All

I do believe it’s Thursday, and that means that I will be Booking Through Thursday. Which is lucky, because my brain is still somewhat addled, and I’m not up to genuine thought all of my own. What a blessing this website is, for the ill and uninventive.
Do you read e-Books? If so, how? On your computer, or a PDA? Or are you a paper purist? Why?Well, my answer to the first question is quite short. No, I don’t. I’m not entirely sure what e-Books are, and, to be frank, I don’t really want to know. They’re an amazing boon for those with sight-trouble, to whatever extent, as are much easier to transform into audio formats – but, for myself, I will never voluntarily read something on screen which is available on paper.

Why? Hmm.

I suppose it’s partly snobbery, if book-media-snobbery is a valid subsection, but mostly e-Books offer none of the things I want from books, aside from the content. That might sound a little silly, but, as they say, “you can’t curl up with a computer”. This is a blogger who has bought books on the basis of their smell. I don’t like the smell of new books much, (by the by, have started the O’Farrell now), but older ones… where will I get the intrinsic history of secondhand books in the computing arena? An Amstrad doesn’t cut it.

Howsabout yourself? Obviously anyone reading this has access to a computer, but do you/would you consider e-Books?

P.s. sorry for lack of sketches of late – take more thought and energy than are currently available. I lied yesterday, this is definitely a Man-Cold.

I must apologise for my absence yesterday, the reasons are twofold.

Firstly, I’m afraid, like those computers into which you are currently staring, I am not invulnerable to viruses. Have come down with a cold, and feeling sorry for myself. Men have it hard, though – the merest mention of a cold, and all females within hearing-distance thrown up their hands and cry “Man-cold! Man-cold!” Well, this is not a Man-cold, I am merely inconvenienced and grumbly. And consequently I’m not talking about books, just for today.

Instead, I have a lovely eccentric Oxford story, for those of you who like to hear about Oxford’s, erm, eccentricities.

At the end of our exams, each subject has ‘School’s Dinner’, where all the students and tutors for your subject, in your college, come together for a lavish dinner. The English one was yesterday, so of course Yours Truly was in attendance. I had asparagus, goat’s cheese mousse, mushroom ravioli, Summer pudding. Yum. But this all came with a side order of oddness – the tutor who arranged it is Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, affectionately known as ‘Bobby’ amongst his fond pupils. He decided it would be witty to write “Dress Code : Daring” on our invitations. Not black tie for this little gathering. And we chose not to follow our usual path, or taking everything Bobby says with a pinch (or a tablespoon) of salt – and, indeed, went a little daring. Daring in terms of ignoring usual dress decorum, anyway.

I went in my dressing gown.

I’ve been delaying the ‘8 Random Facts’ for a while, having been tagged by a couple of people. In fact, I had it in store for when inspiration didn’t hit anywhere else. And, dear reader, you find me tonight rather uninspired… so let’s hope the 8 Random Facts will not be an unmitigated bore. Also, can I suggest the term ‘arbitrary’, rather than ‘random’, since the latter has entered the vernacular for my generation, generally referring to anything unexpected or unusual. And it begins to wear.

Anyhow, without further ado, my arbitrary truths…

1) I am a Christian, and Jesus is the centre of my life, influencing everything I do. Hard to talk about it without sounding gushy and dramatic, but you should know me well enough by now to realise I ain’t either of the above!

2) I’m quite famous, me. Have been on television twice. My first appearance was 1996, on Tomorrow’s World – the crew came to my school, and asked my class what we thought would happen in the year 2000. I said (having just read my Gillian Cross) that computers would use subliminal frames to take over the world. The evidence supports my prediction, I think…
The second time was on Countdown last September. Great fun. I lost. But against the person who came third in the overall series…

3) You all know that I’m at Oxford University, but did you know I had to get through 6.5 interviews to occupy my Magdalen palace? Brasenose, Brasenose, (Jesus), Oriel, Magdalen, Merton, Magdalen. Jesus is in brackets because I was sent there, analysed the set poem for a while, waited outside the professor’s room… only to be told they had no idea why I was there. Had been sent to the wrong college. But it all worked out well in the end!

4) I hate parsnips. Sooooo much. When I’d just had my brace put in (now, thankfully, gone) my family went to dinner with some friends. They all got roast dinner. I got a bowl of curried parsnip soup. The nightmares still return…

5) Most bloggers I visit have an ‘and also…’ interest, alongside books. Opera, photography, gardening, cooking… I’m afraid mine is less sophisticated. It’s Neighbours. For friends across the pond, that’s an Australian Soap Opera. And it’s awful, but I love it. Anyone else watch a trashy soap? Confess!

