Just Wondering

You suddenly discover you have the afternoon all to yourself, what do you do?

Describe your perfect bed.

Have you replaced all the incandescent light bulbs in your lamps?

Tuesday Relaxing

As you may have gathered i had a long lie-in this morning. I will not have the luxury next Tuesday as i will be doing the same shift as i did yesterday, but this time on two days,including the Monday. I have been idling the day listening to the music i bought yesterday. I also finished off another book,so i shall be reviewing that and others in another post.

Not wanting to be coped up inside i travelled over to Faversham in the afternoon to sell some unwanted paperbacks. I received nine pounds for them, and them meandered around the town buying more books. I also found some yesterday whilst i was in London and i shall post these up in another blog.

Back to the visits tomorrow and i may wander off to Margate or Hythe. I hope to do both on the same day - the bus routes this time just tends to make it an awkward route for me.I will work out a viable route though.

Recent Book Finds

As promised- these are the recent book find.

Book 79 - Angela Carter "Unicorn"

Angela Carter "Unicorn : The Poetry of Angela Carter" (Profile Books)




This beautiful hardback book is a revelation. I had no idea Angela Carter wrote poetry; nor, it seems, did a lot of people, so this collection of her poems written 1963-71 put together by Rosemary Hill is a welcome addition to Carter’s published works. Familiar themes of fairy tale shot through by violence, degradation and the banality of human behaviour make for a rich, disturbing retelling of the unicorn myth in the title poem, while the material for other poems ranges from a tale written in Middle Scots by William Dunbar to a forlorn look at modern marriage.


The second half of the book consists of a beautifully written essay by Rosemary Hill, which both illuminates the poems and brings to life the 1960s literary scene with clarity, wit and a delicious sense of humour. Her analysis of how the personal pronouncements of the famous Angry Young Men of the late 1950s ‘ran the gamut of bad temper from righteous anger to peevishness’ made me chortle, as did her remark that ‘the emergence of a remarkable number of talented young women writers...made some of the Angry Young Men simply furious.’

So, if you love poetry and / or a fan of this novelist then you must grab a copy down your local bookstore. I highly recommend this.

Book 80 - Michael Smith "Station X"

Michael Smith "Station X : The Codebreakers of Bletchley Park" (Channel 4 Books)





A gripping but very readable introduction to the rarefied secret world of the codebreakers of Bletchley Park and their incredibly important work.

This very personal narrative of the people and events of that amazing operation was a great look at both the scale of the challenge and the powerful role that literally thousands of people made in this critical operation that may well have affected the outcome of the war. At the very least, Bletchley shorted the war hugely, and the team and the organization -- oh so terribly British!

A Bibliophile

I love the smell of books. I enjoy putting my nose close up to a new book and inhale its enervating freshness.Mind you,i do not forfeit the displeasure from a musty old tome.They have a different scent, a musky hue surfeit with a lived in presence of previous readers,and souls entrapped in the discoloured fragile paper entombed within the covers.
So the perspicuity of the matter is that i am a devoted book lover. I think i would class myself as a lover,a bibliophile, but not an obsessive collector or hoarder like some i know on these hallowed pages of LJ - one particular individual living in West Michigan comes to mind.

No sir,i buy a book whether from thrift stores, charity shops or other sources to read them rather than file them away in some cluttered basement library.

Mind you,i sometimes despair of the lack of time i have for reading.Other commitments and other interests also vie for my attention.I can listen to music and read at the same time but not watch television shows or movies and read at the same time.Well actually i do not have a TV but use the laptop for catch up and so on. This year though i have managed to read more books and will likely achieve a hundred by the end of the year.

So, having said all that , this month as some other book bloggers have done, this is Non Fiction November ,so all my current reading this month will be non-fiction. Hence the focus will be on science, history m arts , biography and of course philosophy.

Cool Music From My Finds Yesterday.

Music form my recent finds in London -

Dave Douglas String Group - Bilbao Song

( More music here )

Enjoy.

Introducing Angela Carter

Found this via You Tube-

Introducing Angela Carter

Coltrane's Impulse Recordings

Another excellent slab of music arrived in the post today.As i have recently sold quite a bit on Discogs i treated myself to this essential set. This is all the recordings of the classic quartet they did for the Impulse record label. Eight CD's,and a 199 page booklet with many rare photos,and then folded into a metal box.



I will be enjoying this over the next few days.

John Coltrane - Crescent