Song for sunday Ian curtis 32 years
20 May 2012 3 Comments
Well friday this week saw 32 years since the to soon passing of Joy Divisions lead singer Ian Curtis .The band have been with me since my early teens ,I lived near where the band was from so I knew places where he lived and the site of his grave as I went to college in Macclesfield his hometown .Around the same time ,I remember hearing love will tear us apart in 1990 the 10th anniversary whilst I was working in a local pub ,boy as I heard it was 32 years on friday on 6 music I realised how quick those twenty-two years have gone as in my head so in a moment I had a proustian moment of being transported back to a busy pub ,behind the bar serving people as this love will tear us apart came on the jukebox (what happen to jukeboxs you never see them these days )and finding myself caught in the moment and singing the lyrics .
Do you like Joy division?
Five Scottish artist for Muriel Spark week
29 Apr 2012 17 Comments
in thoughts, whatn are you listening too ? Tags: 2012, music, musings
As it is Muriel spark week ,I decide as she was Scottish I decide to do an expanded song for sunday .To include five of my favourite Scottish bands and singers -
First up is Scottish singer songwriter Ivor Cutler ,I can’t remember the exact day I heard Ivor first but I know where I heard it and that was on John Peel ,I ‘d been twelve or thirteen under bed covers listening to his radio show .I remember thinking this guy is surreal and still think that his deadpan delivery and odd humour make him a true one-off .
Second up are the Jesus and Mary chain these were a band I discovered via friends at school or the NME I can’t remember ,but there fuzzy hazy guitar and dark lyric matter soon made me a fan of them like a bastard child of the velvet underground and sex pistols with a bit of lee Hazelwood thrown in these guys looked like no one else in a time of flowers and fey pop .
In the early nineties Irvine Welsh appeared on the lit scene and just before him the Scottish writer James Kelman won the booker so sottish dialect and tales of the dark side of growing up in Scotland were the order of the day so then step up Arab strap another band lead by a singer with deadpan singing style but much darker and up to date than Ivor Cutler .
Fourth up is King creosote a member of the fence collective ,whose members all hail from the Kingdom of Fife in Scotland Crail King Creosote is only eight miles from my Late Gran’s home and near where my Aunt still lives ,also Fife is home to the mighty Rob of Rob around books .
Last I give you the Phantom band a band I ve like for the last few years the debut was in my top ten albums the year it came out ,they seem to embody all the Scottish artists and bands I grew up with in one package .
Who are your favorite Scottish band ?
Walking in Kerouac’s boots my wild years
27 Mar 2012 22 Comments
in thoughts Tags: 2012, beat writing, films, NEW BOOKS
If you’ve not seen yet finally a film version of Kerouac’s on the road is finally being made after more than 20 years of false starts it reaches our screens in the summer .I first heard of Kerouac as a fourteen year old when my friend Andy loaned me some Doors music, but also Jerry Hopkins AND Danny Sugerman’s wonderful biography of the Doors lead singer Jim Morrison “no one here gets out alive “.early on in the book Jim’s describes his reaction to reading “on the road “and how it led to him following the rest of the Beat group of writers figure such as William Burroughs ,.Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti .So me as bookish young teen and in some ways looking for something to mean something to me , made my first move it to the world of the beats he’d read and got a copy of Burroughs’ naked lunch I know not the best first choice but I lapped it up in a couple of days and then moved on to On the road and lived in Jack’s footsteps and his friends as I found out the book is as much about Kerouac’s real life at the time .At this time I had a very tense home life I don’t get on well with my stepfather and there was a constant sense of unease at my home.So these books gave me great escape but also as Jim and Jack had both hitch-hike I start missing college and hitch-hiking round firstly in Cheshire and Manchester as I spent my days escaping the impending doom of coming home at night to an unsettled feeling at home I found beauty in the world whether it seeing the world moving or a bird or plant as I waited for a ride .I became a more open person due to this as Hitch-hiking forces you to talk to the person who has picked you up .Well this carried on even after I left and moved to Northumberland to live with my father. I read more and more Burroughs and Kerouac thanks in two ways to the newly opened Barter books in Alnwick where I lived and the wonderful stock Alnwick library which even thou a small Library had a number of William Burroughs books so cities of red night ,nova express and others fell through my hands as I tried to live as a beat in a small way ,drinking, seeing the world , writing poetry (bad poetry looking back but loved typing on an old typewriter I’d been given ) and maybe in some way trying to escape impending adulthood in a way , this I did till well in my twenties and managed to reached Germany as I still had wanderlust and now a romance , had a ball with my German girlfriend seeing different places and cultures first hand was something I’ll never regret .I know look back and have fond memories of what one small book has brought to my life and also a tinge of sadness as it must be over ten years since I read a beat writer but with a new collection of william Burroughs letters out by Penguin this month I feel a summer dive into some beat writing is called for ,I m sure I said that two summers ago but this summer I m going get on the road again anyway in my mind as I know have a wonderful home life with my dear Amanda and Winston ,so the need to run has gone some what .I ll leave you with the trailer for on the road .
