Category Archives: books

amusements, arts, beliefs, books, memes, nudism, thoughts, topographical

Friday Five: Wishes

OK so here, a bit late, is this week’s Friday Five …

1. Name one movie you wish everybody could watch.

  • None of them. I dislike movies and wouldn’t cry if they sunk without trace. Doesn’t mean other people shouldn’t watch them, just don’t expect me to or to share your enthusiasm.

2. Name two books you wish everybody could read.

  • Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time. Well it’s one novel in 12 volumes, so I’ll count it as one. Read it if only as a social history of England from 1914 to 1970. Oh come on, you expected me to say that, didn’t you?
  • Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland (by which I mean the two works Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass). Read them and think about the logical conundrums presented; now apply them and change the way you look at the world!

3. Name three goals you wish everybody could achieve.

  • True inner peace and happiness.
  • Reconciliation and friendship with their parents.
  • To always treat others as you would like to be treated yourself (it’s part of what the Dalai Lama calls “compassion”).

4. Name four people you wish everybody could know.
I am going to assume the people don’t have to be alive now, but could come from any era. So I’ll nominate:

  • Richard Feynman; for his logic, his insights, his humour and his determination to overcome obstacles.
  • Galileo Galilei; a profound scientist who wasn’t afraid of standing up and being counted.
  • Leonardo da Vinci; another way out mind as well as a superb artist.
  • The present Dalai Lama; for his profound thinking, his happiness and his compassion.

That was hard! Four people I wish I knew would be easy, but to translate that into something for everyone is much, much harder.

5. Name five places you wish everybody could visit.

  • Rural England
  • Japan
  • A nudist community; to see just how it isn’t like everyone seems to think it is and to experience the freedom of life without clothes.
  • A small town in medieval England (or Europe at least) to see just what life really was like 600+ years ago and how far we have come.
  • Their special place. I believe we all have at least one place which is special and energises us (just as we have people who do this for us). It may be a town somewhere, or a country, or just a building (I know Stonehenge does it for some people, though not for me). Finding it is a whole different matter though.

[Brought to you courtesy of Friday Five.]

books, people, personal

On Friendship and the Anthony Powell Society

Jilly, over at jillysheep, believes I blame her for changing my life — and she is right for it is she who introduced me to Anthony Powell, something which ultimately led to the formation of the Anthony Powell Society and why I have little time to call my own (I’m the Society’s Hon. Secretary).

Jilly has just given the Anthony Powell Society and this weblog a nice little puff. Just to complete the miniature picture she paints, here is my comment in reply:

Thanks for the puff, Jilly! Yes, you changed my life and by more than just introducing me to Powell, but maybe the rest shouldn’t be discussed here. 😉

The Anthony Powell Society also hosts an active email discussion list at groups.yahoo.com/group/aplist/ which is open to all. And some members of that list have started their own reading group which can be found at www.adancetothemusicoftime.com/readinggroup/ tho’ it hasn’t yet really got off the ground. Both are open access and everyone is welcome.

Thanks, Jilly! 🙂

beliefs, books, freedom of speech, memes, science

Book Meme

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OK just for something a bit different, here’s a book meme I came across the other day …

One book that changed your life:
Anthony Powell; A Dance to the Music of Time

One book that you have read more than once:
Martin Gardner; The Annotated Alice

One book that you would want on a desert island:
Latham & Matthews; Diaries of Samuel Pepys. That’s apart from Dance!

One book that made you laugh:
Douglas Adams; Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

One book that made you cry:
Mervyn Peake; Gormenghast

One book you can’t read:
Amongst a number of others: Salman Rushdie; Satanic Verses

One book you wish you’d written:
Almost anything really; I just wish I had the skill and imagination to write a book.

One book you wish had never been written:
Not sure I think any book shouldn’t exist (that’s a variant of free speech), but if I really had to choose I’d pick two books: the Bible and the Koran; they’ve done more damage in the world than possibly all other books put together.

One book you’re reading:
Jennifer Ouellette; Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales of Pure Genius and Mad Science

One book you’re going to read:
John Aubrey; Brief Lives

The usual rules apply: tag a few friends (say 3 or 5), leave then a comment to tell them they’ve been tagged, and leave a comment for the person who tagged you.

I’ll tag Jilly at jillysheep, Noreen at Norn’s Notebook, Jamie at Duward Discussion.

beliefs, books, current affairs, medical, memes, personal, science, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

One Word Meme

This meme has managed to insinuate its way into here, so I’d better respond to it.

There’s only one rule: you get only one word.

