Well. No news here. I’m still sick! As in with the cold, rather than as in, more mentally odd than usual. I have it on good authority (Stanley, who is more stable than me, though freakish in his own way) that I am at the same level of worry, paranoia and ghoulish melancholia as normal. Hey ho – that I can live with!
I had to go to the doctors yesterday, as since the birth of the infinitely wondrous Fluffhead, I have had problems in the female euphemistic department. Which have led to problems with other euphemistic activities, which I really enjoy. So after much worry and gruelling anxiety, took myself off to the docs to explain (with the aid of a diagram I helpfully drew, no less) exactly what part of the problem is, and can I go see a Euphemism Expert at a hospital. To be re-done, and fixed etc. Having felt rather better for taking control of the situation (as you do, or definitely as I always do – helps anxiety no end to Take Action Of Some Sort), I got home and then succumbed to the horrible I Have Had An Internal Examination Feeling. Which flattens me and makes me want to go to sleep. This not an option, I was lucky indeed that Saint Mother appeared, and decided that Fluffhead needed new shoes and she was going to take him out for some. (It turned out he didn’t, not yet anyway, but they had a very wander, hither and thither, and went on a train etc.)
Which left me alone to indulge in the giallo fit I am currently having. Only time for one, so watched What Have They Done To Your Daughters? They being the accurate word, in this case. I was expecting a regular silly giallo, but this was one of the slickest 1970s thrillers I’ve ever seen. Horror/giallo elements but really, a good police thriller. Good acting, good direction, good suspense; some cover your face with your fingers moments. 10/10, very good, I thought. I also thought the lead actor had a very 70s face, you know the way some people are indelibly wedded in looks to the decade in which they have the most fame? (Or likewise, a man I once met, not famous at all, who looked so much like he needed an Elizabethan ruffle and some tights it really got in the way of me perceiving him as the taxi driver he actually was. Very distracting, truly.) Turns out the actor, Claudio Cassinelli, had died in the 80’s filming another part: helicopter crash, died instantly. No wonder I can’t search for him and trace what would have been a career of international stardom eventually, I’m sure. Sad. The film did a splendid job of hoiking me out of my strange worried fugginess, and taking me to another world. This usually then means that when I am deposited back here at the end, I have the feeling a large chunk of time has passed and my previous attitude is distanced from me, therefore I feel better; more in possession of myself. (The films that work best for Internal Fug Removal are some musicals, and most of my horror films – two genres far from normalcy, and very emotionally gripping. I think that’s why they work so well.)
Anyway. This post is not called Return of the Cheese Sandwich for no reason! I got a mail after the last post asking me what I have read recently as opposed to watched (probably attempting to stop me reviewing more chick-flicks here – subtle, subtle!!). So here are a few of the books I’ve read in the last few months. There’s loads more, but here are some of the ones I actually made notes on…
1. The Dumas Club, by Arturo Perez Reverte
(Book made into the film The Ninth Gate, with Johnny Depp. The book had me loving it till about half way through, when it dipped severely. It suddenly fell in love with its own literary references in a way that was far too smug. It was the character of the girl, not answering questions; she became very annoying indeed. I struggled on, feeling irritated and a bit bored, till the sudden 2 twists at the end [there was only one twist in the film]. That reinvigorated me and was rewarding. But I still skimmed it, after the two-thirds mark. Clever – but not involving enough. The best characters were Corso and La Ponte.)
(Book made into the film The Ninth Gate, with Johnny Depp. The book had me loving it till about half way through, when it dipped severely. It suddenly fell in love with its own literary references in a way that was far too smug. It was the character of the girl, not answering questions; she became very annoying indeed. I struggled on, feeling irritated and a bit bored, till the sudden 2 twists at the end [there was only one twist in the film]. That reinvigorated me and was rewarding. But I still skimmed it, after the two-thirds mark. Clever – but not involving enough. The best characters were Corso and La Ponte.)
