Hot, with a soothing breeze and lots of little clouds.
Every so often, our doughty postina lugs up the hill a copy of The Author, the esteemed Journal of the Society of Authors. When it appears lodged in the grille of a ground floor window, it is a pleasant reminder of what I did before I became an expat dirt removal executive.
In this quarter's edition I read that Horace Bent has announced the winners of the 2009 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The Diagram Prize was first awarded by old friend and former employer, Bruce Robertson in the 1970s. Bruce was a large-ish man with a ZZ Top beard, a bulging belly, and braces with dinosaur badges on them. He had a reputation for roaring at his staff while under the influence late in the afternoon. "Get on with it yer RABBITS," he would bellow from behind a pile of CRC in his cubby-hole of an office, "I can 'ear ya chuntering on!" As an illustrator by trade he gave us writers and editors short shrift. He always referred to text as 'the wigglies' - in fact he was the only packager I ever met in publishing who didn't really give a toss about whether the editorial was consistent and correct, as long as the diagrams worked and the labelling was straight. I always liked him. His irreverence made me laugh, and I enjoyed his dark sense of humour.
Bruce and his Diagram colleagues thought up the prize in a bored moment (of which there are many) during the Frankfurt Book Fair, and publishing staff of all persuasions have been playing the game of finding silly titles to add to the shortlist ever since. Beats anything so tedious as doing business.
On the shortlist this year were: Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton, The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by E. Scherl and M. Dubinsky, and the title that made even my German husband howl with laughter, Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A. Yannes.
I was, however, fairly disappointed in the winner, which was that rivetting bestseller (sales topped 34 in the UK and more than 580 in the US), Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina. Perhaps it's because I've not the foggiest idea what a hyperbolic plane is (anyone? anyone?).
I shall leave you today with a few of the winners from previous years which have had me falling off my seat since I looked them up a few minutes ago. In 1993, we had American Bottom Archaeology and, seemingly along the same lines in 2002, there was Living with Crazy Buttocks. I guess the Brits just love butt jokes. 2006 brought us The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification, which followed hard on the heels of 2004's Bombproof your Horse.
The very first award was given in 1978 to The Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, and that was swiftly followed in 1979 by The Madam as Entrepreneur: career management in house prostitution. And finally, two of my personal favourites: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality, by Glen C. Ellenbogen, which romped home in 1986, and 1984's Highlights in the History of Cement, which I imagine must also have been the shortest book in the entire history of the awards.
But, you know, I still think Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich was the best of the lot - Mr Yannes, you was robbed! Yer RABBIT!
Friday, 30 July 2010
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Monday, 26 July 2010
Lighting the way to Love Beach
With thanks to M & G for a very enjoyable evening on Saturday,
in deeply romantic surroundings.
in deeply romantic surroundings.
Weather cooler. And without the wind. Now I have no excuse to do something - perhaps even something useful...
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Motherhood means ... No. 22 : At the beach
Hot and very heavy. A smattering of rain and some token thunder claps at 4pm, and by 8pm God is doing a fine job of watering my garden for me.
Motherhood means ...
... keeping schtum when Papà comes home from the beach with two hungry children in wet leather sandals and soggy bathing costumes under their dry day clothes, even though Mama made sure he had with him a bagful of towels, beach shoes, healthy snacks and dry underwear...
Motherhood means ...
... keeping schtum when Papà comes home from the beach with two hungry children in wet leather sandals and soggy bathing costumes under their dry day clothes, even though Mama made sure he had with him a bagful of towels, beach shoes, healthy snacks and dry underwear...
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Book notes No. 36 : The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Yesterday afternoon, about 3pm. It's hot but not too hot. Mama is lying on the garden seat, propped on cushions, surrounded by the purple lavender, the white and pink oleander, the dense screen of camellia. The lake and the mountains shimmer in a blue haze beyond. Three children squabble over two ice lollies at her feet. In the lower part of the garden, more spritz each other with hosepipe and water pistols, screaming with laughter.
A happy scene.
So why are the tears cascading down Mama's face? "Why?" asks the littlest of the children.
I'll tell you why.
The last ten pages of Markus Zusak's bestselling The Book Thief.
That's why!
For a long time Amazon recommended this book, and I stayed away from it. Any novel involving books is a draw for me, but novels about Nazi Germany are a clear no-no in an Anglo-German household (in Basil Fawlty's words, we "don't [often] mention the war"...). When I asked my online correspondents to recommend a book, however, they echoed Amazon's insistence, and I finally followed their advice (thanks especially to LadyFi).
And what did I find? A magnificent, magnificent book. Innovative in form. Compassionate in feeling. Resonant with insight. You'd have thought it had all been said on this subject. And this book proves you'd have been wrong.
The story begins in 1939. It centres on Liesel, who comes to a suburb of Munich following the deportation of her parents to a concentration camp. Liesel has a passion to learn to read and write, and her charismatic foster-father helps her. As the war tightens its grip on the ordinary German, work becomes scarce, and food even scarcer, and Liesel discovers a talent for stealing : books. This is Liesel's story. And the story of the inhabitants of the ironically-named Himmel Street when the bombs start falling and death comes a-knocking. And it's the story of how words can kill, can save, can incite hatred or love, can join people together or tear them apart.
Dark? Yes. Depressing? No. Uplifting? Yes. Life-affirming? Yes. Page-turning? Yes. Yes. Yes.
