Well, my weekend is going well – I’d planned to go on a National Trust jaunt, but had a lie-in instead – but later on today I’ll be going BOWLING for the first time in about eight years. Maybe I’ve just got better at it, without practising? Right?
Anyway, let’s stick to books for now – I feel on more secure ground there.
1.) The book – writing poetry every day without ever reading any is making me feel rather a fraud. And I was tempted by Zoo of the New, edited by Nick Laird and Don Paterson. The name is very silly, because this isn’t new poetry – it’s from Sappho onwards, excluding any living poets under sixty – but a flick through made it seem rather appealing, and not just the usual suspects. Anybody looked through this? Supposedly it’s published on 30th March, but it was in my local Waterstones last week. (Great cover, incidentally, which this blog tells me is designed by Richard Green.)
2.) The link – I’ve not read this yet, but my housemate was reading excerpts from the Guardian article about what happens when (if??) the Queen dies. It sounds fascinating – and I suspect the author was rather relieved that Her Maj didn’t die during his research period. As were we all, of course (love you, Lizzie!)
3.) The blog post – I’m just going to keep providing the world with links to reviews of The Lark by E. Nesbit until everybody gives in and just reads it. This week’s is from Call Me Madam!
My copy of The Lark arrived last week — it is #1 on my TBR list.
Brilliant!
The cover of “Zoo of the New” is interesting as a graphic and fails on delivering information. I do not think Jan Tschichold would have liked it either! However I might be interested to see what poems they have chosen, certainly starting out with Sappho is a good start!
Reading your recommended link to “The Lark” makes me ask you, as a literary expert, what exactly is meant by “authorial tone”? This is the second review I have read recently (of different books) which uses this piece of jargon. To the uninitiated, such as myself, I wonder what other tone does a book have other than the one provided by the author? Apologies if this seems a hopelessly naive question but I really am looking for enlightenment here.
Happy to help if I can! I would use it to mean the tone of the narrative if it’s a third person narrator – so a first person narrator would have their own tone, but the authorial tone is the way in which the author uses language (excluding dialogue).
Thank you!
Whoo hoo, another Lark review! How was the bowling? HAD you got better? Did your fingers get stuck in the holes in the ball, leading you to be dragged down the alley behind the ball (or is that just an unjustified fear of mine)?
Well, I was surprisingly good for the first game, and reassuringly bad for the second! And that’s also been a minor fear of mine – well, more that I might dislocate my fingers – but the bowling balls have different sized finger holes, so I was able to get one with sizeable ones :)
BOWLING! How fun! As long as you are bowling along with other people at about your same skill level, it should be fun regardless of how bad you are. I am a terrible bowler myself, but occasionally I get a strike or a spare and am fueled with bowling success for the rest of the evening.
THANKFULLY nobody was too good, and I had downplayed my ability sufficiently that my occasional strike was taken as being the world’s grandest achievement!