2. Real People, by Alison Lurie
(Middle class woman goes to writer’s community to struggle with her next book. Meets characters. Some very interesting thoughts on writing, given through some recognisable stereotypes of the writing world. This sort of writing is brilliant – it conveys so much about worries on how to talk and think and communicate; illusions about yourself as a person. Alison Lurie always so readable.)
(Middle class woman goes to writer’s community to struggle with her next book. Meets characters. Some very interesting thoughts on writing, given through some recognisable stereotypes of the writing world. This sort of writing is brilliant – it conveys so much about worries on how to talk and think and communicate; illusions about yourself as a person. Alison Lurie always so readable.)
3. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture,by Ariel Levy
(As in: why are so many young women [and pre-adolescents] striving to wear nightclub gear all the time, and their great ambitions are to pole dance and look like Katie Price. You know the phenomenon to which I allude. The book traces the roots of this, as far as American culture goes. I don’t think she went quite far enough somehow – specially in leaving out any mention of religion in the issue of teaching abstinence only sex education in US schools. She also left out the rebellion part of raunch culture that is related to religious ideas of women being unclean/lewd /immodest/dirty. Which was very relevant. But nonetheless, it was a very good book: I knew nothing about the history of Playboy in the way she laid it out; nothing about the womyn and bois and other aspects of the lesbian and trans scene in the US; nothing about the way female teens in the US in a certain income bracket respond to all this raunch. She did a very good job of tracing its roots and making clear what confusions within feminism led to it arising and not being stopped sooner. She made it clear how tantalising and confusing it is – how we - including me – find it so mistakenly tempting, falsely liberating. [My own theory of this is as part of a Stockholm Syndrome on the part of women: that we are acting this way as a result of trauma, for centuries. We are behaving the way we have been labelled, we are working through it; owning it, making it ours, before we can actually re-make sexuality as our own, and shed the identity forced on us by others, by some scared men. It’s a phase, but it’s a nasty one and it needs to pass. I reckon it will take a couple more generations before it has, maybe longer.] )
(As in: why are so many young women [and pre-adolescents] striving to wear nightclub gear all the time, and their great ambitions are to pole dance and look like Katie Price. You know the phenomenon to which I allude. The book traces the roots of this, as far as American culture goes. I don’t think she went quite far enough somehow – specially in leaving out any mention of religion in the issue of teaching abstinence only sex education in US schools. She also left out the rebellion part of raunch culture that is related to religious ideas of women being unclean/lewd /immodest/dirty. Which was very relevant. But nonetheless, it was a very good book: I knew nothing about the history of Playboy in the way she laid it out; nothing about the womyn and bois and other aspects of the lesbian and trans scene in the US; nothing about the way female teens in the US in a certain income bracket respond to all this raunch. She did a very good job of tracing its roots and making clear what confusions within feminism led to it arising and not being stopped sooner. She made it clear how tantalising and confusing it is – how we - including me – find it so mistakenly tempting, falsely liberating. [My own theory of this is as part of a Stockholm Syndrome on the part of women: that we are acting this way as a result of trauma, for centuries. We are behaving the way we have been labelled, we are working through it; owning it, making it ours, before we can actually re-make sexuality as our own, and shed the identity forced on us by others, by some scared men. It’s a phase, but it’s a nasty one and it needs to pass. I reckon it will take a couple more generations before it has, maybe longer.] )
4. What Mothers Do, especially when it looks like nothing, by Naomi Stadlen
(Not one of those How To Mother books, which Jo Brand rightly categorizes as ‘hippy or nazi’, and thoroughly unhelpful in their judgements. This book was halfway between investigative reporting and a thesis paper for psychology. It was definitely the best book on mothering I have ever read – as it doesn’t prescribe – it explains to you how to value what you are doing, when you are too tired to even realise what you are doing is of value. It re-explained to me just how I was feeling and why I was feeling so overwhelmed when Fluffhead used to cry a lot and wouldn’t sleep [pp.74-5] – got right inside my head and showed me my wonky thinking. It gave me a very good possible explanation as to why Fluffhead cried – and why Fry did when he was small [p.85] – that he trusted me to be himself with. That’s why they are good when people visit: it’s not only that they are no longer bored and have extra and new stimulation; it’s that they are on their best behaviour as they don’t trust these new people. Much as Stanley sees the best and worst of me: all of me – Fluffhead shows himself to me the same way, as I have not suppressed him, not trained him to Be Quiet. On the one hand, this was a very validating book, especially the chapters on being tired and the power of comfort.