If you're not one of the half million people to have already read this book, get a copy. Steal one if you have to. But whatever you do, don't miss it, like I almost did!
A happy scene.
So why are the tears cascading down Mama's face? "Why?" asks the littlest of the children.
I'll tell you why.
The last ten pages of Markus Zusak's bestselling The Book Thief.That's why!
For a long time Amazon recommended this book, and I stayed away from it. Any novel involving books is a draw for me, but novels about Nazi Germany are a clear no-no in an Anglo-German household (in Basil Fawlty's words, we "don't [often] mention the war"...). When I asked my online correspondents to recommend a book, however, they echoed Amazon's insistence, and I finally followed their advice (thanks especially to LadyFi).
And what did I find? A magnificent, magnificent book. Innovative in form. Compassionate in feeling. Resonant with insight. You'd have thought it had all been said on this subject. And this book proves you'd have been wrong.
The story begins in 1939. It centres on Liesel, who comes to a suburb of Munich following the deportation of her parents to a concentration camp. Liesel has a passion to learn to read and write, and her charismatic foster-father helps her. As the war tightens its grip on the ordinary German, work becomes scarce, and food even scarcer, and Liesel discovers a talent for stealing : books. This is Liesel's story. And the story of the inhabitants of the ironically-named Himmel Street when the bombs start falling and death comes a-knocking. And it's the story of how words can kill, can save, can incite hatred or love, can join people together or tear them apart.
Dark? Yes. Depressing? No. Uplifting? Yes. Life-affirming? Yes. Page-turning? Yes. Yes. Yes.
If you're not one of the half million people to have already read this book, get a copy. Steal one if you have to. But whatever you do, don't miss it, like I almost did!
Monday, 19 July 2010
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Reported conversations No. 20 : Salt on the salad
At 8am it was already 29°C in Carmine Superiore. Work started early - it's going to be a scorcher!
A little voice from the back of the Panda...
B. [aged not-quite 4 and still mixing her languages] : I can see the See, I can see the See.
Mama [aged quite a lot more than 10 x 4] : Lake, darling. In English we say lake. In German it's See, in English it's lake. [Labouring the point as she pulls out onto the lake road and labours up the gears] Mama says lake.
AJ [aged going-on 6] : It's different you see. The lake is fresh water and the sea is salad water.
[Mama breaks 50 and gets into fourth, one side of her brain calculating the tight lakeside curves that Jeremy Clarkson found so daunting and the other starting to boggle at the conversation]
B : Why is there salad?
[Mama hits 60 and slices across the median line, startling an east-European trucker out of his coma, as both sides of her brain wait for the answer]
AJ : No, silly, there isn't salad in the water, it just tastes of salad...
Mama [shifts into an ill-advised fifth and tips the kids out of their seats on a slightly too-fast downhill left-hander as Cannobio comes into sight] : AJ, who told you seawater tastes of salad?
AJ : My maestra. She said lake water is sweet, and seawater is insalata.
[Mama's brain, hands and feet lose coordination as she freewheels into Cannobio, doing 30 in fifth, with the windscreen wipers on max and all four indicators flashing. She's doubled over the wheel with laughter...and the tiny part of her brain not busy cracking up is busy hoping there are no cute Carabinieri waiting in ambush. Finally, the world's-most-battered Panda pulls into the supermarket car park with all outward signs of sanity, but inside, Mama is red in the face and weeping.]
Mama [finally capable of drawing breath] : Sweetie, I think your maestra said seawater is salata, not in-salata...!
A little voice from the back of the Panda...
B. [aged not-quite 4 and still mixing her languages] : I can see the See, I can see the See.
Mama [aged quite a lot more than 10 x 4] : Lake, darling. In English we say lake. In German it's See, in English it's lake. [Labouring the point as she pulls out onto the lake road and labours up the gears] Mama says lake.
AJ [aged going-on 6] : It's different you see. The lake is fresh water and the sea is salad water.
[Mama breaks 50 and gets into fourth, one side of her brain calculating the tight lakeside curves that Jeremy Clarkson found so daunting and the other starting to boggle at the conversation]
B : Why is there salad?
[Mama hits 60 and slices across the median line, startling an east-European trucker out of his coma, as both sides of her brain wait for the answer]
AJ : No, silly, there isn't salad in the water, it just tastes of salad...
Mama [shifts into an ill-advised fifth and tips the kids out of their seats on a slightly too-fast downhill left-hander as Cannobio comes into sight] : AJ, who told you seawater tastes of salad?
AJ : My maestra. She said lake water is sweet, and seawater is insalata.
[Mama's brain, hands and feet lose coordination as she freewheels into Cannobio, doing 30 in fifth, with the windscreen wipers on max and all four indicators flashing. She's doubled over the wheel with laughter...and the tiny part of her brain not busy cracking up is busy hoping there are no cute Carabinieri waiting in ambush. Finally, the world's-most-battered Panda pulls into the supermarket car park with all outward signs of sanity, but inside, Mama is red in the face and weeping.]
Mama [finally capable of drawing breath] : Sweetie, I think your maestra said seawater is salata, not in-salata...!
