Scot's honour

A note on the song many drunken voices shall no doubt be singing as the clock ticks over midnight tonight...words which have always been assumed to have come from the pen of my grandfather's favourite poet, Robert Burns (1759-1796).
Burns contributed the song to James Thomson's Scots Musical Museum, writing to Thomson in 1793 that it was in fact 'the old song of olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript, until I took it down from an old man's singing'.
However... experts believe there's evidence of Robbie Burns himself within those words and that he may have been exhibiting his own playful humour in the telling, particularly after he wrote this note accompanying the poem to his patron, Mrs Frances Dunlop, in 1788:
'Light be the turf on the breast of the Heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment. There is more fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen Modern English Bacchanalians.'


Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min'?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne?


For auld lang syne, my dear.
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.


And a cup of kindness to you this new year's eve, thanks for reading.

Best with a twist...

So it's the last day of the first decade of the 21st century and lists abound around the world of who thinks what books were the best in 2010. Here's a round up of from a few corners of the literary globe...:
The Daily Beast 
SMH 
The Guardian 
The New York Times 
But maybe you're thinking yeah yeah we've heard about these books all year, give me something new...? 
So here's a list you may find distinctly more useful around this time of year:
Top 10 Best Non-fiction for Winning Family Arguments
Good luck!


Illustration by Aaron Meshon on the NPR website.

Classic Australian reads

I've been reading a lot of Australian authors this year, past and present, discovering some true treasures in our own backyard (I won't mention the trash). 
If I were to suggest a classic homegrown summer read for the holidays - one that is engaging irrespective of gender, beautifully written, captures the imagination, an easy yet intelligent read, slim enough to read from cover to cover over a long weekend and has achieved international literary success - it would be Jessica Anderson's 1978 Miles Franklin Award winning novel, Tirra Lirra by the River. 
After Anderson passed away in July this year aged 93, the book was re-published and copies virtually walked out the door.
I love the title - I'd tell you what it means but it's more fun for you to find out for yourself when you read it.
For some more quality Australian reads, check out this selection from Susan Wyndham in the SMH. Incidentally, Ruth Park, whose The Harp in the South is a well deserved inclusion, and who many a high-schooler in the 1980s would remember for Playing Beatie Bow, passed away this month, also aged 93.
It's not the definitive list in my opinion but there are some sterling authors among them...all of which I recommend bar one (regular readers can you guess who that might be?...;)

Art & Letters Daily

One of my favourite websites and a sure fire place to find inspiration and information about worldly matters one never knew one would find so enriching is Arts & Letters Daily.
Vale Denis Dutton, founder and editor of the site, who passed away over Christmas and whose shoes will be mighty difficult to fill. The Chronicle of Higher Education, owner of the site since 2002, has vowed to continue publishing Arts & Letters Daily 'in the spirit in which Denis created it'.

Oh yes...

Me too!

Saw this on Bookshelf Porn.

Signed editions...

One of my favourite websites - AbeBooks - has come up with its Top 30 most requested signed books for 2010. The usual suspects are there, with the outright leaders according to demand being Jonathan Franzen's Freedom and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Also cracking the nod, a couple of non-fiction hits, Just Kids by Patti Smith and the story of a real life rare book thief The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover, which I've been eyeing off for a while...it sounds like a pretty good read. Which signed edition would you go for?

Merry Christmas!

Ho ho here are the rest of the Christmas cards from the RubyfireWrites 2010 season. An African animal theme seemed appropriate...each one comes with its own 'make it up yourself' story.

Seasons greetings to you!

One more sleep...

...till Christmas! 
It starts with a Christmas Eve feast in our family. And it's a tradition in the RubyfireWrites household that everyone makes their own cards. Here's a sneak preview of the one I made for made my dad, inspired by a story about a famous reindeer with a bright red nose and a very important job...

A Christmas Story...

Inspired by people with so much creative talent and the energy to use it! Loved finding this treasure in my letterbox during the week. A Christmas story that doubles as a greeting card - written and illustrated by Christopher Doherty of Tapestry Creative, husband of one of my Literary Salon-ers and a brand new dad. You can read the full story on Chris' website.

How's that novel coming along...?

A slice of life for the aspiring authors among us, courtesy of one of my fellow Literary Salon-ers.... How many times have we been on the receiving end of conversations like this?! 
Brian, we feel your pain. 
Stewie from The Family Guy rubs a little lemon into a paper cut. 