Now I am 40
19 Mar 2012 48 Comments
Now I am 40
I can get wishful for my youth
Now I am 40
I can go oh and eh when I stand once in a while
Now I am 40
I can say it wasn’t like that in my day
now I am 40
I can happily buy clothes at m&s
now I am 40
I can say what is that noise
now I am 40
I can admit I not read every book I want to
now I am 40
my life begins
now I am 40
I cansay its the new 30
now I am 40
I may listen to what people say .
As you see I turned 40 yesterday ,I want to try and find the serious books I may have missed those gems of literature that have passed me by can you help what can you suggest because
now I am 40
I can ask for help with books
Back soon as I ve a busy weekend
25 Feb 2012 3 Comments
I m away today for a family event and out sunday for a leaving party at work so not be able to post hopefuly back tuesday have a great weekend one and all Happy reading one and all
I got Picked for WBN 2012 WHOOP WHOOP
20 Feb 2012 14 Comments
in #translationthurs, thoughts Tags: 2012, world book night
I didn’t enter world book night last year I’m a quiet person on the whole and was rather nervous at the prospect of handing books out but this years after trying to get beside the sea in top100 and nearly doing it .I want to pass on my passion for translation so when two made the final twenty five I choose Let the right one in by John Ajvide Lidqvist Swedish vampire story which I had read and Enjoyed and is translated .I also have now brought the Swedish film for Amanda so we can watch it together I hope to give the book to people I work with .I m so happy I was chosen and for a book from one of my favourite publisher as well Quercus .I look forward to passing my love on to people and handing my copies out to everyone .
For Amanda
14 Feb 2012 10 Comments
in my hero, thoughts Tags: 2012
here is a videos for valentines day same song but different versions the Adele and Dylan orginal .For my darling wife on valentines day and every day as she brings me such happiness and feeling of being whole .
Hope you all have a great valentines day
Dickens 2012 how far did the ripple go round the world
07 Feb 2012 18 Comments
in book news, thoughts, TRANSLATIONS Tags: english classics, TRANSLATIONS
Well today is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens birth .I ve tossed and turned in my head how to cover this and involve the main focus of Winstonsdad that of fiction in translation and I decide that is to see how in my view he has had an effect outside the UK on writers .At the time Dickens wrote he was along side a couple of great French writers Zola and earlier Balzac these where all social realist writers .so lets see how in my view dickens has effected writers from round the world .
THE CITY -
Now London is Dickens city the sooty dirty back streets dark alleys and cobbles inhabit his london make the city a central character in a lot of his books .Now Orhan Pamuk in a lecture in 2009 acknowledge how both Dickens and Joyce had shown him how important making the city feel right can be to the book ,I read his last book last year the Museum of innocence and this book has loads of dickens links the city Pamuk’s is Istanbul ,class this book is all about classes and love always crops up in Dickens .Although he said he wasn’t a huge fan the great chronicler of Cairo Naguib Mafhouz said Dickens had made cities important to the novel .Joyce also would have read dickens and how many of the scenes in Ulysses wouldn’t have been possible if Dickens hadn’t written so much about working people and the streets they live in .
