Bookworms and Coffee Monsters

#13, #45, #52

2010-04-03T11:49:00.002+01:00

#13 Read ‘War and Peace’
#45 Read all the unread books on my shelves as of 18th Feb 2010 (81)
#52 Collect and read all the Sandman series

There will also be a nod to the overly ambitious #38:

'Write or edit one short story a week'

#13, #45 and #52 are somewhat interchangeable since they all involve taking time out of my day to read. #52 involves slightly more effort, as I don’t yet own all the Sandman books. In fact, I only have the first four – but I started ‘War and Peace yesterday, so I think I can hold off worrying about those until I’ve worked my way through all 1,000 pages of Tolstoy’s masterpiece. (Is it a masterpiece? I don’t know – I’m only 100 pages in.)

Only 100 pages in... thank goodness the book is split into, uh, books.

To clarify #45 slightly; the books I still have to read are not actually on my shelves, though I don’t doubt that there are a couple there that also need to be read or finished. The 81 books (now less) in question were instead stored in two boxes in the messy nook that CM and I call ‘The Study’. The full story of where they came from can be found in an earlier blog entry. There’s only about five entries overall, so I’m not going to give the title. It’s pretty obvious.

The books only earn a place on the shelf once they’ve been read. Some of them will be earning places in secondhand shops because, John Grisham, your golden years are over: ‘The Testament’ made me want to severely assault you with its over-sized, wasted pages. The rule of the boxes is that I have to read all the books, no matter how bad. Recently, the two boxes became one very carefully packed box. It made me feel a bit better, as I have sworn off buying books, except in situations of extreme neediness or where there is list involvement, until they’re all finished.

CM bought me the copy of ‘War and Peace’ which was very sweet of him, especially since he now has to listen to me whinging about how I get the characters mixed up. Probably I’m just stupid, but the cultural difference in writing whereby characters in Russian novels go by five different names each really throws me. The upside to Tolstoy is his tendency to assign a particular characteristic to each character and refer to it frequently. Whenever I lose track of who I’m reading about, the mention of a ‘short downy lip’, ‘ironical look’ or ‘beautiful, wistful eyes’ will clarify the situation for me.

In a twist of fate calculated to draw my attention away from ‘War and Peace’, the paperback edition of ‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest’ arrived this morning, courtesy of CM’s parents (thank you!). It counts as an unread, right?

Shiny, new... my preshussss.....

#13, #45 and #52 go some way towards putting of #38. That was a badly phrased list option, so I hereby officially change it to ‘Write and edit 30 short stories’, because one a week is... just never going to happen. I ought to be writing one now, for The Campaign for Real Fear competition. I also ought to be writing a script (#6). I signed up for Script Frenzy this year. It started two days ago, and so far I have no plot, no ideas and not even a title page. I have had a lot of fun playing with the formatting functions in Final Draft, though. Pah. Procrastination.

3/52

#51

2010-03-27T14:55:00.009Z

'Pose as a life model for photography or drawing’

I will admit right away that #51 is a slight cheat as, long before I wrote the list, I’d been making plans to model for an old friend. But life modelling has long been something I wanted to try, so I think it still counts.

I should say right away that I’m a bit of a camera-phobe. I don’t particularly like having my photo taken and prefer not to look at any photos of myself. I’m not model material – in fact I don’t merit a second look in the street – and so life modelling is an odd thing to want to do. Reasons are partly vanity, partly challenge and partly safety. I think it’d be good to look back in 20 years and see what I could do and how I looked. The challenge? Well, just to see if I could go through with it. The safety? Because the point of the pictures is to look interesting rather than good, and I can handle that without my fragile self-esteem taking too huge a hit. Having to look good in pictures is just too difficult and completely unachievable for some of us.

I am lucky to have a friend who loves, and is good at, photography and who wanted to add nudes to his portfolio, so I offered to model. This particular approach had a few things going for it compared to just answering an advert.

We’ve been friends for years and have zero chemistry, so it was the safest environment I could be in and not sleazy in the slightest.
This also made it easier to be so vulnerable and, er, naked.
I have full artistic rights, and I know that AS will not use any of the photos anywhere without checking with me first.
The old friend scenario also meant that CM was comfortable with the whole thing, which was great, because if it had bothered him I wouldn’t have done it at all. Happily, he was proud of me having the nerve to do it.

We decided to do a run through shoot first, the idea being that I was a practice model; AS wants to do shoots with a range of people and in a studio, but it’s a waste of time and money going in without having an idea of what works and what doesn’t. So, Sunday morning, I head over to the makeshift studio of a flat with a bag filled with random underwear, make-up and so forth. Had a cup of tea and some cold medicine and off we go.

