Other Stories

Academic Friend blogs!

Go and say HELLO and WELCOME TO THE BLOGOSPHERE to my dear Academic Friend, Ms Lauren. Is there no end to this fine girl's talents? Encyclopedic knowledge of Irish theatre, a natural knack with the fiddle, and now she enters the blogosphere too; I'm so proud.

Kudzu Quake is her blog, and it promises to be mighty. Add her to your blogrolls immediately. And as if that isn't enough, tomorrow on Other Stories I'll be posting a book review by Academic Friend for your delight and delectation. Don't miss it.

Now, I have the cold, so I'm off to find more anti-viral Kleenex.

We'll Meme Again...

Oh the punnery. I'm hilarious.

Chartroose and her Book Barrage posted this meme yesterday and today I'm taking on the mantle. A lot of it may be ground I've covered before, but since when have I let that get in the way of some good, solid, memery?

1. Who is your all-time favourite author, and why?

I can give no one answer to this: instead, I am giving two. Virginia Woolf is the first. My love of Mrs Dalloway is well-documented and it is no exaggeration to say that this book changed my outlook on life when I read it at 19. Being of the age when Mrs D believes herself to have been happiest, I could relate on a number of levels to the way she talked about her magical summer. But then, in the book, she's in her early 50s and still trying to recapture the person she was at 18, she is wondering when everything changed, and why it all changed. I didn't want to be like that. It sounds corny, but I decided after that fateful reading to find happiness where I could, to take life as it comes, and to make the most of everything. I hope I've stuck to that. I try to, at any rate. I don't want to wake up one day and wonder where my life went.

And, of course, there is A Room of One's Own, which is just an incredible rallying cry for women to assert some of their independence through writing (amongst many other things). I have a beautiful little embossed paperback edition, which was the first present Boyfriend ever bought for me, and I love it. I was wondering whether there was irony in the fact that a man - whoever that man may be - having bought me my favourite edition of that particular book, but I've decided there isn't. He knew it was a book I loved, and which meant a lot to me. It was an extremely thoughtful gift.

Then there's Orlando, which is much overlooked I think. There's a boy in the 17th century. He grows up. Then he turns into a woman. And lives for hundreds of years. It's brilliant. Chameleon nature of sexuality and all that. Lots of pictures of Vita. Love it.

My other favourite author is Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre is simply an amazing book and I have no earthly idea how many times I've read it. Villette is also fantastic and I remember as a teenager sitting on my bed with a French dictionary trying to translate the French passages.

2. Who was your first favoutite author? Do you still consider them amongst your favourites?

I'd love to be able to give some incredibly precocious answer to this like "Oooh, yes, I first appreciated the majesty of Dostoyevsky at 3 and a half" but I can't. The honest answer is Ann M. Martin, author of The Babysitters Club series. I devoured those books! I was probably 8 or 9 at the time, and every weekend when I went to the West End of Glasgow to see my dad, he would take me to John Smiths on Byres Road, or the big John Smiths in town, and he would buy me another Babysitters book. Without fail I'd have finished it by that night. I just could not get enough of them. I wanted to be beautiful and artisitic like Claudia with her big, almond-shaped eyes, but instead I was undeniably more like the tomboyish Kristy. Hey, at least the name was close.

The first time I went to America, when I was 9, we went to a book shop in some mall somewhere, and I discovered that they had lots of Babysitters books that were much further on in the series than I could get in Britain, it being an American author and all. I came back with stacks of the American editions and let me tell you I was quite the envy of my friends when I produced number 63 in the series. We were only up to 49 in the UK! Thank god my parents encouraged my reading, even when my dad wasn't a reader at all. They realised pretty early on that books (and music) were more or less the only things I was interested in as a kid, and nurtured accordingly. Thanks, mum and dad.

Is she still a favourite? I can't say I read her anymore but I have very fond memories of them.

3. Who is the most recent addition to your list of favourites?

This is a toughie. I think probably Brian Moore (thanks to Palimpsest), or Nicola Barker. Rather different authors, but both excellent.

4. If someone were to ask for your favourite authors right now, who would you say? Who would you add after reflection?

Well, obviously all those mentioned above. Add to them some Dickens, some Sarah Waters, some Ali Smith, some Michel Faber, some Margaret Atwood, some Wilkie Collins, and some Armistead Maupin, and you've covered much of my range.

