that I find I physically can't put it down. I think it is this joy, this absorption, this transportation that is conveyed so beautifully in these five paintings. I must point out though, that these paintings are a very small sample from five of the many artists who have chosen the reading woman as their subject. What do you make of this? Why do we find the sight of a woman engaged in reading so aesthetically pleasing? Which of the five is your favourite?

UPDATE: My mum has just sent me a link to a French website which promotes a book called 'Les Femmes Qui Lisent Sont Dangereuses', or 'The Reading Women Are Dangerous'. It has quite a few beautiful images of reading women on it. Check it out!

Guilty Pleasure of a Theatrical Sort

2007-05-05T21:33:00.000Z

When I go out shopping these days, I have a tendency to shop in such a way so as the purchases cancel each other out. Let me explain - when I buy myself a new novel, I buy the children a book too (thank the lord for three for two deals!!). After buying myself a new top, I dash straight over to the children's clothing department to pick out three new t-shirts. Up until very recently, I thought that this habit extended only to the high street. However, it appears to have spread to entertainment too...

Earlier this week I bought two tickets to see Alan Cumming in The Bacchae. I even bought good seats, i.e. with an unrestricted view. It's to be one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Festival this year, and their website describes it as 'one of the greatest of all Greek tragedies in the world premiere of a new adaptation by David Greig and the National Theatre of Scotland. Savage, comic and intensely lyrical, The Bacchae powerfully dramatises the conflict between the emotional and rational sides of the human psyche.' I am so excited! It's not on until August, but, needless to say, I will be writing a post on it to let you all know how it went.

I will, however, be seeing another performance a lot earlier (i.e the end of May), which is where my crafty cancelling out comes into play. No sooner had I bought tickets to see The Bacchae, I bought tickets for the family to go and see the new Gridiron production. Gridiron, if you are not familiar with them, are a theatre company that specialise in site specific theatre. They have staged The Bloody Chamber in Mary King's Close (quite possibly the most haunted place in Scotland, and that's saying somthing!), and The Devil's Larder in Edinburgh's Debenhams department store. My kids were in their production Roam last year which was staged at Edinburgh Airport, and which went on to win Best Production of 2006 in the Critics Awards for Theatre in Scotland. So, anyway they have a new production called Once Upon a Dragon as part of the Children's International Theatre Festival, and I saw a perfect opportunity to assuage my guilt over the Bacchae tickets! I have to say though, this does look like it's going to be great. They are staging the play in the woods at Cammo in Edinburgh, and I have been sent the following information along with my tickets:

There be dragons in the woods of Cammo estate. They're not too dangerous but, to be safe, we all need to... bring a waterproof jacket, in case of dripping dragon's snot (and Scottish rain) [and] wear sturdy shoes or wellies so we can splash in muddy dragon footprints.

I don't know who's going to have more fun - the kids or the parents!

A Novel Idea?

2007-04-30T16:13:00.000Z

Ok, so what are we looking at here? It's a novel vending machine!

My dad, who is just about to fly out from Edinburgh to Japan to do some teaching, has just sent this photo to my mobile. I think this is so interesting; literature is being sold in the same way as a can of coke! If you compare this method of selling to the one outlined in my previous post which looked at the promotional material that came along with my Inkt purchase, the difference is stark. This, rather than the internet, is the ruin of serendipitous book shopping!

Has anyone seen these machines before? What do you make of them? Do you think the selling method devalues the product?

UPDATE: After further investigation, I have found the vending machine's website. It turns out that there is an interactive screen which displays author notes, publishing information and the books' synopses. I have to say that this makes it seem much more appealing, as your choice isn't left completely to pot luck. I'm still not completely convinced though...

Bibliomania, Bibliopoly, Bibliolatry

2007-04-27T18:39:00.000Z

Following on from my post on serendipitous book shopping, I wanted to tell you about my most recent internet book shopping experience. Yesterday evening I bought a number of short story cycles from Amazon marketplace, including Margaret Laurence's A Bird in the House (I'll be posting more on these at a later date). I expected the purchases to start trickling in from early next week, so imagine my surprise when I came home this evening to discover Laurence's book had already arrived. Inkt, the marketplace seller responsible for this speedy delivery, included their mission statement in the package, and I just had to share this paragraph from it with you.

'We like books - that must be said. We have to, want to, and really do. We like finding them, handling them, sorting them, reading the first paragraphs of them, repairing and rehabilitating them ("nurse, this book looks ill"), gazing at colour photographs in the food ones, lamenting the lack of indexes at the end of them, stealing them for home (overnight only: I promise we'll bring them back), marvelling at the perseverance of authors who have written them, checking the spelling in them and generally overdosing on them. Bibliomania, bibliopoly, bibliolatry. If we didn't work in books, we'd work in misery. Steel rivets? Margarine? Draft excluders? No, let us sell books please.'

Have you ever read such an effusive outpouring of book love? Strangely though, they have preceeded this expression of bibliolatry(?) with a comparison of themselves to a supermarket. They state that they 'view the internet as a worldwide supermarket, not as a small-town delicatessen', and then go on to illustrate the ways in which their business models the supermarket. In my experience, supermarkets do not generally have staff this enthusiastic about their stock; witness my enquiring after puy lentils/ pancetta/ fennel/ any moderately unusual food item, only to be greeted with a look of blank confusion. I know what Inkt are trying to say, in that they want to convey their 'aim to sell as many books to as many people as quickly and cheaply as possible', but I just feel as though their simile sells them short. Surely, with the passion they demonstrate, they should be promoting themselves as a small-town delicatessen catering for a global market, rather than as an impersonal supermarket?

