Ice cubes in the fire

As you can see, I've just added a 'Currently Reading' list on the right, so that you can see... what I'm currently reading. Obviously enough. As you've probably noticed, I'm on a major biography kick right now.

I heard it from Oscar

One of life's golden rules is that if you cannot remember who originally said a quotation, attribute it to Oscar Wilde. He apparently did that himself, in a well-known (and probably completely fictional, but bear with me) exchange, he was listening to someone speak and observed to a friend,
"I wish I had said that." His friend replied, without missing a beat, "You will, Oscar, you will."

So it was a pleasure to find this New York Times article about the joys of quotation-collecting. As someone who collects quotations himself, I mentally cheered after reading the first paragraphs:

I used to wish I could live through the words of other writers. Unpleasant questions would be parried with crisp couplets and song lyrics; strong feelings and opinions would be given third-person protection. I wouldn't have to censor myself because my own prose wasn't up to the mark. Unreliable or omniscient, I would be the narrator in control.

So I kept notebooks of quotations. Lots of people do. Reading them over lets you scan your own temperament. The words of writers you admire provide a trustworthy language for your desires and for how you'll feel when life ambushes them. They relieve you from being brave enough to say what feels unsayable. Notebooks like this are an informal history of your reading."

That's all absolutely right. Go read the whole thing, and then follow Churchill's advice - "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations" - and start collecting quotations for yourself.

Random Passage

(via Kitabkhana)

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

'A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.'
-- Jane Austen, Persuasion
I heartily agree... *looking around his room, shaking his head...*

The King is Dead

Bookslut pronounces the New York Times Review of Books dead. Sadly, I think she may be right.

This is what happens when people who don't read control book reviews. Nonfiction is easy to review. Books that are all plot are easy to review. It's just laziness mixed with an obvious contempt for literature.

Damn right, too...

Despite being a literature-lover, maybe even a literature-obsessive, I didn't watch any of the BBC's recent Big Read programs, which set out to identify the nation's favourite books. So it was nice to read Zoe William's latest piece in the Guardian, condemning, in no uncertain terms, the series.

It's because there's nothing more embarrassing in this cultural landscape than sounding like you think you're an intellectual. This crime is so shameful that there aren't even words to describe it, apart from "pretentious" and "ponce" - the second functioning as so many different and unconnected insults that it's basically unusable.

The appreciation of highbrow literature is seen as synonymous with self-regard, so that a love of the lowbrow is less embarrassing; walking through Trafalgar Square naked singing Chris de Burgh would be less embarrassing. And nothing vents this anti-intellectualism like this kind of questionnaire, which forces the issue so finally, with the open threat of parading about whatever information you give it.

The Big Read pretended to be a celebration of literature, but it's actually a celebration of the kind of curtain-twitching Englishness that makes literature think it's too good for the likes of us, and it should go and live in France.

I feel better now.

S.C.C.R.L.

The whole editing-the-school-newspaper thing is /such/ a drag, but one nice thing it has forced me to do is to recommend some recently-published books for the Christmas perusal of my student contemporaries. I thought you lot might enjoy it too, so, with no further ado, here is...

Seb's Clever Christmas Reading List

That sound is IDS hitting his head against a brick wall. Repeatedly.

The Guardian's weekly political email, the Backbencher is running a competition to win a copy of new writer and part-time Leader of the Opposition Iain Duncan Smith's first book. All you have to do is write what you imagine should be the first paragraph of this novel, using the publisher's blurb as a guide. As this is all too priceless for words, I'll print it here in its entirety:

John Grande, a struggling London art dealer, is thrown what he thinks is a lifeline when he is given the opportunity of handling a collection of rare masters, housed in a villa above the cliffs of Positano in Italy. There, on the beach, he briefly encounters Laura Buckley, the glamorous producer of New York's most prestigious TV news programme. Neither could know that their lives were to become linked in a terrifying web of intrigue and deceit. Set on both sides of the Atlantic, Iain Duncan Smith's debut novel is an ingenious fast-paced thriller with an intriguing cast of characters reaching the highest level of office. All are being controlled and manipulated by a powerful, evil man seeking revenge for incidents reaching back to World War Two, involving art thefts, possible Nazi collaboration and murder ... his actions prove to be explosive.

I'll post my efforts here when I'm done.

Oh, and for extra kudos, underline every cliché in the passage above.