After thinking for a second, I'll add Iain Banks (no sci-fi M for me) because of a long-standing love of his writing (even his slightly ropier recent stuff), and I'll add Sylvia Plath because her poetry is astounding and gets a bad rap as really depressive when in reality the majority of it really, really isn't, and I'll add Katherine Mansfield because her short stories are sublime, and I'll add Rebecca West because The Return of the Soldier is an amazing book, and I'll add Emily Bronte purely and simply because of the masterpiece that in Wuthering Heights.

So, that's your meme for today. Tag, you're it.

Facts and Links

Fictional reading is still taking somewhat of a battering, and at times like this, poetry is a god-send. Recently I have been reveling in Emily Bronte's poetry, especially "No coward soul is mine", which in itself is very high up in my list of favourite lines from poetry.

I'm still ploughing on with The Victorians by AN Wilson, which is proving to be one of the very best history books I have ever read. The scope is incredibly far-reaching without the reader feeling short-changed on any particular topic: it really is an incredibly well-written book - and much funnier in places than you might expect. If you've any interest in the Victorian period, then I implore you to look past its bulk and settle in.

Did you know that during the Irish famine, many adults starved because potatoes were the only crop they were able to grow, and even then they could only grow enough for personal use? Many people ate literally nothing but potatoes - up to 13 or so POUNDS per day - so no potatoes = no food. Meanwhile, the UK government were still having Irish corn exported. Tragic stuff.

My other fact of the day - and this is nothing to do with Victorianism - is that today in the UK there are more members of the National Trust than of any political party. How awfully British.

In other news, here are some links I have loved recently:

• Literary tattoos!
• Bookmooch rocks. Free book swaps mean new books without the environmental impact of making more paper. Have picked up some excellent Virago Modern Classics in original green livery.
• Really interesting F Word discussion on having children late in life.
• This is a BRILLIANT piece from The Observer about Fern Britton and her gastric band.
• Freelance Mum is one of my new favourite blogs.
• Lorrie Moore: A Life in Books.

Right, I'm off back to the 19th century.

Hiatus, or Other Stories is having a week off

Forgive me, dear readers, for the slackness of my blog posts in the last week. Aside from having a few days away in Haworth, York, and then a day of walking in London Town, I am also still having real difficulty settling on a good book of fiction. On top of all of this, an ongoing bout of depression (from which I suffer, and which is having a f**king fieldday with my brain chemicals at the moment) makes it occasionally difficult to do anything but sleep. This is probably an overshare of information, but it's the truth, and it's why I'm having a little trouble focussing at the moment.

So, I am taking a week off from blogland. I'm thinking of you lot, I promise. Otherwise you'd just get a blog-vomit of how I feel a bit crap at the moment, and you don't want that.

I go back to work on Wednesday. This should give me a bit of a kick up the bum if nothing else. In the meantime, however, I can tell you that I am very much enjoying AN Wilson's The Victorians. He writes a mean history, does Mr Wilson. It's a long 'un at just over 600 pages, but I'm already a quarter of a ways through it.

Apologies for the silence this week. Hopefully next week I'll be up and at 'em again. :)

::: P A U S E :::

This morning I am off up to Yorkshire for a couple of days. At some point this afternoon, I will be in the Bronte Museum at Howarth getting all overexcited and spending too much money in the giftshop. Expect photos.

In the meantime, though, I am elsewhere in blogland. The Reader Online asked me to chose a favourite poem for their Monday featured poem slot, and my choice is up today. Go see.

Information Overload

This isn't in the slightest bit book, or feminism, related.

I added a new stats tracker to the blog yesterday and now I know a freakish amount about all of you. There are a few regular readers who I can put my finger on thanks to knowing where they work/how they mispell my blog name/they keep landing on a random old post from last year, etc. But now I can see all sorts of graphs about how many pages people read, which search engine they used, their search terms, even whether they have java enabled or not.

