Stop!

Result! I have signed away yet more of my privacy with a 'fair'-ly secure password, and here I am, ready to confess to never having read 3 Men in a Boat. It seems there's one last copy in Butler that's not in the Rare Books room (!) so I'm going to head downstairs and pick it up. Stay tuned for the twists and turns involved in my finding it (or not!!) on the shelf, taking it to the circulation desk, and trying to avoid checking it out with the scary dude with the latex gloves who is very, very angry at the world.
Anyway, that's it: I'm in. I thought I'd also share this tidbit from Wikipedia with you:

'Among US troops in Iraq, "Three Men in a Boat" is slang for "stop", because of the shape of the Arabic word قف‎ for "stop!"'

Doesn't quite have the punch of 'the suck', does it? What's happening to Army slang? Are they quietly conscripting English grad students? Why do you even need really lengthy slang for 'stop'?

So many questions.

Why Even Bother?

I admit that I have not yet read Three Men in a Boat. In fact, I am still struggling through The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk which is, in my opinion and experience thus far, almost unreadable. I don't know why I'm finding it quite so difficult, but I really am.

Completely readable is, however, The Well of Lost Plots, the third of Jasper Fforde's series about a literary detective, Thursday Next. It is a rollicking read, ridiculous--and the edition I have, kindly lent by a friend, seems unable to distinguish between who's and whose, which drives me NUTS and for which there is NO EXCUSE. Anyway, the point of all this is that there are many literary references in these books which are extremely good fun and make you feel clever for knowing what they mean... which is possibly one reason (albeit dodgy) for reading the classics: That feeling that you are cleverer, somehow, than those who have not yet read them.

Is that wrong?

Is this thing switched on?

So, having inhabited my list of things to do for nigh on three weeks, `post on Grace's blog' has finally made its way to the top. Like cream. Or possibly scum. More accurately, Friday afternoon ennui has pushed everything else on the list down to the point that this is now my most pressing activity. The nice things about `to do' lists is that they convey no actual information on the importance of each list item. For example, the three things I had to do today were:

1/ post on Grace's blog
2/ Write working paper and circulate
3/ eat fruit

and I am going to go home today feeling pretty chuffed that I have completed two-thirds of my goals. Assuming that I can be bothered eating my apple.

I've not got the point of this at all, have I? This is meant to be a forum for confessions about gaping holes in our cultural experiences and searingly insightful discussion regarding our attempts to plug such gaps. Not for self indulgent ramblings better suited to the myspace blog of some subliterate teen. So here are my pithy observations:

a/ Of the observer to 100 books I have read:

3. Robinson Crusoe (though possibly a laydybird classics for young readers edition)
4. Gulliver's Travels
16. David Copperfield Charles Dickens
24. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland Lewis Carroll
31. Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
33. Three Men in a Boat Jerome K. Jerome (well, my dad read it to me as a bedtime story BUT THAT COUNTS)
40. The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame Not only that, my brother starred as toad in Hallam middle school's noted performance of the book
44. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan A classic adventure story for boys, jammed with action, 49. The Trial Franz Kafka
56. The Big Sleep Raymond Chandler I(clearly the best book on the list)
59. Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell
61. Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger Which I can prove, to 2 significant figures, is the worst book in the english language.
64. The Lord Of The Rings J. R. R. Tolkien
74. Catch-22 Joseph Heller
76. One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
87. The New York Trilogy Paul Auster
88. The BFG Roald Dahl
97 Atonement Ian McEwan
98. Northern Lights Philip Pullman

Not very many, but I feel particularly aggreived that I am getting no points for having struggled through Crime and Punishment, the outsider, potrait of an artist as a young man or Gravity's rainbow

b/ it turns out, unlike the rest of you illiterate yahoos, I have actually (sort of) read 3 men in a boat, so I would suggest something different. Or I could read lolita while you all read 3 men. We could meet up and you could discuss humorous, heartwarming happenings in your book while I occasionally interject with comments like 'There is no such thing as morality' and 'I feel so dirty'

c/ Can we do a film series as well? I haven't seen goodfellas, Rocky, The Godfather or Dude Where's my Car, and I'm keen to see all 4

d/ Wind-up: Did you spot the subtle hint at the Midsummernight's dream reference embedded in the title of the first blog entry.

