DOUBLE REVIEW: The History Boys, by Alan Bennett (4*)

I bought the movie version of The History Boys years ago - I think I was at uni, so it was probably when it first came out on DVD - but I barely remember a thing about it.  I think I attempted to watch it with my ex, who wasn't exactly keen on 'smart movies', plus I'd never actually read the play and struggled to keep up with the quick-fire banter and the many literary references!  In case you haven't come across it before, it's basically a play about eight boys trying to get into Oxford and Cambridge, under the watchful eyes of old romantic Hector and young tutor Irwin.  Anyway, I DO remember chuckling away at the boys' cheek, and Richard Griffiths being wonderful, so when I heard that he'd passed away recently it seemed like revisiting it would be a fitting tribute.  This time I hit the library and got hold of a copy of the book first, hoping that I'd maybe catch some of the wordplay and nuances better that way, and then I dug my DVD out again at last!

~ THE BOOK ~
The History Boys, by Alan Bennett
(Faber and Faber, 2004)

"How do I define history?  It's just one fucking thing after another..."

The first thing I have to say about this book is that I really enjoyed Alan Bennett's introduction.  Obviously the point of a play is to be watched, and reading the script isn't for everyone, but a good introduction is always a valuable addition to the experience, as far as I'm concerned.  Bennett's is wryly amusing and very interesting, particularly for someone younger, like me, who tripped into higher education in the noughties when the whole process and meaning was rather different.  It explains the play's firm roots in Bennett's own journey through the education system, and points out little elements of various characters that come from the playwright's life and the people he knew.  It was nice having that context in mind when I started reading!

Now, onto the play itself.  I thought it was wonderful!  As with so much of Bennett's work, it managed to combine provocative thought and deep themes with giggle-aloud humour and irresistable literary eloquence.  Although several of the boys took a while to straighten out in my mind, the majority of the characters (both students and teachers) are larger than life and so utterly real that I felt like I was sitting in that classroom listening to the banter and the ribbing, rather than reading a script.  And it's so FUNNY!  I'm sure we all remember certain people - boys, in particular - who lit up a classroom with their sense of humour, were often a bit racy or pushed their luck on occasion, but who charmed everyone including the teachers.  These boys are like that, and it made reading the script such a delight!

In between the hilarity, there are also some really interesting points and discussions about education and history.  Irwin's introduction of original thought by asking the boys to turn questions and concepts upside down and attack them head-on taught me more about critical thinking than I ever learned at school; if I'd read this before university my essays might have been much better!  The tension between Hector and Irwin, between educational styles and purposes, between jumping through hoops and being deliberately provocative, all mixed together into one big discussion of what elements of education are more important - and indeed, whether the mad push to get to university is worth it at all.  What I particularly liked was the way the very moving ending suggested how meaningless much of the boys' education really was, yet the memories of Hector and Irwin and the underlying lessons they taught still stood firm.  I've found that to be quite true in my own life, and it felt like a fitting conclusion!

Favourite moment:  Probably Hector's lesson, entirely in French, where he takes Dakin's sly 'brothel and client' scenario suggestion and runs with it.  The boys all join in with some delight, until the headteacher arrives and they hastily switch to a very theatrical war hospital theme.  It reminded me of some of the most funny and memorable lessons I had with certain classes and teachers at school!  Fortunately I remembered enough high-school French to get all the jokes... :)

Notable Quotables:

• "The wrong end of the stick is the right one.  A question has a front door and a back door.  Go in the back, or better still, the side.  Flee the crowd..."
• "The heart has its reasons that reason knoweth not..." - Blaise Pascal
• "I count examinations, even for Oxford and Cambridge, as the enemy of education.  Which is not to say that I don't regard education as the enemy of education, too."
• "The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you.  Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead.  And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."
• "Our perspective on the past alters.  Looking back, immediately in front of us is dead ground.  We don't see it and because we don't see it this means that there is no period so remote as the recent past and one of the historian's jobs is to anticipate what our perspective of that period will be..."
• "History's not such a frolic for women as it is for men.  Why should it be?  They never get round the conference table...  History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men.  What is history?  History is women following behind with the bucket."
• "Clichés can be quite fun.  That's how they got to be clichés."
• "I hadn't realised how easy it is to make things happen.  You know?"

~ THE FILM ~
The History Boys (directed by Nicholas Hytner, 2006)
Starring Richard Griffiths and Stephen Campbell Moore

A brilliant adaptation of a brilliant play.  It's a very faithful shift from page to stage to screen, only really diverging from the original in order to set up the construct properly (as you'd expect) and to take the action out of the classroom every once in a while.  Rather than a video montage, we actually get to see the boys exploring the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, for example. 

The genius of the film, in my opinion, comes from the decision to keep the theatre cast intact.  Because it's a fantastic ensemble piece, and these characters are perfect.  Richard Griffiths is a jovial Hector, Stephen Campbell Moore is the perfect mix of bold and nervous in his portrayal of Irwin, and Frances de la Tour's Miss Lintott is an absolute delight.  And then there are the boys, many of whom are now household names and familiar faces from television and film.  Dominic Cooper, who plays the cocky young stud Dakin, is a Hollywood actor.  James Corden is everywhere.  Russell Tovey is a popular television star.  Sam Barnett was a superbly naïve Millais in Desperate Romantics.  I could go on.  Thrown together as the History Boys of the title, they breathe such life and personality into a mismatched group of bright and quick-witted students.

Bottom line?  I laughed, I cried twice - at Hector's classroom breakdown AND at the deeply moving ending, which reflected the stage directions much more thoroughly than I'd expected - and I was SO GLAD to have gone back and revisited this film properly years after I first saw it.  I'll end by linking to James Corden's tear-jerking tribute to Richard Griffiths, which is one of the things that prompted to me to read and then re-watch this superb play in the first place.  It's a beautiful tribute, do read it...

The Verdict

So, should you read or watch this one?  I'd say to do both, if you don't mind reading scripts on the page.  When I was reading the book, I appreciated the wit more, enjoyed the copious literary references and had chance to 'get' the genius of Hector's French lesson, which was hilarious.  The film then brought it all to life (as a play deserves!), separated out the characters more fully in my mind, and was more moving than ever...  Both options come highly recommended, whichever you choose!

REVIEW: Carrie, by Stephen King (4.5*)

(Hodder, 2007)

*** There will be SPOILERS in this post, and more ranting than reviewing, because it's too anger-provoking not to talk about these things.  I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS! ***

"They've forgotten her, you know.  They've made her into some kind of a symbol and forgotten that she was a human being, as real as you reading this...  Nothing can change her back now from something made out of newsprint into a person.  But she was, and she hurt.  More than any of us probably know, she hurt.  And I'm so sorry and I hope it was good for her, that prom.  Until the terror began, I hope it was good and fine and wonderful and magic..."

