Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Yesterday I visited the coastal town of Dover after doing a couple of Jessops visits in Canterbury. The weather, though very windy, was sunny, unlike my last visit where I got soaked by the rain.

Anyway, I picked up a few books from the British Heart Foundation shop and a Murphy Richards Healthy Eating Cooker, plus some other bric a brac stuff and some CD's going for 20 pence each!

The books are -

Howard Jacobson “The Finkler Question” (Bloomsbury)
Susanna Clarke “Jonathan Strange & Mr Morrell” (Bloomsbury)
David Pearce “The Damned United” (Faber)

These three above have also been on this year's World Book Night event.

Frank McCourt “Tis, A Memoir” (Flamingo)
Jem Roberts “The Fully Authorised History Of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue” (Arrow Books)
Zoe Heller “Everything You Know” (Penguin)

plus two volumes of Bygone Kent from January and February of 1981.

The CD's are -
Bedrich Smetana “Ma Vlast” (Classic FM)
Moloko “Things To Make And Do”Echo)
Various “Signed Sealed Delivered 3” (Virgin)
Ms. Dynamite – A Little Deeper” ((Polydor)

The last one by Ms. Dynamite is a fantastic hip hop soul classic, one which I shall be playing tracks from on my next DJ session.

Tomorrow I am off to Margate, and thus a visit to the Turner Art Gallery, and a meal out.

Monday I took a trip to Ashford to see a film at Cineworld,as it was one of my visits. The film I saw was “The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists”,the latest Aardman animation movie, the people who brought you Wallace and Gromit.

Afterwards I popped into the Ashford library for the World Book Night evening. It was nothing like the Brighton one last year. Five givers and only five books to give out from the 25 different titles given on the night. So I picked up all five they had to offer and caught the train to Maidstone to see the new library which opened on that day.

When I got to the new library in Maidstone they were about to close and I was only able to pick one other title from the list, since all the rest had gone. I must admit I felt somewhat deflated and peeved by the whole affair, and wished that I had gone to Brighton, Brighton, for many reasons, is better organised , guaranteed that you would get all the books on the list available, with readings, and an occasional author to talk to,Secondly the event in Brighton at the library there is open till ten o'clock , not closing at eight or , in the case of Maidstone, seven!

I was going to do a much more acrimonious rant but don't have the energy to do so now that my ire has been quenched by the cold light of day, and a few bevvies last night, including some whisky that,supposedly,Ali gave to Tim early evening.

Anyway,these are the books I was given last night -

Bernard Cornwell – Harlequin
Dodie Smith – I Capture The Castle
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
Stephen King – Misery
Cormac McCarthy – The Road
Bill Bryson – Notes From A Small Island

I was very happy to get the Bill Bryson book. I have already read “The Road” and the Jane Austen classic I read a long time time ago for a primer course before I studied the O.U. Arts Foundation Course many years ago. Strangely enough, I have never read any Stephen King novel, so this one will be the first.

So when World Book Night comes around next year I will definitely swan off to Brighton.

What I did find strange is why did they opt for April 23 this year, which happens to be both St. Georges Day and Shakespeare's birthday. Surely these separate events would detract from the evening, and being on a Monday rather than a Saturday.

(Actually checking back to March 5th 2011, I picked up seven books, plus three directly from the authors. These were -


“The Reluctant Fundamentalist” Mohsin Hamid
“New Selected Poems 1966 - 1987” Seamus Heaney
“The Blind Assassin” Margaret Atwood
“Beloved” Toni Morrison
“The Curious Incident of The Dog In The Night-Time” Mark Haddon
“Cloud Atlas” David Mitchell
“Agent Zigzag” Ben Macintyre


and from the authors , not WBN books,

“Master Plan” Charles Bancroft (Raptor Press)
“The Architect” Charles Bancroft (Raptor Press)
“Colonel Barker’s Monstrous Regiment” Rose Collis (Virago) )

So overall, I didn't do too bad this time around. Plus, the Charles Dickens one (A Tale of Two Cities) from this year's list I already have in hardback from a visit to Faversham recently.

I think the poor rain soaked weather made me grouchy, and that overall, it was a good day.

Just one final rant, these books once read read should be given away again free for somebody else to enjoy, but I have found them turning up in charity shops for sale! That cannot be right! It goes against the grain of the whole idea. Once I read this lot I shall be given them out to friends, leaving them in prominent places, or giving them to the gals next door. Last year they had the Ben MacIntyre book on Eddie Chapman, Agent Zigzag.

Link to my post last year -
http://davesmusictank.livejournal.com/595561.html

I just checked , World Book Night is on April 23rd, a Monday, which would be ideal for a visit to the Sussex coast on the Saturday preceding it. Once again, a time to obtain loads of free books, but more important than that, a chance to discover voices I would not have considered before. David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood being examples from the previous year in March, respectively “Cloud Atlas” and “The Blind Assassin” .

These are the 25 titles given away this year -

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Vintage)
The Player of Games by Iain M Banks (Little, Brown)
Sleepyhead by Mark Billingham (Little, Brown)
Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Transworld)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (Harper Collins)
The Take by Martina Cole (Headline)
Harlequin by Bernard Cornwell (Harper Collins)
Someone Like You by Roald Dahl (Penguin)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (Penguin)
Room by Emma Donoghue (Pan Macmillan)
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (Little, Brown)
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Faber)
Misery by Stephen King (Hodder)
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella (Transworld)
Small Island by Andrea Levy (Headline)
Let the Right One In by John Ajvde Lindqvist (Quercus)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Pan Macmillan)
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (Vintage)
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell (Headline)
The Damned Utd by David Peace (Faber)
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman (Transworld)
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff (Penguin)
Touching the Void by Joe Simpson (Vintage)
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (Vintage)
The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak (Transworld)

From that list I have already read “The Road” and part read the Bill Bryson book, and not read any of the others except for the Jane Austen one for an Open University course. The only one which does not interest me at all is the Sophie Kinsella novel.