6) You know that I have a Carbon Copy. Did you know that Our Vicar is also a twin? And that Thomas (our collective surname) means ‘twin’? Zany.

7) Music, you ask? My favourite album is Kathryn Williams’ Old Low Light. Check it out.

8) Alongside my televisual fame, I have also encountered some of my celebrity chums in person. Dame Judi Dench and Prince Charles, to name but two.

Lynne, over at dovegreyreader, has thrown down the gauntlet. She has a way of doing this. And it all dates back rather a long way. Sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Back in the days when ‘blogging’ was merely a misprint, Lynne, Elaine (Random Jottings) and I belonged to an online list, now known as dovegreybooks@yahoogroups.com. They’ve had a few mentions on here before, and are still flourishing. Though an extremely amiable group, it was not underheard of for Lynne to cajole Elaine and myself into Modern Books, nor for us to dig our heels in. My reading is often sequestered firmly in the period 1900-1950, and anything after this makes me feel slightly dizzy.

Well, Elaine has been brave and noble (or, wait for it, Barnes and Noble) and succombed to the charm of the 21st century, alongside healthy doses of Victorian literature and early-2oth century, of course. A challenge, if you will. Where Elaine has bravely gone, there must I also go. Now that my learnin’ at Oxford is officially over (for the time being, at least) I shall be venturing, oh-so-tentatively, into the sphere of Modern Literature, as prescribed by Nurse Dovegreyreader.

So, off I went yesterday, £5 book token clutched in hand, to those shelves of shiny, reflective, non-olde-worlde-smelling books, determined to find something to appease Lynne, and to make myself feel Thoroughly Modern. But… for someone who has bought about 10 new novels ever, it all felt rather wrong. I am at home in secondhand bookshops, or abebooks.co.uk, or even ebay. These coffee table items, all sparkling clean and with ‘Half Price!’ , ‘Buy One Get One Free!’, ‘20% Off If You Stand On One Leg When Paying!’ stickers… it’s all a little terrifying. And do you know what, I feel guilty buying new books. Guilty! I managed to quash book-buying-guilt by the time I was eight. But it all feels a little too… how should I put it… commercial. I can see the Big Businesses behind new books – in secondhand bookshops the benefitting parties are seated behind the desk, wearing brown cardigans and smoking pipes.

But I pushed all this aside. And came out with Maggie O’Farrell’s book, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. And came away with change from my book token.

I’ll report back soon. Wish me luck.

Booking Through Thursday has swept in again this week, to save me having to think for myself, with another query intended to send you all scurrying away to the literary part of your brain. I’m not entirely sure my brain has any other part – which is all to the good here.

This week’s question is: do you have any foreign language books, and if so, can you (still) read them?

Well, I’m afraid my non-cosmopolitan mind can only proffer a simple negative to the latter – I am about as bilingual as the National Anthem – but I do have a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in French, which I bought in an attempt to make French GCSE ‘fun’. Also Winnie the Pooh in Latin, I believe. Can we count Old English as a foreign language? Well, I’m not sure I could comprehend ‘The Wanderer’ and ‘Dream of the Rood’ any more, but once I memorised what they meant. Not really reading a foreign language, is it?

All this reminds me of a man who lived near us in my Merseyside days (those days being up until the age of 7ish). He liked the look of the books in Ikea, the ones used to decorate bookshelves and show how wonderfully functional they are. Indeed, he liked the look of them so much that he asked, and was allowed, to buy them by the yard. Despite not speaking of word of Swedish, the language all these books were written in. Marvellous.

I think I may have inadvertently fooled some people into thinking I was finished with the examinations last Friday – afraid that wasn’t quite the case. My crazy set of exams was finished then, but the final final final one was this morning. I have now officially ended my university career, and am all set to enter the world of reality. Wow!

Come on. You could hardly expect me to finish without showing you the Red Carnation in action. Here it is, sitting contentedly on my lapel, all ready to perform its task. I’ve been through the mill a bit, but the bulk of the achievement falls on the shoulders (or floral equivalent) of these carnations.

The exam today was Middle English Commentary – but, as promised, I shan’t bore you with the pages of Middle English text. Suffice it to say, I recognised where both citations came from, in Pearl and Troilus and Criseyde (not to be confused with Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, on which I wrote in my first exam) – this was nothing short of a miracle. And then I was the very first person out of the exam hall – very strange, there were three of us from Magdalen out of the building first, and the assembled crowd of 100+ all burst into cheers as we left. Obviously it was at the finalists in general, but it still felt rather exciting.