Serendipitous Book Shopping

2007-04-25T18:21:00.000Z

According to a recent article on Times Online, Margaret Atwood has come out against the book buying internet experience. The article claims that Atwood believes 'the joy of stumbling on a captivating book of which you were previously unaware is being undermined by the internet'. I have to say that I fundamentally disagree with this position. I have discovered so many wonderful books through Amazon, Abebooks, Librarything, and various litblogs (such as Baby Got Books, A Work in Progress, Tales From the Reading Room and Me and My Big Mouth), that I remain unconvinced that my days of serendipitous book shopping are over. I do agree with Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro that the suggestions for 'books I might like' from Amazon are frequently ridiculous, but I do appreciate other buyers' wishlists, choices and reviews. Often I have gone online to buy one book, and ended up with three in the post, and five more on my wishlist. And, after all, the very verb we use to describe exploring the internet is 'browse'. Isn't the internet all about serendipity?

Atwood's pessimistic view of internet book buying is also undermined in that the internet seems to be improving sales in independent and second-hand bookshops, shops which actively encourage book browsing. Amazon's success is being touted as one of the reasons for the drop in sales for the larger bookchains, such as Waterstones and Borders, which has simultaneously increased the popularity of the independent bookshop. Abebooks has offered an alternative shopfront for many second-hand bookshops which otherwise would have a far smaller market. I'll admit that the experience of buying a book in a specialist independent bookshop is very different from buying one via the internet, but I don't accept that we have to set the two in opposition to each other. I think they can both exist side-by-side in a mutually beneficial relationship.

So what was your last serendipitous find, and where did it happen? Do you agree with Atwood that the pleasure of book browsing is absent when we browse online? Where's your favourite book buying haunt, virtual or otherwise?

By the way, if you're interested in independent bookshops (and frankly, who isn't?), check out this walking tour of New York's best. I think I may have to do my own version for Edinburgh!

A Couple of Cope Poems

2007-04-21T13:35:00.000Z

I recently commented on a post over at Blog Lily in which I mentioned Wendy Cope's The Waste Land Limericks. After revisiting her wonderful collection, 'Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis', I found two poems which are just perfect for the class I'm teaching next week. We're going to be looking at the poetry of Romanticism, Victorianism and Modernism, and I'm going to give them these poems to have a look at, as I think Wendy does such a great job of capturing the style and the tone of Wordsworth and Eliot.

A Nursery Rhyme
as it might have been written
by William Wordsworth

The skylark and the jay sang loud and long,
The sun was calm and bright, the air was sweet,
When all at once I heard above the throng
Of jocund birds a single plaintive bleat.

And, turning, saw, as one sees in a dream,
It was a Sheep had broken the moorland peace
With his sad cry, a creature who did seem
The blackest thing that ever wore a fleece.

I walked towards him on the stony track
And, pausing for a while between two crags,
I asked him, 'Have you wool upon your back?'
Thus he bespake, 'Enough to fill three bags.'

Most courteously, in measured tones, he told
Who would receive each bag and where they dwelt;
And oft, now years have passed and I am old,
I recollect with joy that inky pelt.

A Nursery Rhyme
as it might have been written
by T.S. Eliot

Because time will not run backwards
Because time
Because time will not run
Hickory dickory

In the last minute of the first hour
I saw the mouse ascend the ancient timepiece,
Claws whispering like wind in dry hyacinths.

One o'clock
The street lamp said,
'Remark the mouse that races towards the carpet.'

And the unstilled wheel still turning
Hickory dickory
Hickory dickory
dock

So, what nursery rhyme would you like to see rewritten in the style of a famous poet? Anyone willing to have an attempt at their own? Maybe 'Humpty Dumpty' in the style of Sylvia Plath, or 'The Grand Old Duke of York' in the style of Wilfred Owen?

Oh, and if you want to check out some more Wordsworthian rewritings, Victorianitas has some great examples.

UPDATE:- The nursery rhymes went down a treat in my class last night. After their lecture on Romanticism we looked at the first one, and they were beginning to understand what made a poem Romantic. But it was after our discussion of Modernism, which included an audio clip of T.S. Eliot reading 'The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock', that their reading of the Eliot nursery rhyme really took off. If we had had more time then I would have got them to attempt their own nursery rhymes in the style of Eliot. I would like to try this in the future though!

The Sending of Books

2007-04-18T17:56:00.000Z

I came across this website, whilst browsing the internet, and it has sparked all sorts of questions for me. The website is called What Is Stephen Harper Reading?, and it is Man Booker Prize winning author Yann Martel's account of a new project which he began earlier this month. This is how he describes it on his website:

For as long as Stephen Harper is Prime Minister of Canada, I vow to send him every two weeks, mailed on a Monday, a book that has been known to expand stillness. That book will be inscribed and will be accompanied by a letter I will have written. I will faithfully report on every new book, every inscription, every letter, and any response I might get from the Prime Minister, on this website.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and I'm looking forward to reading the results. It has got me thinking, however, what book would I send to who, why? I was thinking maybe something by Roald Dahl to awaken Gordon Brown's inner child, Gormenghast for Prince William, and Jekyll and Hyde for Naomi Campbell.

What book would you send to who, and why?

UPDATE: Yann has just sent Stephen Harper Orwell's Animal Farm. Still no response from Harper on the first book though.