On the one hand, this is all really fascinating. There is an inherent nosiness in me that is satisfied by being able to see who is reading the blog, and it's always gratifying to see the stats climb. On the other hand, this all means that other people can see the same information about me, and that freaks me out slightly. I know that all sorts of people and companies store all sorts of information about everyone on various databases and god knows what - I'm sure the good people of Nectar have a pretty good idea of my lifestyle from what I buy at Sainsburys. For instance, they could easily work out that I have cats, that I have an alarming cheese addiction, that I'm now living with a vegetarian from the amount of Quorn we're suddenly buying, and that I am developing a bit of a dependency on parma ham. They probably also think I have a cider problem because every so often we buy a plastic bottle of Strongbow. What they don't know is that sometimes I drink cider out of a champagne flute for my own amusement, but enough about my bizarre foibles.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that I'm an information hypocrite. I like being nosy about other people, but it scares me that people know so much about me. But I write a blog , there are therefore elements of my life that I'm happy to share with whoever reads this, and I have a facebook profile (though with the very strictest security settings). What I mean is that people can see where I work, my computer's specs, what pages I read and for how long. Weird.

Hmm. This has turned into a bit of an odd ramble. I shall stop. Anyway, my eyes hurt. I have hayfever, and my eyes are all puffed up, and people keep asking if I've been crying. I haven't. Pollen hates me.

I got tagged!

Blog tag is a wonderful thing. It reminds me of primary school, with people chasing each other around trying not to be 'it'. This morning, though, I am 'it'. Dovegrey Reader tagged me in the 'Six Random Things About Yourself' game, so now I have to tell you, er, six random things about me. I'm not sure how interesting they are, but never mind, here goes anyway:

ONE: I have tiny kneecaps. They haven't grown since I was about 9 years old, but the runner things that my kneecaps sit on have. This means that sometimes if I turn too quickly then my kneecaps pop out of place then pop back in again. It is excruciatingly painful, but doesn't happen to often now, happily.

TWO: I was on TV when I was 13. I was a member of the Paisley Youth Theatre at the time, and STV (Scottish Television) needed some bright young things to faff about in the background of a new computer game show called T.I.G.S. (Totally Interactive Game Show... yes, really). We had to pretend to answer phones, hold up picture sent in by the audience etc, and - most embarrassingly - do the T.I.G.S. dance as the end credits rolled. One of the presenters was a very young unknown called Gail Porter.

THREE: I failed Higher Maths (Scottish equivalent of A-Level, sort of) despite my father having paid for a private tutor who I worked with for three hours every Sunday morning for 6 months. Turns out I'm just not very good at Maths.

FOUR: I'm allergic to sticking plasters and certain types of metal. This makes jewellry quite hard to buy sometimes. Not sterling silver, or pure gold? I'll be out in a rash the likes of which you've never seen. I am also intolerant to tannins, so no red wine or tea for me thanks. Cranberry juice gives me a nasty headache too.

FIVE: I can swear very impressively in Italian.

SIX: My love affair with all things Victorian started when I was about 10 years old and my mum and aunt took me to a museum somewhere in Kent which showed you the inside of a Victorian house, with lots of posters and adverts for Victorian products, and the clothes, and the books, and it was amazing. I just fell in love with it. Then, a few years later I read Jane Eyre and it all clicked into place. The Victorians have always had a little constant space in my head ever since.

Right, so there you go. Now I have to tag six more bloggers, as per the rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you - i.e. me.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about you in a blog post.
• Tag six people in your post.
• Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• Let the tagger know your entry is up.

So, my tagees are....

• Sarah at Filmknitter
• Sara at A Salted
• Elaine at Random Jottings
• Chartroose at Bloody Hell, it's a Book Barrage
• Simon at Stuck in a Book
• Lindsey at Matching Curtains

If you lot are up for it, then I look forward to seeing your answers!

Charity Shop Haul and Mini Link Love

I have been trying really hard not to buy anymore books. For one, I bought the iPhone of Joy recently, and therefore should really not be spending anymore money, and for two, I've so behind in my reading at the moment that it's quite painful. Uni work + extremely busy time at work + family stress = not a lot of Kirsty Reading Time.