CHILDREN AS A NARRATOR
Whether it is Pip ,David Copperfield or Oliver twist ,Dickens wrote great children as Narrators but also children facing great struggles and meeting the most awful characters along the way from Magwitch and Bill Sikes as evil ,to school or workplace as a horrific situations .Now last year I read two great child Narrators heir to Dickens great Narrator and both from the spanish speaking world Tochtti from down the rabbit hole lives in a nightmares world of the modern criminal class Fagin and Sikes look tame compared to this world but if Dickens lived now this would be his world .The other book is Kamchatka and Harry and his family on the run face a terrifying world and danger at every turn .I interview the writer and he had read a lot of english fiction although he didn’t mention Dickens I m sure he would have read him .
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Now there is one name jumps out for this Leo Tolstoy who was known to be a huge Dickens fan and like Dickens his books have a lot of social realism in them .Tolstoy called Dickens the greatest 19th century writer ,even have pictures of Dickens on his wall .Elsewhere I noticed Heinrich boll mention Dickens in his book the Irish journal and the recent German short story collection from Clemens Meyer a rough edged book is the heir to Dickens in its view of people on the edge is the rough parts of east german that much different to the Victorian London of Dickens I wonder .
So there is just a few people from round the world that could be called the children of dickens but I like to point out Sarah’s post and the fact that I love dickens but as Sarah says there are lots of over looked writers like Henry Green and Lawrence Durrell would be another this year is his 100th anniversary .The top image is one I took recently at the dickens museum which is at his home .
Libraries where does the future lay
14 Jan 2012 11 Comments
in news, thoughts Tags: 2012, library
Earlier this week we found out that the large department store in london Selfridge is due to open a library for seven weeks to run along side it’s book festival word ,word words .Here is the piece from the guardian .I remarked on twitter that it remind me of a scene from brief encounters where Celia Johnson talks about going to boots (a large chemist chain in the UK for those not from the UK ) ,Boots ran libraries ran from 1898 til 1960 ,people paid a few pennies for each book lent here is an article for info .Also there has been a library in the protest camps for the occupy movement has opened libraries ,here in london they’ve had a few well-known writers including Alan Bennett and donate their books to the cause .So are these signs of a movement with the current cut backs in local government spending here in the uk ,which has hit the UK library system hard with 500 libraries either closed or under threat 10% of UK total library system .As there is no bright light on the horizon with regards governmental investment in fact there maybe more cuts ,so if we want people to access books that may not have the means or funds to buy them or a kid to read books we maybe need some new ideas like shops having libraries or communities banding together ,with uk literacy at 99% but the truth is one in five people have trouble reading .We need free access to books for the most of the population so even if they don’t want to read I m not a dreamer but if they are there people have the chance to access them and borrow a book !!
How do you see the library system going ?
How is the economic situation affect libraries in your country ?
A new book podcast and a old one
04 Jan 2012 8 Comments
in news, thoughts Tags: 2012, NEW VOICES, podcast
Well I say A new one there has been 14 episodes of the readers a new banter based podcast .It is run by two well-known Blogger Simon of Savidge reads and Gavin of Gav reads .each episode is about an hour long a mix of book news ,reviews interview and also a couple of other bloggers have also appeared .If you like the long running us podcast books on the nightstand this one is for you .I like the informal style of Simon and Gavins’s almost like your sat having a coffee with the guys as they inform you of all that is going off .
Well Kim of reading matters is hosting an australian literature month I d thought I d remind any one that doesn’t it is worth listen to ABC NATIONALS the book show this show on a few times a week is a wonderful source of book info and in particular australian book news ,I feel I learnt lot about the in working of publishing and what books sell in australia and new writers from australia .I would try it and look at the archives for suggestions for Australian reading month my self I m just finishing Bereft by Chris Womersley .
What podcast do you like ?
are you reading a Australian book this month ?
