Saturday, July 31, 2010

Five meet the 21st century

Once a treasure always a treasure… even if means changing the lingo. They've done it to the Ancients - Homer, Socrates, Ovid - and the Classics - Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton - too many to mention, so that we modern plebs can access, appreciate and perpetuate the creative greats. Now they're giving the marvellous Enid Blyton a turn.
The Guardian reports that, approaching 70 years since they were written, publishers have ‘updated’ Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series because they feared her 1940s vernacular was putting off 21st century kids.
Commenting on Hodder’s decision to release ten updated versions of Blyton’s Famous Five novels, journalist Alison Flood bade “farewell’ to “awful swotters,” “dirty tinkers” and “jolly japes,” explaining:
Hodder is ‘sensitively and carefully’ revising Blyton’s text after research with children and parents showed that the author’s old-fashioned language and dated expressions were preventing young readers from enjoying the stories. The narrative of the novels will remain the same, but expressions such as ‘mercy me!’ have been changed to ‘oh no!,’ ‘fellow’ to ‘old man’ and ‘it’s all very peculiar’ to ‘it’s all very strange.’ …
“Other changes include ‘housemistress’ becoming ‘teacher,’ ‘awful swotter’ becoming ‘bookworm,’ ‘mother and father’ becoming ‘mum and dad,’ ‘school tunic’ becoming ‘uniform’ and Dick’s comment that ‘she must be jolly lonely all by herself’ being changed to ‘she must get lonely all by herself.’”
Mercy me! The old lady might be rolling in her grave, but hopefully happily, as it signifies her perpetuity.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Feast your eyes on this...

The Abbey Bookshop on Rue de la Parcheminerie in Paris, perfect for an afternoon of English-language book perusing. Check out the secret sliding shelves in the last photo. I was in heaven...

Thursday, July 29, 2010

I sing the body electric...

This morning I woke up singing the body electric in my head. 
'I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul...'
J'adore Walt Whitman. 
'...and if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?'
I'm hoping this is a sign that while I'm sleeping, my unconscious continues to slowly untangle my story and and issue it forth. 
Last night I was contemplating how the expression of the inner mind can be written with subtlety and grace and insight and understatement, so that the reader who reads the lines on the page is satisfied with what they take from the story, while the reader who sees beyond the text finds a richness there, greater than they expected, which pleases them.
So I keep reading Whitman because I'm sure there's an answer in there somewhere...

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

How Archimedes scuppered a Roman fleet

With so much history and legend behind it, Sicily is high on my list of 'must go' places. Some seriously cool stuff happened there. It even manages to make maths palatable.
You know Archimedes? He was a Greek mathematician who hung out in Syracuse just before the dawn of Christendom.
The UK's Sunday Times reported last week that a scientist claims to have solved the mystery of how Archimedes used solar power to help destroy a dastardly Roman fleet that ambushed his home city in the 3rd century BC.
Legend has it that during Sicily's Siege of Syracuse, Archimedes used mirrors to create a 'death ray' that burned through the enemy fleet's sails, rendering each vessel limp and lifeless. 
However, Cesare Rossi, professor of mechanical engineering at Naples Federico II University in Italy reckons that, in fact, Archie invented a steam-powered cannon to annihilate the invaders.
So, instead of reflecting sunlight straight onto moving ships, he might have used mirrors to heat huge kettles of water to power his prototype artillery. Rossi says curved mirrors could have concentrated the sun's rays on a tank filled with water. The water would have boiled and the trapped steam fired the gun, shooting flaming cannonballs at the Romans. And all this 1500 years before gunpowder was known in Europe. 
The paper says: 'Rossi calculated that a heated cannon barrel would need to have converted little more than an ounce of water into enough steam to hurl a 13lb projectile, with a firing range of 500ft. In the 15th century Leonardo sketched a steam cannon which he credited to Archimedes.'
I am no scientist, but the creative in me loves this story, whichever version of events - legend or logic - happens to be true.

Monday, July 26, 2010

And the hottest of our hot men who reads is.....


My Godson :) Kicking back with an intellectual tome on the briny blue off Ste Tropez after happy wanderings in France...
'Whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It's always ourselves we find in the sea.'
 - e.e. cummings

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Hot men who read #9

The D-man from Mascot does it in style cruising the Mediterranean...
'Gather a shell from the strewn beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea's speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what though art:
And Earth, Sea, Man are all in each.'
 - Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Friday, July 23, 2010

Hot men who read #8

Ahh...Thursday night bliss in a winter wonderland. A hot man reading a book by a crackling, hearty fire... could this be the beginning of a new era of popular poetry...?
The E-man from up the hill takes in the lucid lines of William Ernest Henley
'It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the Captain of my soul.'
As Annie breathed in the movie Bull Durham after Crash Davis [Kevin Costner] delivered his momentous soliloquy on the soul...'Oh my'.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Hot men who read #7

