When men piss me off with their art

This is a ranty post. It's also not entirely serious, but it is a little bit serious, because the things I mention really did/do annoy me, though probably not all to the degree I'm presenting them here. I'm exaggerating a little to make my point.  It's just for fun :)

When men piss me off with their art

You won't get any argument from me that most great artists are men. You will get an argument from me if you try and say that's because men are better than women at art, but that's another story.

(The pram in the hall - I'm just saying).

Anyway, as there is so much great art, high and low, produced by so many talented men, I have been a big fan of a number of talented men all my life. And when you're a huge fan of someone with huge talent, it is easy to assume that that person is also a wonderful human being who you would personally like and admire in the flesh, and that they generally see the world the same way you do, because after all, don't you both agree on what makes awesome art??

So it is a shock when these artists disappoint you. You might find out they might not be nice people (Terence Howard - you disappointed me greatly, sir). Or, as is equally jarring, an artist you love suddenly produces something that pisses you off!

Gordon Lightfoot

I LOVE Gordon Lightfoot. If there is a better slow sultry country song than Sundown then I haven't heard it. I love Early Morning Rain, If You Could Read My Mind, Carefree Highway....

Carefree Highway. I do love it, but it also never fails to piss me off a little. Take a listen:

Carefree highway, got to see you my old friend
Carefree highway, you've seen better days
Got the morning after blues, from my head down to my shoes
Carefree highway, let me slip away, slip away on you

What's it about? A guy who is down on his luck, lost (possibly because his girlfriend left him, or perhaps that was some time ago), not knowing what to do. And what does he do? Takes off. Hits the highway, as he's done before. Sure, run away from your problems! It's not like anyone else ever has the same impulse, is it? Nice to be able to just throw everything away, pack your bag and take off when things get hard!

In my even less charitable moments, I think, what a GUY thing to do!  A bit like:

Bruce Springsteen

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never came back...

Paul Theroux

For years, Paul Theroux was my favourite writer. I read most of his books in my teens and early twenties, and I didn't mind that he was arrogant and grumpy. At least not until The Happy Isles of Oceania, when he was finally too grumpy even for me. Plus I was a bit offended when he referred to a bloody sanitary pad on a beach as "that disgusting thing" - I mean sure, it was disgusting that it was there on a beach, I get it - but there was something about the way he phrased it that was a bit... anti-women? It seemed?

It may well be wrong or unfair, but sometimes it feels like you read something that shows a true glimpse of the writer's feelings or character.

Here's the main thing I remember, from all my hours and hours of reading Paul Theroux. Hours and hours, and books and books, and this is what has stuck with me:

This is from My Other Life, which was a weird experiment that annoyed me a bit in itself, even while it was a great read. There is a chapter where Paul Theroux (or possibly a fictional character! He won't say which!) has invited people for dinner and is forced to cook and organise everything himself because his wife, tired from her day at work and under some kind of unnamed stress, is angry with him and refuses to help with any of it, saying repeatedly "It's your dinner."

The thing is, even young as I was when I read this, and even being a massive Paul Theroux fan, I totally got his wife's point of view in this, without any more context from Paul Theroux. In this one incident, in which he imagines he portrays himself as the injured party, he instead unwittingly outs himself as a probable bastard who routinely expected a lot from his wife with little reciprocation or notice. She was busy from work, tired and stressed out, and was angry at him for a lifetime of precisely this kind of shit. A lifetime of watching him swan off to travel and write memoirs which included boastful hints of affairs or at least flirtations, and her at home to raise the kids plus keep her own career going, and then also have to entertain his last-minute mid-week dinner guests when he was back home?

Fuck off Paul, it's your dinner!

AND WHAT'S MORE: After enduring the unreasonable and unfathomable reaction from his wife, Paul Theroux (or, okay, the fictional character), happily and competently makes the dinner. He prepares a pot of curry on the stove - taking care to describe the deft and relaxed way in which he prepares it, as counterpoint to his wife's unreasonable stress - then ducks out to the shops to buy whiskey for his guests while it cooks, because his wife wouldn't go and get it.  As he walks, he passes the local pub and "wished that I could be sitting there irresponsibly reading the evening paper over a pint of draft Guinness."

Oh. My. God. I do believe this is the part that actually irritated me the most. This whole section is meant to convey how relaxed and competent he is in the kitchen and at life, but in that one sentence he conveys his sudden pique at having to do all this himself when he really, obviously, didn't think he should have to.  What an asshole.

Cat Stevens

As a teenager I discovered my parents' Cat Stevens albums, and fell for them hard. I LOVED Cat Stevens. I taped Teaser and the Firecat and Tea for the Tillerman and listened to them for years. I loved the beautiful melody in the song Wild World but it also has always pissed me off.  As a kid I had been confused by the way men seemed to sing romantic songs to girl-children ("little girl"). It took me ages to understand that the "little girls" in songs were actually grown-up girlfriends. As I got older it just started to really annoy me. I didn't know the word "infantilising" but I knew that's what it was. It was always either really patronising or really creepy and sometimes, as in Wild World, it managed to be both.