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Monday, 12 July 2010
Book notes No. 35 : Of Bees and Mist, Erick Setiawan
Last night a storm, with thunder rolling around the Lago Maggiore 'basin', lightning cracking open the murky skies and a heaven-sent fresh wind to clear out the cobwebs. Today, more beautifully sunny and hot weather.
In an unnamed town that could be in California, in Indonesia, in southern Spain, our heroine Meridia grows up in a family home haunted by eerie mists, yellow-eyed ghosts and overwhelming cold.
When she falls in love at 16, she flees to her young husband's home, only to find it plagued by mysterious bees, and her life is soon blighted by her mother-in-law's sharp tongue.
Will Meridia repeat the mistakes of her mother? Or does she have the strength and the insight to strike out for a better life?
Of Bees and Mist is a masterful first novel. In parts moving, in parts sensuous, always ringing true. I was carried away by Setiawan's lyrical-magical style, the inventiveness of his plot and the depth of his characters. I read as often as I could, everywhere I could, and all too soon the story was finished.
It's one of those books that you are sad you have finished, things are so lively, so eventful amidst its pages. And one of those books, like William Goulding's Paper Men, with a twist in the very last sentence.
Buy it. Read it. I recommend it. But don't allow yourself to read the last page first. If you think you won't resist the temptation, cut out the last page - put it in a perfumed envelope and mail it to yourself. By the time it gets to you, it will be just in time.
When she falls in love at 16, she flees to her young husband's home, only to find it plagued by mysterious bees, and her life is soon blighted by her mother-in-law's sharp tongue.
Will Meridia repeat the mistakes of her mother? Or does she have the strength and the insight to strike out for a better life?
Of Bees and Mist is a masterful first novel. In parts moving, in parts sensuous, always ringing true. I was carried away by Setiawan's lyrical-magical style, the inventiveness of his plot and the depth of his characters. I read as often as I could, everywhere I could, and all too soon the story was finished.
It's one of those books that you are sad you have finished, things are so lively, so eventful amidst its pages. And one of those books, like William Goulding's Paper Men, with a twist in the very last sentence.
Buy it. Read it. I recommend it. But don't allow yourself to read the last page first. If you think you won't resist the temptation, cut out the last page - put it in a perfumed envelope and mail it to yourself. By the time it gets to you, it will be just in time.
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Anemone : some notes
After a sprinkling of rain late last night, more hot weather today. Soil bone dry, wooden bathtub leaking. Running water battles have broken out in the streets of Carmine among the eight under-14s currently in residence.
On the mulattiera between Carmine Inferiore and Carmine Superiore lies a small Lady Chapel with a representation of the Madonna of which I'm particularly fond. See it here.
This detail shows that in Her hand she holds what appears to be an anemone, a flower often associated with the Virgin Mary. Like the Fleur-de-Lys (here pictured in the Annunciation gracing the walls of Carmine Superiore's San Gottardo church), the anemone in the Christian tradition symbolises the Trinity.
The anemone was once dedicated to the Roman goddess Venus. While the goddess of love, she was also the protector of chastity in women, and, interestingly, the anemone was said to have sprung up from the spilled blood of her lover, Adonis (cf. the spilled blood of Christ and the association of the anemone with sorrow and death).
In the Middle Ages, the anemone was called St Brigid. Brigid was a powerful abbess, and remains one of Ireland's patron saints. She is known, even, as 'the Mary of the Gaels' and is often mentioned in the same breath as the Virgin Mary.
Both Venus and St Brigid are associated with springtime (St Brigid's festival is 1 February - Imbolc, coinciding with the Celtic festival to mark the start of spring), the season in which this type of anemone flowers.
For myself, I just like to absorb for a moment the rich colour of the petals and the elegance of that long hand, early on a hard-pressed Monday morning.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Early start
Hot. Hotter than yesterday. Hottest? We'll see!
Early start to arrive at Verbania Intra's grand Saturday market before there's no longer any place to park the car nor any space to move among the tourist crowds.
Trouble with being the first one down the mulattiera on a summer's morning is that you catch all the cobwebs that were strung across it in the night, and you get the feeling that hundreds of night-shift garden spiders are glaring at you, plotting eight-legged revenge.
At the bottom of the hill I felt festooned like Miss Havisham's wedding banquet. It was an incongruous image to spring to mind amid the fresh mists of an early July day with a view of Lago Maggiore...
Early start to arrive at Verbania Intra's grand Saturday market before there's no longer any place to park the car nor any space to move among the tourist crowds.
Trouble with being the first one down the mulattiera on a summer's morning is that you catch all the cobwebs that were strung across it in the night, and you get the feeling that hundreds of night-shift garden spiders are glaring at you, plotting eight-legged revenge.
At the bottom of the hill I felt festooned like Miss Havisham's wedding banquet. It was an incongruous image to spring to mind amid the fresh mists of an early July day with a view of Lago Maggiore...
Friday, 9 July 2010
Storm clouds at sunset
Storm clouds at sunset, a view from Carmine Superiore.
For more beautiful sky pictures, visit Skywatch.
Monday, 5 July 2010
The flowers in my world
Another hot summer's day, and Carmine's normally lonely lanes are ringing with the voices of children.
In my world, Carmine Superiore is bursting with hydrangea, roses and lavender.
For more images of our world, click here.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
At the cloud line
Perfect weather. Hot and sunny during the day, with cooling winds and garden-pleasing rain at night.
Dawn over Maccagno.
