10 Favourite Books on my Shelf

As the shelves in my study finally begin to be ordered, I thought about which books I would keep if I were only allowed to have ten of them. These are the ones that I treasure the most today:

1. Fungus the Bogeyman by Raymond Briggs

I have just about everything that I could find by Raymond Briggs from his Mother Goose treasury to his magnificent anti-Thatcher tirade "The Tin Pot Foreign General and the Old Iron Woman". Fungus, however, is my favourite, combining my loves of graphic storytelling and existentialist despair. He always cheers me up. Plus, my paperback edition is autographed. I forced poor 7-year-old Noam to queue with me for ages at the Puffin Club Exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute to collect the inscription.

2. Penguin Modern Poets:  The Mersey Sound

Except for readings by family friends, these guys are the only poets I've gone to listen to voluntarily. My copy of this edition is also autographed by all three after a gig somewhere near the River Thames, or maybe it was just that I was also keeping an ear on the Boat Race via a pocket radio during the poetry reading rather than we were actually near the river. I know we were in central London, and I went with Sophie Manham. Anyway, it's a battered old paperback but they wrote in it and I like reading it.

3. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler by E L Konigsburg

No autographs here. Just a cool book that still comes to mind each time I visit a museum and wonder where I'd hide and what I'd do once everyone else had gone home and I had the place to myself. Maybe my niece the daughter of a museum curator will find it on my shelf one day and enjoy it like I do.

4. Hannah Senesh:  Her Life and Diary

It was a choice between this and Anne Frank's diary. Anne is more famous. She is more innocent, more universal, more optimistic; more most things perhaps. Hannah was only 23 when she was executed, not that much older than Anne. Yet she seemed more grown-up to me, and her bravery was more dramatic. That was the appeal of the book itself. In terms of volumes I treasure, however, I choose this because it was always hard to find and the copy that I have is a precious gift from my other sister that reminds me of a time when we were closer to each other.

5. The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Next to the Tanach, to which by virtue of my current profession I refer to constantly, I probably quote the five books of this trilogy more than any other writings I have read. And when I've read this and laughed and felt better, I'm hopeful again.

6.  The Education of Hyman Kaplan by Leonard Q Ross aka Leo Rosten

With this book I have wooed those friends of mine for whom English is a second language. I love to read it aloud to them. And it makes me laugh too. What better way to spend a little time?

7.  Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

If you have strong wrists and an earlier, lighter edition; this is the all-time perfect book for the bathroom. Also useful if you keep forgetting what it means to be hoist on your own petard.

8. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain

Having grown up in the UK I take the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood very seriously (I still haven't forgiven Kevin Costner for Prince of Thieves). Don't mess with my legends. Unless you are Mark Twain, and put Sir Lancelot and the Knights of the Round Table on bicycles.

9.  The Penguin Book of First World War Poetry

I don't know what it was like in other countries and for other generations, but the romantic heroes of my childhood as I was taught in school came from the lost generation of the First World War - those who died, and those who lived but were forever damaged by their experiences. I preferred Wilfred Owen and my sister went for Rupert Brooke, but we all still cry at the sight of poppy petals falling in November.

10.  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Apparently the fact that this book had a female protagonist in a sci-fi genre was the reason for its initial rejection and of course exactly the reason why I went for it. Anne Shirley, Katy Carr or Jo March but science fiction! Also, I fell in love with the character Aunt Beast. Back then I wished she were my mother. Now I'd like to be more like her.

This list took quite a while to put together. As I review it I think, o no, what about

how could I leave that out and which book should it replace and I really don't want to do any more editing. It is top of the list of near misses which also includes Fahrenheit 451, The Book of Letters and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. But it's time for bed. And there's always another blog post. 

Scariest Monsters in the Galaxy

According to the Telegraph, readers of SFX magazine have voted as the scariest monsters the one and only Daleks. As long as they are not the awful multicoloured ones above, I will certainly agree. The dalek cake below also kind of takes the ooooomph out.

The list:

1. The Daleks - Doctor Who
2. Lorne - Angel
3. Aliens - Alien franchise
4. Death - Discworld
5. Gollum - Lord Of The Rings
6. The Shadows - Babylon 5
7. Gizmo - Gremlins
8. The Thing - The Thing
9. Aslan - The Chronicles Of Narnia
10. Predators - Predator franchise
11. The Borg - Star Trek
12. Pilot - Farscape
13. The Cybermen - Doctor Who
14. Godzilla - Godzilla
15. Ludo - Labyrinth
16. Pinhead - Hellraiser
17. Nibbler - Futurama
18. The Great Dragon - Merlin
19. Frankenstein's Monster - Frankenstein
20. Slimer - Ghostbusters

As Tom Chivers points out in his recent blog, however, the rest of the list is a bit rubbish. Anything out of Angel has to come second to anything from Buffy. This is a terrestrial law. Gollum and Frankenstein's Monster are both tragic characters, terribly mistreated and thus driven to behave badly. The same for the Great Dragon. I am more scared of those that made them into what they became. And Aslan isn't a monster. Duh!