In Wild World, the singer's character is upset that his girlfriend is leaving him, and he is begging her to reconsider. We all have contradictory feelings in anger and the song is well written: the character veers between grief, despair, concern for his girlfriend and flashes of anger ("I hope you have a lot of nice things to wear"). But it is super patronising, and gives the girlfriend no credit for having any intelligence at all. It refuses to believe she has any good reason for leaving him. I mean I know it's just a "story", in character, and it's about feelings, but it just always really irked me. It is absolute proof that the girlfriend was making the right decision. You run far, girl, and don't look back!


You know I've seen a lot of what the world can do
And it's breakin' my heart in two
Because I never wanna see you sad, girl
Don't be a bad girl
But if you wanna leave, take good care
I hope you make a lot of nice friends out there
But just remember there's a lot of bad and beware

Yeah.... see ya!



And finally...

Jim Carrey

While I was looking for an image I could use for this post using search terms "angry woman" I came across this Jim Carrey quote/meme, and it pissed me off!

StatusMind

A Walk in the Woods is going to be a movie!

Yay! I can't wait for this. My favourite book in the world, A Walk in the Woods, is being made into a movie, which is awesome, and it's starring Robert Redford which is even more awesome (two things I love in one thing!)

The reason I love this book is it has everything. It's a story of an unlikely adventure; of friendship; loyalty to friends and how friends can annoy and betray each other; endurance; changing plans and letting things go; overcoming obstacles; surprising yourself; and doing something hard and rewarding. It's also a love letter to the North American wilderness and to the simple side of life.

It's different to Bill Bryson's other books. I've enjoyed the others too, but this one has depth and meaning beyond the travel yarn premise, and it weaves in the history, ecology and cultural meaning of the North American wilderness as it goes.

In the book (and real life), Bill Bryson and his friend were in their mid-forties and unfit when they attempted to hike the Appalachian Trail. Personal growth, shock, tears and hilarity ensue.

In the movie, Robert Redford stars as Bryson (I bet Bill Bryson never imagined that while he was walking the trail), and Nick Nolte as his friend Stephen Katz. They are both a fair bit older than Bryson was, but the premise is the same.

Here is the trailer:

And apparently, the movie also has bears. Plus Kristen Schaal who I can only assume will be playing the strange and annoying hiker Mary-Ellen, because she would be perfect as her.

I plan to see this movie as soon as it comes out.

What's your favourite book to movie adaptation? 

Alternative Medicine

Last year I read the fantastic 'Trick or Treatment', by doctor and researcher Edzard Ernst and science writer Simon Singh. It is a scientific examination of alternative medicine. It does not debunk all alternative medicine - indeed some are shown to be (moderately) effective. Rather it is an examination of alternative therapies with evidence for and against, and some surprising results.

In recent years we have thankfully seen a resurgence in respect for science and more questioning and rejection of some of the more outlandish beliefs that have been popular for years. The social acceptance of atheism and the explosion in popular science writing online and in magazines and best-selling books have all been part of this.

But there has also been an impact the other way. The more strident the science fans and atheists become, the more many people are irked and even suspicious. Perhaps it makes more people cling to 'alternative' worldviews, seeing the scientists and writers as part of a bullying conspiracy.

I am angered by anti-vaccination groups and I struggle to empathise with and understand parents who don't vaccinate - but then I remember my own scepticism (due to lack of knowledge) when an anti-swine flu vaccine was developed so quickly, and when some batches of seasonal flu vaccine created adverse reactions in young children in 2010 (the problem was limited to a couple of bad batches and was not due to the vaccine itself, which is safe).

I thoroughly reject astrology, reiki, therapeutic touch and homeopathy, but I have been open minded (to some degree) on chiropractic, acupuncture and reflexology, as these at least seem to have some level of biological plausibility.

Chiropractic 

I saw a chiropractor fix my husband when his back went out some years ago. He woke up with his back having spasmed and 'stuck' and he was white and almost vomiting from pain. At that time I didn't realize chiropractic was alternative medicine. I thought it was a medical specialty, or an accepted therapy like physiotherapy. So I took him to a chiropractor. She showed me how he was all seized up on one side of his back, manipulated him a little, and he was fixed.

Of course I am sure a physiotherapist could have achieved the same result. But the chiropractor was still effective.

However, chiropractic for anything other than muscular-skeletal pain is completely implausible.
When my kids were babies in 2006 it became popular to take babies to chiropractors for 'colic'. I was appalled and amazed that anyone would take a baby to have its spine manipulated, or that any ethical practitioner would do such a thing, for a therapy that makes no sense at all.

Homeopathy

When M had horrible reflux and screamed in pain, before the problem was diagnosed I bought a 'natural' medicine for 'colic' from a pharmacist. Only when I examined the bottle at home did I realise, amazed, that this popular medicine sold by a professional chemist was in fact a homeopathic waste of time and money.  I tried it, but it did nothing, of course.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture and reflexology have always made sense to me for the purposes of pain relief and nerve-related problems, because we know nerves are connected. You know that thing where you scratch your leg and feel a twinge somewhere else?