The view from Carmine Superiore.
The view from Carmine Superiore.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Book notes No.34 : Godmother: the secret Cinderella story, Carolyn Turgeon
Twenty-four degrees at 8am, and 31° at five. Hazy. The climb home was ... sweaty.
Every morning, silver-haired Lillian opens a second-hand bookshop in Manhattan's West Village. Before the first customer opens the door, even before she has made coffee or swept out the night's dust, Lillian secretly takes out her favourite of all the ancient and precious books in her care, Cinderella. On the inside back cover, someone has written, Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir - All my old loves shall be returned to me. Each morning, Lillian reads the inscription sketched on the onion-skin pages over and over - this is a sign to her, a message that soon she will be offered a chance to redeem herself, and return home to the world of Faerie.
Disney made of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother a plump old lady in spectacles with a grey bun and a way with squirrels. Carolyn Turgeon, in this thoroughly enjoyable retelling, has portrayed her as a fairy of such beauty that in her human manifestation she has the power to make men insane for love of her. And therein lies the beginning of a tragedy that leads to the Fairy Godmother falling to earth in disgrace.
Two stories are woven together. The retelling of the events that led to Lillian's downfall and banishment to the world of the humans, and the story of her efforts in the here and now to create a new Cinderella and get her to the ball, suitably attired, in time for the prince to fall in love with her.
Turgeon sets out to imagine the experience of the fairy in the world of humans. How would it feel for an entity from a race not given to emotion to suddenly feel what humans feel - love, desire, hunger, pain? Turgeon tells us in beautiful, sensuous detail. How might it be to be lighter than air, to play among the leaves, to fly with no more effort than the raising of an eyebrow? All wonderfully imagined and faultlessly expressed.
And along the way there are some interesting meditations on seeing and identity ("I just remembered the way he saw me, the way he made me someone new..."), on social invisibility and on our own ability to change our lives for the better.
This is a cracking pageturner. I gobbled it down in a couple of days, snatching chapters wherever I could. And the ending - which I am not going to spoil - makes this more than just a sand-in-the-spine beach read...
Every morning, silver-haired Lillian opens a second-hand bookshop in Manhattan's West Village. Before the first customer opens the door, even before she has made coffee or swept out the night's dust, Lillian secretly takes out her favourite of all the ancient and precious books in her care, Cinderella. On the inside back cover, someone has written, Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir - All my old loves shall be returned to me. Each morning, Lillian reads the inscription sketched on the onion-skin pages over and over - this is a sign to her, a message that soon she will be offered a chance to redeem herself, and return home to the world of Faerie.Disney made of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother a plump old lady in spectacles with a grey bun and a way with squirrels. Carolyn Turgeon, in this thoroughly enjoyable retelling, has portrayed her as a fairy of such beauty that in her human manifestation she has the power to make men insane for love of her. And therein lies the beginning of a tragedy that leads to the Fairy Godmother falling to earth in disgrace.
Two stories are woven together. The retelling of the events that led to Lillian's downfall and banishment to the world of the humans, and the story of her efforts in the here and now to create a new Cinderella and get her to the ball, suitably attired, in time for the prince to fall in love with her.
Turgeon sets out to imagine the experience of the fairy in the world of humans. How would it feel for an entity from a race not given to emotion to suddenly feel what humans feel - love, desire, hunger, pain? Turgeon tells us in beautiful, sensuous detail. How might it be to be lighter than air, to play among the leaves, to fly with no more effort than the raising of an eyebrow? All wonderfully imagined and faultlessly expressed.
And along the way there are some interesting meditations on seeing and identity ("I just remembered the way he saw me, the way he made me someone new..."), on social invisibility and on our own ability to change our lives for the better.
This is a cracking pageturner. I gobbled it down in a couple of days, snatching chapters wherever I could. And the ending - which I am not going to spoil - makes this more than just a sand-in-the-spine beach read...
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Friday, 30 July 2010
Publishing news
Hot, with a soothing breeze and lots of little clouds.
Every so often, our doughty postina lugs up the hill a copy of The Author, the esteemed Journal of the Society of Authors. When it appears lodged in the grille of a ground floor window, it is a pleasant reminder of what I did before I became an expat dirt removal executive.
In this quarter's edition I read that Horace Bent has announced the winners of the 2009 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The Diagram Prize was first awarded by old friend and former employer, Bruce Robertson in the 1970s. Bruce was a large-ish man with a ZZ Top beard, a bulging belly, and braces with dinosaur badges on them. He had a reputation for roaring at his staff while under the influence late in the afternoon. "Get on with it yer RABBITS," he would bellow from behind a pile of CRC in his cubby-hole of an office, "I can 'ear ya chuntering on!" As an illustrator by trade he gave us writers and editors short shrift. He always referred to text as 'the wigglies' - in fact he was the only packager I ever met in publishing who didn't really give a toss about whether the editorial was consistent and correct, as long as the diagrams worked and the labelling was straight. I always liked him. His irreverence made me laugh, and I enjoyed his dark sense of humour.
Bruce and his Diagram colleagues thought up the prize in a bored moment (of which there are many) during the Frankfurt Book Fair, and publishing staff of all persuasions have been playing the game of finding silly titles to add to the shortlist ever since. Beats anything so tedious as doing business.