On the other – the chapter on motherly love, I had real problems with. I felt very un-validated by that chapter – as if I was selfish to want time away from Fluffhead to write, read and generally do BlackberryJuniper things. As if my sense of self was not ‘large enough’, as she puts it, to encompass me and the baby and that this is my life. There is a re-idealisation of motherhood in this book. In some ways that is very good; in others, despite attempting not to say one way of mothering is better than another…it thumps its own tub nonetheless. But then it would. It’s an answer to a different school of motherhood, the training school. In that sense, it’s extremely well done polemic. I’d give this 8/10 – which hey, isn’t bad.)
(Not one of those How To Mother books, which Jo Brand rightly categorizes as ‘hippy or nazi’, and thoroughly unhelpful in their judgements. This book was halfway between investigative reporting and a thesis paper for psychology. It was definitely the best book on mothering I have ever read – as it doesn’t prescribe – it explains to you how to value what you are doing, when you are too tired to even realise what you are doing is of value. It re-explained to me just how I was feeling and why I was feeling so overwhelmed when Fluffhead used to cry a lot and wouldn’t sleep [pp.74-5] – got right inside my head and showed me my wonky thinking. It gave me a very good possible explanation as to why Fluffhead cried – and why Fry did when he was small [p.85] – that he trusted me to be himself with. That’s why they are good when people visit: it’s not only that they are no longer bored and have extra and new stimulation; it’s that they are on their best behaviour as they don’t trust these new people. Much as Stanley sees the best and worst of me: all of me – Fluffhead shows himself to me the same way, as I have not suppressed him, not trained him to Be Quiet. On the one hand, this was a very validating book, especially the chapters on being tired and the power of comfort.
On the other – the chapter on motherly love, I had real problems with. I felt very un-validated by that chapter – as if I was selfish to want time away from Fluffhead to write, read and generally do BlackberryJuniper things. As if my sense of self was not ‘large enough’, as she puts it, to encompass me and the baby and that this is my life. There is a re-idealisation of motherhood in this book. In some ways that is very good; in others, despite attempting not to say one way of mothering is better than another…it thumps its own tub nonetheless. But then it would. It’s an answer to a different school of motherhood, the training school. In that sense, it’s extremely well done polemic. I’d give this 8/10 – which hey, isn’t bad.)
5. In Search of Herne the Hunter, by Eric Fitch
(This was a marvellous book of linked folklore and old wives tales, ‘authenticated’ accounts of ghosts etc. I really enjoyed following the rambling sequences of seeing where the threads went, the many faces and elements of the Herne legend: it fits with so many things: oaks, leys, antlers through time, midwinter, moon, Wild Hunt collecting souls, demon dogs, hunters and huntresses horned, Father Xmas and reindeer flying through the sky as shamans [excellent idea leap there], trooping fairies, bad luck to see them, Woden, Cernunnos, so much shamanism recurring and recurring – initiations, hangings; Hobby Horses, half men half animal, death of Kings near oak trees: sacrifices?, ghosts as presages of disaster….and so and so on…Fascinating stuff. Herne definitely does seem to be a link to the sacrificed king of the past, that dies to renew the harvest every year.)
(This was a marvellous book of linked folklore and old wives tales, ‘authenticated’ accounts of ghosts etc. I really enjoyed following the rambling sequences of seeing where the threads went, the many faces and elements of the Herne legend: it fits with so many things: oaks, leys, antlers through time, midwinter, moon, Wild Hunt collecting souls, demon dogs, hunters and huntresses horned, Father Xmas and reindeer flying through the sky as shamans [excellent idea leap there], trooping fairies, bad luck to see them, Woden, Cernunnos, so much shamanism recurring and recurring – initiations, hangings; Hobby Horses, half men half animal, death of Kings near oak trees: sacrifices?, ghosts as presages of disaster….and so and so on…Fascinating stuff. Herne definitely does seem to be a link to the sacrificed king of the past, that dies to renew the harvest every year.)