But acupuncture for weight loss, infertility, quitting smoking or anything else makes no sense at all.

In fact, the authors of 'Trick or Treatment' show how neither therapy is that effective, despite seeming plausible. Acupuncture seems to make sense because of its seeming relation to the nervous system, and this is how I had assumed it worked. But in fact the 'meridians' used by acupuncturists bear no relation to the actual nervous system, and needles are only inserted under the skin, not in nerve points. This was a surprise to me and I was a bit sad to read all this about acupuncture. The ideas of ancient Chinese wisdom and 4000 years of history are so nice it is hard to give them up.

Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks) 

Reiki

Reiki and therapeutic touch were debunked by a 12-year-old for an American school science fair project some years ago.

I have a friend who practices reiki, and without really discussing it we agree to disagree on such therapies. What I can say is my friend is a caring, empathetic and ethical person who does truly help people. She is gifted and intuitive in her reading of people and their ailments, and she never professes to be able to fix anything outside of her remit. She is also a qualified reflexologist and masseuse, and I can attest from experience she is very good at these therapies.

The allure of alternative medicine = the limitations of conventional medicine

The authors of 'Trick or Treatment' paint a very good picture of the allure of alternative therapies. Conventional doctors are often busy and not always good at listening, the appointments are only 15 minutes and specialists can be brusque and have limited knowledge outside their specialties. In contrast a homeopath, naturopath or hypnotherapist will spend much more time with the patient, listen empathetically, and will prescribe a holistic treatment specifically tailored for that person. If nothing else, the placebo effect is triggered and the patient also feels well looked after.


A couple of years ago my father found himself with severe, ongoing back pain. He already has a terminal illness and has had periods of pain, so his doctors - even his very good specialist - were somewhat dismissive. I do believe due to his age and underlying illness, his doctors did not give the same consideration to his pain that they would have given a younger, healthy patient. His pain was chronic. It altered his voice and his personality and often he could barely move.

I kept telling him he should ask for an x-ray. I thought he might have a slipped disc. He asked his doctor who said no, it was just muscular. I couldn't believe it. For the next few months every time I spoke to my dad I told him he needed an x-ray.

Who finally raised the alarm (apart from me)?  An acupuncturist. She was feeling around his back and told him he had something strange sticking out of his spine, and said he needed an x-ray.  He told his doctor who finally ordered an x-ray, and the problem was diagnosed: a large tumor on the spine that needed major surgery and months of physiotherapy afterward.

In this case, although acupuncture itself was no help, the acupuncturist certainly was.

Why do we need stories that ask why do we need scary stories?

The feature article in the 'Life and Style' section of the paper today was this:

Be afraid.... The enduring power of ghost stories.

THE HAUNTING From ancient tales of mythical creatures to the unspeakable crimes of modern cinema, the ghost story holds us in thrall.In this spectral world where sorrow dwells, why are we unable to look away?

I love scary stories and I love anthropology, cultural history and mythology, so hooray, even though I think this topic has been well and truly covered. It's actually a promotion for new Australian film The Darkside, but still, I feel like this is the fifth article I have read in the last couple of years asking "why do people like scary stories?"

Do a Google search for "why do people like scary stories" and most of these articles will come up, along with a good bunch of blogs and forums answering the same question.

I don't actually think it's that mysterious, is it?  Stephen King answered the question in On Writing, and all these articles, blogs and forum posts answer it too.

People like (or are drawn to) scary stories because:

• they are cathartic, allowing us to feel and release pent-up tension and fear
• they help us manage our fears of the unknown and death
• they allow us to rehearse scary situations
• they provide the adrenaline rush of the 'fight or flight' response which we need to keep us safe
• this adrenaline rush, as a by-product, provides a thrill which is (kind of) pleasurable
• or, encapsulating all of these: as Older Single Mum commenting on this post of mine so succinctly said, they "still the mind".

New Scientist, in its recent Night issue, had a great article called The night: Things that go bump... which says the paralysing terror we feel at noises in the night (and during horror stories) is our animalistic fear of predation, of being hunted and eaten.  That gives me a shiver just re-reading it (and reminds me how horribly stressful the life of many animals must be).

So that's pretty well explained, from my point of view.

The Antidote

I've just started reading The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman. Mr Burkeman writes a column for The Guardian called This Column Will Change Your Life, which is one of my favourite reads.

In one of those columns he recently said: "Happiness is reality minus expectations."

There's been a bit of resistance to the "pursuit of happiness"/positive thinking paradigms in recent years, with books such as The Happiness Trap reminding us that trying to be happy seldom makes us happy and studies demonstrating the value of pessimism.  Work-related articles on the internet are finally starting to look beyond the whole "follow your bliss" theme we've been fed for some time. The only self-help book that I like, Maurice Seligman's Learned Optimism, espouses realistic strategies using cognitive behavioural therapy to combat depression and anxiety, and rejects the more common positive affirmations and mantras that tend to irk people like me.

I'm less than halfway through The Antidote, but I like it a lot.