On the shortlist this year were: Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton, The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by E. Scherl and M. Dubinsky, and the title that made even my German husband howl with laughter, Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A. Yannes.
I was, however, fairly disappointed in the winner, which was that rivetting bestseller (sales topped 34 in the UK and more than 580 in the US), Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina. Perhaps it's because I've not the foggiest idea what a hyperbolic plane is (anyone? anyone?).
I shall leave you today with a few of the winners from previous years which have had me falling off my seat since I looked them up a few minutes ago. In 1993, we had American Bottom Archaeology and, seemingly along the same lines in 2002, there was Living with Crazy Buttocks. I guess the Brits just love butt jokes. 2006 brought us The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification, which followed hard on the heels of 2004's Bombproof your Horse.
The very first award was given in 1978 to The Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, and that was swiftly followed in 1979 by The Madam as Entrepreneur: career management in house prostitution. And finally, two of my personal favourites: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality, by Glen C. Ellenbogen, which romped home in 1986, and 1984's Highlights in the History of Cement, which I imagine must also have been the shortest book in the entire history of the awards.
But, you know, I still think Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich was the best of the lot - Mr Yannes, you was robbed! Yer RABBIT!
Every so often, our doughty postina lugs up the hill a copy of The Author, the esteemed Journal of the Society of Authors. When it appears lodged in the grille of a ground floor window, it is a pleasant reminder of what I did before I became an expat dirt removal executive.
In this quarter's edition I read that Horace Bent has announced the winners of the 2009 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year.
The Diagram Prize was first awarded by old friend and former employer, Bruce Robertson in the 1970s. Bruce was a large-ish man with a ZZ Top beard, a bulging belly, and braces with dinosaur badges on them. He had a reputation for roaring at his staff while under the influence late in the afternoon. "Get on with it yer RABBITS," he would bellow from behind a pile of CRC in his cubby-hole of an office, "I can 'ear ya chuntering on!" As an illustrator by trade he gave us writers and editors short shrift. He always referred to text as 'the wigglies' - in fact he was the only packager I ever met in publishing who didn't really give a toss about whether the editorial was consistent and correct, as long as the diagrams worked and the labelling was straight. I always liked him. His irreverence made me laugh, and I enjoyed his dark sense of humour.
Bruce and his Diagram colleagues thought up the prize in a bored moment (of which there are many) during the Frankfurt Book Fair, and publishing staff of all persuasions have been playing the game of finding silly titles to add to the shortlist ever since. Beats anything so tedious as doing business.
On the shortlist this year were: Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter by David Crompton, The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease by E. Scherl and M. Dubinsky, and the title that made even my German husband howl with laughter, Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich by James A. Yannes.
I was, however, fairly disappointed in the winner, which was that rivetting bestseller (sales topped 34 in the UK and more than 580 in the US), Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes by Daina Taimina. Perhaps it's because I've not the foggiest idea what a hyperbolic plane is (anyone? anyone?).
I shall leave you today with a few of the winners from previous years which have had me falling off my seat since I looked them up a few minutes ago. In 1993, we had American Bottom Archaeology and, seemingly along the same lines in 2002, there was Living with Crazy Buttocks. I guess the Brits just love butt jokes. 2006 brought us The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: a guide to field identification, which followed hard on the heels of 2004's Bombproof your Horse.
The very first award was given in 1978 to The Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice, and that was swiftly followed in 1979 by The Madam as Entrepreneur: career management in house prostitution. And finally, two of my personal favourites: Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality, by Glen C. Ellenbogen, which romped home in 1986, and 1984's Highlights in the History of Cement, which I imagine must also have been the shortest book in the entire history of the awards.
But, you know, I still think Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich was the best of the lot - Mr Yannes, you was robbed! Yer RABBIT!
Wednesday, 28 July 2010
Monday, 26 July 2010
Lighting the way to Love Beach
With thanks to M & G for a very enjoyable evening on Saturday,
in deeply romantic surroundings.
in deeply romantic surroundings.
Weather cooler. And without the wind. Now I have no excuse to do something - perhaps even something useful...
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Saturday, 24 July 2010
Friday, 23 July 2010
Thursday, 22 July 2010
Motherhood means ... No. 22 : At the beach
Hot and very heavy. A smattering of rain and some token thunder claps at 4pm, and by 8pm God is doing a fine job of watering my garden for me.
Motherhood means ...
... keeping schtum when Papà comes home from the beach with two hungry children in wet leather sandals and soggy bathing costumes under their dry day clothes, even though Mama made sure he had with him a bagful of towels, beach shoes, healthy snacks and dry underwear...
Motherhood means ...
... keeping schtum when Papà comes home from the beach with two hungry children in wet leather sandals and soggy bathing costumes under their dry day clothes, even though Mama made sure he had with him a bagful of towels, beach shoes, healthy snacks and dry underwear...
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Book notes No. 36 : The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
Yesterday afternoon, about 3pm. It's hot but not too hot. Mama is lying on the garden seat, propped on cushions, surrounded by the purple lavender, the white and pink oleander, the dense screen of camellia. The lake and the mountains shimmer in a blue haze beyond. Three children squabble over two ice lollies at her feet. In the lower part of the garden, more spritz each other with hosepipe and water pistols, screaming with laughter.
A happy scene.
So why are the tears cascading down Mama's face? "Why?" asks the littlest of the children.
I'll tell you why.
