Top 10

jmm1951 wrote:
....
>
> The Guardian's list looks an awful lot like a school reading list, and
> very pretentious one at that. Of course many people would want the
> Harry Potter books to keep the children quiet.
>
> Personally I would want an English dictionary, and an English-Spanish
> dictionary, and then Merck Manual of Medicine, while I can live well
> without it, would be pretty useful if I was sick to tell me whether I
> was likely to live or die. An atlas is definitely useful, and an
> encylopedia of carpentry, home electrics, and plumbing is essential.
> So that is half of my ten books, but at least I will be able to build
> a shelf to put them on. I am surprised that Paul Theroux doesn't seem
> to be on anyone's list, because I would definitely have two or three
> of his, though I, like the Guardian readers, would probably by-pass
> Bill Bryson as just too silly. Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Woman of
> Pleasure would be useful bedtime reading, I would take all four
> volumes of CEJL, so that probably puts me over my baggage allowance
> already. I would not bother with the Bible, though Origin of Species
> would serve the purpose and is a pretty good read for when you start
> wondering where we came from and where the hell we are going. I don't
> think I would bother with Shakey or Dickens. They both fire off some
> good one-liners, but I can't get into the books.
>
> The Da Vinci Code might be useful for toilet paper or for lighting
> fires.
>
> If could get hold of a book I had in 1959 called Masters of Soccer,
> then I would like to read that again, also the Beano annual of 1960.
> For my final selection I would take the French Lieutenant's Woman,
> which may not be a great book, but it has its moments.
>

You wouldn't want something written in Spanish to read using the dictionary?

/M

"Martha Bridegam" <bridegam.TakeThisOut@pacbell.net> wrote in message
news:eEFHh.7798$re4.5808@newssvr12.news.prodigy.net...

>
> Maybe this is a more interesting idea phrased as a general question: does
> a book, to be well written, have to stay at a consistent level of realism
> throughout?


Well I think realism can be a bit overrated at times. Not that I'm much up
for magic realism and all that bollox. When Nigel N read a draft of my
latest romance he objected to these two passages:

At a party where someone's been shot:

'They both went downstairs into a mist of smoke and overpowering din of
music. John noticed the spots of blood from the fashion designer's wound in
the hallway. A policeman idly rolled a joint as someone shouted a statement
in his ear.'


And this, outside a shop, looking at its logo:


'I don't like it,' said John, 'it looks a bit poncy.'
He felt a sharp tap on his back. Turning, he found himself facing a
mean-looking policeman wearing a fluorescent tabard, holding a long stick
and on whose waist jangled the paramilitary appurtenances of postmodern law
enforcement.
'What did you say?' he demanded with brute authority.
'I said it looked a bit.poncy.'
The last word of the sentence was obliterated by the sound of a bottle
thrown at a passing car smashing on its passenger window. The policeman
repeated his question. John answered.
'You do realise that's a potential hate crime against homosexuals?' the
policeman said nastily, in the archetypal accent and inflection of a London
copper.
'Come off it,' said John, who was half-drunk. He turned to seek Gimmick's
support but he'd disappeared into the crowds with Tina.
'He didn't mean it like that,' said Amanda.
'How do you know what he meant? Are you inside his head?'
People drunkenly pushed past them.
'No, but I know that he wasn't being hateful towards homosexuals.'
'Intcha read any Michel Foucault?' asked the policeman, raising his radio
to his lips.
'A bit,' said John.
'2-1,' said the policeman into his radio. 'Got section
six-three-nine-two-four here. Back up needed.' The policeman looked at John
again. 'Foucault was a post-structuralist, basically. The structuralists
believed that the individual is shaped by linguistic, sociological and
psychological structures over which he has little control. In that respect I
have sympathy for you. That's my Derrida sympathies coming out as well. But
the law is the law - even though a final and definitive interpretation of it
is, by Derrida's standards, impossible. However, it isn't my job to
interpret the law - that is a magistrates' job.'
A large shaven-headed man in a football kit swiped the policeman's helmet
off and danced around with it for a bit.
'This guy here is responding to certain pathological deep structures,'
said the policeman calmly, indicating the man. 'But at the same time, he,
unlike you, is not indulging or promulgating prejudice or bigotry to sexual,
racial or gender differences, know what I mean?'
'Isn't he making you look foolish though?' asked John.
'A righteous thing to do in many ways,' said a second policeman who had
just got out of a flashing and squawking patrol car; 'a subversion of the
hegemonic debate and all that.'
'Gramsci,' beamed the first policeman by way of explanation. The second
policeman retrieved the first policeman's helmet. 'Come on,' he said, 'leave
this - a barman called someone a 'wop' at the Cod's Eye.'
'Did he? Right,' said the first policeman. He turned to John and raised
his finger to the sign: 'remember what we discussed.'
The patrol car squealed away. John and Amanda walked on quickly, hoping to
catch Gimmick and Tina up. The crowds seemed uglier. Someone threw a petrol
bomb at a tram and it rumbled past with a slather of flames discolouring the
advertising on its side. Inside, people stared placidly through the windows.



Now the realistic novel forbades both. But I want them to make points in an
amusing way. 'Reality', as Orwell said about Tropic of Cancer, 'but not so
much that it turns into Mickey Mouse' *

*paraphrasing from memory.

So I don't think a consistent level of realism is the way to judge good
writing - that puts Harold Robbins in front of Ronald Firbank and that ain't
my critical perspective.

ROBBIE


ROBBIE