However, all of these things are done and dusted for the time being, and the weekend just gone saw me creeping back to form with a book and a half devoured over two days. *sigh* That's better. Thus I feel utterly justified in having had a bit of a second-hand splurge on Saturday morning. Boyfriend and I had taken a leisurely breakfast at a local cafe and were wandering home when through the window of the Mind shop I spied some shelves of books. That was it, I was through the door with Boyfriend trailing after me. "I just want to look," I lied, as I suspiciously fingered my purse in my pocket.

Ten minutes later, I emerged into the fresh air £26 poorer but 17 books richer. What a haul! I picked up:

• Four Dreamers and Emily - Stevie Davies (I've never read anything by her, but she's   been highly recommended to me several times over the years, and it was a Women's Press book. And it was 80p.)
• Alberta and Jacob - Cora Sandel (Another Women's Press edition, and translated from Norwegian, so falls into both my "women's fiction" and "translated fiction" quotas.)
• The Remarkable Journey of Miss Tranby Quirke - Elizabeth Ridley (It's VMC. It was 80p. Of course I was going to buy it.)
• Sexual Politics - Kate Millett (Feminist table-thumping ensues.)
• The Brontes Went to Woolworths - Rachel Ferguson (Talked about over at Justine Picardie's blog, and found in delicious old green VMC livery.)
• Zoology - Ben Dolnick (Recently released in B format paperback, it caught my attention in Borders some weeks ago. Finding it in A format paperback for just over a quid was obviously fate.)
• I, Claudius / Claudius the God - Robert Graves (An omnibus edition from 1976, complete with TV tie-ie photo on the front.)

And then, the piece de resistance. For 20 of your British Pounds, a Virago Modern Classics box set, in perfect condition, box still shiny and new, nary a spine broken featuring the following:

• Precious Bane - Mary Webb
• Liza's England - Pat Barker
• The Land of Spices - Kate O'Brien
• The Edwardians - Vita Sackville-West
• Fireworks - Angela Carter
• Good Behaviour - Molly Keane
• Provincial Daugher - R M Dashwood
• Our Spoons Came From Woolworths - Barbara Comyns
• Now in November - Josephine Johnson

I was massively excited. I can't even begin to tell you. Another entirely-free weekend awaits me, so I can't wait to get properly stuck in.

And now, some mini-link love. Knitter Friend has just started her own Etsy Shop, and her creations are quite beautiful. Go see (and buy). Also, her blog can be found here.

Also, all this week on OUPblog, I am posting questions concerning Oxford World's Classics. No prizes, just for fun. But do go and have a shot. Answers on Friday.

A New Look for Other Stories

As you can see I've been fiddling about again.

The fundamental design is still the same, but we've got some stars up there at the top now. I like stars.

The typeface is slightly different in places, most notably in the post headings.

My books are now over there ------>

My blogroll has been separated into broad categories and is now over there <--------

I like. I hope you like too.

Later: Proust.

I'm sleepy today.

I'm not here

If you're wondering where I am, then worry not. I have rocked up in London Town for three days for the London Book Fair (I'm here right now. Wireless is god.).

I shall be blogging for OUPblog about my time here, so do take a wander and follow my progress over there until Wednesday.

And if you're at the LBF yourself, come and say hello! I'm the person with the laptop looking a bit lost. Oh, wait, that's everyone here.

Wonder if there'll be any freebies...

Blogging the Classics: The Aftermath

You do an event about blogging, and whaddya know, the blogs go wild. And rightly so. You can catch up with all the various accounts at the following places:

• The Times Online
• The Guardian Blog
• OUPblog (yes, I did write that post)
• ReadySteadyBook
• Dovegrey Reader Scribbles (particularly the story about dgr and Academic Friend attempting to force their way into Merton College)
• Torque Control
• Eve's Alexandria
• Stuck in a Book

Blogging is (part of) the future people. As Mark Thwaite said on the night, while we have academic critics like Christopher Ricks now, perhaps the next Christopher Ricks will be found online.

Don't think it's me though. Just a head's up.

Blogging the Classics

It went wonderfully. I was thrilled as a PR, as a blogger, and as a reader.

Chairing was the excellent John Carey, author of  The Intellectuals and the Masses, and What Good Are The Arts?, both of which I now desperately want to read. Then we had Mark Thwaite of ReadySteadyBook, John Mullan (author of How Novels Work and Anonymity), and finally lovely Lynne Hatwell aka dovegreyreader - and she needs no introduction round these parts.