Before I read Carrie, I expected it to be exactly as popular myth seemed to dictate: a book about a monstrous girl in a dripping prom dress, destroying a town with her telekinetic powers.  But as is so often the case with these culture-pervading novels, it is so much more than that!  Just as Pet Sematary isn't really about a mystical graveyard, and Frankenstein isn't merely about a lumbering humanoid, Carrie isn't really a book about supernatural horror.  No.  It is about a young girl tormented by years of bullying and abuse and humiliation, who finally snaps and has a mental breakdown.  The telekinetic powers are just the apocalyptic icing on the cake of ritual high-school cruelty...

I think this is probably one of those books that people respond to largely based on their own experiences at high school.  Although it's set in the 70s, there's a sense of the futility of high school posturing; despite the decades that have passed, high schools are still dominated by the same people, the same patterns, the same problems...  For those who sailed through their teenage years, it's very much the cult novel about a girl developing powerful telekinetic abilities when she (finally) hits puberty and getting revenge on the people in her town who have always laughed at her.  For those who were more like Carrie than her tormentors at school (which I'm guessing might be a fair few of us bookish types), it's the heartbreaking story of a victim at the end of her tether. 

So many moments from my teens were driven back into my head while I was reading, and considering how nervous King claims he was about trying to enter the mysterious world of the high school female, I thought it was painfully truthful.  I remember sitting at home and devouring junk food to make myself feel better.  I remember wishing I had better skin and swishier hair and a thinner stomach so that people would like me more.  I remember moments where the panic was so intense that time slowed down and faces blurred.  I remember moments when chanting and singing echoed in my ears until I wanted to run away.  I remember the day I finally turned around and faced my principal tormentor, and the surprising switch of allegiance amongst some of the watching spectators as they realised that maybe I had some small dignity after all.  I also remember watching another, deeply unpleasant but vulnerably small, girl being bullied at school, and feeling a strange sense of shameful satisfaction.  Just like Sue.  Because it wasn't in my nature to be cruel, but I stood back anyway.  All of these things were echoed in the novel, and it was profound and honest and miserable and sickening and angering, all at the same time.

Of course, not only is Carrie constantly humiliated by her peers, but let's not forget the religious and domestic abuse she is regularly exposed to at home by her violently 'Christian' mother.  If I thought Oranges are Not the Only Fruit was bad, Carrie takes the religious indoctrination and abuse of children and drags it to a whole new level.  Of course, this isn't autobiographical like Oranges, but as you read you can't help but think that there are people this religiously crazed out there, and those people do have children.  Children who are being raised in the same madness, and punished if they dare to show signs of thinking for themselves.  I'll be honest, I'm not a big fan of any child being indoctrinated into religion before they're old enough to have any kind of say in the matter, but when it comes to extremism it's outright dangerous. 

Right, that's my righteous anger done.  Back to the writing itself!  One thing I really loved about this book - in the same way that I loved the similar structure in Palahniuk's Rant - was the way it was composed of all kinds of different 'source material' alongside the regular progression of the plot, pitting post-Carrie academic speculation against the human story.  Even though I knew roughly where the novel was going, getting clues and insight into the sheer scale of Carrie's destruction and the involvement of other characters via the 'book extracts', interviews, reports, dictionaries and other excerpts scattered liberally throughout the normal prose helped to ratchet up the suspension to an unbearable pitch by the time that bucket upturned over the stage.

Skipping between characters - Carrie, her mother, Sue, Chris and Billy - gave a rounded version of events, allowing the reader to see the 'big picture' as events unfolded, and tightening that tension even further.  I also liked the way King uses parentheses to insert little snippets of impulsive thought, flashes of pure gut feeling.  It's not a technique I've ever seen before, but I thought it was a really deft way of showing how instinctive thoughts pop into someone's mind even as they're reflecting on something else.  As if that wasn't enough, King introduces so many opportunities for things to turn out differently.  Every time a character pondered intervening, every time someone had an inkling something might happen, every time someone thought about showing kindness but didn't, every time a bad decision was made, EVERY SINGLE TIME, I wanted to scream.  And Carrie's blossoming happiness and perfect Prom night broke my heart because I knew what was coming.  It's that kind of novel.

I actually found that this wasn't as much of a horror story as I'd expected, which was quite refreshing.  It had its moments, of course, as Carrie weaved her way across town wreaking havoc, projecting her fractured mind into everyone else's, imagery hot with the colours of fire and blood, but really it was more horrific.  Subtle difference.  Maybe this surprise was due to my preconception of Carrie as 'the bad guy', the monster of the piece.  In fact my heart went out to her, and just as I enjoy the downfall of the villain in any story, I felt quite pleased when Chris, Billy and even Margaret White got what they deserved.  Then I felt bad because it was going against pretty much the entire ethos of the novel...

Okay, I think I've rambled quite enough... but suffice to say that if you haven't already read this one, I'd definitely recommend it.  It's not the best novel I've ever read, and there were some fairly horrendous typos all the way through, but it made me think and feel so very much, and I found myself constantly mulling over the events and issues and moral dilemmas in the novel even when I wasn't reading.  What was right?  What was wrong?  How many girls are there out there who have been stamped on like Carrie?  How many times do those girls wish they had some small dose of power that would turn the tables at last?  How many Prom Nights would there be if these poor souls had the opportunity to get their revenge?  How did King manage not only to get so perfectly inside the minds of a series of high school girls, but to nail the way the horrible little popular cliques work and drag this reader kicking and screaming back into the past as he went?  Brilliant.  Wrenching, but brilliant.

One small thing...
I just have to share this with you, which I found scribbled in my review notebook as I was writing this post: "This is a Cinderella story - only instead of running and crying when her ugly sisters humiliate her, she reveals herself to be a ninja and kills them.  Cinderella Goes Wild."  :)

Notable Quotables:

• "Real religious nuts are nothing to fool with."
• "They were almost certain to be voted King and Queen of the high school Spring Ball, and the senior class had already voted them class couple for the yearbook.  They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet.  And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America."
• "High school isn't a very important place.  When you're going you think it's a big deal, but when it's over nobody really thinks it was great..."
• "It seemed like... oh, a big laugh.  Girls can be cat-mean about that sort of thing, and boys don't really understand.  The boys would tease Carrie for a little while and then forget, but the girls... it went on and on and on and I can't even remember where it started any more."
• "And then this other thought crept in, and it was as if it wasn't my own at all.  I was thinking about Carrie.  And about God.  It was all twisted up together, and it was awful.  Stella looked over at me and said: 'Carrie's back.'"
• "She sat quite still, letting the noise wash over her like surf.  They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.  In this one she would bite a poison apple, be attacked by trolls, be eaten by tigers.  They were laughing at her again."
• "I feel that I would kill myself before ever teaching again.  Late at night I keep thinking: If I had only reached out to that girl, if only, if only..."

Source: I bought this book from Amazon UK several years ago.

Top Ten Characters I Would Crush On If I Was Also A Fictional Character

 

 TTT is hosted by the lovely ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish.

 

Today's a rewind!  I'd half-written this post two weeks ago and never got chance to finish it, so it seemed like a good opportunity to catch up...  I actually really like this prompt - it's a slightly different slant on the 'hot fictional character' thing, when you think about it.  Some characters are sexy for the reader, but might not be if you were living the novel alongside them.  For example, Heathcliff has a certain "passionate bad boy who could be tamed by the right woman" thing going on - but you wouldn't want to be Isabella.  Noah Calhoun is perfect - but he's already hopelessly in love with another woman.  Mr Darcy is one fine specimen of gentlemanhood - but you might not think so if he was poncing around your local dance hall sneering at your friends...  See my point?  With these things firmly in mind, here are my ten, in no particular order:

 

Dorian Gray

From:  The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

I'd fancy him if:  I was alive

Dorian always seems to be top of my hot-lists!  He's young, beautiful, and devilishly sexy - and if you were a not-so-prim young lady (or man!) or a bawdy bargirl, you wouldn't KNOW that he'd made a pact with the devil and was actually getting older and more vile all the time, would you?  He's irresistable and uninhibited, which makes him eminently crushable for me...  ;)

 

 

Eric Northman
From:  The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris
I'd fancy him if:  I was alive OR dead
Well, come on, look at him!  He may be a fast, mean drinkin' machine, but he's also a six-foot-something hunk of Viking muscle with 2000 years of lusty experience and no intention of toning it down anytime soon.  Works for me...  (Note: leggings optional)

 

 

Grigg Harris
From:  The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
I'd fancy him if:  He recommended one of his favourite authors

I have the softest of soft spots for Grigg - the fact that he's played so adorably by Hugh Dancy in the movie definitely helps...  Grigg is a sci-fi-loving IT nerd with a thirst for books, a hearty respect for women, and a heart of gold.  How could I not love him, really?
 

 

Nan King

 From: Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
I'd fancy her if: She threw a rose at me
I love Nan.  Her journey from oyster girl to happy member of the London queer community was such a riveting read, and her strength, earthy wit and resourcefulness shone out of every page.  If I was in the audience at her shows with Kitty and she tossed that coveted rose my way, or if she threw a saucy glance in my direction as I walked past on the street, I'd definitely look twice!
 

Roux
From: Chocolat by Joanne Harris
I'd fancy him if: He played gypsy guitar for me
There's something about the dark, slightly wild stranger blowing in on the breeze...  For me, Roux is kinda what Heathcliff could have been if he hadn't gone crazy over Cathy, only with a boat and a guitar and a lilting Irish accent.  He also likes chocolate, and in my head, will forever be a very sexy Johnny Depp.  Politics be damned, if he arrived on a riverbank near me I'd be head over heels!

 

 

 

Aragorn

From:  The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

 I'd fancy him if:  I possessed ovaries (human or elf variety)
Dishevelled ranger turned wise king, proficient with a big sword and a nice guy to boot?  Well, duh.
 

 

Miyuki Woodward

From:  Gold by Dan Rhodes
I'd fancy her if:  She made me spaghetti hoops on toast in her clifftop hut
This book's come up a few times in recent TTT posts!  I'll be rereading it soon as well, so a full review is on the way...  Anyway, Miyuki is probably my perfect woman - artistic, laid-back, low-maintenance, but with a healthy appreciation of the magic in the world.  We'd spend lots of time wandering in the sea air, reading and eating odd mixtures of student food in a deliciously carefree fashion.  :)
 

 

Charlie
From:  The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
I'd fancy him if:  He made me a mix tape with Asleep on it... twice
Oh come on, Charlie's a sweetheart.  He's smart, he's cute, he thinks about life in a unique way, he loves to read and discover new things, he becomes more and more of a whole person as the book goes on, and he's tremendously loyal and generous to the people he loves most.  With Patrick hot but unavailable, Charlie would definitely be top of my list on the Island of Misfit Toys.

 

 

Dickon Sowerby
From:  The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
I'd fancy him if:  He brought his animals and taught me how to grow things
When I was a little girl I was a bit in love with Dickon.  A grown-up version would definitely still work for me...  He was servant Martha's little brother, the one who wandered the moor with his tame animals and helped Mary bring the rose garden back to life and became her best-friend-with-a-side-helping-of-youthful-chemistry.  Gentle, intuitive, earthy and a good laugh - what's not to like?!

 

 

Percy Jackson
From:  Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and Heroes of Olympus series
I'd fancy him if:  He did something cool with water
Yeah, so, Percy Jackson is also technically rather on the young side... but come on, ladies.  SON OF POSEIDON.  He can control water and loves being anywhere near it and is also really smart and brave and good looking.  And did I mention... SON OF POSEIDON!  DEMI-GOD.  Oh yes.  I'd share an oceanside house with him any day.

 

 Alrighty!  I think that's quite enough swooning for one week - tell me, if you were between the pages of a book, which characters would you be eyeing up?  And if you're a fellow TTT-er, feel free to leave a link to your own post in the comments so I can return the visit!

 

Top Ten Books I Read Before I Was A Blogger

TTT is hosted by the lovely ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish.

This prompt took a bit of researching, I can tell you...  Sometimes I'm amazed to realise how long ago I read a particular book - usually when I go to my review archive and find that it's not there after all.  I see this as a good opportunity to revisit some of the great books I read BEFORE the blog - though you'll be happy to know that I've deliberately left out the ones that come up week after week (The Secret History, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the book about Shakespeare and Co., all those usual suspects) to focus on boosting some different titles!  I wouldn't call this my ultimate top ten pre-blog reads, but I'd say it was ten of my top pre-blog reads.  Subtle difference.  Here goes nothing!

 

Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
This is possibly my... second?... all-time favourite book.  Maybe even first.  It's definitely toppled Jane Eyre off the top five, if my recent stalled-halfway rereading of THAT is anything to go by.  Clearly I just like my sweeping Yorkshire gothic romances with more madness, more passion, grumpier servants and less morality-based TALKING.  :)

Robinson Crusoe
by Daniel Defoe
I've actually only read this book once, but whereas these days I feel a little... intimidated... by Defoe, back then I sailed through it!  Maybe it's because it's one of those books that's so tangled up in the public conscience already?  In my head it's mixed with The Coral Island and Castaway and Pirates of the Caribbean and Sebastian Faulks's television series and even *whispers* The Nightmare of Milky Joe, which all adds up to a must-keep for me!
 

The Snow Goose
by Paul Gallico
Such a tiny, tiny book, but by the end of it... OH MY GOD SO MANY FEELS!  "Whiling away an hour" my butt - it was more like "whiling away half an hour followed by an hour of sobbing into my pillow and a nap".  It's such a beautiful, tragic, heartbreaking little novella, about love and nature and war, illustrated with scratchy line drawings, and I still sometimes think about it now. 

 

My Booky Wook
by Russell Brand
Surprised?  Bear with me... because this is a great book!  I think the reason a lot of people don't like Russell Brand is that his mouth tends to run away with him - but that's not a problem in a book.  This memoir of addiction and recovery, fame and friendship, is beautifully written and has all of Brand's self-deprecating humour and exquisite flights of speech, only... y'know, edited.  I loved it.
 

Eat Pray Love
by Elizabeth Gilbert
The story of a woman's solo journey to a more fulfilled life via indulgence in Italy, spirituality in India and finding balance in Bali, this came along at just the right moment in my agoraphobia recovery.  Elements of her journey inspired me, some of what she learned applied to my own life, and the book made me really want to be out there in the world again...  For that it will ALWAYS have a special place in my heart!

 

The Secret Garden
by Frances Hodgson Burnett
How could anyone not like The Secret Garden?  The little girl in the spooky mansion?  The tormented lonely uncle?  The crippled cousin learning to live again?  The earthy boy with the tame animals?  The robin mysteriously leading the way?  The deserted garden, slowly returning to life under small, searching hands?  Can't you almost catch the scent of grass and roses just thinking about it?

 

Cinnamon City: Falling for the Magical City of Marrakech
by Miranda Innes
If this book doesn't make you want to pack a case and head off to Marrakech, nothing will.  It's about the painstaking - and frequently frustrating - renovation of an old riad in the middle of the city, now open to travellers as the beautiful Riad Maizie.  It is alive with the scent of spices, the bustle of the bazaars, the music of the snake charmers and the cries of the local muezzins, and it pushed Marrakech straight onto my travel list!

 

Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime
by Joe Moran
A brilliantly quirky book in which each chapter discusses the social history of one element of our daily life.  Topics include what we eat for breakfast, the daily commute, cigarette breaks and bedtime.  It's such a clever way to explore the way our most basic routines have evolved, and it's one of the few history-type books that I know I'll definitely reread, just because it was so much fun!

 

Gold
by Dan Rhodes
A gentle, funny and unique novel about a girl called Miyuki who arrives in a small coastal town at the same time every year to walk, read and find some peace.  This year she'll do all these things, reacquaint herself with some of the madcap small-town characters in the local pub, and take part in something of a miracle down by the cliffs...  I'm rereading this one soon!

 

No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
by Naomi Klein
This was probably THE book that first awakened a spirit of anti-consumerism and anti-materialism in me.  It was the first book to tell me about sweatshops and how they operate, the first to tell me how supermarkets drive down the price of food, the first to tell me how brands manipulate our need to buy.  It was also the first book to tell me about the people fighting back.  It was possibly the most powerful book I read in my teens!
 

Those are ten of MY favourite books from before I started the blog; what would be on YOUR list?  If you're a fellow Top Ten Tuesday participant, feel free to leave a link to your post!
 

Project Reading In Bed

I've seen a few posts and news articles recently that have discussed reading before bed, the importance of an evening routine, and the negative effects of screen time on sleep.  Being prone to depression, getting plenty of sleep and creating a good routine is really important for keeping things on an even keel, and getting into BAD sleeping habits can have an immediate effect on my mood.  A few weeks ago I had a major wobble which was exacerbated by night after night of restless sleep, so it's definitely been boosted back up my priority list of late.  After a fair amount of reading around (ironically) on the internet, I thought it might be time to finally get my butt in gear and give all this advice a whirl! 

I'd already had vague ideas floating around my head on this subject, but it was Jenn's Sunday update post over at Booksessed last week that first started to solidify my resolve.  She wrote:

"I've decided that I sleep better and have more interesting dreams when I make a point to read before bed.  So for the past couple weeks I have been going to my room between 8-9pm and reading until I get tired which is about 11pm.  I get so much reading done, it's amazing.  I don't know if I'll stick with this but it makes me feel better.  My reading is more focused which I love."

"What a marvellous idea!" thunk I, and promptly forgot about it for a few days.  Then Mum mentioned reading an interesting article on the BBC website about poor sleep being linked to heart failure, which then led me down the internet rabbit hole (again) into a whole labyrinth of articles about the link between bedtime screen use and melatonin suppression (when it gets dark our melatonin level rises, making us sleepy - more blue screen light means less melatonin), the importance of a healthy bedtime routine, and the rather fascinating myth of the 8-hour sleep, which links back to various historical sources and definitely provided me with food for thought!  Oh, and I found a sleep profiler, which I OBVIOUSLY couldn't resist.  I got 65%, which in my end report roughly translated as "You know what you should be doing, so why ain't you doing it?  Fool."

Domino got 100% on her sleep profiler.

I found all this very interesting and more than a little thought-provoking.  When I was a child, when a computer was that bulky thing in the corner of the living room that took forever to whirr up but was occasionally good for homework, reading before bed was a matter of course.  Naturally, I had nights where I was more awake and would sneak out of bed and sit under my nightlight to write my diary or carry on reading - but more often than not I would read for an hour or so and then, when it was time to turn the light off, I drifted off content and had a good night's sleep.

It's all well and good to talk about 'the good old days' and hark back to childhood with rose-tinted glasses firmly in place, but the fact remains that without a laptop three feet away on the floor, bedtime was a much more peaceful process!  There was no getting swept up article-hopping at 10 o'clock at night.  No jumping from YouTube video to YouTube video until I suddenly realised it was nearly midnight.  No sly thoughts of 'Well, I'll just write a bit more of a blog post and maybe check Twitter one more time.'  No suddenly realising I had grocery shopping to do or library books to renew and popping online in my PJs.  No idly clicking onto TV Catchup even though I knew I had to be up early the next morning.  There was a clear division between screen time and winding down for bed, and BOTH were pleasurable experiences.

So, maybe I should give this a try!  Follow in Jenn's footsteps - and those of my miniature self - and make an effort to get back to a calmer, more organized, book-fuelled pre-sleep routine rather than getting caught up on the internet and suddenly realising that I'm still fully dressed and my stuff for work isn't ready and that I should have been in bed hours ago.  It's certainly not going to hurt, and it could do wonders for both my quality of sleep AND my reading focus. 

The plan is to make a concerted effort to have the laptop or TV turned off by about 9pm every night, switch the big overhead light off in favour of the bedside lamp at the end of the bed, and READ until I get that 'time to doze off' feeling.  Sure, there's sometimes good stuff on telly at that time, but most of what I watch is on the BBC or Channel 4, both of which have decent catch-up services anyway.  Perfect for watching over breakfast or dinner, or on days off!  I'm sure I won't stick with it EVERY night - there'll be DVD evenings and nights where I get swept up doing something, undoubtedly - but I think it'll be a good step in a healthier direction!


A sleepy little Millie purr-ito!

Do you read in bed?  Do you have a particular routine, or does it chop and change from day to day?

REVIEW: Snuff, by Chuck Palahniuk (3*)

(Vintage, 2009)

This is a novel about a record-breaking gang-bang featuring one legendary porn queen and six hundred obliging men.  Except... it's not.  Because Palahniuk's never as simple as that.  Told from alternating and often conflicting viewpoints - Numbers 72 (a young man), 137 (a shamed TV star) and 600 (a porn veteran), and the 'talent wrangler', Sheila - this is actually a novel about the seediness of the adult entertainment industry, the vacuity of Hollywood and the deceptive nature of screen beauty.  At the opening of the book, everyone looks good and has a reputation to uphold; by the end their secrets have been revealed and the layers of makeup and ego and personal history have been peeled away to reveal something uglier, smaller and deeply sad.  It didn't rock my world like Rant, which I still occasionally find myself mulling over nearly a year on - but if you're not easily offended it was a relatively quick read and still pulled me on at breakneck pace towards the inevitable bizarre finale...

Favourite part:  Palahniuk's trademark devotion to throwing in loads of pithy little facts about his subject, the more offbeat the better - I stopped every few pages to Google something, only to find it was actually true and not just part of his fiction.  Some of my favourite examples from this particular novel:

• During the making of Singin' in the Rain, Gene Kelly had to film the title song for several days in a row while running a temperature of 103° and dancing in 'rain' made by mixing water with milk.
• Marilyn Monroe used to cut down the heel of one of her shoes to make one leg shorter than the other, giving her a real wiggle when she walked.
• Tallulah Bankhead used to grind eggshells into a glass of water and drink down the mixture, scratching her throat and giving her a deeper, more sultry voice.
• During the Cold War, American spies had cyanide cast into their glasses.  If they were caught, they were meant to casually chew the curved earpieces, killing them almost immediately.
• Roy Fitzgerald was a giggly, clumsy actor with a high-pitched voice.  He was deliberately exposed to someone with strep throat, then advised to exert his vocal chords until they were damaged enough that when he got better, his voice was lower.  Then he changed his name to Rock Hudson.

If nothing else, this novel has been an excellent source of genuinely interesting trivia to throw at people over the last few days!  :)

Source:  I borrowed this book from Chesterfield Library.

REVIEW: Julie and Julia - My Year of Cooking Dangerously, by Julie Powell (4*)

(Penguin Books, 2009)

"There was something about all this familiar work - the kneading and rolling and flouring, the Book beside me, Julia in my head chortling quietly to herself like a roosting pigeon in its cote... It made me philosophical - or maybe just hungry."

This book centres around one woman, Julie Powell, and her impulsive decision in 2002 to give her life focus by cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.  She set up a blog to record her experiences, and christened her attempt The Julie/Julia Project.  This is an expanded account of that project, drawing on her daily cooking battles, her working life as a secretary for a government agency, and her growing infamy as a food blogger.  She has also scattered a handful of cookery- and MtAoFC-related quotes throughout the book, as well as semi-fictional vignettes about Julia and Paul Child's relationship concocted from the material found in their letters, journals and (auto)biographies.

When I first started reading, I must admit, I thought Powell was going to be far too neurotic and self-obsessed for me, and that this might even end up as a rare DNF.  Fortunately it didn't take long for things to pick up: as the Julie/Julia Project begins in earnest, Powell's attention is drawn outside of herself and away from her own hysterical personality, and the book really takes off.  I wasn't a big fan of Julie when she was trying too hard to demonstrate her own kookiness - she came across as far more likeable, honest and yes, quirky, when she turned her pen towards other people and other things in her life.  This, for me, was where her writing felt the strongest and most enjoyable: when she was enthusing about food, sharing her cookery experiences, talking about her friends and family, and exploring the way her project brought her closer to the people she loved.

I think my favourite section of the book was "They Shoot Lobsters, Don't They?", a hilarious chapter about her first foray into cooking lobster.  I've never done it myself, but I've heard the horror stories, and Powell's experiences lived up to expectations in that regard!  The image of her sitting in her car after buying her first ever lobster, anxiously listening for the rustle of the paper bag that might signal a crustacean escape attempt in the back seat, is just wonderful.  From there it only gets better as she has a total freak-out in the kitchen, manages a successful couple of kills, and finally arrives at The Big One - the dismemberment of a live lobster for Homard à l'Américaine.  By this point she's almost like the Lady Macbeth of the kitchen, blood on her hands, worrying that maybe she'll actually enjoy this last kill, getting in touch with her culinary dark side.  Call me sadistic, but I loved every moment of it!

I also really enjoyed reading Powell's thoughts on blogging: her intrepid beginning, the first flush of excitement as she realises she has a mini readership all her own, and soon afterwards, her devotion to her 'bleaders' (her rather unpleasant term for blog readers), the feeling that she has to keep going for them, and the encouragement she draws from their feedback.  Later, she shares her thrill as her blog really takes off, as well as her worry that if she isn't 'the Julie/Julia woman' she will go back to just being a secretary with a lot of neurosis and two cats.  The project begins to give her a purpose, and to define her as an individual, and it made me think - what would all of us, we book bloggers, do without our own little empires?  She really reflected the stages of being a blogger, and the feelings we all have about it sometimes away from our carefully tended homepages.  I know I've sometimes wondered who I'd be if I wasn't 'the Bookshop Girl' any more, so it was interesting to see my thought processes put into words so honestly!

If there was anything that really flattened my enjoyment of the book, it was the moment when I was idly Googling around the subject and found out that Julia Child was actually very dismissive and uninterested in Julie Powell, intimating that her project was a stunt, and that she wasn't a serious cook.  I find that sad.  Powell may be quirky and neurotic, but I don't think you could NOT call her a serious cook, given how determinedly she followed through with her plan, cooking complex meals almost every night, using methods and seeking out ingredients that really aren't that common these days.  Her affection and reverence for Child shines out of her writing, and I'd imagined Julia as a kind of genial larger-than-life Ma Larkin figure who'd be tickled and perhaps flattered by the project.  It was her masterpiece, after all, that brought Julie, her husband, her friends and other Mastering the Art of French Cooking devotees together.  It must have been devastating for Powell, like a kid being snubbed by their favourite celebrity when they asked for an autograph.  I can't help but think that perhaps if Child had survived to read the book, rather than just part of the blog, she might have felt differently; as it is, Powell's reaction to Child's death and her tribute at the end were so moving they had me in tears! 

That blow aside, I really enjoyed this book.  I'll admit that there were occasional moments that began to drag, and little sections where Powell veered back into self-obsessed territory and began to lose me a bit, but these moments got fewer and farther between as the pages went by.  There was plenty of food-and-cookery writing to satisfy my taste for good mouthwatering prose, but there was also real heart, real smarts, a real individual, a real voice behind that prose that I ended up appreciating more and more as the book went on.  Of course, I have the DVD awaiting me now that I'm finally finished with the book, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Powell's kooky style translates onto the screen.  Knowing it was in the capable hands of the late, great Nora Ephron (and really, who does kooky better?), I'm expecting to be in for a lovely girlie evening of giggling and eating popcorn sometime over the winter!  Cautiously recommended for amateur foodies, hopeless cooks and people who can't resist another helping of dessert.  You'll be in good company here!

Notable Quotables:

• "Sally and I have managed to remain close friends ever since living together in our freshman year of college even though I'm the kind of person who, when bored or unhappy, either drinks myself into oblivion or cooks very unhealthy things; Sally is the kind of person who, when bored or unhappy, goes jogging or cleans the bathroom with a toothbrush."
• "You know that dejection that comes upon you when you realize that the person you're talking to might as well be from Jupiter, for all the chance you have of making them get what you're saying?  I hate that."
• "I tore open the bag to let in some air - so this underwater creature could breathe better? - before putting him in the freezer.  Suffocating is worse than freezing to death is better than being steamed alive?  Perhaps anticipation of my evening of bloodletting had addled my brain, but the philosophical intricacies of lobster murder were proving too much for me to rationally negotiate."
• "I knew I had to write something on my blog...  I wanted to write Julia the best, funniest, greatest in memoriam ever.  I got to work on it, and I was on fire, let me tell you...  I was on a roll.  And then I wrote this sentence: "I have no claim over the woman at all, unless it's the claim one who has nearly drowned has over the person who pulled her out of the ocean."  And I started crying so hard I had to stop writing."

Source: I nabbed this book from a bag of incoming stock.

REVIEW: Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman (4.5*)

(Penguin Books, 2000)

"... there is a certain kind of child who awakens from a book as from an abyssal sleep, swimming heavily up through layers of consciousness toward a reality that seems less real than the dream-state that has been left behind. I was such a child."

This lovely little volume is a collection of essays about books and reading.  Fadiman does not deal in generalisations and the broad sweep of the literary world, instead writing about her deeply personal habits and experiences.  Whether she is discussing the difficulties of merging libraries with her husband, or the delights of reading a book in its real-life setting, her introspective approach means that the reader doesn't feel the need to argue or dispute her opinions; instead we are simply invited to enjoy the ride and reflect on our own reading experiences along the way. 

Like many American 'books about books' (and Fadiman does love her old-school highbrow literature), there were many titles I hadn't heard of and many authors I wasn't familiar with, but rather unusually, in this case I found that my enjoyment wasn't dented at all.  Fadiman's lightly-worn expertise means that her readers don't need an intimate knowledge of every volume she cites, and her infectious enthusiasm had me adding a whole bunch of new and exciting titles to my wishlist rather than getting frustrated.  She also includes a list of more 'books about books' at the end, some of which I already own, and some of which I'm sure I'll be seeking out at some point!

Obviously I would highly recommend this one to book lovers who haven't already succumbed to its pleasures - but rather than leave the post at that, I thought instead I'd give you a run-down of the essays themselves.  I don't know about everyone else, but sometimes with a book like this I like to know a bit more about what I'm buying so that I can better judge whether it's going to contain pieces I'm interested in, written from a perspective I'm going to appreciate...

1.  Marrying Libraries
One of my favourite essays of the bunch - though like songs on a CD, I do sometimes wonder if this is because it's at the beginning and so I've probably read it most often!  It is about a reader's love for their own books, about an individual's unique history with each volume on their shelves, and the perils of trying to sort and categorise books when you are melding collections with another, equally idiosyncratic reader.

• "Promising to love each other for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health... had been no problem, but it was a good thing the Book of Common Prayer didn't say anything about marrying our libraries and throwing out the duplicates.  That would have been a far more solemn vow, one that would probably have caused the wedding to grind to a mortifying halt."

2.  The Joy of Sesquipedalians
Fadiman shares her family's love of words, and the pleasure they get from learning new, long or archaic words to add to their already impressive vocabularies (this is one of the few books I've read over the years where I've had to consult a dictionary every few pages!).  Some of the more ancient examples she cites are quite beautiful, and her enthusiasm is infectious!

3.  My Odd Shelf
A quirky essay about what Fadiman calls her 'odd shelf' - a collection of around sixty books on polar exploration.  She practically bubbles with enthusiasm, sharing little-known facts and explaining why she loves these tales so much.  This is the kind of essay she writes best, I think: sharing her affection for her favourite books and making us want to rush off and read them too!

• "When the corpses of some of Franklin's officers and crew were later discovered, miles from their ships, the men were found to have left behind their guns but to have lugged such essentials as monogrammed silver cutlery, a backgammon board, a cigar case, a clothes brush, a tin of button polish, and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield.  These men may have been incompetent bunglers, but, by God, they were gentlemen."

4.  Scorn Not the Sonnet
Fadiman looks back at her youthful fascination with the sonnet form, and neatly captures the earnest but usually fairly painful compulsion of a bookish teenager to write bad poetry.  It is also the moving story of her father's developing blindness, and the poetry and intellectual curiosity that saved him from despair.

• "It was a grievous blow when Miss Farrar tacked up the class's star sonnets on the bulletin board and mine was not among them.  Her favorite was about the Acropolis... its author called the Parthenon "a ruined crown".  It never occurred to me that this metaphor alone was worth a hundred of my entire sonnet."
• "My sonnets looked like poems.  They quacked like poems.  But at seventeen, when I got to college and my critical faculties suddenly kicked in, I had to admit that they weren't really poems.  I had mistaken for lyric genius what was in fact merely the genetic facility for verbal problem-solving that enabled everyone in my family to excel at crossword puzzles."

5.  Never Do That to a Book

An exploration of the way readers interact with their books, and the different attitudes we have towards the book as an object.  Do we keep our books pristine and care for them faithfully, or do we annotate, dog-ear, stick mementoes between the pages, and generally make them our own?  Is the book a vessel or a sacred object, and what makes this particular topic so inflammatory for bookish folks?  This is another of my favourites, because it's so very relatable!

•  "The chambermaid believed in courtly love.  A book's physical self was sacrosanct to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration, a noble but doomed attempt to conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which it had left the bookseller.  The Fadiman family believed in carnal love." 

6.  True Woman
Musings on an old book on the subject of a woman's duties, passed down to Anne from her great-grandmother Maude.  The archaic advice laid down in the book is set against Maude's life and against Anne's role as a modern wife and mother.  It's quite interesting, but very personal and not so bookish; it would probably have been a better fit in Fadiman's other book of essays, At Large and At Small.

7.  Words on a Flyleaf
A rather lovely essay about inscriptions, beginning with where they are written and how they are acquired.  Fadiman includes some famous examples (eg. Shelley to Keats, Byron to the Marchesa Guiccioli) as well as some personal ones, showing how special a book becomes when it contains a carefully-considered inscription from a lover or friend.  Another one I like to reread fairly regularly!

8.  You Are There
What is it like to read a book in the very place being described within its pages?  For Fadiman this is a kind of literary double whammy - being able to look around and see, smell and experience some little piece of that book in the flesh.  The less the place has changed, the better!  My favourite part of the essay is when Fadiman's little daughter gets to enjoy this phenomenon at a certain famous New York hotel - it's so adorable!

• "When he read Livy at Thrasymenus - in Latin, of course - Macauley achieved a kind of Double Word Score whose peculiar frisson will be instantly recognized by anyone who has ever read Wordsworth at Grasmere, Gibbon in Rome, or Thoreau at Walden."

9.  The His'er Problem
One of the duller essays of the collection, about gender bias in language, and the pros and cons of trying to find more neutral alternatives.  Fadiman successfully walks the fine line between historical precedent and modern feminism and it's worth reading, but honestly?  I'm not THAT interested in etymology, and I prefer it when she's talking about books.

10.  Insert a Carrot
The actual title of this essay has proofreading symbols in it, which I can't figure out how to do on here, so... go with it.  This one's about spelling and grammar mistakes, and the sheer impossibility of switching off your inner proofreader if you have a pedantic nature.  I'm sure many of us can identify!  Fadiman comes from a family of compulsive correctors and includes some brilliant examples of classic proofreading blunders, which always make me laugh!

11.  Eternal Ink

Fadiman goes right back to the basics of the writing experience: the implements we use.  Part of the essay is a kind of love letter to her favourite pen and the romance of writing with a quill, before she moves on to modern convenience and how writing on a computer differs to the reassuring permanence of ink.  I really enjoyed this one for its simultaneously relatable ideas and its very personal touch.

• "What a pleasure it is to open one's mailbox and find a letter from an old friend whose handwriting on the envelope is as instantly recognizable as a face!"

12.  The Literary Glutton
One of my absolute favourite essays, covering every aspect of literary gluttony, from the literal (people who chew book pages) to the sublime decadence of food description.  Interestingly, she returns to her polar exploration shelf to show how vivid and joyful a hungry man's description of an imagined meal can be.  This is a real celebration of the sensuousness and poetry of food writing, and made me immediately think of everything from The Darling Buds of May to Enid Blyton picnics, Chocolat to the groaning tables in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.  Gorgeous.

• "My most frequent response to gastronomic references in literature is an immediate urge to raid the refrigerator.  When I happen to be reading in bed, the spoils are a source of marital strife.  If I had married Charles Lamb, who once told Coleridge that he was especially fond of books containing traces of buttered muffins, I would have no problem, but instead I married George, to whom crumbs on the pillows - especially after we have brushed our teeth - are a sign of grave moral turpitude."

13.  Nothing New Under the Sun
A playful but enlightening look at plagiarism in an era in which nothing is truly 'new' - who does it, how attitudes to plagiarism have changed, and how it affects its victims.  Fadiman cites some extreme (and deeply ironic) examples, which made me smile!  In a rather inspired move, this essay is also excessively footnoted, showing every single source of influence and input, from the title (taken from Ecclesiastes) to phone conversations Fadiman made to her mother.  It's amusing but also makes her point very cleverly!

14.  The Catalogical Imperative
Fadiman explains her peculiar addiction to mail order catalogues: she delights in the ridiculous yet tempting items on offer, and the vastly hyperbolic descriptions that are always so very entertaining to read!  She describes the wondrous plenty of an old Sears catalogue, and explores the way these companies pander to our fantasy lifestyle via her imaginary alter-ego, 'Anne Sadiman'.  Pithy and amusing!

• "... why do I receive catalogues devoted exclusively to salsa, equestrian gear, electric grills, extra-large clothes, extra-small clothes, tours to sites at which UFOs have landed, and resin reproductions of medieval gargoyles?  Do these companies know something about me that I don't know?"

15.  My Ancestral Castles
A rather magical essay about the way in which a parent's reading habits trickle down to their children: how a child observes someone reading, imitates them, and might later borrow books from their library, opening up a new world of discovery.  Fadiman talks about our fond memories of the books that we had around the house in childhood - and how many of us had our first encounters with literary 'dirty bits' via sneaky peeks at some of the less virtuous titles on those very same bookshelves!

• "My daughter is seven, and some of the other second-grade parents complain that their children don't read for pleasure.  When I visit their homes, the children's rooms are crammed with expensive books, but the parents' rooms are empty...  By contrast, when I walk into an apartment with books on the shelves, books on the bedside tables, books on the floor, and books on the toilet tank, then I know what I would see if I opened the door that says PRIVATE - GROWNUPS KEEP OUT: a child sprawled on the bed, reading."

16.  Sharing the Mayhem
Fadiman explores the joys of reading aloud, and of hearing a story read aloud to you in turn.  She discusses Dickens's famously dramatic public reading of Nancy's death scene from Oliver Twist, the act of reading aloud to your children, and the romantic intimacy of lovers reading to one another.

• "When you read silently, only the writer performs.  When you read aloud, the performance is collaborative.  One partner provides the words, the other the rhythm.  No stage is required, no rehearsal, not even an audience.  When he was a boy, Heine read Don Quixote to the trees and flowers in the Palace Garden of Düsseldorf.  Lamb believed that it was criminal to read Shakespeare and Milton silently, even if no one was there to listen."

17.  The P.M.'s Empire of Books
An essay about William Gladstone and his obsession with arranging, cataloguing and housing his books.  He saw this occupation as a retreat from his government work, and made it his mission to cram as many books as possible into a small space: he designed an optimum library layout, and invented the rolling bookshelves now used at the Bodleian Library (amongst other places).  He even wrote a book about it!  Definitely one of the more unusual and fascinating pieces of the bunch.

18.  Secondhand Prose
I'd actually forgotten all about this essay in between reads, so it was a pleasant surprise to get to the end of the collection and find an entire piece about the delights of second-hand books!  Obviously I'm biased, but I loved this one.  Fadiman writes eloquently about her affection for second-hand bookshops: the surprises, the romance, the temptation...  In the name of balance, she also cites George Orwell's experiences as proof that running one of these bookshops isn't always idyllic (yup), and describes the flipside of used books - all those unwanted titles sitting unloved, without a home.

One thing I found particularly interesting was the idea that once a library is split apart in a secondhand bookshop, it no longer 'is' its owner - the books lose their context and meaning.  With my own books, I definitely find that once they're divided up onto the bookshop shelves, they no longer feel like a part of me and it's easier to let them go.  If they're together in the office in a stack, on the other hand, they still feel like a part of 'my collection'.  Books get their value from the way they sit within a library or a personal collection - a book with no home and no context loses that value.

• "On an earlier birthday, George gave me a two-volume set of Farthest North, Fridtjof Nansen's account of his unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole by ship.  The edges were unopened.  As I slit them with an unpracticed fingernail, I was overcome with melancholy.  These beautiful volumes had been published in 1897, and not a single person had read them.  I had the urge to lend them to as many friends as possible in order to make up for all the caresses they had missed during their first century."
• "In a secondhand bookstore, each volume is one-of-a-kind, neither replaceable from a publisher's warehouse nor visually identical to its original siblings, which have accreted individuality with every change of ownership.  If I don't buy the book now, I may never have another chance.  And therefore, like Beecher, who believed the temptations of drink were paltry compared with the temptations of books, I am weak."

Source:  I acquired this book six years ago after finding it frequently quoted in The Book Addict’s Treasury (Julie Rugg and Lynda Murphy), and it's been a much-loved fixture on my shelves ever since!

Bookish Epiphany Part 3: Getting back on track

This has been a bit of a marathon, but fret not - this is the last post of the bunch!  So, in Part 1 I talked about how dissatisfied I've become with my reading and with the way I seem to keep falling down the twin rabbit holes of trashy telly and the internet instead of doing things I enjoy of an evening, like reading good books and watching documentaries.  In Part 2 I sketched out how my reading has changed from 2006-12, and clearly demonstrated the discrepancy between what I love to read most (as evidenced by my favourite books of each year) and what I'm actually reading (the figures never lie).

That really only leaves one question - where do I go from here?  What have I learned this week, and how do I implement these lessons in such a way that I can start to regain my genuine love for my books and get some much-needed balance back in my free time?

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED

1. Mixed reading is good reading - I enjoy a really mixed diet of books.  That means classics, history, literary fiction, chick lit, humour and journalism, natural history, science, YA, social sciences and biography.
2. Not every blogger recommendation is a GOOD recommendation - Just because twenty bloggers have recommended it, doesn't mean it's worth buying.  WHO those bloggers are, and whether I share their tastes and sensibilities, is more important.
3. I really like non-fiction - Nothing makes me feel quite as satisfied as getting to the end of a book that's taught me something, and where I've had to think and persevere and understand instead of just being able to skim along on the surface.  Books about books are also a good bet, for obvious reasons!
4. I also really like classics - Not every classic hits the spot for me, but the ones that do make up a large proportion of the books I keep and love and re-read.  There's a reason they've stuck around so long!
5. Quality over quantity - Reading less books but choosing wisely and really enjoying them is FAR preferable to ploughing through twice as many but not clicking with most of them.
6. Self-inflicted pressure never helps - Feeling like I should be posting reviews twice a week doesn't help.  Joining challenges that I have no chance of finishing doesn't help.  Overthinking and overprescribing and fretting does not a happy reader make.
7. The internet is a deceptive fiend - I am REALLY good at 'popping online for five minutes' only to come back to consciousness three hours later and realise I've lost another evening.  Then I feel like a muppet and go to bed in a huff.
8. The BBC is my friend - I love documentaries on BBC2 and BBC Four.  I also love great dramas like The Hour and Homeland (ssh, I know, Channel 4).  I get more out of watching something fascinating at 9pm instead of spending another hour on Pinterest.
9. I enjoy taking a chance - Picking up books on a whim from the library often yields some of my favourite books of each year.  Taking a chance on something I know very little about, or that is completely outside my comfort zone, is one of the most satisfying parts of my reading life.
10. Reviewing for others isn't doing me any favours - I'm happiest when I'm free to read whatever I like, whether that's a pile of chick lit over a busy summer or a wave of books on Ancient Egypt because I'm on a history kick.  Throwing compulsory reading into the mix - especially compulsory reading that isn't something I enjoy that much - seems rather counter-intuitive.

WHAT I PLAN TO DO ABOUT IT

1. Take the blog down a notch - That means less filler, more substance.  Instead of feeling like I NEED to post three or four times a week, I'm going to scale things down and start enjoying what I write again!  I'll review to the timetable of my reading instead of reading to fit a review timetable, if you see what I mean...  Hopefully it'll just loosen everything up and take the pressure off. 
2. Get off the reviewer radar - Reviewing for RHCP was a great privilege at the beginning, partially because much of what I read I'd chosen from their blogger bulletins, or I was emailed first to see if I was interested.  These days it seems many books are just sent out regardless so I've ended up with a big pile of titles that I'm not really interested in but still feel obligated to read.  I've asked to be removed from their mailing list and I'll just read and review the couple that HAVE piqued my interest in the near future.
3. Quit planning - We all know that the moment you make a list of books you want to read next, you end up desperate to read something else entirely.  So I'm going to stop for a while and see what happens.  When I finish a book, I'll go up to the flat and choose something else.  Something that I want to read RIGHT NOW - not next week, not next month, NOW.
4. Challenge-Free for 20-1-3 - I'm always tempted by challenges.  Always.  But I don't think I've finished a single one yet, and they just end up hanging over me in December chortling to themselves.  Yes, they've pushed me towards some great books in the past - but the whole point of this exercise is to start doing that for myself again, so maybe I won't need them in 2013!
5. No to the numbers game - An extension of the Challenge-Free 2013, this means no numerical target next year.  Not that I ever expect to hit it anyway, but subconsciously it seems I still feel the need to boost my numbers via quick reads.  My average on a free year seems to be around 40-45 books, so why am I aiming for 75?!
6. Use the TV guide, Luke - Instead of switching on TV Catchup at 7pm and watching whatever's on, I really want to start planning ahead again.  There are so many wonderful-looking series and one-offs that I've missed because I just didn't bother checking the TV guide online or in the paper.  I can't watch everything, but I won't spot the gems unless I look!
7. Interacting mindfully - One of my main problems is focus.  How am I reading properly if I'm sitting a foot away from a humming laptop screen?  How am I watching a programme properly if I've got Twitter open in the next tab?  Instead of doing multiple things at once, I'm trying to practise doing one thing at a time.  When something else flits across my mind, I'm trying to set it aside for afterwards.
8. New and shiny doesn't mean better - Just because a book's hot off the press and everyone's talking about it, doesn't mean I have to buy it right this minute.  In fact, it's often better to wait until the filter's kicked in a bit and there's a more balanced response out there, so I know whether it's worth reading or not.  Being a blogger doesn't mean I have to jump on every bandwagon that rolls past - especially when there are so many awesome books already waiting for me on my bookshelves.
9. Allow one thing to lead to another - Once upon a time, I would read a bunch of books on a particular topic within a short space of time, because one naturally led to another and I couldn't get enough.  Or maybe I'd watch an amazing programme and want to read the book behind it (Ben Macintyre tends to make a compelling one-off BBC documentary every time he has a new book out, for example), or see a biopic movie and want to know more.  Instead of thinking, "Oh no, I should mix things up more for the blog!" I'd like to go back to following the book trail wherever it may lead!  Who am I reading for, in the end?!
10. Finding a balance - I don't want to implement a reading plan or only ever watch BBC Four for the rest of my life - but nor do I want to continue to waste hours and hours of my time reading books I'm not enjoying, watching comedy episodes I've only seen two days earlier, and obsessively trawling epic Pinterest boards for days at a time.  Hopefully just being conscious of everything I've talked about this week will help me make better choices and do what I want, when I want, instead of feeling constrained by self-inflicted pressures that I've accidentally allowed to take over!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Crunching numbers and making sweeping statements can start to sound prescriptive, but ultimately this entire Epiphany triptych is about regaining a balance that has been skewed by what I have perceived to be my blogging responsibilities, by my sheer laziness in my free time, and by force of bad habit.  Instead I want to use my time wisely, to read as the mood strikes, to watch some fantastic television alongside the fluff, to break up my evenings between different things instead of spending the whole night hopping across the internet without even realising.  As I have found in the past, before the shop started, before the blog, before challenges and targets and reviews - THAT'S what makes this reader happy.  It's time to rekindle the passion I have for books and learning and everything they bring into my life...  I can't wait to get started!

Thanks to everyone who's read along for the past few days and left comments - there have been some interesting suggestions, lots of 'OMG ME TOO' moments, a little mutual inspiration, and plenty of discussion!  As always, feel free to continue the conversation below (and do a little Carlton Wiggle while you're at it).  I'm off to read me some Anne Fadiman before The Hour comes on, woohoo!  :)