(Some) Books of the Year (2002 mostly, it seems)

And so we come to the end of 2009, and also to the end of the decade we (rightly) hesitated to call the noughties.

I wasn't really prepared for the end-of-the-decade thing this time, as the last one was also the end of a century and of the millenium and so was heralded with nostalgia, smugness and predictions of technological meltdown and apocalyptic doom.

I do not have my ear to the ground or my finger on the pulse or my anything else on the whatever of the zeitgeist, so cannot give a definitive top [insert number, preferably multiple of 5 or 10] [insert cultural experience of choice] of 2009.

I can, however, exclusively reveal the list you have all been waiting for (subconsciously, probably, but waiting nonetheless):

5 Good Books I Have Read This Year.

Exciting stuff.

In no particular order then:

1. The Lunar Men: The Friends Who Made the Future by Jenny Uglow.
This is really, really good, and there is plenty (500+) pages of it (and with pictures). A group biography of members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which includes Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles, polymath), Josiah Wedgewood, Joseph Priestly and James Watt.

2. Samuel Pepys, the Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin
This was Whitbread Book of the Year 2002 (see?) and is marvellous.

3. Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
Neurological case studies of music and the mind. Very interesting indeed.

4. The Golden Age of Couture, Paris and London 1949-57 ed Claire Wilcox
Absolutely gorgeous big dresses. Beautifully cut tweed suits. Yum.

5. The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
All of Douglas Coupland's books are good, but some are too sad for me to read. This one is quite sad, and is also very funny.



These are not all the books I have read. They may not be the top 5 - I'm not sure. I also read Sputnik Sweetheart and After Dark by Haruki Murakami as well as Norwegian Wood, and I read (sections of) lots of Political Philosophy books for work. I note that mostly I have been reading non-fiction and this is interesting. I shall go on as I started, as I have just launched into Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy.

So there you are. Furnish your Christmas list with listingslightly. Coming up, some music released sometime which I have listened to somewhere at some point, collated for your enjoyment.

It's the thought [of spending $2640 on partridges and pear trees] that counts

The Christmas CD is playing in Starbucks today and the festive season is upon us. This takes over from their rather pleasing late 70s/early 80s compilation, so rather than being haunted by Squeeze I now find myself humming Dean Martin songs in the afternoon. Or, less pleasingly, Jingle Bell Rock*, which I CANNOT STAND. (In fact Christmas songs that have me fleeing shops or leaping for the skip button make a long list in themselves, so it is just as well I decided long since to stick to non-grumpy lists....).

This year, inspired by spotify playlists last year, we will be filling up on mince pies and sherry to the sounds of Nat King Cole, the Snoopy Christmas CD and James Brown's Funky Christmas. Oh yes.

The best Christmas song is, of course, The 12 Days of Christmas, being a long list of improbable gifts. Apparently it is not, as some had suggested, some kind of Catholic code during years of repression, and the goo-OOOld riiiings are in fact pheasants. From Monday you can check the cost of this extravagent list on the Christmas Price Index, but if you can't wait (or for an examination of the effects of recession on the cost of turtle doves) you could check last year's .

*Although wikipedia lists 56 artists who have recorded this, so it is yet possible that one of these versions will be at least tolerable. The Fall, for example, may have saved this for me, just.

A Decorative Interlude

Thank you to people who have said nice things and identified themselves as actual listingslightly readers. Some of you are not even relations. I find this heartening.

It is a shame that, having readers, there is not more reading material. Some ideas are simmering. In the meantime, I shall pretend this is a craft blog and demonstrate how to make a festive dove decoration.

Ingredients:
white card
white paper
scissors
glue
scalpel and cutting mat (not essential, but does make it a bit easier)

1. Draw a dove shape on white card and cut it out (this one is about 10cm long).

2. Cut out some strips of white paper (these are 10cm wide) and fold them in a concertina kind of a way about every centimetre.

3. Chop into the concertina-ed paper symmetrically so that when it is unfolded it makes a pattern.

4. Cut a letterbox-shaped hole in the dove card, which is big enough (but only just) to push the folded concertina-paper-wings through.

5. Fan out wings and attach in the middle with glue. Voila!

The first set of these I made was in about 1985 (with added glitter), following instructions from, I think, Blue Peter, so thank you to them, and also to my parents for wielding the scissors....

An Awesome Blog

That there are entire blogs which consist of one ever-expanding list is something that fills me with joy.

1000 Awesome Things is a marvellous list-blog and includes thoughts on the joys of socks, snow days, and cereal, as well as making space to acknowledge the particular pleasures of the smell of an old hardware store or the feeling of getting into a bed with clean sheets after shaving your legs.

Another blog to bookmark and read all of, I would suggest.

Isn't it good

Finally I have read Norwegian Wood. I have read lots of other books by Haruki Murakami, and bought this rather special edition years ago, but was scared to read it. For lots of reasons I think - partly that the edition was a bit too special to actually read, partly that it's good to know that you haven't yet read all the books by an author you love, and partly that I thought it would be very good and make me sad.

I borrowed it from the library. It is very good and it did make me a bit sad, but I'm glad I read it, although now I don't want to read anything else for a while.

Interestingly, it's being made into a film at the moment. I shall keep my fingers crossed.