AS was very careful to make sure I was fine with everything we did. A lot of it was based on pictures taken by other photographers, playing with light, shadow, water and paint – the pictures I’ve seen are in different styles. Some are pretty classic and safe-for-work pictures are below. Others are, for example, more 80's trash. Some are pretty explicit. Thoughtfully, AS did not expect me to fling my clothes off with abandon and start throwing shapes, so the clothes came off bit by bit. But what happened, and what I hadn’t expected, is that the less clothing I had on, the more comfortable I was being in front of the camera. When there was nothing to hide behind, there was nothing to worry about, and without worrying it was just fun. It was also cold (in the water), but fun all the same. Frankly, I’d jump at the chance to do it again.

So, what life lessons did I learn from this? Well, it was an odd all-or-nothing way to learn to be happy with my shape because yes, prior to the shoot I did start freaking out and doing sit-ups and so forth. I have a hunch I'd be happier in a world where I didn't have to mash myself into 'flattering' clothes. I also learnt that modelling of any kind is really bloody difficult. My whole me hurt the next day. Ached like I'd run a marathon. No one ever told me about the intricate and muscle-stretching logistics of lying on the floor AND keeping the bottom of a heel-wearing foot flat to the ground at the same time. Lesson, er, 3: time goes fast when you're posing and it's surprisingly introspective. And the final lesson: you never can tell with people. I was concerned about telling my parents what I'd been up to, only to discover that my mum used to life-model for a sculptor. A lot of people wish they could have a go at it themselves (and I think they should). I loved it. I was also, if I'm honest, slightly turned on by it mentally and physically - it's a massive boost to the ego to be the sole focus of the camera for a day and, if you're me, to have faced up to something of a big fear in a fairly over-the-top way.

I didn’t see many of the photos on the day, mostly because I didn’t want to see a bad one and lose all the confidence that had built up. But a few have been sent to me now (and I’ll be getting the others soon), so I’m putting a few of them up here. These are safe for work; the others will be staying strictly offline, at least for the time being!

These pictures are copyright of Andrew Stripp, 2010 (http://www.andrewstripp.com/).

I love the light in this one, but...

... I love the way the wooden floor looks in colour even more.

This is probably my favourite.

The List

2010-03-24T23:08:00.006Z

I’m the type of person who needs a deadline to get anything done. Being that my life is flipping past me at top speed ‘like one of those day calendars in an old movie’ (as someone recently and horribly described it) I’ve signed up to dayzeroproject. Basically, writing a list of 101 things to achieve in the next 1,001 days.

As I signed up to do my 101 about a month ago, the number of days I have left is already down to 961. Then a couple of weeks ago, I realised that the 101 in 1,001 is only a 100 or so days off being a list of things to complete before I turn 30. In retrospect, I think when I was coming up with the 101, I probably should have referred to the lists I made was I was 12 (things I’ll do by the time I’m 16), 15 (things to do by 21) and 20 (things to do by 25), none of which I’ve ever completed. But because I didn’t think of the 101 as a ‘before 30’ list, a lot of the things on it are small and crap and... achievable, I think is the word I’m looking for. Just a way to get my arse in gear. Of course the flipside to writing a list of achievable things was the two weeks of soul searching and wondering what in hell happened to my dreams and ambitions, but that’s by the by.

Item number 58 on the list requires me to write 52 blog entries. The plan was to get them done in about a year, but since that was a month ago and this is the first blog entry I’ve done in months, clearly that hasn’t worked.

So, ladies and gentleman, I’m taking the cheap cheat’s way out. I lack the inclination to spill my most personal feelings on so open a blog; I lack the skill to write a blog of searing political satire of the type that involves a meticulous understanding of the way the world is (not) run; I lack the patience to critique other people’s work in any coherent fashion except for maybe once in a blue moon (I’m very pro-spontaneous rant); and, despite being pro-spontaneous rant, I think there are more than enough opinionated columnist-style blogs out there in media land, to the point that it’s both overwhelming and boring. The abundance of such writings has actually numbed me when it comes to caring what anyone else thinks. So my own tiny contribution to the massive sprawling messy interweb is going to be an occasional account of me working my way through this list. Which can be found here.

I figure that when I start working on an item, or complete it, or come up with a viable reason not do it, I can babble on about the whys and wherefores here and, lo and behold, I’m a step closer to ticking off number 58. Genius.

We're going to need a bigger flat (with more shelves)

2009-12-28T17:57:00.003Z

My bookshelves are groaning. I mean that literally - there's some precarious bending of slats going on. This year's Christmas haul consists of 84 books that I've never read and about 120 that I haven't read for eight years.

