Tag Archives: Street Reading

Street Reading – again

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He’s the type of chap you only see in ‘local’ pubs. I am sure you know the type.  He is always a bit scruffy and occasionally a bit dirty. He always asks his boss for an advance on next week’s wages, which is clever because now he owes so much money they can’t fire him. You wonder if he ever had a wife to look after him and the truth is that he did, but being a drunk, he thinks he dreamt her. He is waiting for the big promotion at the factory and at 58, has not realised it’s a bit late for him to get his shit together. Today I saw him walking down the street holding a plastic bag and the top of his jeans with one hand and reading the latest Lee Child paperback with the other. Kudos.

I also saw a new shop which was proudly displaying two huge signs drawing attention to their ‘Specialized Signage’ business. I presume spell check in English (UK) is extra.

 

A real page turner

 

Street Reading

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Word, y’all!

After seeing Stuart Kelly successfully navigate his way round North Fort Street carrying a shopping bag and reading a book, I have been in training. I have never, never been able to read when walking. I did once finish a Dean R Koontz book in the shower because I was scared and needed to get to the soft ending, but I was about 14 so don’t start with me!

I Googled ‘ walking and reading’ to see if perhaps Stuart was part of a much bigger movement I have hitherto been ignorant of, but all that search offered was a list of walks in Reading. A brisk manipulation of ‘and’ to ‘whilst’ provided much more fruit.

Firstly, someone has gone to the trouble of listing instructions complete with safety tips that include not walking down the stairs, but more excitingly, a group of 49 people have banded together through the power of social media to promote ‘Reading While Walking‘. They don’t seem to have too much to say right now but I suspect that is because they are busy reading. Ssh!

More on Street Reading, Street Reviews and e-reading

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I found this article among many in my Reader this morning and it got me thinking again about book covers, synopsis and street reading.

I picked up Jarful of Angels by Babs Horton at least 1,000 times in Waterstones over the course of about three months. I liked the book cover but hated the synopsis so much that I always put it back down. Finally I bought the book and loved it; the cover was right but the synopsis was wrong. I now trust Babs Horton and won’t even look at the synopsis when I see her work;  although I do like her book covers.

I make it a rule never to  talk to strangers. I was taught this at an early age and as a maxim for life, it has served me well. I will however walk up to anyone engrossed in a book to ask them what they are reading. This is how I discovered Henning Mankell and Angry White Pyjama’s by Robert Twigger, to name but two. The Henning Mankell reader was so delighted at being asked that she immediately launched into a rave about the author and the Wallander books. I absolutely love and never tire of people talking about books they love. It strips away a lot of surface inteference about the person and when anyone is passionate, you can’t help but like them.

When it comes to new books I function rather like a human Evernote, collecting visual images of book covers, newspaper clippings of reviews, article mentions, handwritten scribbles of authors and books, and the obligatory want to read list which is sadly and annoyingly strewn across 90 notebooks and about a gazillion pieces of paper. I keep a pile of A5 paper in a tray under my monitor so that if I want to make a note, everything is to hand. This morning I jotted down another two books to add to the list – Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom, and Kristoff and WuDunn’s Half the Sky. One of these days I am going to grab a couple of bottles of wine and go through every piece of paper I own and pull together a proper, definitive to-read list. Because that is not a displacement activity at all.

Street Reading and Street Reviews

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Forgive me WordPress for I have sinned. It’s been nearly three weeks since my last post.

There has been a lot going on, not least my sister being injured in a car crash. It was quite scary the first few days especially when she stopped breathing after her lungs collapsed but I am happy to say that she is going to be absolutely fine once orthopaedics finish stapling and glueing her leg back together.

Travelling to the hospital to see her requires a four hour return trip and given that I haven’t spoken to my sister in 18 years, bedside conversation has been stilted at best. We have a saying in our family which laments that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.

I have started a number of posts in the past few weeks which I do plan to return to but I wanted to share this post from another blog.

Since starting my MA course I have been re-built as a reader; well I have been deconstructed as a reader and like any good deconstructee, I am awaiting bionic parts for the rebuild. Since I started reading for myself, I have always approached a book with caution. First I conduct a basic litmus, tip of the tongue test to try to determine whether I am going to read the book or not. Sidebar – I want to take a closer look at synopsis and book jackets in another post.

My second test involves opening the book at a random page and reading a short passage. This second test has become a little more advanced recently as I now apply close reading, but prior to starting the course, I would be looking at the font – sometimes good books are ruined by bad font; and if I liked the style/feel/ tone of the writing. My third test was to look at dialogue – so many good books are ruined by dreadful dialogue. My fourth and final test is to start reading the book and periodically check that I am still believing as the story unfolds.

It is my belief that as a reader BC (before course), I looked over and above the writing, my default target always being the story. Unless it was particularly provocative or emotive,  or particularly shite, I never saw the writing, treating it much the same as I do the postal service; my interest is the letter not how it got to my door. Identifying bad writing was instinctive rather than technical, and close reading (bionic parts) is the skill I am honing to shift that knowledge from hunch to fact. I am still quite the novice, but it is exciting to learn.

I read this lovely post about reading in McShandy’s the other week when I came back from seeing my sister. After a day of worry, having to stand by while divers dredged up the past and flung it in muddy, wet lumps at my feet, and numerous fraught journeys in a car that has been given 12 months to live, this  example of thoughtful writing brought me back down into myself as it was about something that is important; vital even, to me. Reading. Books. Writing.

I thought this was a lovely piece and it instantly returned me to when I lived in Maida Vale (my spiritual home) in London, where  I would walk to either Maida Vale or Warwick Avenue tube station to start my journey. If I wasn’t running late I would stop at a little cafe for coffee and I still tell anyone who will listen about the day I had coffee with Paul Weller. Really he was sitting at another table but a girl should be able to have coffee with Paul Weller if she wants to.

Once on the tube, and this never got boring, I would look around to see what everyone was reading. I used to keep a list (please see earlier post about my love of lists, although I lost this particular list) of the books I saw and I would use the number of repeat sightings as a ‘street review’ of books I may want to read.  This is how I discovered Margaret Atwood. On one particular day, on one particular tube, for a particular and peculiar moment, I thought I had walked into a staged scene. Nearly everyone who was reading was holding the same book, Blind Assassin. It is still one of my favourite book covers for this reason alone. I was so blindsided by the tableaux which I took as a sign from God/Buddha/Santa/Coco Chanel (delete as appropriate) that instead of going straight to work I should go straight to Selfridge’s (my second spiritual and oh so material home) to buy the book. I complied of course as one does when CC makes contact.

I have more to say on the McShandy’s post but will stop here just now.

The very copy bought in Selfridges

And just to finish. I loved travelling by tube and found this site a number of years ago. Basically it is some guy who would take a note of what people were talking about when he was travelling by tube.  The site is themanwhofellasleep