OK this guy isn't strictly Australian...but he has been to Australia [once, when he was six] so he qualifies. Not only is he a hot man reading, but he's a hot man studying a book and taking notes! 
This is Etienne. I met him on a train in France. The book is in fact a play, L'Avare, by 17th century French satirist and playwright Molière (real name Jean-Baptiste Poquelin).
With his English and my French, we had about three coherent sentences between us, but I gather from the gist of our halting conversation (which included the art of mime) the story is about a tyrant who is in love with his son's lover, and whose children want to escape from his household and run off with their lovers. I think. Don't ask about the miming.
Note the sleepy head behind Etienne. In her defence, this is not her best angle. She's an opera singer, travelling with two colleagues, on her way home to Birmingham from a performance in Paris the previous evening. 
I know this because I was practising an exercise I learnt in my writing class. (Some would call it eavesdropping. I call it creative listening.) 
I was very happy with my seat selection - three English-speaking musos to creatively listen to and one hot man studying a classic play - who knew train travel could be such a rich cultural experience?

Monday, July 19, 2010

Hot men who read #6

An encore performance from the D-Man from Freshie. Bravo!
'There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.'
- Will Rogers

Friday, July 16, 2010

Hot men who read #5

T-man from the North reads work texts to enhance other peoples' pleasure... 
'When driving for extended periods, remember to engage in frequent back-bends. Contrary to common beliefs, back-bends are good for you, we spend much time slouched so perform many back-bends to counter this.'
Oui Monsieur.


Thursday, July 15, 2010

Hot men who read #4

The K-Man from Kitchener, now proudly Australian talent.
'Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.'
- George Eliot



Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Hot men who read #3

Bert and Ernie...rub a dub dub.
'Rubber duckie you're the one...'
- Bert.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Hot men who read #2

The J-T from Will-O-bie with his Mini-Me....
'If you're trying to show off to people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you're trying to show off to people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.'
- Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

Monday, July 12, 2010

Hot men who read #1

I put out a call a couple of weeks ago to the bookish men of Sydney, challenging them to contest the goods on display on the blog Hot Guys Reading Books. I thought we could do better. So, with tongue firmly in cheek while I'm tripping around the Mediterranean, let me keep the Aussie flag flying by celebrating hot Aussie men who read...:)
In no particular order, we begin with the Dickensian style of the D-Man from Queensie.
'There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.'
- Charles Dickens





Friday, July 9, 2010

Literary adventures in New York


Remember the lovely story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and its gorgeous illustrations? Author/illustrator Eric Carle has a blog where he shares his thoughts on creativity and where I found this cool picture.
He used it in reference to an article about pretzels in the New York Times that talks about bakeries in NYC where you can buy freshly baked pretzels. Carle gets drooly just talking about soft fluffy bread, in fact, he even wrote a book about a baker. Walter the Baker tells the tale of how the pretzel was invented. 
Why am I talking about this? Because as you cast your eyes upon this blog I'm in the French Alps having a bread-fest of my own...mmm...le baguette...le pain...le yummo!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Literary adventures in Russia


'Discover new things!'
'Be guided by knowledge'
'Fill in the gaps!'
So says Moscow's government, in an ad campaign to encourage young people to read more. 100 billboards have been planted around the city by the Moscow Writers Union blaring 'Read Books' to the masses.
The Union says experts are witnessing an 'alarming tendency' for people to read less, especially the classics. Russians are developing 'an apathy toward reading serious literature, thick books written  not only by contemporaries but by classic writers as well,' and that 'such indifference can lead to erosion of entire cultural layers, to depletion of knowledge about literature, to the loss of national  self-identification'.
Who'd have thought? - a Union that talks sense.

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Literary adventures in South America


Raul Lemesoff, an Argentine art-car artist, has taken a 1979 Ford Falcon that used to belong to the Argentine armed forces and turned it into a 'Weapon of Mass Instruction.'

Armed with 900 or so books, Lemesoff travels the streets of Buenos Aires and beyond offering free books to one and all.

He sees his Weapon of Mass Instruction as a "contribution to peace through literature."


Monday, July 5, 2010

Literary adventures in Asia

A librarian turned scuba diver is offering '20-minute aquatic reading sessions' at Singapore's noted oceanarium Underwater World.
While sharing the tank with some seriously scary freshwater predators, the librarian reads ocean-themed books using a special deep sea marine communication system. Guess she really dives into her books then. The series is sponsored by the National Library Board.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Today's musical inspiration...

Because it's one of my absolute favourite books of all time. Because Kate Bush achieves a rare feat (that no movie version ever could) in actually doing justice to the story and its two main characters. And because I've just stepped off a jet plane in England - land of the blustering moors and the legend of the Brontë sisters...