None of these books are new. My parents, since they were in the area for Christmas, took the opportunity to offload some of my attic-stored boxes on to me, along with all the books they suddenly decided to get rid of this year and that I offered to take off their hands. Even though I grew up with one entire wall of our living room being used for bookshelves, I didn't really consider how much stuff would be arriving when I enthusiastically offered to have them. And I don't even have all of them. My sisters had the opportunity to get in there first and take their pick, which I'm sure they did. (I also suspect them of taking their pick of some of my books, since all my Chuck Palahnuik, a book called 'The Animals Noah Forgot' and an awesome collection of 50-word stories are missing. I'd be angry, but frankly lack of space and the knowledge that I'd probably do the same thing to them just doesn't allow it.)

Thus far on the organisation front, all I've managed to do is separate the reference books, plays and poems from everything else and put them on their allotted shelves, and then split the read and not-read up.

I don't normally own any books that I don't read immediately. Up until today, I could hand-on-heart say that I've read every fiction book on my shelves. I can't say the same for the reference and some non-fiction, but that's because I tend to dip in and out of those as and when I need them (except for a brilliant book called 'The Feminine Ideal' which was about ideal women's body shapes through the ages and which was just unbelievably grotesque and fascinating, and I couldn't put it down), and, anyway, I keep them on a separate set of shelves, because I have a bad habit of buying 'interesting' reference books which I 'might' need one day. Hence the out-of-date dictionary of psychological neuroses, two Latin-English-Latin dictionaries, a book on how to speak ancient Greek and one on how to write in hieroglyphics. They look awesome, but I have to admit that I've never really used them.

Having 84 books in the flat that I've never before read, all right there, all at once, is causing a bit of a reader's existential crisis - the one that normally happens at a young age when some well-meaning adult points out that reading speed, history and publishing output means you'll never ever read all the books in the world. Or maybe that was just me. Anyway, my young self's response to that was to swear never to reread. That particular vow was broken by the inner nostalgic bookworm and the new-at-that-stage inner bibliophile, the combination of which have left me with said groaning shelves.* The sensation also reminds me of having too many dessert options. 'They all sound so good! What do I have!?' Eeny-meeny-miny-mo-ing, and knowing all along that if you break and have too many at once you'll be left with a massive toothache. Or headache, in this case.

So my approach has been to count and put all the unread books (lots of W Somerset Maugham and Herman Hesse) into two boxes in the study. My plan is to get through them one at a time, taking books from the top of the boxes only. Unless the book in question is part of a series, in which case I'll dig them out in order. The read books have been dropped on shelves, and I will sort out them out once I've finished all the unread books (so in a good few months), because there's no point doing it before then since I'll only have to reorganise everything again every time I finish one, because that's how crammed things are (I HATE having to double and pile books on shelves, but that's where we're at, folks).

Also, some of the read books are now duplicates because I missed them so much/came across a nicer edition than the one I had in storage/forgot I already owned it, so I need to go through those and get rid of one of the copies. Probably. If they aren't both too nice to get rid of. If I do that properly, I think I can just about squeeze all the books on to the shelves we have. And then I probably shouldn't buy any more books, ever. But I will.

* Bibliophile = one who loves the format and look of books. Bookworm = one who loves their content. This is according to Wikipedia, but it sounds right.

C'est trop tôt pour hurler!

2009-10-11T08:30:00.004+01:00

Eight am on a Sunday morning and I'm sat in my front room listening to an angry man having an argument on his mobile phone right outside my house. He's yelling in French, which makes it sound that much more impassioned. It's also very loud for first thing on a Sunday. A few minutes ago, he kicked our bin (yes, I am nosy and have been watching. If you have an argument THAT loud at THIS time in the morning outside my window, I consider you viable entertainment). The bin made an exciting, echoing, clonking sound, which brought the dogs to the window. It's a large picture window and they treat it pretty much like a doggy television. They were grinning, as they do when something exciting happens. I am used to their toothy grins, and know that, despite the odd wrangle with each other, they've never used those teeth on a person. Angry Man on Phone does not know that. He crossed to the other side of the road pretty damn fast. That was oddly satisfying.

I'm now on the final book of the Ink trilogy. I want to do a post about it when finished. At this stage I'll just say that it's very much a trilogy for people who love books. Beautifully bound books.

Other fun things going on this week:

I'm planning my escape from facebook. After wasting God only knows how much time on that damned site doing nothing at all, I've decided to just delete my account and be done with the whole thing. And not just deactivate my account. Deactivation is balls. It basically just means that you aren't using facebook. Nope, I want full, blown-to-smithereens, extinction. I announced I was quitting a few days ago, in an effort to gather emails from those people I'd like to keep in touch with. The amount of concern that I'm leaving a popular networking site was quite ... odd. "Are you ok?" was asked quite a lot. No one asked "Why?" though.