Here are some excerpts that grabbed me:

That we yearn for neat, book-sized solutions to the problem of being human is understandable, but strip away the packaging, and you'll find that the messages of such works are frequently banal.

There are good reasons to believe that the whole notion of 'seeking happiness' is flawed to begin with. For one thing, who says happiness is a valid goal in the first place? Religions have never placed much explicit emphasis on it, at least as far as this world is concerned,; philosophers have certainly not been unanimous in endorsing it, either. And any evolutionary psychologist will tell you that evolution has little interest in you being happy.

This last reminded me of what a psychologist told me, when I told her about the anxiety I felt every day when my children were little, terrified something bad would happen to them; how I couldn't watch them play in the park without visualizing them falling off things. I was not terrified all the time, and I didn't stop them doing normal things, but I would have these constant intrusive visualizations and then feel annoyed with myself, or anxious. While I expected her to counsel me on how not to worry, she told me instead that my worrying was what was keeping my children safe. "Your brain is not interested in keeping you relaxed or making you happy," she said. Once I accepted that this worrying was there to stay, I was able to accept it.


On positive thinking:

...once you have resolved to embrace the ideology of positive thinking, you will find a way to interpret virtually any eventuality as a justification for thinking positively. You need never spend any time considering how your actions might go wrong.

And when bad things happen ("and such things will happen"):

Trying to see things in an exclusively positive light is an attitude that requires constant, effortful replenishment. Should your efforts falter, or prove insufficient...you'll sink back down into - possibly deeper - gloom.  

On 'positive visualization' as a way to achieve goals (a la The Secret):

...focusing on the outcome you desire may actually sabotage your efforts to achieve it.

...as the brain "subconsciously [confuses] visualising success with having already achieved it."


On outcomes:

[W]e habitually act as if our control over the world were much greater than it really is. Even such personal matters as our health, our finances, and our reputations are ultimately beyond our control

I think when it comes down to it, almost every philosophy we espouse is a way of convincing ourselves we can control what happens to us. We can do some things of course, and there's no benefit in being totally pessimistic and defeatist - but so, so much of what happens to us is down to luck.

That's no justification for inaction, just a way of looking at things and not shrinking from the bad:

'The cucumber is bitter? Put it down,' Marcus [Aurelius] advises. 'There are brambles in the path? Step to one side. That is enough, without also asking: "How did these things come into the world at all?"'

Of course, these philosophies are all easy from our part of the world, and when we're talking about the usual gamut of everyday trials and losses.   There are few among us who cannot ask "WHY?" when bad things happen. But I'm not a person who can totally embrace "positive thinking" and the type of philosophy this book promotes is indeed, for me, a good antidote.

What do you think?

Invisible Kids

My current favourite reading genre is young adult supernatural or suspense (no, not the kind involving romance with vampires).

I just finished a lovely book called 'How to be Invisible' by Tim Lott.  (The Guardian has a charming review written by a young reader here).

The protagonist is an intellectually gifted loner whose parents have recently uprooted him from his home and friends to a village and school he doesn't like, where he has no friends. Within the first chapter the author deftly sets the scene with the boy Strato, his bully tormentor at school, his fighting parents and the strangeness of his new environment. Then it goes straight into the story, which is a good one.



Via a mysterious book from a mysterious bookshop presided over by a mysterious bird which may or may not be able to talk, Strato becomes the owner of a book that enables him to become invisible. He uses this (temporary) power to learn the truth about his bully, his parents and life as a grown-up, and he becomes stronger and makes some friends along the way.

There's an interesting scene in the book where Strato's teacher Dr Obejande tells him:

"Some people are natural victims because they indulge in self-pity, and compensate for their lack of popularity by imagining that they are superior to others. You are not superior to others and you are not inferior. You are just a boy, like any other. Behave like one, and you will find that you will be respected, and, in the long run, liked - or if not liked, then at least accepted by your peers."

I'm not sure that's correct advice for every loner kid out there, but it was right for Strato in this book.

This book got me thinking about "the invisible kids" at school. When I was a kid I wasn't invisible, but I was a nerd and I was shy. I always had friends and I told by a couple of teachers I was "respected by my peers", which always surprised me because I never saw any evidence of it. I was bullied to the "usual" degree, which is to say a couple of kids made me miserable for awhile, but it wasn't on a big scale and didn't last long.

As a bit of an outsider myself, I always empathized with the "invisible" kids. At primary school I befriended a girl who was reviled and bullied by everyone, and she was grateful for awhile and then turned on me spectacularly for reasons I didn't fully understand, but I know I wasn't the best of friends to her really. In high school I remember hanging out in the library with friends one lunchtime and a girl who sat and read in there alone every day listened to us and smiled at our jokes. I turned and smiled to her often as I felt sorry for her and I wanted to be kind, but - to my shame - I didn't invite her to join us. I remember wanting to, but not being sure how to do it (I was shy myself - and worried I would seem very uncool if I said "do you want to join us?").

School always had at least one loner kid who seemed pretty miserable. Some loner kids were probably not miserable, but even loners need friends.