Anyway - I feel cleansed. Thank you for letting me share. I'm now going to play shamik at Badminton. Surely no-one could lactate after an activity so manly?

...by moonlight?

I have to admit, the name of this blog is clever in a silly sort of way. Even sillier, though, is the fact that it has taken me this long to work out the pun. I would keep looking at the address every time I came here, thinking, "Huh, illread. Makes me think of something, but..." And then I would get distracted by some other shiny object, lending proof to my sneaking suspicion that my attention span is... I'm sorry, what were we talking about again?

Here's what I like: "Illread" is both a pledge, as in "I'll read," that is, I shall or I will read, the convention of the URL forcing out the apostrophe, and a confession, as in I (to take the most blatantly obvious example) am "ill read."

But I think, too, that this last is also a charming reference to A Midsummer Night's Dream wherein Oberon greets Titania at the first on-stage crossing of their paths with the line, "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania." That is, this is a crafty, subtle, underhanded challenge, calling us out to read or risk losing some form of (A) handy child, (B) fairy kingdom, (C) pride, (D) magical love-potion, (E) all of the above in the form of our imaginations, allegorized.

Then, too, you have homophony, such that "illread" becomes "isle red," possibly a reference to the ill-fated Red Island of Rovinj, Croatia. How this last works seems slightly beyond my modest powers of interpretation, but I would imagine it has something to do with the rocks upon which the stormy waters of time will toss us should we fail to keep ourselves afloat with the aid of good, solid, surely-everyone-has-read/watched/listened-to-this-except-me culture.

Any others?

It's Not Just The Academy

So, Mr M Scorcese finally recognised by the peeps in Hollywood and given an Oscar. Huzzah! It is, of course, an outrage that he has never won one before. It is, however, just of much an outrage that I rage outishly about this, and yet really haven't seen that many of his movies.

So, throat cleared, here it is. The real list of shame.

Of his movies, I have seen (in chronological order): Mean Streets; Taxi Driver; New York, New York; Bad (by Michael Jackson - seriously, that was Scorcese); The Departed.

I have, therefore, not seen: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore; Raging Bull; The King of Comedy; The Color of Money (seriously though - who wants to? Paul Newman is not enough... Marty, Marty, what were you thinking?); The Last Temptation of Christ (this was him? Really? What did seminary school have to say about it?); Goodfellas; Cape Fear; The Age of Innocence; Casino; Kundun; Bringing Out The Dead; Gangs of New York; or, The Aviator.

Oops. Maybe I should start this whole netflix business and start remedying all this.

But remember: I have seen Bad.

Mandamus

We have made a start. I am a great believer in starts (so says Joey the Lips Fagan in The Commitments).

So the plan is to push forwards... no slacking (ha!). Despite having work and children and theses to write, I feel we should choose something none of us have read... and force ourselves to do it and discuss it. If I've got this wrong and you've read the suggestions, let me know...

What about Madame Bovary? I've read it, but I don't think I really got it at the time, and as the reviewer in the Observer said,

You could summarise this as a story of adultery in provincial France, and miss the point entirely.

For something which is such a strong portrayal of a woman's situation, how did I not get it? Dunno, really, but maybe we should try this?

Other suggestions:

If you've not done Les Liaisons Dangereuses I really think it's a truly wonderful book... Windup Bird and Stk, that appears to be missing from your lists...

Or, for something fun and a little less heavy, how about Three Men In A Boat?

Answers on a message post please...

Little Lola

Interestingly, we all seem to have read Lolita. I was utterly mesmerised by it. I think what people find troubling about the novel (probably those who haven't read it) is its strength: the ambiguity with which we view Humbert. He is not obviously a monster, despite doing often monstrous things. It's on every list of the greatest books of all time that you can find, it seems. The Guardian's 50 books you must read describes it thus:

With its unreliable narrator and ambiguous tone, Lolita avoids drawing any definite moral conclusions from this notorious story of ageing academic Humbert Humbert and his obsessive confusion of lust and love for a 12-year-old girl. It is Nabokov's playful prose, however, that is the most bewitching aspect of this novel.

It is a truly remarkable work. That it was written in a second language makes it all the more incredible - to have such a command of a tongue that is not your own... my envy is palpable.