The author J.G. Ballard has passed away. More at BBC.
While JG Ballard's seeming obsession with technology, disaster, sex and violence was not to everyone's taste, there is no doubting the huge impact of his work. He was an original, a man who spent most of his life charting hopes and terrors, and trying to make sense of the 20th century.
And he wrote Running Wild which I read at school and still consider one of the worst books I have ever had the misfortune to read.
It's going to be a beautiful day so the bluebirds sing. I have booked myself a short, but much-needed flight home to Denmark in May. I need to spend time with the Danish part of myself, I have decided. Going back is always odd because it invariably ends up being a long series of meet-ups with everybody I have ever known in Denmark. I cannot remember the last time I spent a few hours in Copenhagen just, you know, hanging out with myself. I am not complaining. It just feels strange after having spent fifteen years in Copenhagen and suddenly the way I engage with my city is transformed. I think this is something most expats experience.
Linkage, then:
+ When I read "Glasgow Artist Restores Lost Mural" on the BBC website, I knew exactly who and what they were talking about. Wooh! + Cover Versions: "Classic records lost in time and format, remerged as Pelican books." + Speaking of which .. Pelican paperbacks. I used to own a lot of them. + Art-House Book Trailers. Just as vile as the name suggests. + CraftGawker. Look, be inspired, create. + This Is Not A Riot: An effective, non-violent response to riot police. (I miss going to demonstrations) + The Fall of the Spanish Hapsburgs, or why marrying your first cousin is a bad, bad idea. See also this pictorial guide to the Spanish Hapsburgs. Ouch. + As seen everywhere on the web: Uncomfortable plot summaries. To wit: "Groundhog Day: Misanthropic creep exploits space/time anomaly to stalk coworker." + And as seen on John's blog: "Over the weekend, sharp-eyed Cassini-watchers on unmannedspaceflight.com noticed a series of way-cool photos on the mission's raw images website." Mindblowingly cool photos.
I finished reading The Time-Traveller's Wife. It was rather "girly". I have also begun yet another knitting project: Geno in duck's-egg-blue milk-cotton. It's rather lovely and very summery.
R.I.P., Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick.
It is difficult to calculate the impact of Sedgwick's scholarship, in part because its legacy is still in the making, but also because she worked at a skew to so many fields of inquiry. Feminism, queer theory, psychoanalysis and literary, legal and disability studies--Sedgwick complicated and upended them all, sometimes in ways that infuriated more anodyne scholars, but always in ways that pushed established parameters.
"Based on the books in your collection," the Facebook notification read, " we thought you might like the New York Times best-selling author, Arthur Phillips', new book The Song is You." A quick google-search came up with a book which the New York Times described as "[reading] like a maladroit mash-up of the romantic comedy “Sleepless in Seattle” (..) and one of those creepy, straight-to-video movies, in which a famous beauty is pursued around the world by an obsessive fan." and which its publisher is trying to promote using the tag-line "Julian Donahue is in love with his iPod."
Some days I wish I were still running my literary blog, so I wouldn't be so out of the loop. Has Facebook moved into target-marketing literary geeks - or am I just super-priviledged? Is Arthur Phillips Spring '09's Jonathan Safran Foer or just a random no-name author whose publisher has paid hefty sums to social networks in a desperate attempt to shift copies? Should I even care enough to blog about this?
Regardless, I am not the reader you are looking for, dear Facebook notification. The book in question sounds absolutely vile and quite unlike anything I'd even consider reading.
In unrelated news, I have contracted the girly version of manflu which means I'm on the verge of dying. In lieu of flowers, please send skeins of Malabrigo or Noro Cashmere Island .. *cough, splutter, cough*
I have no idea what this will become although I'm thinking "strange necklace" or "very strange necklace". I just liked the colour combination of the turquoise waxed cotton and the matte red beads. I have some big opaque white beads too which I think might also make an interesting necklace. I don't tend to wear much jewellery, so this is certainly a departure for me.
Regular readers might have spotted that I am dealing with persistent medical matters and that I tend to visit doctors and/or hospitals with alarming frequency (actually, there is nothing alarming about the medical matters but I prefer not to blog about very personal things. I never was a confessional blogger). Anyway, this week I was advised by my NHS person to relax as much as possible in the weeks to come and, I quote, "watch some trashy TV and read crap books".
Huh.
Trashy TV: I don't think I will ever be able to stomach this. I tried watching some nonsense "middle-age female TV presenter investigates cosmetic surgery" programme yesterday but I only lasted ten minutes before switching to G20 coverage on BBC News. Is there a trashy TV programme which I would potentially enjoy? Recommendations for standard UK networks (remember, I'm in Scotland).
Crap books: Granted the actual words were "light reading which won't rot your brain but won't tax you either" but the gist is certainly crap books. Any recs? I think I'd prefer historical fiction, regency romances, fantasy or crime novels set in the early 20th C, but I'm open to suggestions. I'm not keen on contemporary chick lit, hard-boiled crime novels or writers who have graphic sex scenes every 18th pages or less (Laurell K. Hamilton, I'm looking at you in utter disgust).
Today I trawled through the seedy secondhand shops in Glagow's Partick area and managed to pick up 9 books for less than £5 plus a fabulous knitting magazine from 1983 with hilarious sweater patterns, stress-inducing lace socks and a curtain for the auto-camper.. and the beads you see in the photo. I tried to go for "crap books" but sadly I ended up with mostly Booker prize nominees and post-colonial classics. I clearly need recommendations.
Many years ago I read A.S. Byatt's The Game - a novel about two sisters and the rivalry between them. The book asked questions about the rights of a writer to blur the line between fact and fiction: when could you use your family in your book and when did you have to start inventing? I don't know if Julie Myerson has read A.S. Byatt, but I think she should rush out to buy The Game. Myerson is a British journalist, TV personality and novelist whose latest literary feat, The Lost Child, has been causing headlines this week.
Her book is about her son's addiction to cannabis and how this led to violent behaviour within the family. Myerson's son is angry at his mother for publishing a book about him against his wishes: "She's a writer and like a lot of writers she is wrapped up in her own world - even if the worlds they are creating aren't quite true, they become true to them anyway". Furthermore, it turns out that Julie Myerson has been writing anonymous (and intimate) columns about her children in the Guardian for years - without telling her children.
The Times has dubbed it "the chattering classes version of Heat Magazine". The Guardian is not sure Julie Myerson should have published the book. BBC's Jeremy Paxman interview with Myerson is perhaps the most damning: "You seriously thought you could publish a book detailing your son's drug use, and his identity wouldn't get out?" "Well...I may have been a bit naive about that..." Ouch.
Still, Julie Myerson has not written the worst book ever to come out of her household (maybe just the most thoughtless and self-indulgent) as her partner Jonathan Myerson wrote Noise which is one of the three worst books I have ever read in my entire life (and I have read Judith Krantz' Scruples; I liked Krantz better).
Speaking of books, I'm halfway through Anne Donovan's Being Emily. So far it is disappointing me somewhat.