A blog called Torque Control has an excellent synopsis of the discussion, which was basically about the litbloggers versus the professional literary critics/academics... who has the right to talk about books? Essentially... all of us. We all bring different qualities to the table. Of course, I'm always going to be rooting for the bloggers though. We don't claim to be critics, or as Lynne said last night, even book reviewers. We are just people who love to talk about books, and the blogosphere provides the perfect platform to get the conversation going. And that is what it is, a conversation. I don't expect people to agree with what I think about a book 100% of the time, and similarly I don't expect to agree with anyone else 100% of the time, but the point is, we talk about it. Discourse, discussion, chat, it's what it's all about.

But to yet again steal Lynne's words, we seem to have caught some of the pros on the hop. They didn't see us coming, and are now blustering about in their ivory towers, choosing the worst of the bad blogs (and there are some real stinkers, lets be frank) to write us all off as yammering simpletons who wouldn't know a Good book (note the capital G) if it hit us in the face. Thing is, we do know what we think are good books, and we've read a few...

From left: John Carey, John Mullan, Lynne Hatwell, Mark Thwaite

PS, yes I did take these photos on the iPhone of joy.

Quickness

I am afraid there is only time for the briefest of posts this morning - there is just so much to do. So let me tell you what you should be reading instead of me today. (Only today mind, I want you all back here tomorrow!)

• Boyfriend Blogs! My beloved is dipping his musical toes into the blogosphere. It is still in its infancy, but do pop over and say hello at Six Shining Strings.
• Tonight! Live! Bloggers talk! At the OLF tonight is Blogging the Classics. For a sneak preview, go and Listen Again to this morning's Today Programme, where Lovely Mark and John M were talking about the literary blogosphere.
• I am officially a capitalist whore. Yesterday I gave in and bought an iPhone. It is AMAZING and I am boring everyone rigid with it.
• Finished Annie Dunne by Sebastian Barry. It was wonderful. Thoughts later.

And now I must dash for the door. Full report on Blogging the Classics tomorrow, complete with photos (taken on my iPhone, obv.)

Reading Progress

When you work in publishing March and April can be ridiculously busy. Next week is the Oxford Literary Festival, and I will be there for three and a half days out of seven. I have authors speaking every single day. I also have events that I'm going to as a Regular Punter.

What I'm most looking forward to, though, is an event on Monday night: Blogging the Classics. We are sponsoring the event because our classics series has just undergone a major facelift, and they're about to relaunch. Speaking at the event are John Carey, John Mullan, the lovely Mark Thwaite of ReadySteadyBook and Book Depository fame, and the inimitable Friend of Other Stories dovegrey reader. I'm not just saying this because of work, I really can't wait for that one. Do come and join us!

When I'm not hanging around the Festival Green Room (oooh, get me) I shall be sweating over my essay. And probably drinking a lot of coffee. The stress, the stress, I really don't need anymore at the moment. Seriously, everyone be nice to me next week.

At least I have lovely, calming books to read. My current main read is Sebastian Barry's Annie Dunne. I have never read anything by him before, but Academic Friend rates him extremely highly, and that is good enough for me. So far, I haven't been disappointed, it's shaping up to be a real treat.

Vanity Fair is still on the go too, I promise. I seem to have been distracted by other things recently, but I haven't given up, I swear! I'm at page 250-odd out of 900-odd, so the end isn't yet quite in sight, but I will get there. I am really enjoying it, or I was, before I got sidetracked.

On top of all this, I have taken delivery of another couple of review copies: Hearts and Minds by Rosy Thornton, and Fresh by Mark McNay. One is a campus novel about a man in an all-female Cambridge college, and the other is a brutal drama set in a rundown area of Glasgow. I fear the first may be more relaxing than the latter, so I think that might be first up during my week of busy-ness.

The VMCs, again

For those of you who, like me, adore the Virago Modern Classics, author Justine Picardie is inviting comments and memories of the series for a newspaper piece she is writing. I have already been over to her blog to put in my tuppance worth. Do pop over and say hello.

My first VMC, for what it's worth, was The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West. It remains one of my favourite books of all time.

In other news, while you're meandering about the blogosphere, do take a moment and read my post over at OUPblog. It's an excerpt from one of my very favourite short stories: A Nightmare by Guy de Maupassant. It's deliciously eerie.

Starfishing - Nicola Monaghan

Well, I hope you all had a very Happy Easter and enjoyed a relaxing Easter break. We had Boyfriend's folks down for a few days, and a wonderful time was had by all.

Slightly less relaxing was the ever-looming essay, which I stole away a few hours to work on over the weekend too. I was starting to feel like I was hitting my head off a brick wall with early Yeats, trying to pin down exactly where the young man was coming from, and feeling monumentally stupid until yesterday morning I finally made a breakthrough. What a relief it was for inspiration to strike at last, and I was off, making frenzied notes in all the margins and scraps of notepaper I could find.

When my brain is full of academic things, it is of paramount importance for me to have an easy-reading book on the go. A book that I can pick up and whizz through a couple of chapters of with ease. A mental sigh of relief, if you will. Starfishing by Nicola Monaghan has been just such a book over this jam-packed Easter weekend.

I confess that had I seen this book on the shelf in a shop, I would never have picked it up. City traders? Party girls? Drugs? Clubbing? Not my thing, I'm afraid. However, I was offered a review copy by the publisher and when I heard that the author had started a blog in the main character's name I was intrigued enough to accept and give it a bash.

The story concerns Frankie Cavanagh, trainee City trader. You know, those people wearing stripey jackets and waving a lot. It's 1997, she's "one of the lads", she drinks and drugs and dances and hardly sleeps. She's a council estate gal done good, apparently unable to reconcile her life in London with her past life in Essex. She fancies her boss, her boss fancies her, but is already married to Baby, "slightly overweight" with a "strong Essex accent". She'd be "getting jowls in a couple of years". Affair with Tom the Boss ensues. Trouble follows shortly thereafter.

It's perhaps too easy to slot Starfishing slap bang into the chick-lit genre, because it isn't a fluffy story, it is actually quite dark with a climactic ending scene that I didn't see coming. To paraphrase Frankie herself, it's chick-lit on acid. Everything-but-the-needle and the damage done. Frankie is on the downward spiral and it's alternately fascinating, compelling, and uncomfortable to watch as a reader.

What interests me most about this book, though, is the companion blog, Starfish Soup. In writing it, Nicola Monaghan has placed Frankie in the here and now, 10 years after the novel finishes (thus clearing up a major question I had when I finished the book). She's dropping in references to characters and hinting at what has developed since the novel took place. But what is the future of said blog, I wonder? Is it going to be a long-term thing, therefore opening up the door for possible sequel novels in the future? Or is it a quick-hit marketing fix for the launch of this paperback original? I hope that the blog doesn't disappear over night, not least because otherwise it would be somewhat making a mockery of the blogosphere and the integrity thereof. But then, aren't quick fixes what Frankie Stein spent most of the novel looking for?

I shall be watching with interest. Meanwhile, if you like your novels fairly dark without wanting to give yourself a headache, then I suggest Starfishing as the perfect aspirational read between tube stops on your way to the next club.

Updates

While I have been fiddling about in the blogular background, I have made a few changes to my sidebars.

Not much, just a bit of re-ordering. New photo (that's me, last year, on top of the White Horse hill). New clever little feed thingy, bringing you the latest posts from OUPblog.

Also, I have a new blog email address, after some gmail confusion. I always like getting email, unless you're abusive and/or spam, so drop me a line at otherstories [at] live [dot] co [dot] uk.

Right, back to posting properly. I have quite the backlog of book reviews to get through.

Places to go, people to see...

Today, I am a little behind. Being stuck in bed for a week meant that I whizzed through a few books because frankly I was incapable of doing anything other than reading, sleeping, coughing, and drinking litres of orange squash. In the space of a week, I (finally) finished Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I'm not planning to review here largely because I can't think of anything intelligent to say about it other than it took me a few chapters to get into it, it's a gory, rollicking, good fun book, the story is really nothing like the film, and if you're into a bit of Victorian weirdness then you could do far worse than to pick this one up. I'm not just saying that because I work for the publisher. Y'all know that I keep my work life and Other Stories life separate unless they genuinely overlap.

I also read the third Inspector Morse novel, The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn. Decent whodunnit. Buckets of sexism, which annoyed me. The other two books read were The Ice Palace by Terjei Varsaas, and Watch Me Disappear by Jill Dawson. Enjoyed both, and proper reviews are forthcoming, once I have time to down and formulate my thoughts and pencilled notes into something approximating a book review.

Meanwhile, I am in full-tilt MA mode, and have also been completely sucked into Vanity Fair when it comes to recreational reading. It's a big ole book is Vanity Fair, and given that I'm only getting time to get through 50 pages a day at the moment with everything else going on, then progress is not particularly speedy. However, Thursday is uni day, so at least I have an hour each way on the train to London to have a bit of read.

Talking of having a bit of a read, off you lot pop and take a gander and what's been floating my cyber-boat this week:

• I'm doing more posts on the good old OUPblog at the moment. Two this week - one on Captain Scott, the other on Prozac - with another one to come tomorrow.
• 1-15 March is the Oxford International Women's Festival. Hooray!
• 2007's Oddest Book Titles are...
• Scottish Friend and I went to see Juno last night - and it was fantastic. Knitter Friend reviewed it over on her blog too.
• The curious case of the forged biography.
• Following on from the stories I linked to yesterday, there's another good piece in The Independent today about violence against women.

A couple of these links will pop up on tomorrow's OUPblog link love post from me, so these will give you a head start. But do stop by tomorrow OUPblog post for bunnies and staircases and other stuff too.

Happy Blogday!

While I was in the midst of my seventeenth bout of illness this year, a special day dawned. That's  right, blog fans, Other Stories celebrated its First Birthday (or Blogday, if you will)! Hooray!

I started this blog a year ago out of the wreckage of countless tried-and-failed blogular ventures. Finally, this one seemed to feel right, mainly because I realised that I had previously been barking into thin air about nothing in particular. My last blog before this, though, was slowly turning into something bookier and bookier, and I realised that there was no earthly reason why I couldn't start a book blog proper. Why hadn't I done it before? Oh, I don't know really. Not being very confident in my opinions was a main one. By which I mean that I knew what I thought, but feared that my idle ramblings would be sneered at by others.

Thankfully, though, that hasn't been the case, and the reception of Other Stories into the blogosphere has been quite wonderful. The things that have arisen out of this blog, too, are amazing, and I didn't entertain for a second that any of them could happen. Now, I occasionally get free books from publishers, I've been quoted in the Guardian's weekly blog round-up, I've made friends with other lovely bloggers, and The Reader quoted something I said about the magazine on their website (look! That's me on the same page as Doris Lessing!).

I love writing this blog, and my ever-increasing webstats seem to suggest that other people quite like reading it. Onward, fellow bloggers, and here's to another year of Other Stories.

Bloggers Versus The World

Well, not quite, but what with Ian McEwan outing himself as anti-blog recently ("...I don't have much time for the kind of site where readers do all the reviewing. Reviewing takes expertise, wisdom and judgment. I am not much fond of the notion that anyone's view is as good as anyone else's") it sometimes feels like we book bloggers have to make excuses for our very existence.

The blogs vs the critics debate has been raging around the interweb recently, starting with an excellent, balanced article over at Vulpes Libres and continued today by the always sensible Mark at The Book Depository.

There's not much I can really add to these two articles other than saying in the strongest possible terms that I completely agree with them. I have never set out to rival a broadsheet review section, but what I do think we bloggers can do is bring an air of trustworthiness to the world of book reviewing that is sometimes lacking from the professionals. Please note the emphasis on "sometimes". Occasionally you just can't help but wonder how cliquey The Establishment is.

I am "just" a common reader. I like to tell people about the books I enjoy reading, and I like to read the opinions of other "normal people" too. That's not to say that I don't read the review sections because I do, every weekend, it's just that I am possibly more likely to read a book on the recommendation of DGR, or Booklit, or John Self, or Elaine, than on the recommendation of a literary critic.

To steal a handful of Mark's words:

"The death of the Common Reader has been long announced, but no-one has yet seen a body."