6. TheVoice in the Wind: On Becoming and the Druid Way,by Greywind
(This was one of those books like Living Druidry by Emma Restall Orr – I will need to read it again. It was unnecessarily dense and repetitive in some places, and wonderfully clear and helpful in others. It showed me the same thing – but differently, that Living Druidry showed me – that it’s a hard path, requiring so much care and consciousness. There were good things in here about identity, and purpose – which I read when I really needed to. And things about the Celtic Metaphysic that were clarificatory and helpful. Some things about Western scientific materialism that I saw the point of, but partially disagreed with. I really appreciated viewing the World as ‘what we have created’, and the Universe as ‘what is actually there’. We have overlaid it with the World – which the author argues has been a pitiful, depressing, scary failure in its more or less entirety [I disagree strongly with the extent of his pessimism]. Truth is finding out who we are in relation to the universe, and trying to get back in balance with it, and heal the damage so far done. The work of a Druid is Service: to help the balance be restored and maintained. The balance is ever changing and evolving, as are we. Hence the juggle and the extreme care and alertness needed. I can try, with my small steps, to do less damage, walk more lightly, and to be conscious of what I do. And to remember that the purpose – and it sounded like a good one – is to find my own way of harmonising with the universe as much as possible.)
(This was one of those books like Living Druidry by Emma Restall Orr – I will need to read it again. It was unnecessarily dense and repetitive in some places, and wonderfully clear and helpful in others. It showed me the same thing – but differently, that Living Druidry showed me – that it’s a hard path, requiring so much care and consciousness. There were good things in here about identity, and purpose – which I read when I really needed to. And things about the Celtic Metaphysic that were clarificatory and helpful. Some things about Western scientific materialism that I saw the point of, but partially disagreed with. I really appreciated viewing the World as ‘what we have created’, and the Universe as ‘what is actually there’. We have overlaid it with the World – which the author argues has been a pitiful, depressing, scary failure in its more or less entirety [I disagree strongly with the extent of his pessimism]. Truth is finding out who we are in relation to the universe, and trying to get back in balance with it, and heal the damage so far done. The work of a Druid is Service: to help the balance be restored and maintained. The balance is ever changing and evolving, as are we. Hence the juggle and the extreme care and alertness needed. I can try, with my small steps, to do less damage, walk more lightly, and to be conscious of what I do. And to remember that the purpose – and it sounded like a good one – is to find my own way of harmonising with the universe as much as possible.)
7. Tickling the English, by Dara O Briain
(At first I wasn’t liking this at all, it felt like I was getting criticised by a knowledgeable schoolteacher. Then the brilliant mix of the book started to get to me – the history, the wit, the anecdotes, and the nice structure of it. There’s some stuff in here that I would do to remember – why we shouldn’t have a specifically St George’s Day here in England, for instance [he never set foot here, hasn’t really got feck all to do with the country, is patron saints of loads of other countries, and the basis for the day with our temperament of internal criticism and the lack of religious base for it which seem to help other countries patron saints days work, and our tendency to be down on our drinking rather than celebrating it, etc, is all wrong!!]. His thoughts about the 3 laws of identity are worth remembering too, as is the bit at the end where he very accurately interprets people saying: ‘my identity is being threatened’ as the same statement really, as: ‘I don’t understand what he means’ – it’s a culture of common references, inclusivity or not. The Tayto joke not working in England as we don’t have that brand of crisps here, etc. I ended up finding this book a bit profound, in a very quiet, shockingly well written sort of way. [Very happy too, to see he repeatedly wrote ‘me and Damon’ or ‘me and so-and-so’ which I have always thought is a much more natural way of expressing yourself than ‘Damon and I’ which I have always thought sounds far too royal and pompous.] I need to think about some of the things he said, more. I envy him badly: his experience of the world makes sense to him, he clearly feels at home in it and confident. Lucky man.)