Childhood, or specifically school, is so hard. We tend to forget how hard and awful it can be.

Did you know any invisible kids at school? Were you one of them?

The Big Book Clean Out

I have always loved books, and I have always owned heaps of them. Until recently, I had four bookcases, each full, plus piles of books on my bedside table, floors and on top of one of the bookcases.  But this year I wanted to de-clutter a little, and I decided there was no sense keeping all of these books.

It wasn't easy to cull, because I had already been culling my books regularly. I only keep the ones I really like, you see - I had already given away a lot of other books over the years.

However, I did it. I got rid of most of the piles, and an entire bookcase. The lounge is a little less cluttered, and I turned my small bookcase into a case of shared books for the kids: classics, new books, books for kids, books for tweens and young adults. They have their own bookcases in their rooms, but this is like an extra library that they can dip into anytime they like.

I replaced some grand old books I'd had lying around, into their rightful place on the bookcases. I even had room for photo albums and a couple of boxes on the bottom shelf of my main bookcase.

Here's a scene from mid-way through the process, while I sorted books to keep from books to give away:

The kids' bookshelf starts to take shape:

At the end of it, I was reduced to 3 single-layer stacked bookcases, and one modest pile on the bedside table.  I filled 4 green bags and a plastic tub with books I know I don't need to keep.

And what did I do with all of those books?

They're still sitting in their tub and green bags in the garage. It's been four months now.

Do you cull books? Is it hard?

The Book Meme

I got this one from The Plastic Mancunian and Princess Pandora who blogged it last month. Talk about my favourite books? Sure!

1. Favourite childhood book?

My first truly beloved book was a Little Golden Book called The Color Kittens. I lost my childhood copy so bought another when I was in my twenties and I still have it.

Then Enid Blyton EVERYTHING but especially the Faraway Tree books, the Naughtiest Girl in the School books and the Famous Five books, of which I read all but two.

2. What are you reading right now?

I’m currently reading:

Remember When? Scientific American e-book on memory

11.22.63 by Stephen King

3. What books do you have on request at the library?

None. I go to the library but rarely borrow books these days. 

4. Bad book habit?

Buying more than I read.  I finally managed to stop buying paper books that stack up next to my bed, but am now doing the same with e-books. So many on my Kindle I still haven’t started, or started but haven’t got back to. Somehow it’s easy to get distracted from Kindle books and forget you have them.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library?

Nothing. See the answer to question 3.

6. Do you have an e-reader?

I have a Kindle and love it; I can read on the Kindle, or on my Kindle app on my phone.  Brilliant. 

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once?

I always have 2 books on the go, though when I get into a really good book I can’t put it down and the second one gets left.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog?

Yes, though I’m not sure if it’s blogging or Twitter that’s had the most impact. I read a lot online now, especially Slate, Rolling Stone and links via Twitter, plus blogs. Book reading has definitely gone down as a result. 

9. Least favourite book you read this year (so far?)

Hmm. Probably have to say I haven’t been able to get into Gone Girl, though I will give it another shot.

10. Favourite book you've read this year?

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone?

Not often – there’s little enough time to read as it is. I have no patience anymore to read things that don’t interest me.

12. What is your reading comfort zone?

These days mostly non-fiction: pop science on stuff like economics, weather, probability, psychology, etc.  I also love to re-read favourite fiction. 

13. Can you read on the bus?

Yes, though it gives me motion sickness. Trains are better for reading.

14. Favourite place to read?

In bed.

15. What is your policy on book lending?

I’ll admit I don’t like doing it much, if it’s a favourite book. These days with most on the Kindle I can’t and that’s frustrating when you just want to shove a great book at someone and say “Read this!”

16. Do you ever dog-ear books?

Yes, and write notes in margins or underline good bits. 

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books?

Ah, I skipped ahead on the questions. Yes.

18. Not even with text books?

Did I stutter? YES. ESPECIALLY in text books.

19. What is your favourite language to read in?

Wow, what a question. Pretentious, moi?  I have in the past been fairly fluent in French and Spanish, but I didn't enjoy the few times I tried to read novels or poems in those languages. Reading is a whole other level of fluency. I seldom believe people who say they read novels in other languages.  I have read one short novel in Greek and it was dire, but no more difficult to read than a magazine.

So, yeah – definitely English!

20. What makes you love a book?

Good story or narrative, good pace, believable characters and a good way with language helps. But not too stylised or inventive – that can annoy me. Oh, and with a very small number of noble exceptions (Moby Dick, A Suitable Boy), it should NOT be a tome. A short book is a good book.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book?

I will steal The Plastic Mancunian’s answer for this one: I will recommend a book if I am disappointed that I have finished it.

Or, if it stays in my head and I continue to obsess over it after I’ve finished it.

22. Favourite genre?

Suspense.

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?)

There is no genre I don’t read "but wish I did". I rarely read romance or historical fiction.

24. Favourite biography?

Recollections of a Bleeding Heart by Don Watson, or Eleni by Nicholas Gage.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book?