O hang on a sec, it seems upon rereading the articles that they were voting for the Greatest monsters and not the Scariest. Silly me for thinking that what makes a monster great is its scariness. Ok, then Gollum and Karloff are back in, but still no place for the dragon. And if I could add one other great and scary monster that is just behind the daleks for me, it would be the giant living brain called IT in "A Wrinkle in Time" by Madeleine L'Engle. Terrifying!

madeleine l'engle r.i.p.

the author of one of my all-time favourite books - a wrinkle in time - madeleine l'engle died yesterday of natural causes at the age of 88. the first response by the new york times is here. with regard to "wrinkle", it says:

"The “St. James Guide to Children’s Writers” called Ms. L’Engle “one of the truly important writers of juvenile fiction in recent decades.” Such accolades did not come from pulling punches: “Wrinkle” is one of the most banned books because of its treatment of the deity.

“It was a dark and stormy night,” it begins, repeating the line of a 19th- century novelist Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and presaging the immortal sentence that Snoopy, the inspiration-challenged beagle of the Peanuts cartoon, would type again and again. After the opening, “Wrinkle,” quite literally, takes off. Meg Murray, with help from her psychic baby brother, uses time travel and extrasensory perception to rescue her father, a gifted scientist, from a planet controlled by the Dark Thing. She does so through the power of love.

The book used concepts that Ms. L’Engle said she had plucked from Einstein’s theory of relativity and Planck’s quantum theory, almost flaunting her frequent assertion that children’s literature is literature too difficult for adults to understand. She also characterized the book as her refutation of ideas of German theologians."

as with the narnia books of c.s.lewis, especially "the last battle", there was a strong xian background to l'engle's writing. when i first read these books it went right over my head. these days, while i am no longer so drawn to the final narnia book, i still love to read "wrinkle" and also "the young unicorns".

the ny times ends with the following:

“Why does anybody tell a story?” Ms. L’Engle once asked, even though she knew the answer.

“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

have a great weekend!

yahoo obit
new york magazine
grauniad recommendations for readers who've finished harry potter

from madeleine l'engle's commonplace book

i just learned about commonplace books from lemony snicket, and it turns out i have had one for a long time ... the notebook in which i gather words and poems that i like. My poetry book includes stevie smith, dorothy parker, william blake, brian patten, a a milne, dylan thomas, jenny joseph, wilfred owen, ogden nash and sylvia plath. o, and gerard manley hopkins, she added. of course, like thousands of brits, my favourite poem has to be 'jabberwocky'.

anyway, i was reading 'walking on water' by madeleine l'engle. why? because i had finished the artemis fowl book from the library, i'd already read both patricia cornwells, and i wasn't in the mood for 'the star of redemption'. i like to have someone to talk to when i eat, and this book was on the top of the pile on my kitchen table. however, i got no further than the following quote from francis of assisi (p 25):

"In pictures of God and the blessed Virgin painted on wood, God and the blessed Virgin are held in mind, yet the wood and the painting ascribe nothing to themselves, because they are just wood and paint; so the servant of God is a kind of painting, that is, a creature of God in which God is honoured for the sake of his benefits. But he ought to ascribe nothing to himself, just like the wood or the painting, but should render honour and glory to God alone."

l'engle was talking about the symbolism of icons, but since i come from a tradition that proscribes the creation of images of the divine, that did not grab me. at first glance, it seemed to be simply about humility, that each human body is not actually divine, but rather a medium for the expression of the divine. and we should not get confused and start to believe our own press, i.e., that we deserve the kudos for being as wonderful as we are. then i started to think about, well actually the next thought was the picture of dorian gray. you know - the effect the decay of the soul has on the physical body. we do have some power over this creation - is it only the power to destroy?

what is the difference between humility and submission? perhaps humility is having no desire for kudos, and submission is either forced or voluntary acceptance of a power greater than one's self. while traditional jews are required to submit to the yoke of the commandments, they are free to choose so not to do. are the commandments the act of painting? and since we are in a covenantal relationship we have to take part in that act? or am i pushing this too far? hmmmmm.