Saturday, August 04, 2012

Sticking and Reading

I have just narrowly avoided supergluing two of my fingers together while gluing som draught excluding stuff to the bottom of the door. Offsprog Two and myself have been painting and decorating and I have also spectacularly failed in an attempt at making a raspberry cake.
There's a huge pile of books on the floor, some academic (we haven't had access to the campus during the Olympics so half of my books are here) and some not. As usual I have been plundering local charity shops for crime novels. One, by Lynda La Plante, was so racist that I read it till the end, expecting some sort of ironic twist that never materialised. I read a jolly dark book by Ruth Rendell.. I'm halfway through Max 'battle of' Hastings' autobiography; I got a bit stuck in the bit where he indulges himself in a lot of war stories as told by his relatives. I am also halfway through Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler,which is an unnerving read for any woman born in the middle of the 20th century; when husbands tired of their wives even in the early part of that century and before, it was common practice to declare them mad and have them committed to an asylum. Having earned this label a mere five years ago, I count myself very lucky to have been born when I was. The book is informative and frightening in equal parts, although the references to the classical stories of gods and goddesses don't add anything to its discourse. It is an essential read and was given to me by Caroline Coon, who was given one in turn by Yoko Ono.
On the academic front, Allan Moore's book Song Means is at the top of the pile; high time someone did it and I'm glad it was he. There is a book called Beautiful Trouble  so I can learn to be politically active, The Great Animal Orchestra by Bernie Krause, a collection of writing called White Riot and also a book, still in my car, that I bought second hand in a quirky pub in Brighton: Dave Haslam's book about Manchester. And I have just finished The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, a very useful book as it makes you realise just what a waste of time it is trying to reason with psychopaths, who are readily recognisable from a series of traits that psychologists have identified- and who are disturbingly common in powerful business environments like banking, politics and the like.
All these books... it's the rain! I have a lot of writing to do as well, and sometimes reading the opposite of what I should be writing seems to help.
However, The Great St Trinians Train Robbery is chugging away on the screen, George Cole at his finest bossing fake schoolgirls about, and that's fun. So toodle pip for now!

4 comments:

Monty said...

I'd always preferred George Cole as Arfur' Daley!

A Glue Specialist said...

What type of glue did you use! was it that Evo-Stick stuff, Bostic, or contact adhesive,and if i was you i'd contact the manufacturer. PS. Don't inhale the fumes

Nick Campbell said...

Really loved your write-up of last night's Liz Fraser gig. My boyfriend and I were in a funny state for the first few songs, trying to work out why it didn't feel as good as it ought to be. You pinpointed the truly wonderful good things, and the iffy things obscuring them, perfectly. Thank you. I also wanted to recommend The Tiger in the Smoke (read only last week) as a truly sublime crime novel for bad weather.

Helen McCookerybook said...

Thanks Nick- I'll read it!