The Christmas Gift Picker

Stuck for ideas for presents? I know, get them books! Seeing as that is not the kind of information you normally get from me (ha), you know to take it seriously and oblige.

This might help: The Vintage Book's Gift Picker.

And failing that, get them 'A Christmas Carol' (no-one can resist Tiny Tim - what a bummer that I didn't manage to get to that before Christmas. Look forward to an unseasonable review in February!) or Jilly Cooper's 'How to Survive Christmas'(I remember seeing this on my mum's bedstand when I was younger and being like 'Mum? Are you ok?')

I imagine most families fit into the mould of one or another or these.

My other contribution to Christmas this year is the addition of green to my usual red blog theme. I did doctor the Tolstoy is my Cat logo in Paint, adding a Christmas hat and some holly, but it looked so naff that I won't be uploading it here. I was also a little concerned that the logo designer, who's a friend on facebook, might see that I'd destroyed her logo with lame makeshiftness, so out of respect for her, I have abstained :)

I so wish it would snow! Snow always makes me want to take my delicious copy of Dr. Zhivago off the shelf and waft around looking pale in furs. Of course, in reality, it's exciting for a day or two, or for as long as you don't have to spend much time outdoors, and then it becomes the most annoying thing since unsliced bread. 

Some for Christmas would be nice though, wouldn't it?  





Dickens from the Start, No. 3 - The Pickwick Papers

Or, to give it its full title, 'The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club'.

This was the first book in my 'Dickens from the Start' challenge, and, well, there was a lot of it. A lot. 801 pages, to be exact, and I feel like I felt every single one.

The premise is pretty nice, if a little antiquated: a group of likely young men of a certain social standing traverse around the countryside, drinking like fishes and looking for girls and a good time. It was, of course, originally published in serialised form, with each edition as a stand alone but linked episode in the great collection of Pickwick Papers, which means that reading it as a complete collection is a bit like watching a box set of half hour episodes of a rogueish sitcom, where some storylines persist throughout (Ross and Rachel), but for the main part it is the characters repeating and then resolving mistakes (Joey and his dating, Chandler and the awkwardness) that make up the main narrative thrust. Pickwick's most capital chaps, Augustus Snodgrass, Tracy Tupman and Nathaniel Winkle, are a kind of amalgous mass of good humour and carpe diem recklessness, indistinguishable from each other as far as I could ascertain, but rather fond of the odd comely servant or marriagable middle-aged widow. There's also a lot of ghosts, goblins and ghouls, as well as a talking chair who dispenses romantic advice:

'Tom gazed at the chair; and, suddenly as he looked at it, a most extraordinary change seemed to come over it. The carving of the back gradually assumed the lineaments and expression of an old shrivelled human face; the damask cushions became an antique, flapped waistcoat; the round knobs grew into a couple of feet. encased in red cloth slippers; and the old chair looked like a very ugly old man..."Tom," said the old gentleman, "the widow's a fine woman - remarkable fine woman - eh, Tom?" Here the old fellow screwd up his eyes, cocked up one of his wasted little legs, and looked altogether so unpleasantly amorous that Tom was quite disgusted with the levity of his behaviour; - at his time of life, too!'

I thought that bit was actually quite funny.  







Last Night I Dreamt I Went to Manderley Again...

...when I arrived at my friend's beautiful wedding venue this weekend in Gartocharn, Scotland, and was reminded overwhelmingly of the iconic Manderley of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.

It was, of course, stunningly, starkly, beautiful, but it had that slightly eerie menace of wild places that could turn nasty as soon as the weather pulls in and someone malevolent steps out from behind that tree.

There was a long, straight, tree-lined driveway, a stark edifice of a Gothic mansion right next to a boatyard and a huge expanse of very cold water.

Yes, I might have been being a little dramatic, but see what you think:







10 Lessons on Nano, from a Non-Winner

So, I didn't manage to 'win', which is the official parlance for reaching the designated 50,000 words that comprise the completion of the Nanowrimo challenge. My score comes in at a respectable (to me, anyway) but unfortunately not winning, 30,031. I'm actually quite proud of that, and intrigued that, weirdly, that works out as 1,001 words per day. Maybe that's my 42?

Anyway, I think, as a loser, I might be able to point out the good behaviours that might get you to the end. 

Here we go: 







Being a Writer is Perilous...

...if all these articles I've come across lately are to be believed:

Hypergraphia, Bipolar and Writer's Block:

Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin

Alcoholism in Writers, and the Accompanying Risks of Sobriety:

Intelligent Life

So, you know, hold onto your hats...

FYI, normal, slightly more elaborate, service will resume once Nanowrimo is finished on Wednesday.

Current weigh-in: God knows... 





Writer's Block is a Bitch

...here's how to manage it:

The 10 Types of Writers' Block (and How to Overcome Them)


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Whilst Searching for Wedding Poems with a Friend...

...I uttered a sentence not unlike 'I'm sure if people knew that poetry could be like this, they wouldn't walk around thinking poetry isn't for them.'

Here are some of the poems that brought me to that conclusion: