A Book A Day for 365 Days

Of all the new year resolutions that I have made, one of the few that I have successfully kept is a pledge made back in 2000 to try and read at least one book a week for the entire year. I've since gone from that initial target of 52 books to setting myself a more ambitious one of 100 books for the year (just under 2 a week). All this pales in comparison though to the goal that Nina Sankovitch set herself - she wanted to finish a book a day for one entire year, and write a reflection on each and every one of them. She started on October 29, 2008 and she's almost done - having read through Christmas, New Year's and Easter. She started her one year of reading as a means of helping her come to terms with her sister's death and of course to appreciate more about herself and the world. Her reviews and thoughts on reading are real gems, which I encourage everyone to read.

I can't help but be moved and impressed by Nina's journey, and perhaps, one day I will find the courage and the time to do something similar. The depth and breadth of her reading was very impressive - she would not read anything she had already read before; she would read an individual author's work only once, and she would read widely - essays, short stories, science fiction and fantasy, crime, literary novels, the occasional classic. Of course, the fact that she had only a day to complete it meant that each book was usually limited to under 300 pages (with novellas for busy days).

It was flattering to see a number of books I've already read that she encountered for the first time during her one year journey. These included The Watchmen (she found it far too violent and didn't enjoy it), Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman (we both loved it but as book lovers that was only to be expected), Ali Smith's The First Person and Other Stories (she found Smith's style irritating and distracting, I found it intriguing and fun), The 39 Steps (we both thought it farcical and not very exciting), and many others such as Ender's Game, Paul Auster's Man in the Dark, Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach (she found the ending too staged, I thought he had earned it), Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, The White Tiger, Never Let Me Go and Stardust by Neil Gaiman (we both wanted more of faerie).

Anyhow here's a salute to Nina once again, and I'll go back to her list and I'll sure be glad to find some interesting new reads that might help me fulfil my goal of reading 100 books next year.

Courting Controversy

I was asked by Pete to be the quizmaster this week as he had a load of marking to catch up on. I naturally agreed - I do love being the quizmaster and I pride myself on setting a fair quiz. For me, there have to be at least a couple of teams with a shout of winning the quiz for it to count as successful.

The last time I set the quiz there were complaints that it was slightly too intellectual with a round on first lines from novels, and one on famous last words (from both real and fictional people), so this time I decided to dumb it down considerably. So, I besides a more typical round on the 1920s, I dumbed things down considerably with a round on celebrity baby names. As if more proof were needed of the horrendous names that people give celebrities. I also set a random and interesting round on tricksters and scams, which was a bit of fun.

All in all it was a fairly well received quiz bar one moment. I asked a question about the recent Manchester derby football match, where there was a huge bone of contention over the amount of added time played, mainly because Michael Owen rifled in the winner with the clock showing 95:25. I of course, asked what minute in extra time the goal was scored and there was significant semantic controversy as to whether that constituted the 95th or 96th minute of added time. Obviously less than 6 minutes of added time had elapsed, but it was still IN the 96th minute itself. Confused? Well some of the teams were outraged. The problem was 2 teams had put 95th and three teams had put 96th, so in the end I accepted both answers.

Other than that, I was rather pleased that my usual team missed out on a question on the 'Lost Generation' (in the 1920s round) despite having 2 literature teachers in their ranks. And I was pleased, in keeping with my own ethos about exciting quizzes that the top three teams were only separated by 2 points at the end of the night.

Defending the Caveman

Defending the Caveman came relatively hyped up. After a sold out first run last year, the SRT brought it back for another run due to 'popular demand'. It is easy to see why so many people loved it, dealing as it does with gender stereotypes and the battle of the sexes it was impossible not to resonate. It was definitely popular with the audience, as there were laughs throughout, though the true measure of its success could probably be measured in the number of knowing glances between couples that were exchanged throughout the show.

However, to sum it all up it was not theater. Not to be too pedantic about it, but the 'play' was effectively a one man scripted stand up comic routine masquerading as a play, much to the detriment of both its attempts to be theater and more damagingly, to its attempts at comedy. Apart from a few props (TV set, a couple of wall mounted paintings, chair, pillow) which the best stand up routines now incorporate anyhow, and some largely irrelevant lighting effects, there wasn't anything terribly theatrical about it. Not that it largely mattered if the play (or should I say routine) succeeded on its own terms. I had some serious doubts in that regard, however.

I'm quite a big fan of improvised comedy, particularly the British variety. I admit to not having had the chance to see much improv live, but I have a couple of friends who are diehard fans, and we occasionally get together to watch the latest DVDs of QI (with the indelible Stephen Fry), as well as other one night only performances. Of course the very point of improv is that it is not scripted, and the performer is able to feed off the audience. Of course the best improv performers prepare and reherse quite thoroughly, but there is an element of spontaneity which characterizes the best routines. That of course was very much missing in Defending the Caveman, stolidly scripted as it was.

Daniel Jenkins does a fine enough job, nicely building up an easy rapport with the audience, without which the entire production would have fallen quite flat. He strutted and exaggerated and milked the laughs, and was more than competent especially when role-playing the inevitable disagreements and entanglements that formed the complex web of male-female relations that was at the heart of the show.

Ultimately, though, I just didn't find the jokes all that creative or original, and in fact not even all that funny. There were the usual cliches trotted out about men being hunters and women gatherers and how that accounts for our differences. So women always gather information about each other, while men of course when interacting are satisfied with a couple of grunts following which they watch footie on the telly. Of course that is why men can't multitask either (they're evolved to concentrate on one thing for a long time) while women are quite the opposite. The jokes went on in a similar vein and soon started to wear thin.

The problem is, you soon got the sense that you've heard all of this before, probably when meeting up with you guy or girl pals for a bitch about the opposite sex (ah one thing that men and women have in common!). When the play went on to espouse such nuggets as poking fun of the fact that men absolutely refuse to ask for directions (which was mocked far more succintly and charmingly in Pixar's Cars among other places), I quietly felt the inclination to want to leave the theater, head straight to my local pub and start moaning to my mates. Of course, that could just be down to the fact that I wasn't one of the lucky six people to get a free Tiger beer (in what was probably the only original act in the entire play). More likely, it is due to the urgings of my inner caveman that I felt hard pressed to resist.

England and 'Destiny'

Much has been made on England's brilliant progress in their recent World Cup qualifying campaign and their eight consecutive wins. The praise and enthusiasm has reached a new high following their 5-1 victory over Croatia, a win that sealed their place in next year's World Cup. Coach Fabio Capello has now officially gone on record in saying that anything less than making the finals next year in South Africa will be a disappointment. The British press has typically gone all agog, with the Times stating that there was a 'sense of destiny' about England. However, as any England fan will know, England never fails to provide a sense of drama and heartbreak. If anyone can break this streak it is the iron-willed, disciplined and methodical Italian manager they now have, but I'm not altogether ruling it out.

The first thing that inevitably seems to happen, of course, is injuries. It seems inevitable that England enters a World Cup with their best player facing some kind of major injury crisis. Captain Fantastic Bryan Robson had a hamstring injury and struggled for full fitness for much of Italy '90 - that was well before the sudden metatursal jink that affected both David Beckham in 2002 and then Wayne Rooney in 2006. Capello himself noted that one key factor in England's success will be their physical conditioning during the World Cup itself. He'll have one full week to make sure they're in shape before the competition starts, but there is not much he can do if they're crocked.

In a related point, for all of Capello's tactical nous, England's squad still remains thin in several areas. The Goalkeeping problem is unlikely to go away, Paul Robinson has World Cup experience, but was in a slump; David James remains error prone; Rob Green whom Capello seems now to prefer is hardly deemed world class. England also lack an out and out striker. Wayne Rooney is wonderful gifted but he's not a true goal poacher (and his best talents lie elsewhere, anyhow), for all the physical presence that Emile Heskey has provided, he has a poor goalscoring record, and missed two one on ones against Croatia. France in 1998 proved decisively that you don't need a proven goalscorer to win the World Cup - they had Stephane Guivarch and Cristophe Dugarry leading the line when they won, but it does make life easier. An injury to Rooney would still be fairly fatal to England, and there might be a lack of goals should opponents find a way to effectively stifle England's midfield.

