OK, there was no plan to post again today. However, I AM IN THE ZONE. Reading: 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The most intriguing scientific mysteries of our time by Michael Brooks Check me out! Reading science books; clever stuff, eh? Writing about science makes me nervous. What if Ben Goldacre stumbles upon my blog and exposes me as the thicko that I truly am? What if I sound like some pseudo-intellectual smart arse? Anyway, these fears are highly irrational, and science really dislikes things that are irrational. So I’ll just get on with it. The decision to read this book came after I’d drunkenly launched into my favourite ‘but how do they know?’ rant about science. This is essentially my adult equivalent of the toddler ‘But why?’ phase. It is infuriating for all involved, though at the time of ranting I’m normally so full of gin that I’m convinced that I’m on a par with Bertrand Russell in terms of my philosophical insights. After being humoured for a good 30 minutes by a patient and scientifically minded friend, he calmly told me that he admired my scepticism and recommended that I read this book. We then went on to win £3.00 on the quiz machine. These two facts aren’t related, but we rarely win more than £1, so it seemed worth a mention. I’m currently only three chapters in, and whilst I’m still a bit sketchy on the concept of QED, I’m finding the book very interesting. It is refreshing to read about things that science can’t currently answer.  The most exciting part is that scientists are challenging universally accepted principles in a bid to explain some of these mysteries. In the introduction Brooks describes how the scientific community will need a ‘paradigm shift’ in order to tackle some of these unanswered questions. This appeals to me[.....]

NOTE: I started this series of posts back in the Spring.  It had a promising start (seriously, read this post about Ludwig Bemelmans and you will be entertained and informed to the max!), but then life and stuff happened and I forgot about it. Yesterday, I decided that the time has come to resurrect this series. There’s something special about dark nights and curling up with a good book. I hope you enjoy it. Friday 5 November Weight: 9st 6 (but my skinny jeans still fasten so I frankly don’t give a fig), alcohol units: 0 (yet, though that bottle of Leffe in the fridge is getting more and more tempting), calories: approx. 700 – digestive biscuits are a source of wholegrain goodness, right? Number of minutes spent performing useful activities: significantly less than number spent vacantly staring out of window drinking tea. 3p.m My Flat Writing about Helen Fielding is not easy for me.  I don’t really know much about the woman other than what I can glean from ‘About the Author’ paragraphs and Wikipedia. She’s clearly very clever and an astute social commentator. I’m also in complete awe of her comic talent. That said, I have only ever read two of her books.  After much deliberation, I have established the problem – Helen Fielding is not my literary hero, a character she created is. The character is, of course, Bridget Jones. So far, so cliché. In recent years, Bridget has become a lazy stereotype of womanhood. She is pop culture shorthand for many things I can’t abide – the woman as a weight obsessed, squeaky voiced ditz; sobbing into her Haagen Daaz one minute and manically screeching along to Gloria Gaynor the next. But that is not MY Bridget Jones. My Bridget Jones has been a constant friend since[.....]

I have already decided what my ‘potty old lady thing’ will be – hoarding magazines. It is that or gin. I don’t want to hoard stuff like ‘People’s Friend’ or ‘Woman’s Weekly’. They would just remind me of being a potty old woman. No, I’m going to be the neighbourhood’s only 80-year-old with a subscription to ‘Pop’. My Grandchildren will be able to visit and build dens out of back issues of ‘Lula‘ and ‘The Gentlewoman’. I may even decorate the downstairs loo with pages torn out of ‘Amelia’s Magazine’. These are magazines that perform the trickiest of feats: you fall in love with them. They mess with the concept of ‘magazine’ by ceasing to be throw away items that cause merely passing pleasure and become something that you treasure and stow away safely. Magazines have always entranced me, be it my pre-tween piles of ‘Horse and Pony’ or the short fling that I enjoyed with ‘Nova’ when it relaunched (briefly) in 2000 (they are still stashed away in my parent’s attic). My back issues of ‘Vogue’ are currently arranged in date order on our bookshelves. I geek out over them. ‘Vogue’ is my constant, the magazine that I will never give up. I accept its flaws – it is elitist, fickle and, in the main, totally detached from reality. But I don’t care. Whilst Elle tries to trendy itself up with edgy page layouts and brooding cover shots, ‘Vogue’ refuses to be anything other than chic. After Vogue, there are the weird and wonderful high-end niche fashion and lifestyle magazines. By ‘high-end’ I mean that they tend to cost well over a fiver; sometimes because they are so ridiculously extravagant, sometimes because readership is so small that high prices are the only way to make them a viable enterprise[.....]