Yes, a couple. Most of them just annoy me but a couple have had a big impact on me. Awakening Intuition by Mona Lisa Schwartz, although she’s probably a dangerous crackpot, impressed me at the time (some years ago). I’ve since realised I no longer believe some of it but still. More recently, Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman was transformative for me. 

26. Favourite cookbook?

My favourite cookbook is probably Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen. If you ignore the annoyingly perfect happy family pictures throughout, it’s got great recipes and is a nice read.

27. Most inspirational book you've read this year (fiction or non-fiction)?

Probably Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. Yeah introverts!

28. Favourite reading snack?

I don’t snack in bed!

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience.

Same as The Plastic Mancunian: I succumbed to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I thought it was average and I thought the answers to the codes were ridiculously silly and simple – I was expecting something smarter.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book?

About half the time. Or in the case of Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography, 100% of the time.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews?

Bad reviews are part of what authors can expect for publishing a book. The only thing I don’t like is when reviewers are snobby or closed-minded about an author and don’t review their books fairly. For example, The Dead Zone by Stephen King and Shutter Island by Denis Lehane are very good books different from the author's usual genre, but probably not appreciated by most reviewers because of who wrote them.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you choose?

Russian, just to be super impressive. No, Mandarin!

33. Most intimidating book you've ever read?

Not sure about that. Maybe Jane Eyre when I was in high school, because it seemed impenetrable to me at the start, though I really liked it by the time I had finished it.

34. Most intimidating book you're too nervous to begin?

It’s not that I’m nervous, but for some reason I keep not starting Shantaram. I don’t know why because I started it years ago and liked it but never got going on it. I keep wanting to try again but I just never do.

35. Favourite poet?

Easy: Dorothy Porter. 

36. How many books do you usually have checked out of the library at any given time?

8-10 children’s books.

37. How often have you returned a book to the library unread?

About half the time.

38. Favourite fictional character?

If I was still a kid I’d probably say George from the Famous Five books, or Trixie Belden. I also liked Hermoine from the Harry Potter books. For grown-up characters, maybe Yossarian from Catch-22.

39. Favourite fictional villain?

I can’t think of a favourite. I Googled some ‘top 30 villains of literature’ kind of lists but am still stumped for a “favourite”. I always felt sympathy for Madame Bovary.  Or maybe Heathcliffe from Wuthering Heights?

40. Books you're most likely to bring on vacation?

I’ll load something new on the Kindle, and bring a couple of things I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t got to.

41. The longest you've gone without reading.

Maybe half a day??

42. Name a book that you could/would not finish.

The last two Twilight books. Just awful. (You know, I actually thought the first one was not bad, and the second one was very good. They are for teens, of course they are angsty and over-dramatic).

43. What distracts you easily when you're reading?

Once again, I agree with The Plastic Mancunian here: Music. Music and reading do not go together.

44. Favourite film adaptation of a novel?

Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men was great on film. And I think The Talented Mr Ripley was better than the book.

45. Most disappointing film adaptation?

I reckon the second Charlie and the Chocolate Factory film with Johnny Depp was a weird waste of time.

46. The most money I've ever spent in the bookstore at one time?

Back when I was earning good money and was less responsible, probably $150.

47. How often do you skim a book before reading it?

I always read the first page before I buy it, and occasionally might check out a few more pages, but it’s hard to do that without ruining the story.

48. What would cause you to stop reading a book half-way through?

Starting a better book.

49. Do you like to keep your books organised?

Not overly, but I organise them a bit by genre on my Kindle; the paper ones are mostly just stacked by similar size on the bookshelf.

50. Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you've read them?

I keep the ones I loved, I give away everything else.

51. Are there any books you've been avoiding?

I have a book I bought years ago called Orphans of the Empire, which is the story of orphan children sent to Australia from England in the first half of the twentieth century. I feel guilty I still haven’t read it – and I want to read it – but I just know it’s going to be so damn unbearable. 

And The Hunger Games. I bought it last year and want to read it, but am scared it will be traumatic!

52. Name a book that made you angry.

The First Stone, by Helen Garner. I was the same age as the young women she was complaining about, and although she is a beautiful writer, she just showed with this book that she had no understanding of either young feminists or sexual harassment.

53. A book you didn't expect to like but did?

One Good Turn, by Kate Atkinson. Just a crime paperback that was sitting in the lobby of the guesthouse we stayed in on holiday last year, but I really enjoyed it. 

54. A book that you expected to like but didn't?

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. He’s a great writer but I just found this book awful and the plot unbelievable.

55. Favourite guilt-free, pleasure reading?

I loved all the Harry Potter books; any of the slimmer volumes by Stephen King; Bill Bryson.

My favourite book of all time is Bill Bryson’s A Walk In The Woods. I read it whenever I want some comfort-reading, and it is often on my bedside table.