The last ten pages of Markus Zusak's bestselling The Book Thief.
That's why!
For a long time Amazon recommended this book, and I stayed away from it. Any novel involving books is a draw for me, but novels about Nazi Germany are a clear no-no in an Anglo-German household (in Basil Fawlty's words, we "don't [often] mention the war"...). When I asked my online correspondents to recommend a book, however, they echoed Amazon's insistence, and I finally followed their advice (thanks especially to LadyFi).
And what did I find? A magnificent, magnificent book. Innovative in form. Compassionate in feeling. Resonant with insight. You'd have thought it had all been said on this subject. And this book proves you'd have been wrong.
The story begins in 1939. It centres on Liesel, who comes to a suburb of Munich following the deportation of her parents to a concentration camp. Liesel has a passion to learn to read and write, and her charismatic foster-father helps her. As the war tightens its grip on the ordinary German, work becomes scarce, and food even scarcer, and Liesel discovers a talent for stealing : books. This is Liesel's story. And the story of the inhabitants of the ironically-named Himmel Street when the bombs start falling and death comes a-knocking. And it's the story of how words can kill, can save, can incite hatred or love, can join people together or tear them apart.
Dark? Yes. Depressing? No. Uplifting? Yes. Life-affirming? Yes. Page-turning? Yes. Yes. Yes.
If you're not one of the half million people to have already read this book, get a copy. Steal one if you have to. But whatever you do, don't miss it, like I almost did!
A happy scene.
So why are the tears cascading down Mama's face? "Why?" asks the littlest of the children.
I'll tell you why.
The last ten pages of Markus Zusak's bestselling The Book Thief.That's why!
For a long time Amazon recommended this book, and I stayed away from it. Any novel involving books is a draw for me, but novels about Nazi Germany are a clear no-no in an Anglo-German household (in Basil Fawlty's words, we "don't [often] mention the war"...). When I asked my online correspondents to recommend a book, however, they echoed Amazon's insistence, and I finally followed their advice (thanks especially to LadyFi).
And what did I find? A magnificent, magnificent book. Innovative in form. Compassionate in feeling. Resonant with insight. You'd have thought it had all been said on this subject. And this book proves you'd have been wrong.
The story begins in 1939. It centres on Liesel, who comes to a suburb of Munich following the deportation of her parents to a concentration camp. Liesel has a passion to learn to read and write, and her charismatic foster-father helps her. As the war tightens its grip on the ordinary German, work becomes scarce, and food even scarcer, and Liesel discovers a talent for stealing : books. This is Liesel's story. And the story of the inhabitants of the ironically-named Himmel Street when the bombs start falling and death comes a-knocking. And it's the story of how words can kill, can save, can incite hatred or love, can join people together or tear them apart.
Dark? Yes. Depressing? No. Uplifting? Yes. Life-affirming? Yes. Page-turning? Yes. Yes. Yes.
If you're not one of the half million people to have already read this book, get a copy. Steal one if you have to. But whatever you do, don't miss it, like I almost did!
Monday, 19 July 2010
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Thursday, 15 July 2010
Reported conversations No. 20 : Salt on the salad
At 8am it was already 29°C in Carmine Superiore. Work started early - it's going to be a scorcher!
A little voice from the back of the Panda...
B. [aged not-quite 4 and still mixing her languages] : I can see the See, I can see the See.
Mama [aged quite a lot more than 10 x 4] : Lake, darling. In English we say lake. In German it's See, in English it's lake. [Labouring the point as she pulls out onto the lake road and labours up the gears] Mama says lake.
AJ [aged going-on 6] : It's different you see. The lake is fresh water and the sea is salad water.
[Mama breaks 50 and gets into fourth, one side of her brain calculating the tight lakeside curves that Jeremy Clarkson found so daunting and the other starting to boggle at the conversation]
B : Why is there salad?
[Mama hits 60 and slices across the median line, startling an east-European trucker out of his coma, as both sides of her brain wait for the answer]
AJ : No, silly, there isn't salad in the water, it just tastes of salad...
Mama [shifts into an ill-advised fifth and tips the kids out of their seats on a slightly too-fast downhill left-hander as Cannobio comes into sight] : AJ, who told you seawater tastes of salad?
AJ : My maestra. She said lake water is sweet, and seawater is insalata.
[Mama's brain, hands and feet lose coordination as she freewheels into Cannobio, doing 30 in fifth, with the windscreen wipers on max and all four indicators flashing. She's doubled over the wheel with laughter...and the tiny part of her brain not busy cracking up is busy hoping there are no cute Carabinieri waiting in ambush. Finally, the world's-most-battered Panda pulls into the supermarket car park with all outward signs of sanity, but inside, Mama is red in the face and weeping.]
Mama [finally capable of drawing breath] : Sweetie, I think your maestra said seawater is salata, not in-salata...!
A little voice from the back of the Panda...
B. [aged not-quite 4 and still mixing her languages] : I can see the See, I can see the See.
Mama [aged quite a lot more than 10 x 4] : Lake, darling. In English we say lake. In German it's See, in English it's lake. [Labouring the point as she pulls out onto the lake road and labours up the gears] Mama says lake.
AJ [aged going-on 6] : It's different you see. The lake is fresh water and the sea is salad water.