“Bon viveur” has a nice ring to it, non? A hedonistic lover of the good things in life. It is hard to imagine having a bad night with someone bestowed such a title. They’d throw the best parties, eat the best food and have the best stories to tell, as I’m sure was the case with Ludwig Bemelmans. He would be the first name on the Bookish Brunette fantasy dinner party list, followed closely by Derek Zoolander. Born in the Austrian Tyrol in 1898, Bemelmans left Europe for America in the early years of the twentieth century. His childhood had been a tumultuous one – with Ludwig’s father having an affair with the family governess, causing the family to uproot and move to Regensburg, Germany. Young Ludwig did not respond well to strict German discipline and was eventually taken out of school to work in the hotel owned by his successful Uncle Hans. That didn’t exactly go well, after several months he reportedly shot a waiter and got shipped off to the USA. You’ll best know him as the author and illustrator of the Madeline children’s books. These are truly wonderful stories – even for grown ups. The illustrations are joyful and effortless. The rich green smudgy trees, the contrast of the yellow bonnet against little Madeline’s orange hair; these colours bring the simple lines and shapes to life. Bemelmans was also a prolific adult writer, often drawing from his own experiences and observations working in luxury hotels. ‘Hotel Splendide’ was the, frankly appalling, disguise he created for New York’s The Ritz. His short stories cover the whole gamut of life in a ‘Grande Hotel Deluxe’ – from the crazy excesses of the privileged guests to the misguided excesses of the down, but not yet out, staff. You can find[.....]

Reading: Trout Fishing in America – Richard Brautigan This is the first time that a song has ever made me go out and buy a book. You may remember me posting about a song called ‘Have you ever heard a digital accordion?’ by a band called the Lovely Eggs. Well, you don’t have to be genius to figure out that ‘Brautigan’ kind of rhymes with ‘accordion’. After hearing the song, I became intrigued about this Richard Brautigan fellow and decided to look him up on Wikipedia. The description of his seminal work ‘Trout Fishing in America ‘ sounded so utterly odd that I had to read it. Now-a-days, books with weird titles like ‘Salmon Fishing in Yemen’ or ‘How to Drive Tractors in Ukrainian’ are common place. I have no impressive literary academic credentials to support my claim, but I’m fairly certain that the authors of such works are fans of Brautigan. The book is weird. Some bits are about trout fishing, other bits aren’t. I think he uses the act of trout fishing as some sort of motif (check me out, English Lit. A-level, back of the net!) to make profound comments on human existence. OR, he was completely out of it and just wanted to write something all trippy and weird to deliberately baffle wannabe intellectual/zeitgeisty sorts such as myself. What the hell, it is of a similar ilk to ‘On the Road’ by Kerouac. If you dug that, then you’ll probably dig this. It reads like it has been written by the offspring of a beatnik and a scarecrow. There aren’t many books that you can say that about. Go read it for that reason, if for no other. Watching: Gossip Girl There is truly something captivating about teen melodramas featuring overprivileged American youths. Mainly because they[.....]

The hair colour part is easy. I live up to it everyday with no effort whatsoever. The ‘bookish’ bit is more of a struggle, mainly because I am rather particular when it comes to my reading material. Life is too short for me to continue reading a book that I am not enjoying. That’s not to say that those books are all bad, they are just not my cup of tea. The list of books that I have started and never finished is extensive. Fiction troubles me the most, especially books where people die or experience terrible emotional turmoil. I don’t quite get what draws authors back to these themes, they have a free choice from the plethora of human experience, yet the dark side always holds an enormous lure. I’d make a terrible fiction writer, mainly because I could never keep a character down and out for too long, or kill any of them off. Books are escapism and when I escape, I like to go to a place where bad stuff doesn’t happen. Controversial, I know. Non-fiction is preferable, but even then there are certain no-gos such as ‘misery memoirs’. I really don’t want to read harrowing stories about child abuse. These things do happen and writing about it may well be a cathartic process, but why take pleasure in reading about another’s suffering? Newspapers are enough to make me aware of the horrible things that happen in our world. I want books that make me laugh (or at least crack a smile). Give me a rich dream world that can absorb me wholly and doesn’t seek to shock or outrage me. At this point, I suspect purists will write me off as some literary lightweight or airhead. Well, if so, screw you. Reading is an intensely personal[.....]

Just to warn you that I’ve not watched much in the way of TV or films recently. I could review the ancient episode of Friends I caught on Friday evening, but that wouldn’t be very interesting for any of us now would it? So this week you’re just getting books and tunage. Sorry. Reading: O.K. I’m slightly scared to admit what I’m reading at the minute. It is, to borrow a phrase from a fellow I know, a bit ‘Countryfile’. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it is more ‘Songs of Praise’ followed by ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ whilst eating Werthers Original and sipping on Ovaltine. Yes, this book is the literary equivalent of a terribly dull retirement. But such is the power of Bill Bryson (AKA ‘The Bryson’), an author so intensely wonderful that I will go wherever he wishes. And if that means hurtling down a hillside in a tin bath or joining Diane Louise Jordan at a church doilly making workshop, then I’m there. So here we go… Icons of England – edited by Bill Bryson Admittedly, I had only noticed The Bryson’s name on the cover when I greedily grabbed the book from the shelf and waltzed to the nearest till. Had I not been so hasty I would have noticed the troubling phrase ‘foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales’. If I had been capable of rationality in the face of The Bryson, I would have checked the blurb on the back and probably returned the book to the shelf. £7.99 later, I open the book and discover that I am about to read a book that my Mother would probably find too genteel (her ‘reading/watching/listening to’ list is likely to include ‘The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency’, ‘New Tricks’ and Cliff[.....]