BookJumper

When I studied Ginsberg at uni (we read Howl and Other Poems) I loved it. However, it's quite different from the poetry I usually like, which tends to rhyme and usually flows according to a metre of some description. I think the way Gingsberg still drew me in is that he breaks the rules, yes, but does so knowing inside out what it is he is breaking - it is preciselu because he knows the tradition so well that he can depart from it to such great effect, I think.

So glad you guys like Cabal do make sure you catch the film with some urgency, it's absolutely magnificent. En par with Lost Boys, my favourite left field horror movie of all time.

Thanks for that Pixie, you have clinched a deal many years in the considering...!

I did that once I was ill all I could do was lie in bed listening to stuff I already knew, so I stuck on Martin Freeman reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Part Three of Five: Mostly Harmless; in such a state was I, it took me two entire CDs to figure out the chapters were playing at random...!

Why, hello 2011! The cards have told me you're going to be a good year, one in which non-bookish methods of coursework procrastination will be banished, and close reading of books read for pleasure become a thing of times past. A year in which I'll rid myself of the title of fraud by reading & reviewing a bare minimum of a book a month. In short, nothing like 2009 and 2010, which for all the good intentions with which they were paved, were two definite cases of smoke minus the fire. Stay, therefore, tuned for my adventures into the hopeful and glorious land of word (& sorcery if I have anything to do with it, which I sure hope I do. Where would one be if one couldn't even choose one's own reading matter?)! Currently Reading Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer (started November 2010) [122/181] February Challenge: BookJumper's Jumps Across BookWorld Jasper Fforde, The Big Over Easy Jasper Fforde, The Fourth Bear Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair (re-read) Jasper Fforde, Lost in a Good Book (re-read) Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots (partial re-read) Jasper Fforde, Something Rotten (partial re-read) Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays is Missing

The Last Conversation has been shortlisted subitaneously - you're bad for my wallet, girl. The Female Quixote is already on my wishlist, so it's good to have it authoritatively backed.

So you should in fact, mereckons me, you & Kylie should conspire and read it simultaneously. What say you girls? Oh dear. What was wrong with it? Let me just say this: The Last Dragonslayer is the kind of book that makes me wish I had kids so I could read it with them. It's THAT good.

Michael Ball - Show Me from My Fair Lady (even better than the original, methinks).

What did that for me was Bianca Pitzorno's Ascolta il Mio Cuore (Listen to My Heart). It was about three best friends rebelling against the reign of a tyrannical new teacher, and one of them - Prisca Puntoni - was a crazily creative little thing who would always fill up diaries and school essays with short stories. She wanted to be a writer when she grew up, and I realised as I read about her that 'writer' was what I wanted to be when I grew up also. I wouldn't say that it changed my life though, because it just gave me a name for something I knew already was inside me. No, the book that actually changed my life is Victor Hugo's Les Miserablés - I read it between the ages of 14 and 15 and it's instilled in me most of the ideas I still hold about justice, friendship and love. I always say it's the book that turned me from a child into a young adult, as nothing I've read before or since has influenced my way of thinking or feeling more.

These days, I tend to be out between classes, extracurricular stuff etc. until 10-12 at night every day. By the time I crawl home I am starving but too knackered to even think about cooking, so what usually happens is a frozen pizza gets put in the oven / a Rustler's Rib gets put in the microwave and I munch on that. Now, I realise this isn't the healthiest regime but I just don't have the energy to cook up something from scratch. So what I'm asking you lovely, creative people with taste is: what are some things which are super-duper quick to prepare but are actually sort of good for me? Thank you !

I do a bit of both. I read extensively in the sense that I keep an open mind and will try any subject/genre/author once; I am however selective in the sense that if I'm not enjoying a book, it will get cast aside and marked with a big 'Do Not Go There' sign. Life's too short to read books which you do not enjoy, and besides the books that are meant to enrich you are the ones you enjoy: find out why you enjoy a book, and you've got your enrichment.

You're definitely making both sound extremely appealing, so yes m'am! Now my uni deadlines have relaxed a wee bit I can actually pick Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer back up, hopefully I can finish that in a couple of sittings so I can start on Little, Big soon. And yes, The Last Dragonslayer is so awesome I could have actually read it all in a handful of sittings - me of all people! - 'tis just the homework which forced me to take a vacation from reading for pleasure evil homework. And Kylie, you're most welcome .

Problem is, all the interesting (cool/beautifully sad/love to hate...) characters were the ones poor 14th century Dante would have been excommunicated for putting anywhere except in Hell, thus accounting for the mind-numbing dullness of Purgatory and Paradise. I mean, Dante is a supreme poet is a supreme poet is a supreme poet, but there's only so much you can do if you've used all the best characters in Book 1. I think you'll love Paradise Lost if you liked Inferno by the way, it's just so stunning and flows so skillfully it could have been written yesterday. One of the few poems out there I actually wish I'd written (a girl can dream).

It does have some really funny bits (thinking particularly of the way Tennant did the 'antic disposition' for the RSC, just hilarious), however - is it just me who actually finds it a very moving play at times? I once wrote an essay about this which was shot down, so probably it is just me ! Now is perhaps a good time to announce to the forum that I've actually just moved to Stratford-U-Avon and will be living here for the next four years, therefore anyone who needs help planning a theatre trip in Shakespeareland should just let me know & I'll see what I can do .

... what Kylie The Wise said.

Of course it doesn't count, special rules apply all the way so, good haul (let me know what you think about What Dreams May Come, I adore the film but I've been told the book is very different so I don't know if I should read it - counting on a killer review now, you see! Really glad you're liking The Children's Book, it keeps calling out to me in shops so I might have to appropriate it soon. & oooh, so Little, Big is your favourite book like ever? I'm even more excited now, will do my best to finish my current book (long story) a.sa.p. so I can start it...!

I personally would advocate not changing it, especially for younger readers. Rather than sheltering them from words they hear every day on the street and on the telly anyway, editors/teachers/parents/etc. could if anything use the book to talk to children about the issues a word can raise. The only protected child, I feel, is an informed child. Besides, when I was little and I realised that a lot of the books I was borrowing from the library had been altered, I felt offended and patronised - I would have rather the books hadn't been available at all, and do unto others and all that. In general, if one were to edit out the potentially offensive in literature,* we'd be chucking most of the canon out with the bathwater. * Or literary criticsm for that matter. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, for instance, comes out with some truly cringeworthily racist/sexist comments in his Shakespearean criticism (often in the same sentence), but I find it better to contextualise Coleridge in his century and move past it to the commentary itself, which is for the most part still brilliant and relevant.

Got given John Crowley's Little, Big by a wonderful uni friend as a belated Christmas present today, really chuffed 'cos I can tell from the texture of the cover alone that I'll love it to bits.

I tried listening to audiobooks on my mpman mp3 player once upon a time but no matter how sensibly I named files and folders they would not play in order of track or even CD - any idea what might have been causing this? I have since lost that player, now I use my Sony Walkman phone as an mp3 player but as it plays songs in anything but the right order, I'm assuming it will do the same for audiobook files... halp? I would love to be able to listen to books on my walk to and from uni as comulatively it's nearly an hour a day, it'd be a nice way to put that time to some use cheers.

W00t w00t - way to go, Kell!