Yourself: Depressed
Your Partner: Sexy
Your Hair: Greying
Your Mother: Ninety-Two
Your Father: Dead
Your Favorite Item: Camera
Your Dream Last Night: Anxiety
Your Favorite Drink: Beer
Your Dream Car: None
Your Dream Home: Tidy
The Room You Are In: Study
Your Fear: Poverty
Where Do You Want To Be In 10 Years: Retired
Who You Hung Out With Last: Friends
What You’re Not: Fit
Muffins: Mules
One of Your Wish List Items: Japan
Time: Midday
Last Thing You Did: Email
What Are You Wearing: Nothing
Your Favorite Weather: Sunshine
Your Favorite Book: Dance
Last Thing You Ate: Tablets
Your Mood: Lazy
Your Best Friends: Local
What Are You Thinking About Right Now: Sleep
Your Car: None
Your Summer: Seaside
What’s on your TV: Politics
What is your weather like: Raining
When Is the Last Time You Laughed: Yesterday
Your Relationship Status: Happy

Feel free to allow this to insinuate its way into your mind/weblog as well. 🙂

beliefs, books, current affairs, environment, history, quotes

Papal Carbon Offset

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The BBC is running on BBC4 TV a short series of programmes about medieval times. It started this evening with a program in which the comic actor Stephen Frye looked at Gutenberg and the development of the printing press. It was a coffee table programme: long on visual imagery, Frye’s idiosyncratic style and hammed-up wonderment; but despite the reconstruction of a Gutenberg press short on real academic detail. Certainly worth watching and much better than the average run of what these days passes for heavyweight programming; and mercifully devoid of dramatised reconstruction.

Frye made one interesting point, however. The Papal Indulgence was the medieval equivalent of our modern-day carbon off-set schemes: the payment of money to absolve us of our sins. Pure genius. Pure scams.

arts, books, personal

Books Do Furnish a Room

I’ve just come across Terence Jagger’s weblog Books Do Furnish a Room about books, trees and gardens, wildlife, ideas. As those of your who know me at well will know Books Do Furnish a Room is the title of volume 10 of Anthony Powell’s 12-volume sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. And indeed Jagger does occasionally make reference to Powell, so his weblog is a “must read” for me. The first Powell-related items I spotted are Borage, Writer with the X Factor and Uncommon Readers. This weblog is well worth a look for those interested in books.

books, current affairs, people, quotes

Hugh Massingberd RIP

It greatly saddens me to have to report the death on Christmas Day of Hugh Massingberd after a long battle with cancer; he was just days short of his 61st birthday.

“Hugh Massingberd was a true gentleman of letters” (Dr Nicholas Birns) who was variously a prolific author and editor of books on the English and country houses, editor of Burke’s Peerage and Burke’s Landed Gentry, book reviewer and writer. However he will probably be best remembered as the father of the modern obituary, being for some years Editor of the Daily Telegraph‘s Obituaries pages; “his creed was that an obituary should give pleasure to relatives and friends as well as to the general reader” (International Herald Tribune). He will also be remembered for being guyed in Private Eye as “Massivesnob” – something which greatly amused him.

More importantly for me Hugh was President, and latterly an Hon Vice-President, of the Anthony Powell Society, and had a quiet but significant influence on the early days of the Society. He was a great friend of the Powell family and of the Society. In December 2005 (when already unwell) he produced an entertainment “Love and Art” for Anthony Powell’s centenary celebrations. He was also a major influence on the Wallace Collection’s Powell centenary exhibition, being instrumental in suggesting (and helping locate) potential objects for inclusion; he seemed to know of, and know the whereabouts of, every possible Powell-related artifact that ever existed!

I had the privilege of knowing Hugh and sharing, all too briefly, his unending friendship and camaraderie. He will be very greatly missed by many.

Obituaries: Daily Telegraph, International Herald Tribune, Independent.

beliefs, books, memes, science, thoughts

Catching up on New Scientist the other evening I spotted an interesting piece attached to an article entitled “God’s place in a rational world“:

An Alternative reading of literature

Religion is not the only aspect of the human condition that could do with a little more rationality, said some delegates at Beyond Belief II [a symposium of scientists who don’t buy into the god meme]. Jonathan Gotschall, who teaches English literature at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, proposed marrying literary studies with a scientific style of inquiry.

Gottschall has already made waves among his colleagues by conducting an experiment on how people respond to literature. From interviews with readers about their responses to books, he has shown that in general people have similar reactions to a given text. This runs counter to the conventional idea that the meaning readers take from literature is dependent more on their cultural background than what the author intended. It also appears not to make sense, as literature is grounded in subjective rather than objective experience.

Gotschall, however, argues that the same can be said for literary criticism: the field is awash with irrational thought, he says, largely because most literature scholars believe that the humanities and science are distinct. As a result, literary theorists rely on opinion and conjecture, rather than trying to find solid, empirical evidence for their claims, he says. By adding an element of scientific thought to literary criticism, Gottschall says, we could unearth hidden truths about human nature and behaviour.

Interesting idea. Needs thinking about. My literarist friends please note!

arts, beliefs, books, quotes, thoughts

Virtue and Art

The great artists of the world are never Puritans and seldom respectable. No virtuous man – that is, virtuous in the YMCA sense – has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a symphony worth hearing, or a book worth reading.

[HL Mencken]