BONUS SECTION: My favourite books

Here in no particular order other than how they popped into my head, are my favourite books:

Children’s Books:

Eric Carle, The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Margaret Wise Brown, The Color Kittens

A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six

Enid Blyton, Five on Kirrin Island Again

Theo LeSieg, I Wish That I Had Duck Feet; Come Over to My House

T Ernesto Bethancourt, Doris Fein Super Spy; Doris Fein Quartz Boyar

Fiction:

R.K. Narayan, The Man-Eater of Malgudi

Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

Graham Greene, The Honorary Consul

Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast; Doctor Slaughter

E. Annie Proulx, The Shipping News; Bad Dirt

Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses, The Crossing

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love In the Time of Cholera

Thornton Wilder, The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Pierre Boulle, The Bridge on the River Kwai

Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express

Colm Toibin, Brooklyn

Ian McEwan, The Innocent

Kimberly Kafka, True North

Thea Astley, Reaching Tin River

Mary Stewart, Wildfire at Midnight; My Brother Michael

George Orwell, Animal Farm

Denis Lehane, Shutter Island

Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong; Charlotte Grey

John Le Carre, The Little Drummer Girl; The Tailor of Panama

Andre Dubois III, House of Sand and Fog

Meg Cabot, Size Doesn’t Matter

Stephen King, The Dead Zone

Anais Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Patrick Suskind, Perfume

Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull  

Aesop’s Fables

The Arabian Nights Tales

Theucydides, The Pelopponesian War

Homer, The Odyssey

Dorothy Porter, Akhenaten

Memoir/Autobiography:

Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods

Joy Adamson, Born Free

James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small

Robert Drew, The Shark Net

Gillian Bouras, A Foreign Wife

Hunter S Thomson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes

Frank Abagnale, Catch Me If You Can

Biography:

Nicholas Gage, Eleni; Greek Fire

Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Ark

Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth I

Non-Fiction:

Steven Levitt and Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics

Martin Seligman, Learned Optimism

Jon Ronson, The Men Who Stare at Goats

Malcolm Gladwell, Blink

Stephen Pinker, The Language Instinct

Germaine Greer, The Whole Woman

Ian Wilson, Jesus: The Evidence

Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, & Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm

Stephen King, On Writing

Lynne Kelly, The Skeptic’s Guide to the Paranormal

Simone De Beauvoir, The Second Sex

Susan Sontag, Illness As Metaphor

R Lacey, The Year 1000

Best Jokes (including one NSFW)

My daughter is currently going through an interest in jokes and pranks, and our house has been hosting joke books from the school library over the last few weeks.

Most of the jokes are terrible, but some are quite funny (and terrible).

Such as:

Little Monster: "Mum, can I eat my fries with my fingers?"

Mummy Monster: "No, you should eat them separately!"

What do you need to know to be a lion tamer?

More than the lion.

Knock knock.

Who's there?

European.

European who?

European in the bathroom and I need to use it!

What do you call a fake noodle?

An impasta.

Knock knock?

Who's there?

Euripides.

Euripides who?

Euripides pants, Eumenides pants.

A guy walks into a diner and sees a horse behind the counter. The guy can't stop staring, which prompts the horse to ask, "What's wrong, you've never seen a horse serving coffee before?"

"It's not that," said the guy. "I just never thought the bear would sell this place."

And my personal favorite:

A man went to the vet to collect his his sick dog. The vet came in carrying the dog and said, "I'm really sorry, but I'm going to have to put your dog down."

The man burst into tears. "Why?"

"Because he's too heavy."

Some of these needed some explaining to the kids, whose favorite joke at the moment is that childhood classic:

Why shouldn't you play Go Fish in the jungle?

Because it's full of cheetahs!

corny

Reading all these jokes reminded me of a couple of my favorites.


This one is on a Reddit thread What's the most intellectual joke you know?, and got quite a laugh at work. For those who work with (not in) IT:

A programmer's wife sent him to the shops with this instruction: "Get a loaf of bread, and if they have eggs, bring back a dozen."   The man came home with 12 loaves of bread. 

This one I saw on TV from a comedian who I had never thought was funny, and I laughed out loud, and then couldn't stop laughing, for two days. Warning - it is RUDE:

A man goes to his doctor for a physical.  The doctor says, "You're going to have to stop masturbating."  The man says "Why?"  The doctor says, "Because I'm trying to give you a physical."

Sorry.


And finally, the piece de resistance: here is my favorite joke, my "go-to" joke (do you have one?) for when people ask you to tell a joke. This won me a hamper in a work competition a couple of years ago, and it was apparently voted somewhere some time (where I first read it), the funniest joke ever.

It is the funniest joke ever!

A city guy went to visit his farmer friend in the country.  His friend met him at the gate and said he still had some work to do, but suggested, "Why don't you take my gun and my dogs and go hunting?"  So the city guy took his friend's rifle and whistled for the dogs, and they set off.  Five minutes later he was back.  "That was great," he said.  "Do you have any more dogs?"

Got any good jokes? Share in the comments!

The Way Things Happen

When I was a child I had a book of folk stories from around the world. My favorite story was from Mexico and was called "The Way Things Happen":

A poor young man left his village and looked for work in the city. He had no skills, so he applied for a job as a street sweeper. He was asked to write his name on an application form. "I can't write," he said, and they shooed him away. Everywhere he tried the same thing happened. Finally he stopped looking for work and sold a few tomatoes that he had brought with him from his village. With the money he made he bought some more tomatoes and sold those, and he did quite well. He continued on in this way, buying and selling tomatoes, and he continued to do well. He started to buy and sell more vegetables, and built a thriving business. Eventually, he had to open a bank account.

