Books
If you are one of those people who feel that you really can’t draw or maybe you’ve only recently started to draw or indeed come back to drawing after a long break and feel stuck at a certain level then I would heartily recommend the above books.
Music: ‘Free Until They Cut Me Down’, Iron and Wine
Above: The gorgeous Mr Darcy with Elizabeth Bennett in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Still counts as studying! Honest!
Well I did something today that I really thought I wouldn’t. I decided to deliberately NOT to do an assignment for my current OU course. It’s all the assessment calculator’s fault (a doodah on my course website which allows me to work out my overall likely grade). Having had a play around with it yesterday I worked out that as long as I get a pass 2 mark in my exam, i.e. 70% or higher I will get a Pass 2 grade for the entire course whereas if my exam grade falls below 70% I’ll end up with a grade 3 mark for the overall course regardless of how well I do in my final two TMAS.
Music: Right now I’m a little obsessed with this song.
I have chosen Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss as my next novel and starting it today I was arrested by this wonderful passage quoted at the start. It is from one of my very favourite writers, Jorge Luis Borges.
Boast of Quietness
Writings of light assault in the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and my death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like someone who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.
* * * *
Previously on Bad Faery: you might also find this entry of interest You Learn
Rocketing right up my favourite books chart is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go which I just finished reading yesterday. I’m glad that I had avoided reviews for it in advance as part of the pleasure in reading it was in the gradual discovery of the exact nature of the lives of the characters.
So I’m not going to explain any of the plot and only say that it is haunting and poignant and utterly heart breaking. And it is one of those stories that stays with you after, so much so that today I had to tell myself off several times for grieving for what were after all only imaginary characters.
I hadn’t read Ishiguro before but I’ll certainly be adding him to my future reading list.
Music: ‘Broken Heart’, Spirtualized
The subject of age banding is a hot issue in the world of children’s publishing at the moment. If you haven’t heard of it yet it’s a move by publishers to start putting age guidance recommendations on all their books. Now on the face of it this sounds pretty innocuous. After all it’s about making it easier to go into a bookshop and pick out a book for your child. But herein lies the problem. Age banding is nothing to do with making books more accessible for children, it’s about making them easier for adults to buy (and a lot easier for non-tradititional bookretailers like supermarkets to sell).
“But that huge shadow is more than my only moon, more even than my destruction: it has the innocent slipping advent of the next generation, which enters in one night of joy, and leaves a meadowful of lamenting milkmaids when its purpose is grown to fruit.”
from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart
I did not have a good night, racked with fits of coughing that left me breathless so that by 3am I gave up on any notion of getting to sleep. I reread the first part of By Grand Central Station, it is a long term favourite of mine and sometimes when I am ill I would rather turn to a much treasured book that I know and love than a fresh read, it is somehow more soothing, like the company of a trusted friend.
Then I spent a little while painting in the hope that it would help take my mind off how terrible I was feeling.
This began as something completely different, I’ve been experimenting with different backgrounds and textures and this was originally part of those efforts. But being the dead of night, the moon emerged from a random splash of paint.
Since I have given up on the idea of sleep for tonight too I’m sticking with the galactic theme and am going to veg out with some Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica:)
I am drinking hot lemon with honey as it’s supposed to sooth sore throats. It tastes blee!!! I’m sorry Mary Poppins, but sometimes a spoonful of sugar doesn’t help at all!
Music: ‘My Moon, My Man’, Feist
Congratulations to fellow Snow Leopard enthusiast Jackie Morris! Her book The Snow Leopard has been shortlisted for the Highland Schools Book Awards!
“There was a boy called Odd, and there was nothing strange or unusual about that, not in that time or place. Odd meant the tip of a blade, and it was lucky name.”
Continuing on with yesterday’s Neil Gaiman theme, today when I was in town I picked up a copy of Odd and the Frost Giants. Yes, as a work of fiction, this breaks my no-new-books embargo but as it was a) only €1.50, b) in aid of a good cause namely World Book Day, and c) by one of my favourite writers I felt that it was worth the breaking. And as CJ Cherryh says “no rule should be followed off a cliff”.
I’ve read it already, over coffee and a pastry in a little cafe. It proved a short and enjoyable read, all 97 pages of it. Set in Viking times, it is a comic caper about a boy called Odd who forms an unlikely friendship with a fox, a bear and an eagle who turn out to be more than they seem. Suitable for younger readers (and those childish at heart like me) I shall definitely be choosing this one to read to my nephew, who is seven, the next time I’m staying at my sister’s place.
This is my new desktop graphic. What do you think? It’s a little gruesome, I’ll grant you, but I love it!
It’s for Neil Gaiman’s new novel, The Graveyard Book, due out this October.
This is how the author describes it:
Lots of scary. Some funny (some of the funniest stuff is also the scariest, though). A fair amount of action. Some drama. No kissing. Late nights. Fish and chips. A werewolf, a vampire, an Assyrian mummy and a small pig. A knife in the dark.
And here’s where Neil blogs about Dave McKean’s great bookslip design
I got this book, Botanical Illustration Course with the Eden Project by Rosie Martin and Meriel Thurstan, last week.
I’ve been drawing flowers this month and my results haven’t been too great so I’m hoping this will give me some inspiration.
Music: ‘Polegnala e Todora (Love Song)’, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares
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