Good enough to frame

Had I been in London this month, I'd have gone to StolenSpace gallery to see this exhibition on the art of the book cover.
The gallery, in conjunction with Penguin, invited artists to 'paint, print, photograph, whatever their medium, whatever their style...create a book cover for a novel of their choice, a book that has inspired them, a book that has had a profound impact on them or a book that they remember fondly as a child...original artwork created to the traditional format and size of a Penguin book 198mm (h) x 129mm (w).'
The results were a visual feast and included new interpretations of old classics like The War Of The Worlds, The Cat In The Hat, Nineteen Eighty-Four and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
Had I been in London, and had I been an artist....I would have designed a book cover for Laurens van der Post's The Hunter and the Whale... 
What book would you choose?

Digital nativity

Storytelling in the 21st century... In my world the storybook - written in proper sentences, and on real paper with a texture you can stroke between your fingertips, with pictures that leap into your imagination - will never die. 
But technology has its place for the writer (think about your audience 'n all that). Here's a little digital Christmas for the multi-media gen. It's actually pretty cool.
The Digital Story of the Nativity:

Merry merry joy joy

Christmas tree is up! Ho ho ho... 

Getting ready for some Christmas reads, stay tuned.

Yup.

Confessions of a Book Fiend, 2010, by Grant Snider. 

Click on the image to enlarge.

Love love...

Found these covetable prints on the UPPERCASE website, a Canadian books/papergoods magazine that makes me drool...

This, by Lisa Congdon, is how I feel with a jumble of different characters in my head all upsidedown and round-about jostling for position...

This is a beautiful bookstack by Katie Green. 

Looks like the pile(s) beside my bed.

And these treasures are vintage matchbox labels (artist unknown). Sigh...they leave the old Redheads for dead.

A handy little stocking filler...

An update on the world's most expensive book, first talked about here in September....and an excuse to show you this exquisite illustration again! The complete volume of John James Audubon's The Birds of America went to auction in New York on Tuesday and fetched US$10.3m, claiming a new record for literary treasures. It's no small volume either, The Economist says the book measures 91cm x 61cm and includes 435 life size hand-coloured illustrations of birds from North America.
The newspaper produced a chart tabling the top ten most expensive books (excluding four other copies of The Birds of America which would have made the list). Click on the chart to enlarge.

Art lit

How cool is this! Artist Francisca Prieto has created this literary artwork out of a dictionary of days gone by. Prieto was inspired to mix algebra, alaphabet and anatomy after poring over old copies of Encyclopaedia Britannica. A number of copper plates appear in the artwork along with an inscription dated 3 December 1811. 
As has been recorded on these very blog pages, it is only on the rare occasion that I will accept the act of folding the pages of a book.... For the purpose of art and the preservation of an encyclopaedia culture that has been (sadly) surpassed by the Google age, this is one such occasion!
The piece pictured is titled 'Between Folds/Encyclopaedia' Material: Encyclopaedia Britannica: or, a dictionary of arts, sciences, and miscellaneous literature. Third edition, Volume I - Part I, Edited by Colin Macfarquhar; printed for A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, 1797.
I want this in my house.

Street lit

Haaa! Graffiti to raise a giggle, as seen scrawled on the back of toilet doors, in the subway, on park benches etc, with thanks to Schott's Vocab:
Men's restroom - written on tank next to handle:
'Please wiggle Handel'
Written below it:
'If I do will it wiggle Bach?'
Sign above the mirror at the IBM head office in the US: 'Think!'
Written next to the dispensers below it: 'Thoap!'
Seen painted across a subway wall:
'Handwritten graffiti is becoming a lost art in the age of Twitter, the world's biggest bathroom wall.'
Have you seen any good ones lately?

Wiki-lit

Sometimes you come across a new take on an international saga that makes you sit up and pay attention again. Well it did me anyway. Wikileaks cables as literature, the headline blares.
Slate magazine's Christopher Beam argues that the 250,000 diplomatic cables in the latest Wikileak (I tried to hotlink but the site is 'no longer available') could be considered a new form of literary art.
'Most of the documents don't rise above stenography — diplomat X met with foreign leader Y to talk about Z. But at their best, these cables read like their own literary genre, with an identifiable sensibility and set of conventions,' writes Beam.
'Cables are meant to brief the diplomatic and military communities on a particular issue, whether it's Afghan power broker Ahmed Wali Karzai or Muslim unrest in France. But they're also written to impress the boss back home. State Department officials receive thousands of cables a year. If you're a foreign service officer stationed in Molvania who wants to stand out, writing a colorful cable could be your ticket.Diplomacy requires observation, intelligence, and a keen understanding of people and their motivations. Cables are an opportunity to show off.'
He sites examples referring to Prime Ministers, princes and Middle Eastern oligarches. They make interesting reading....perhaps he's onto something. Check it out.