By this stage he was older and better dressed.  The bank staff were impressed. As the account was opened, the teller handed him a pen to sign the form. The man explained he could not write his name, and the bank teller was amazed. "But, senor," he said, "you are so rich and successful and yet you can't read or write? Imagine how successful you would be if you could!"

The man said, "If I could write my name I would be sweeping the streets out there."

And he smiled to himself at the way things happen.

My Favorite Recipe Books

I once read that the average recipe book is used for two recipes. I think that's right.
When I read that I took a good look through the shelf of recipe books I had collected over the years and gave away all the ones that I did not use, or that I only used for one recipe (I copied the recipe first).

The others I have kept, and it is now a small but honest collection.

Here are the recipe books I use the most:


Tana Ramsay's Family Kitchen
If you ignore the kind of annoying perfect-family pictures throughout, the recipes are fantastic. Good wholesome family food with lots of stews, pies, soups, sandwiches and sweets.

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You also have to ignore the title of the chapter "Cooking From the Cupboard" which is supposedly about using ingredients already in your pantry, because the Ramsay family clearly have a very different pantry to mine. Theirs is apparently always stocked with things like creme fraiche, pancetta, and fresh flat leaf parsley (rather than, say, tinned tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce and a packet of spaghetti).

My favourite recipes:

• tinned sardines with avocado on toast
• stew
• fish pie

Healthy Cooking: a Commonsense Guide

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A brilliant reference containing loads of information on nutrition plus kilojoule, carb, fat and fibre count tables. It also has general cooking tips and how-to guides at the start of each chapter.
Many recipes are classic favorites modified to be less fattening or more healthy (you can always modify them back!).

My favorite recipes:

• roasting - introductory section with lots of tips and info
• wholemeal banana bread
• fudge brownies

Elliniki Kouzina (Greek Cooking)
This is a book produced in Greece and available at all good tourist shops in the Greek Islands.  I bought it because I was learning Greek as well as to have a reference for Greek dishes. I still use it a lot.

My favorite recipes:

• stuffed green peppers and tomatoes
• stuffed zucchini with white sauce

My Greek Recipe Journal
For one eventful summer in my twenties, I worked as a cook in a restaurant in Santorini. I was lucky enough to work with a man named Mike Roussos who was not only a wonderful guy but a really good cook. He had lived for the past 20 years in Chicago and had just returned to Greece with his American family, and was adjusting to life back in his homeland. He taught me loads of dishes, including some clever shortcuts for cooking dishes in bulk and fast.
I kept this journal throughout, in a tatty exercise book spattered with oils and sauces, which I still use all the time.

My favorite recipes (thank you Mike!):

• Avgolemono (chicken egg and lemon soup)
• tomato keftedes (tomato, cheese and zucchini pancakes)
• Madeira cake
• spaghetti carbonara 
• spetsofai (spicy sausage casserole)
• moussaka

My Recipe Book
My own collection of hand-written recipes which I started in my early teens and finished in my early twenties when I first moved out of home and started cooking for real.
It has all the best of my mum's cooking, many of which are the same recipes still passed between women which turn up under different women's names in the "reader recipe" sections in women's magazines (and which probably ultimately came from some early Women's Weekly feature or the old PWMU cookbook).
It has recipes which are solidly of the 1970s like chop suey and "curry" (lamb, sultanas and curry powder). It has recipes from the years we lived in the US when I was a kid, like Club 21 Chicken Hash, Kathryn Hepburn's Brownies, Hamburger Helper, Pumpkin Pie and Pecan Pie. And it has recipes I got from flatmates and friends in my uni days, which evoke great memories of cooking back when cooking was new and fun.


My favorite recipes:

• honey orange chicken
• curry chicken 
• Club 21 Chicken Hash
• tuna casserole (with potato chips)
• chocolate fruit slice
• Devil's Chocolate Cake
• Flat Five Mince and Chickpea Curry
• Kate's apple crumble
• Jacob's sweet and sour pork
• Anatoly's chicken

Busy Woman's Quick and Easy Recipes: Make 'em Happy, Fix it Fast!

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I bought this recently at the supermarket. It has approximately one million and sixty chicken recipes, most of which use some dodgy but convenient base like French Onion Soup Mix, apricot jam or mayonnaise. All the recipes are indeed very quick and very easy. Some of them sound too weird to try (Cola Chicken), but I have had a few successes.

My favorite recipes:

• honey baked chicken
• chicken quesadillas
• deluxe dinner nachos

Australian Women's Weekly Fresh Food for Babies and Toddlers

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Brilliant during the transition to solids and toddler finger food. Still my go-to for simple plain foods friendly to fussy taste buds

My favorite recipes:

• custard
• mini beef rissoles
• broccoli and cheese frittata
• honey and soy drumsticks
• basic birthday cake recipe

What are your favorite recipe books?