(At first I wasn’t liking this at all, it felt like I was getting criticised by a knowledgeable schoolteacher. Then the brilliant mix of the book started to get to me – the history, the wit, the anecdotes, and the nice structure of it. There’s some stuff in here that I would do to remember – why we shouldn’t have a specifically St George’s Day here in England, for instance [he never set foot here, hasn’t really got feck all to do with the country, is patron saints of loads of other countries, and the basis for the day with our temperament of internal criticism and the lack of religious base for it which seem to help other countries patron saints days work, and our tendency to be down on our drinking rather than celebrating it, etc, is all wrong!!]. His thoughts about the 3 laws of identity are worth remembering too, as is the bit at the end where he very accurately interprets people saying: ‘my identity is being threatened’ as the same statement really, as: ‘I don’t understand what he means’ – it’s a culture of common references, inclusivity or not. The Tayto joke not working in England as we don’t have that brand of crisps here, etc. I ended up finding this book a bit profound, in a very quiet, shockingly well written sort of way. [Very happy too, to see he repeatedly wrote ‘me and Damon’ or ‘me and so-and-so’ which I have always thought is a much more natural way of expressing yourself than ‘Damon and I’ which I have always thought sounds far too royal and pompous.] I need to think about some of the things he said, more. I envy him badly: his experience of the world makes sense to him, he clearly feels at home in it and confident. Lucky man.)
8. The Ritual, by Adam Nevill
(That was a NASTY ride, a nasty book. Which is just about the best thing you can say about a horror! It felt real, and painful and maddening and disgusting, and so so sad. The protagonist Luke asks why some people get left behind, and I knew then, that Adam Nevill is writing about people like me. While reading this, on a day that made no sense, like all the other days, I realized that what he said at the end was true: we all only have a little while. Little spots of freedom. And that’s all. To be more technical in review: this was a book of 2 halves, noticeably, and I preferred the first half, the wilderness half. That was excellent. I got quickly annoyed with the derivative backwoods Rob Zombie type ickiness of the black metal characters of the 2nd half, though Loki was a good character, I liked the way he spoke. But it was an interesting way to stitch the novel, the 2 elements. He is improving so fast as a writer [though a very odd unconventional style – but hey, I love to see rule breaking in writing], its leaping: this one should really be a film. He should get very famous now, with this as his breakout book. And I can say I read him from the first one, when no one much knew about him J)
(That was a NASTY ride, a nasty book. Which is just about the best thing you can say about a horror! It felt real, and painful and maddening and disgusting, and so so sad. The protagonist Luke asks why some people get left behind, and I knew then, that Adam Nevill is writing about people like me. While reading this, on a day that made no sense, like all the other days, I realized that what he said at the end was true: we all only have a little while. Little spots of freedom. And that’s all. To be more technical in review: this was a book of 2 halves, noticeably, and I preferred the first half, the wilderness half. That was excellent. I got quickly annoyed with the derivative backwoods Rob Zombie type ickiness of the black metal characters of the 2nd half, though Loki was a good character, I liked the way he spoke. But it was an interesting way to stitch the novel, the 2 elements. He is improving so fast as a writer [though a very odd unconventional style – but hey, I love to see rule breaking in writing], its leaping: this one should really be a film. He should get very famous now, with this as his breakout book. And I can say I read him from the first one, when no one much knew about him J)
Ah. They were good books. I may tell you some more books later – perhaps a summing up of the best books I read this year??? I always like reading other people’s book lists. (Hehehe – fuel for my 570 ‘saved for later’ items in my Amazon basket online…)
Its time to replenish the tissues (again), and to put the heating on boost, I think. And have lunch…Oh no! This has NOT been informative as I promised…oh well…lets hope it was a bit interesting, anyway…I plead continual sniffles if you’re disappointed. Surely I shall be better soon? (By then, likely be time to go and be tampered with at hospital though, mutter mutter…)
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