[Mama breaks 50 and gets into fourth, one side of her brain calculating the tight lakeside curves that Jeremy Clarkson found so daunting and the other starting to boggle at the conversation]
B : Why is there salad?
[Mama hits 60 and slices across the median line, startling an east-European trucker out of his coma, as both sides of her brain wait for the answer]
AJ : No, silly, there isn't salad in the water, it just tastes of salad...
Mama [shifts into an ill-advised fifth and tips the kids out of their seats on a slightly too-fast downhill left-hander as Cannobio comes into sight] : AJ, who told you seawater tastes of salad?
AJ : My maestra. She said lake water is sweet, and seawater is insalata.
[Mama's brain, hands and feet lose coordination as she freewheels into Cannobio, doing 30 in fifth, with the windscreen wipers on max and all four indicators flashing. She's doubled over the wheel with laughter...and the tiny part of her brain not busy cracking up is busy hoping there are no cute Carabinieri waiting in ambush. Finally, the world's-most-battered Panda pulls into the supermarket car park with all outward signs of sanity, but inside, Mama is red in the face and weeping.]
Mama [finally capable of drawing breath] : Sweetie, I think your maestra said seawater is salata, not in-salata...!
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Monday, 12 July 2010
Book notes No. 35 : Of Bees and Mist, Erick Setiawan
Last night a storm, with thunder rolling around the Lago Maggiore 'basin', lightning cracking open the murky skies and a heaven-sent fresh wind to clear out the cobwebs. Today, more beautifully sunny and hot weather.
In an unnamed town that could be in California, in Indonesia, in southern Spain, our heroine Meridia grows up in a family home haunted by eerie mists, yellow-eyed ghosts and overwhelming cold.
When she falls in love at 16, she flees to her young husband's home, only to find it plagued by mysterious bees, and her life is soon blighted by her mother-in-law's sharp tongue.
Will Meridia repeat the mistakes of her mother? Or does she have the strength and the insight to strike out for a better life?
Of Bees and Mist is a masterful first novel. In parts moving, in parts sensuous, always ringing true. I was carried away by Setiawan's lyrical-magical style, the inventiveness of his plot and the depth of his characters. I read as often as I could, everywhere I could, and all too soon the story was finished.
It's one of those books that you are sad you have finished, things are so lively, so eventful amidst its pages. And one of those books, like William Goulding's Paper Men, with a twist in the very last sentence.
Buy it. Read it. I recommend it. But don't allow yourself to read the last page first. If you think you won't resist the temptation, cut out the last page - put it in a perfumed envelope and mail it to yourself. By the time it gets to you, it will be just in time.
When she falls in love at 16, she flees to her young husband's home, only to find it plagued by mysterious bees, and her life is soon blighted by her mother-in-law's sharp tongue.
Will Meridia repeat the mistakes of her mother? Or does she have the strength and the insight to strike out for a better life?
Of Bees and Mist is a masterful first novel. In parts moving, in parts sensuous, always ringing true. I was carried away by Setiawan's lyrical-magical style, the inventiveness of his plot and the depth of his characters. I read as often as I could, everywhere I could, and all too soon the story was finished.
It's one of those books that you are sad you have finished, things are so lively, so eventful amidst its pages. And one of those books, like William Goulding's Paper Men, with a twist in the very last sentence.
Buy it. Read it. I recommend it. But don't allow yourself to read the last page first. If you think you won't resist the temptation, cut out the last page - put it in a perfumed envelope and mail it to yourself. By the time it gets to you, it will be just in time.
Sunday, 11 July 2010
Anemone : some notes
After a sprinkling of rain late last night, more hot weather today. Soil bone dry, wooden bathtub leaking. Running water battles have broken out in the streets of Carmine among the eight under-14s currently in residence.
On the mulattiera between Carmine Inferiore and Carmine Superiore lies a small Lady Chapel with a representation of the Madonna of which I'm particularly fond. See it here.
This detail shows that in Her hand she holds what appears to be an anemone, a flower often associated with the Virgin Mary. Like the Fleur-de-Lys (here pictured in the Annunciation gracing the walls of Carmine Superiore's San Gottardo church), the anemone in the Christian tradition symbolises the Trinity.
The anemone was once dedicated to the Roman goddess Venus. While the goddess of love, she was also the protector of chastity in women, and, interestingly, the anemone was said to have sprung up from the spilled blood of her lover, Adonis (cf. the spilled blood of Christ and the association of the anemone with sorrow and death).
In the Middle Ages, the anemone was called St Brigid. Brigid was a powerful abbess, and remains one of Ireland's patron saints. She is known, even, as 'the Mary of the Gaels' and is often mentioned in the same breath as the Virgin Mary.
Both Venus and St Brigid are associated with springtime (St Brigid's festival is 1 February - Imbolc, coinciding with the Celtic festival to mark the start of spring), the season in which this type of anemone flowers.
For myself, I just like to absorb for a moment the rich colour of the petals and the elegance of that long hand, early on a hard-pressed Monday morning.
Saturday, 10 July 2010
Early start
Hot. Hotter than yesterday. Hottest? We'll see!
Early start to arrive at Verbania Intra's grand Saturday market before there's no longer any place to park the car nor any space to move among the tourist crowds.
Trouble with being the first one down the mulattiera on a summer's morning is that you catch all the cobwebs that were strung across it in the night, and you get the feeling that hundreds of night-shift garden spiders are glaring at you, plotting eight-legged revenge.