In the meantime, here is a list from the Times about Haruki Murakami.

You say coin and I say forint (and score 39 points)

I like to play Scrabble. I also like to win games sometimes. These things are not compatible chez-listingslightly.
Exhibit A:

Not the world's most elaborate game - note the four-letter words at the bottom of the board (no, not that kind of four letter word, that is quite a different version of scrabble) - stem, sing, avid etc. So far, so dull. But there, look!

A 7 letter word. On a triple word score. That's 89 points right there for Mr Listingslightly. I'm not entirely sure why I took this photo at all, except it was a newish camera and it was a day when it snowed I think.

Still, things are looking up as today the Guardian published a list of 10 words that were on the finals board at the National Scrabble Championship. If only I can remember how to spell them...

The cat that liked to be beside the seaside

There are many books of lists, but the best ever, I think, are those by David Wallechinsky, Irving Wallace and Amy Wallace.

The 70s originals are full of amazing stories and intriguing facts, as well as weird insights into the time of writing For example, the joint third* most hated person in history 1975, according to visitors to Madame Tussaud's, was Richard M.Nixon, down from the top spot in '73. (Interestingly, although his hatedness peaked after Watergate, even in 1970 he was fourth...)

The 2005 version is just as good and includes "5 Body Parts Named After Italians", "33 Names of Things You Never Knew Had Names" and, marvellously, "The Cat Came Back: 9 Cats Who Travelled Long Distances to Return Home", which is the list I read when I can't sleep and need to think of nice things.

This is a truly cheery list, of cats that travelled up to 1500 miles to rejoin their owners who had moved, or to go back to where they used to live. My favourite is Gringo the cat who left his family in Paris and travelled 480 miles to the French Riviera in December 1982. “Wishing to escape the cold winter, he had made the journey south in a week and appeared at their summer home, where neighbours took care of him.” A cat that escapes winter to make for the coast is my kind of cat.

So there you have it – worth buying for the cat stories alone. It’s £5.99 on Amazon, so less than 67p per amazing cat journey story.

*with Dracula

Additional notes

A recent ‘blog of note’ flagged by blogger is the excellent site Letters of Note, which is just marvellous and I recommend that you click here immediately and read everything on it (not as time-consuming as you might think as it’s been going for a month, although it’s certainly updated much more often than listingslightly...). Scanned copies and transcripts of interesting letters, memos etc, recent and not so, make for exactly the kind of blog I like to wander about in.
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On Friday night I watched North by Northwest, which I feel I have seen many times, but in fact I think I’ve seen the whole thing about twice, and bits of it many times. Regular readers (hello, both) will know of my love for Cary Grant, and this is him at his classy best, being pursued and drawn into dark dealings in a fabulous suit (and note how gorgeous his shirt is also), and with the very lovely Eva Marie Saint.
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I’ve been rummaging about in some shoe boxes and turning up various interesting bits of paper that have accumulated over the last 12 years or so. In June 1999 I was finishing my second year at university. I’m sure that there were all sorts of exciting things happening with the internet, but I was mostly unaware of them. In those days when interesting snippets of information seemed a bit more special, a bit harder to track down, but when we were just starting to realise the possibilities of email, a lovely friend sent me a list of all Alfred Hitchcock’s cameo appearances. I was interested enough to forward it from my university email to my home email, and then, a month later, to print it off to save, and have been moving it around with me ever since (9 house moves in 10 years). Now, of course, Wikipedia does the work for you. But this is a marvellous site, which not only lists the cameos, but also has fantastic stills with Sir Alfred highlighted.

And while you're at it, where's my cambric shirt eh?

Being a list of herbs which have so far survived in our front yard.

Parsley
Mint
Oregano
Chives
Bay
Purple Basil
Sage
Rosemary
Thyme
Tarragon

I'm particularly impressed with tarragon, which I hadn't knowingly eaten before a few weeks ago when we made this excellent recipe, with chicken though, not guinea fowl so far.

They are mostly thriving (or at least surviving), but we shall see how the rain and cold affect them. And at least the caterpillars haven't eaten them yet - they're too busy demolishing the broccoli which we have planted in unwisely small containers. Fortunately we live near some shops.

Fantasy Football

(Possibly the main fantasy aspect of this game for me being the belief that I will remember to update my team...)

Last year the performance of my fantasy football team was pretty mediocre. It was all going averagely until I stopped paying attention for a few weeks, forgot to substitute injured players and plummeted in the mini-league.

However, with renewed enthusiasm I have chosen my new team, and a strip that involves red and pink stripes. The listingslightly fantasy football team 2009-10 starts the season as:

Schwarzer
Bosingwa
Queudrue
Hreidarsson
Warnock
Benayoun
Wright-Phillips
N'Zogbia
Fellaini
Agbonlahor
Adebayor

And have been chosen by the following criteria:
1. Is their name pleasing to say and/or write?
2. Did they perform excellently in my team last year?
3. Do they collectively come from a range of teams, thus improving my chances of actually scoring some points?
4. Are they any good? (I am not entirely silly) And are they likely to play every match?

Will I remember to change the team when necessary? Will I regret the garish socks? Will I score at least enough points that it's not embarassing? And will I start wearing a large overcoat, pacing around the room and shouting at the TV during Match of the Day? Hmmm....