One of Oxford’s stranger traditions, and one which dates to quite recent times, I think, is ‘trashing’. When one comes out of exams, one is punished for all the moaning one has committed, generally through the liberal application of glitter/flour etc. My friends decided that buckets of lukewarm tea were appropriate… Oh yes, this blogger is not privileged to know sophisticates such as himself. But luckily it was a beautiful day for sitting on Magdalen’s lawns, and thinking about the nothing I have to do for a long time.

In the spirit of celebration, alongside a lovely letter from Barbara-from-Ludlow, a jumper arrived in the post today, which I ordered quite a while ago. The design is shown to your left… it amused me.

Finally, here are the books I ordered from Hesperus Press – very exciting to receive these in the midst of examinations. You might recall, from my first mention of the publishing house, that they lured me in with mention of the pair I like to call Janey and Ginny. That makes them sound like a pair of schoolchildren, doesn’t it? I speak of Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf, the two female titans (titanesses?) of literature, so far as Stuck In A Book is concerned. The idea of them as schoolchildren has got me thinking… and sketching… I wonder what they’d be like? Probably not friends – Woolf would be rather the sardonic, cleverly rebellious pupil. Austen much more likely to be teacher’s pet, while affectionately impersonating the teachers behind their backs. Then again, both would have relished the opportunity to go to school, so perhaps they wouldn’t have left the library.

Anyway, where was I? Supposed to be praising Hesperus Press, but got distracted and did some sketching (this was GOING to be a sketch-free blog entry) – but I must tell you which books I bought.

Lesley Castle – Jane Austen
Monday or Tuesday – Virginia Woolf
The Platform of Time – Virginia Woolf

These are in the line of not-so-famous-books by famous authors, which I mentioned before, and are extremely inviting. Lesley Castle is from Austen’s juvenilia, which I have read, but do not own (thanks Our Vicar’s Wife) – the correspondence of Miss Margaret Lesley and Miss Charlotte Lutterell is a wonderful satire of the epistolary novel, and with moments of absurdity allowed only to peep into Austen’s novels. Her early scribblings are characterised by this irrepressible humour, and sense of the absurd, which (in my amateur way) I connect with Voltaire’s Candide. No-one else seems to see the comparison, but it works for me – perhaps all the others have perused Voltaire in the original, whereas I have to settle for my green Penguin translation. Lesley Castle comes with two other of Austen’s early work, and is a must-read for anyone who has got to the end of the six novels, and wishes there were more – though be prepared for, as the Monty Python people might put it, Something Completely Different.

Monday or Tuesday is the only short story collection Woolf printed during her lifetime (she could hardly print anything at any other point, could she?) and contains such gems as ‘The Mark on the Wall’; ‘Kew Gardens’ and ‘An Unwritten Novel’. Great access to Woolf if you’ve not dipped a toe in before, as they exemplify her style in miniature, but also have a peep at ‘A Society’, which demonstrates Woolf’s amusing side – and shows she didn’t take Extreme Feminism as seriously as some might fear, while still presenting valid feminist points. My old copy is a rather tatty Dover edition, and the cover of the Hesperus one is SO beautiful, and they had a discount…

The Platform of Time is a new one for me – reviewed by dovegreyreader on 3rd May 2007. Hesperus printed the review. Not much to add – this is a collection of Woolf’s sketches and memoirs of family members and acquaintances. Most of it available elsewhere, but useful to have it all together, in another rather pretty volume.

Here’s me talking about how attractive all these books are – time I let the covers do the talking. Feast your eyes; give in; open your wallets. MUST talk to Hesperus about my cut…

Oh dear, this is going to be a brief entry – having blitzed a week of exams, my mind seems to have gone for hibernation, and refuses to do much but sleep and… actually, that’s all it’s happy to do at the moment. Just a quick post today, and then more tomorrow – when I will finally tell you what I received from Hesperus. If you look at their latest catalogue, you’ll see that Your’s Truly has been included in the review section, with the post I put up a few days ago. Fame AND glory, I think you’ll agree.

So, I’m sure you’re asking, why the Phantom-of-the-Operaesque pictures for today? Well, to finish the most intense week of my University career, I, like Cinderella, went to a ball. I’m afraid that’s where the comparisons with Cinderella end – one of the endearing things about Oxford is that appearances are deceptive. There we all were in our Black Tie, and among the attractions was… a Bouncy Castle. I kid you not. I haven’t been on one for many years, and I’d forgotten how exhausting the things are. That’s right – I’m too unfit for bouncy castles.

The ball was the annual Leavers’ Ball at my church in Oxford, and a lovely, lovely evening. Photos up of all the leavers, great atmosphere and good, clean fun, as they say. Oh, and in case you haven’t guessed, it was a Venetian Masquerade ball, hence my rather dashing mask, purchased from Ebay. What a wonderful thing the internet is.