At the bottom of the hill I felt festooned like Miss Havisham's wedding banquet. It was an incongruous image to spring to mind amid the fresh mists of an early July day with a view of Lago Maggiore...
Early start to arrive at Verbania Intra's grand Saturday market before there's no longer any place to park the car nor any space to move among the tourist crowds.
Trouble with being the first one down the mulattiera on a summer's morning is that you catch all the cobwebs that were strung across it in the night, and you get the feeling that hundreds of night-shift garden spiders are glaring at you, plotting eight-legged revenge.
At the bottom of the hill I felt festooned like Miss Havisham's wedding banquet. It was an incongruous image to spring to mind amid the fresh mists of an early July day with a view of Lago Maggiore...
Friday, 9 July 2010
Storm clouds at sunset
Storm clouds at sunset, a view from Carmine Superiore.
For more beautiful sky pictures, visit Skywatch.
Monday, 5 July 2010
The flowers in my world
Another hot summer's day, and Carmine's normally lonely lanes are ringing with the voices of children.
In my world, Carmine Superiore is bursting with hydrangea, roses and lavender.
For more images of our world, click here.
Sunday, 4 July 2010
At the cloud line
Perfect weather. Hot and sunny during the day, with cooling winds and garden-pleasing rain at night.
Dawn over Maccagno.
The view from Carmine Superiore.
The view from Carmine Superiore.
Friday, 2 July 2010
Book notes No.34 : Godmother: the secret Cinderella story, Carolyn Turgeon
Twenty-four degrees at 8am, and 31° at five. Hazy. The climb home was ... sweaty.
Every morning, silver-haired Lillian opens a second-hand bookshop in Manhattan's West Village. Before the first customer opens the door, even before she has made coffee or swept out the night's dust, Lillian secretly takes out her favourite of all the ancient and precious books in her care, Cinderella. On the inside back cover, someone has written, Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir - All my old loves shall be returned to me. Each morning, Lillian reads the inscription sketched on the onion-skin pages over and over - this is a sign to her, a message that soon she will be offered a chance to redeem herself, and return home to the world of Faerie.
Disney made of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother a plump old lady in spectacles with a grey bun and a way with squirrels. Carolyn Turgeon, in this thoroughly enjoyable retelling, has portrayed her as a fairy of such beauty that in her human manifestation she has the power to make men insane for love of her. And therein lies the beginning of a tragedy that leads to the Fairy Godmother falling to earth in disgrace.
Two stories are woven together. The retelling of the events that led to Lillian's downfall and banishment to the world of the humans, and the story of her efforts in the here and now to create a new Cinderella and get her to the ball, suitably attired, in time for the prince to fall in love with her.
Turgeon sets out to imagine the experience of the fairy in the world of humans. How would it feel for an entity from a race not given to emotion to suddenly feel what humans feel - love, desire, hunger, pain? Turgeon tells us in beautiful, sensuous detail. How might it be to be lighter than air, to play among the leaves, to fly with no more effort than the raising of an eyebrow? All wonderfully imagined and faultlessly expressed.
And along the way there are some interesting meditations on seeing and identity ("I just remembered the way he saw me, the way he made me someone new..."), on social invisibility and on our own ability to change our lives for the better.
This is a cracking pageturner. I gobbled it down in a couple of days, snatching chapters wherever I could. And the ending - which I am not going to spoil - makes this more than just a sand-in-the-spine beach read...
Every morning, silver-haired Lillian opens a second-hand bookshop in Manhattan's West Village. Before the first customer opens the door, even before she has made coffee or swept out the night's dust, Lillian secretly takes out her favourite of all the ancient and precious books in her care, Cinderella. On the inside back cover, someone has written, Tous mes anciens amours vont me revenir - All my old loves shall be returned to me. Each morning, Lillian reads the inscription sketched on the onion-skin pages over and over - this is a sign to her, a message that soon she will be offered a chance to redeem herself, and return home to the world of Faerie.Disney made of Cinderella's Fairy Godmother a plump old lady in spectacles with a grey bun and a way with squirrels. Carolyn Turgeon, in this thoroughly enjoyable retelling, has portrayed her as a fairy of such beauty that in her human manifestation she has the power to make men insane for love of her. And therein lies the beginning of a tragedy that leads to the Fairy Godmother falling to earth in disgrace.
Two stories are woven together. The retelling of the events that led to Lillian's downfall and banishment to the world of the humans, and the story of her efforts in the here and now to create a new Cinderella and get her to the ball, suitably attired, in time for the prince to fall in love with her.
Turgeon sets out to imagine the experience of the fairy in the world of humans. How would it feel for an entity from a race not given to emotion to suddenly feel what humans feel - love, desire, hunger, pain? Turgeon tells us in beautiful, sensuous detail. How might it be to be lighter than air, to play among the leaves, to fly with no more effort than the raising of an eyebrow? All wonderfully imagined and faultlessly expressed.
And along the way there are some interesting meditations on seeing and identity ("I just remembered the way he saw me, the way he made me someone new..."), on social invisibility and on our own ability to change our lives for the better.
This is a cracking pageturner. I gobbled it down in a couple of days, snatching chapters wherever I could. And the ending - which I am not going to spoil - makes this more than just a sand-in-the-spine beach read...
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