Lastly, there is the dreaded notion of penalties. Of the horrors of Italia '90, the '96 Euro Championships (both to Germany), the '98 World Cup, and of course the last World Cup finals against Portugal. On some occasions there was a clear lack of self-belief and some bizarre decisions - what was David Batty doing taking a penalty in 1998? As much as I admire Gareth Southgate's courage in 1996 he made it sound like a complete spur of the moment decision to step up and take the sudden death penalty. Shouldn't such things be planned? They will be under Capello. England players certainly don't lack self-belief and it is not that they can't take them. Gerrard, Lampard and Barry (at Villa) regularly took spot kicks for their clubs and now Rooney seems to have taken over the job at Man Utd. Yet Gerrard and Lampard both missed in 2006. One final interesting point - given his trauma in the 2008 Champion's League final playing for Chelsea, will England captain John Terry step up to the plate again if England are faced with a shootout?

It's fun being an England fan. You learn to live with drama and a little bit of heartbreak. It would be nice for a change if they actually do go on and win the tournament, and they get lucky in the lottery of freak injuries and penalty shootouts, but it would be just a little less exciting. Destiny, maybe, but I'm not ruling anything out just yet.

Counterknowledge

Random crackpot conspiracy theories have been around for ages. We all have our favourites such as insisting that JFK was assassinated by more than the lone gunman but instead fatally shot by a mysterious shooter on the grassy knoll (either way, there is no disputing that he ended up quite dead) . Indeed, if one were to be completely spurious about it, I wouldn't be surprised to find that more Americans believe in the existence of UFOs than the theory of evolution.

Damian Thompson takes direct aim at some of the more nonsensical recent crackpot theories in his book on Counterknowledge subtitled "how we have surrendered ourselves to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history". These might make rather easy targets, but Thompson argues that their influence has grown rather perniciously. Indeed, counterknowledge which he defines as "misinformation packaged to look like fact" has gone from being at the fringe of society to having spread to the mainstream. UFOs are a classic example of this, but the list now encompasses such unfounded scares and unabashed rubbish as a 9/11 being an American-Israeli conspiracy, MMR immunization causing autism, quack nutritionism, alternative treatments in general, particularly for HIV/AIDS, creationism, and such meta-historical nonsense as Jesus fathering a child, China 'discovering' America and the holocaust never occuring.

As he notes, one of the paradoxes of our age is that while "our techniques for evaluating evidence are subtler than before..... counterknowledge is corrupting intellectual standards". It must be said that he does skirt around the more intellectually interesting question of why this might be the case. Mention is made, obviously, of the internet, and the information revolution which has increased the "privatization of knowledge" and has made everyone an expert. He also delves into Sociology arguing that modernity leads to the "dismantling of authority structures" and our dedication to what Anthony Giddens calls the "reflexive project of the self". Still, more interesting analysis on this paradox of more easily available knowledge leading to the growth of so-called counterknowledge would have been welcome.

Where Thompson does succeed well is gleefully deflating some of these crackpot theories. He does this with gleeful abandon and not inconsiderable wit. He delights in showing the intellectual bankruptness of such quack cures as homeopathy, craniosacral therapy and other so called 'alternative' medicines. More scarily, he shows how some of those remedies are now marketed officially in high street stores such as Boots, or worse how homeopathy is available as a treatment from the NHS and as a degree course at the University of Westminster. Nutritionism, or rather those who abuse the label also comes under fire from him, and his cynicism is amply justified when we consider that (Dr.) Gillian McKeith actually earned her Phd from a non-accredited American University on the basis of a correspondence course. Worse still is the case of Patrick Holford, a 'nutritionist' whose degree in psychology better explains his blatant attempts to market quack products like a 'crystal' which will protect one from allegedly harmful electromagnetic radiation emanating from mobile phone towers.

Ours has been labelled the information age with good reason: advances in technology has allowed us almost instant access to unlimited information. But as Damian Thompson has pointed out, this has also led to the pernicious spread of misinformation. We might shrug off mass mails about HIV infected needles being left on train seats in order to infect people (the virus can't survive any length of time openly exposed), but it is more scary for society at large when this extends to autism scares over MMR jabs, cancer scares over cellphone antennaes and the belief that China discovered America in 1421 (and Europe in 1431 too apparently).

Spelling As a Competitive Sport

People who know me well will know that I am a bit of a sports junkie. As in, I am the kind of person who will be happy to put ESPN on in the background, and I am someone who follows a wide variety of sports - football, tennis, basketball, golf, and even more random ones like table tennis and badminton. ESPN has been extending their coverage to such non-traditional sports as pool, snooker, bowling and darts (all of which I must admit I do rather enjoy watching as a kind of guilty pleasure), but even I was taken aback when I turned on the TV the other evening to be confronted with the ultimate clash of the titans, 48 individuals battling it out for the ultimate grand prize: the US National Spelling Bee trophy.

Traditionalists ("It ain't a sport unless you sweat while doing it") will laugh, but there was something rather captivating about seeing 13 and 14 year olds (some as young as 9) puzzling out words which were, quite honestly baffling, even to those who believe they have a considerable grasp of the English language. That spelling is a competitive sport, as unlikely as that might sound, was soon evident from the contestants.

Many of them were familiar with Latin and Greek root and derivatives, better to ensure not being caught out by tricky words; a number of them were making their second, third or even fourth appearance at the National Spelling Bee, with previous experience seen as a bonus (is experience a key factor, well just ask any golfer or tennis player yet to win a major). Nerves were evident, unsurprising given the one mistake and you're out see you next year format of the competition. It was often tension filled and pressure packed - there was even a psychologist on hand to counsel the distressed, some visibly distraught after they were literally "rung out" by the dreaded bell, signifying they had made a misstep puzzling out some fiendish word or another.

Just how difficult was it? I am not a great speller, laziness and Microsoft Word spellcheck has seen to that, but I do think I have a fair vocabulary. By the third and fourth elimination rounds (when the difficulty was increased) I would have probably gotten between a third to a half of the words wrong. This put me just about par for the competition as a whole. No doubt, these were 13 and 14 year olds, so I should feel ashamed at my ignorance, but in my defense, some of the contestants admitted to more or less sleeping with a Miriam-Webster by their bedsides, and spending arduous amounts of preparation in advance of the competition.

That said, I have kept a little notebook which I have filled with puzzling and interesting words that I had not previously come across. I have always meant to check out their meanings and etymologies, if only to expand my vocabulary. I have also meant to get to the roots of language, literally and metaphorically, to actually learn the building blocks (what is an adverb, what on earth is a past participle?) of grammar. Perhaps watching the US National Spelling Bee will inspire me to renew my efforts in this.

15 Books

I've succumbed to yet another Facebook meme that has gone rabid. This one can be basically called 15 Books. You are supposed to choose 15 books that you love, or that had a major influence on your life. It was a very difficult task for me, given how much I enjoy reading, but here is the list I've come up with:

1. The Lord of the Rings | J.R.R Tolkien
2. Dune | Frank Herbert
3. The Sandman Graphic Novels | Neil Gaiman
4. The Passion | Jeanette Winterson
5. Housekeeping | Marilynne Robinson
6. Atonement | Ian McEwan
7. Disgrace | J.M Coetzee
   
8. The Remains of the Day | Kazuo Ishiguro
   
9. The Great Gatsby | F. Scott Fitzgerald
   
10. The Things They Carried | Tim O'Brien
11. In Cold Blood | Truman Capote
    
12. King Lear | William Shakespeare
13. Ex Libris | Anne Fadiman
    
14. A Wrinkle in Time | Madeleine L'Engle
    
15. True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle | Avi

Two books that probably influenced me greatly but which are too embarrassing to list: The Firm by John Grisham (it was the very first "adult" novel I ever read after I picked it up off my mother's shelf) and Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer (I read through the night trying to finish it, fell asleep, woke up around lunch and carried on where I had left off).

Near Misses: A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes, Practical Ethics by Peter Singer, Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George, Bartholomew and the 500 Hats by Dr Seuss, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisevitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Love Condensed?

On certain occasions, fiction mirrors reality to a rather uncanny extent. We quote music lyrics because sometimes they express what we feel in a more direct and pithy way that we otherwise manage. So I found this passage in Julian Barnes's England England, which I am now reading:

Martha knew exactly what she wanted: truth, simplicity, love, kindness, companionship, fun, and good sex was how the list might start. She also knew that such list making was daft; normally human but still daft. So while her heart opened, her mind had remained anxious. Paul behaved as if their relationship were already a given: its parameters decided, its purpose certain, all problems strictly for the future. She recognized this trait all too well, the blithe urgency to get on with being a couple before the constituent parts and workings of coupledom had been established. She had been here before. Part of her wished she hadn't; she felt burdened by her own history

Couldn't have put my current feelings more accurately and concisely that what Barnes has written. Fiction mirroring reality.

Soft Landing

My mother told me about the death of Elisha Chng the other day, and I was quite shocked. It was a surreal sensation reading about him in the afternoon papers - about how he played rugby and was a male model, though I was annoyed at the tone of idle speculation, the he seemed to have it all, so why? I used to play with Elisha when we were young children - our families were close. I remember giving him a bucket of G.I. Joes when he left for Africa with his family - his father was a missionary sent there to proselytize. I've written this poem as a form of remembrance and tribute. Note it is still a work in progress. Comments and suggestions on the poem (and how to improve it!) are welcome.

Soft Landing

for Elisha Chng

I knew you but briefly
more a presence, a memory,
than something solid,
until the thump of your landing
in the afternoon papers -
dry words of baffled condolence
leavened with concrete.

It was surreal to discover
the grown up you, secondhand -
rugger, model, all action hero,
rather like the G.I Joes
we played with as kids –
a bucketful my parting gift
as you left for Africa.

You weren’t a close friend or confidant –
nothing to warrant
this extravagance of verse;
still, I offer this wreath -
wraith like memories
thinly plucked
an antidote to idle speculation:
of why, what, waste
seeking some absolution
better found
in quiet remembrance.

Mexican Banditry

The sister, CL, and myself met at Holland Village for lunch, and given the usual ding dong backwards and forwards discussion of where to eat, I plumped for Mexican. Holland Village itself has two Mexican restaurants sitting plumb right beside one another. Family tradition has dictated that we always dine at El Patio, which has a slightly more homely feel compared to Cha Cha Cha which was reputed to serve food that was less than authentic.

That age old tradition was to be broken today. We arrived at El Patio and stood outside briefly perusing the menu. The restaurant was completely empty, rather dire for a Sunday afternoon. We could blatantly see the one staff member on duty inside the restaurant, sitting at one of the tables, doing her damnedest to blithely ignore us. Even when we stood there for five minutes and began staring straight are her. I finally made irritated waving motions and she slowly and very reluctantly began to rise from her slouch, by which time me and the sister were so irritated, we walked away.

It was thus that we came to dine at Cha Cha Cha. The service was admittedly much more prompt. We were soon shown to a table. That, if anything, could explain why they had 6 or 7 tables occupied to El Patio's none. All was going rather well. Until the food came. I had ordered the mixed combo - one hard taco with beef, one chicken burrito. By the time I was half way through the hard taco, I was confronted with stringy bits of meat at the bottom, which was so tasteless, I couldn't remember whether I had ordered the beef or the chicken with the taco, and quite honestly, on taste alone I couldn't tell. I guessed it was beef based on the coloration, and nothing else. My sister was similar unenthused about her meal - her rice wasn't quite to her liking, and the refried beans tasted like they had probably been refried one too many times. The result was poor CL being subjected to a litany of complaints about the food from the two of us.

So, the puzzling question for us remained: how did these two establishments survive for longer than a decade at Holland Village, given the poor food in one, and the poor service in the latter (though the poor service at El Patio was probably due to a change in management). More importantly, where can Caleb and the sister go if they want some good mexican food? There is of course the Cafe Iguana, near Clarke Quay and with a newly opened outlet on Greenwood, which is decent. But we're looking for really authentic Mexican, stuff which can vaguely measure up to what we had when we spent a few months in Texas. Can anyone help us with our conondum, please do send recommendations. We need to eat proper Mexican after the debacle that was Cha Cha Cha.