As I leave facebook (the death throes of my account will be taking place in about two hours) I found myself joining Skype. This resulted in a number of actual conversations with people yesterday afternoon - people I hadn't seen for a long time. Way more satisfying than statuses.

I have signed up for NaNoWriMo. I've been signing up for the last few years, and then doing nothing because for some reason all my holidays seem to take place in the first week of November. Not this year. This year I shall WRITE. Ha.

No picture this time.

Buying a book by its cover.

2009-10-02T20:14:00.001+01:00

There are a few opening lines of books that really stick with me. The ones that spring immediately to mind:
"I write this sitting in the kitchen sink."
"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed him."
And now...

"There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife."

It's been a slog of a week, so on my way home I stopped off to buy Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. The Dave McKean version, since he's one of my favourite artists (beaten only by Maurice Sendak). I started reading it on the train and nearly missed my stop.

The thing is, bookshops are dangerous places for terminally broke, book-addicted folks such as myself. A quick trip is never quick. Dropping by involves going round all the shelves picking up likely books and then using a lot of will power to put them back down. I avoid Waterloo Bridge at the weekend, because all the secondhand marvels would bankrupt me. Back when the Coffee Monster and I were rocking the long-distance thing, he came to visit and we spent a week visiting all the reputable secondhand bookshops in London. And some of the firsthand. We ended up with so many books that he had difficulty getting his home, and I ended up living on porridge for a month. Additionally, we're both collection freaks. Him more so than me. I'm not completely concerned about getting matching editions, but I do like to have everything in a set. We have everything ever written by John Wyndham in our flat. Twice.

So, this evening, while I was pottering around clutching what was definitely the only book I had planned on buying, I was sunk by the sight of all three Cornelia Funke 'Ink' books - the paperback gift editions - in a row on a shelf. All books in a trilogy, side by side, happens less often in bookshops than it ought to; though in retrospect, that's probably a good thing, because the net result was that I'd picked them up before I really thought about it and bought the lot.

Not a good picture. No decent camera - but, ooooh, the lovely!

Ladies and gentleman, I am a low-paid media minion. I can't afford such whimsical extravagence, especially not in a dreaded five-week month. I take comfort in the fact that when I'm hungry, I've got something to take my mind off it.

Bibbity Bloggity Boo.

2009-09-19T08:21:00.001+01:00

This blog has been resurrected. I started writing it once, many years ago, but then deleted the lot (it was a bitter, post-studenthood, pre-decent job blog that didn't make for good reading and just added to the general dross available on the interweb).

So, I'm back.

First off - the name. Bookworms and Coffee Monsters is the name of the bookshop/cafe that I own in my dreams. Seriously, I have a whole floor plan and everything mapped out. Second-hand books. Scrummy coffee goodness. (Short prayer to the God of Books: Dear God, it's me Frounette. Please don't let e-books take over the world of papery goodness. Amen.) Alas, it remains but a dream and will do for a good while yet.

It also more than applies to my life at the moment - at the beginning of this year I moved in with my Romantic Complication. He is no longer a complication, but he is still my chunk of romance. We've settled ourselves in one of the less wealthy boroughs of London. We're a poor imitation of an up-and-coming, Guardian-reading, media couple. He is the Coffee Monster. I am the Bookworm. (Actually, he's sort of a bookworm too - but hey, I need a title, and I make the things!) We have two slightly loopy husky pups (not so puppyish anymore, but still loopy) who go out of their way to thwart all my efforts at gardening and, last night, at sleeping as well. Woke up this morning to find myself and CM squashed into one corner while the dogs pretended to be me, but with extra legs.

Slightly loopy husky pups

I am a production assistant at a legal publishing house. Actually, thanks to the current economic cliché, my work spills over the borders of being a production assistant and well into the lands of editorial. I wish I had a snazzier title, but alas I do not. I also wish I was working on fiction, but again. No. I think, given that I work in what is essentially reference publishing, I'm actually in a line of business that is becoming increasingly obsolete - or at least needs less people to do everything that needs to be done. Something to whitter on about another day. Anyway, I relish my evenings and weekends and sleep (dogs! take note!) and dream about, and occasionally work towards, better things.

CM is a damn good camera man and film editor (he does other stuff too, DVD authoring and so forth). He's also looking for work, so if anyone needs any of the above, do get in touch. I do not say 'damn good' lightly or because I live with him. He's worth hiring and knows what he's doing.

We are a couple of country bumpkins dropped in a big city.

Loopy pup No 1 just yelled at me. It's time to go to the park.