My Literary Shitlist

I'm currently in the process of compiling my top 20 favourite books for this blog. I have to say I'm finding it quite hard to nail it. Simultaneously I've been listing the books which I really, really didn't like. This list has been a little easier. So, I present, my Top 8 Most Hated, Despised, Time-thieving Books List.

8) Emma by Jane Austen. Holds the dubious honour of being the book it took me longest to complete. Two whole years it took me to plod through this novel with its irritating, smug heroine.

7) One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. To be fair to Marquez I've never been the biggest fan of Magic Realism so we started off on the wrong foot-and from there we walked in opposite directions. Marquez's work reminds me of a sticky fruitcake-far too rich and cloying for my taste. I found the novel incoherent. I spent a lot of time trying to absorb and memorise the family tree at the beginning of the book. My memory is trying to insist there is a scene in which one of the characters floats off into the atmosphere with some bedsheets. Surely I've imagined that. Haven't I? Three years later I read Love in the Time of Cholera. Clearly I'm a glutton for punishment.

6) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Maybe I should have read up on American history before I started this novel. Or maybe it's just a dull novel which no amount of American history/politics knowledge could have saved for me.

5) Twelve by Nick McDonnell. Someone died maybe? Lots of drugs in the book maybe? I don't really remember. The new Catcher in the Rye some declared at the time. We'll never know because it's already out of print. Thank God.

4) The Backpacker by John Harris. Hilariously this book is kept in the travel literature section, rather than the fiction section. I'm not sure how any editor could have been fooled into believing the 'facts embellished beyond truth' in this novel. Want to read the badly-written fantasy adventures of an oversexed, overdrunk, overdrugged lad with a mental age of about 16? I didn't.

3) Faithless by Karin Slaughter. As a young, inexperienced bookseller I was given the crime section to run. Gamely, I decided to try to acquaint myself with this alien genre by reading one of the new releases. It put me off crime for years. This must be one of the most badly written books I've had the misfortune to encounter. "She opened the cupboard door and reached for her cornflakes. She poured her cornflakes into the bowl and turned around to her friend and said "x". She poured milk on her cornflakes and went to sit down" and so forth. Parts of the book are written in 'real time' as above. Perhaps she even wrote when her characters blinked. I would not have been surprised. Perhaps we'll feel more empathy for the characters if we live through the mundane, day-to-day parts of their lives? Perhaps it's just badly edited and Slaughter is a poor writer?

2) The Colour Purple by Alice Walker. I wanted to like this, I really did. No doubt the subject matter is important but I'm just not good at such heavy-handed feminism. Nor when it is so poorly written. The whole novel seemed so contrived. I liked it not.

1) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. This novel includes 2 things I simply cannot abide in novels-2d characters and American sentimentalism. Each of the 'women' plays a role in a cliched 'American Dream' family-the good one, the clever one, the naughty one etc.. They all learn their lesson and evolve to form perfectly happy families. I was almost shocked when they did away with one of the characters, but then Holloywood kills the odd hero off too to 'engage your emotions' and 'tug at the heartstrings'. Nauseating...cringing..I feel sick ...

Beannacht Lá Fhéile Pádraig

A bad back has rendered me partially immobile thus my St Patrick's Day celebrations are not what I had planned. I had, of course, arranged a wild night out involving fiddles, Guinness and Shamrocks. Instead, it will be quietly celebrated with a glass of Bailey's and some of the wonderful Irish myths in Peter Beresford Ellis's brilliant 'Celtic Myths and Legends' (which also includes Manx and Cornish myths and legends!). Note my green, woollen jumper, just to underline the tameness of my evening. Happy St Patrick's Day to all my other relations and friends of Irish heritage!!

p.s. a couple of indispensable Gaelic phrases for those of you celebrating in style tonight:

Pionta Guinness, le do thoil = a pint of Guinness, please

Tabhair 'om póg, is Éireannach mé = kiss me, I'm Irish

Lunch

I had a lovely lunch in Rochester of an egg mayonnaise sandwich, orange Tango-enjoyed with a group of poets headed by Carol Ann Duffy. Rochester is an excellent place to take a book and sit in one of the numerous little cafes

Secondhand Bookshop Acquisitions

Today I ventured into a local secondhand bookshop, dangerous territory for me. I have little willpower to resist beautiful or interesting books. I found three treasures today:

• a Latin dictionary. A Latin dictionary has been on my To Buy list for ages. This little dictionary cost just 69p. It is an old edition-but I doubt that Latin has changed that much in the last few years :D
• a Swedish grammar (99p). Old fashioned and solid. It contains lists of verb conjugations, endless pages of sentences and linguistics terminology. I like my grammar hardcore. I have little patience for the new 'soft' way of teaching grammar-I do not think it is particularly effective. Grammar can be hard and monotonous (as well as rewarding). Deal with it! I know a small handful of people who have this as their native language hence the reason for choosing this minority language over the other 20 there were on the shelf. If I'm feeling inspired, this will aid me in constructing a few clumsy sentences to litter my Swedish friends' Facebook walls.
• 501 German verbs (99p). German can be a real fiend and I will pass a few pleasant hours perusing this.

I have never understood how people can be emotionally detached enough from their books to be able to dump them at a charity shop. Still, I suppose their loss is my gain. I now have roughly a shelf of dictionaries and grammars. Joy! I won't insult geeks by accusing myself of being a geek. I'm just a complete and utter loser with an expanding dictionary collection.

A Favourite Book

From time to time, you receive a gift from someone which is so perfect, so wonderful that you wonder if the giver has somehow managed to infiltrate your mind and steal some of your very essence.

My parents had been somewhere in Kent, I can't remember where, and had obviously come across a second hand shop. My dad said he saw this old copy of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens and thought I would like it, so bought it for me. There is no printing date in the book but some internet research leads me to believe that this edition was published in 1900.

I haven't yet read the book (I have a long 'to read' list) but regardless this is one of the books most frequently pulled off the shelf and looked at, simply because it is so beautiful. When I hold it, I wonder how many people have read it, and who those people were. Given the age of the book, the people who previously held it in their hands would have experienced the Blitz, had friends or relatives who were killed in the Trenches, walked though gaslamplit smog in London. They may have read this to the sound of The Beatles or The Kinks coming from vinyl record players. Perhaps some of them read this on a 'slam door', British Rail train, on their way to work, The Smiths playing on their Walkman.

I think it is time to share some photographs of this little piece of history...

The title page

                                                             The book is beautifully illustrated

                                                          This is my favourite illustration in the novel. I love looking at the detail in their clothes.