Tag: Literature

Guest Post: 7 Reasons To Read The Thursday Next Books By Jasper Fforde

Today, the 7 Reasons sofa sees the return of former guest writer Rachel Simmonite. She has many important things to say so I won’t keep you long. Just to say, when you’ve read today’s post head over to Rachel’s blog. It’s full of interesting things about rugby. Right, here’s Rachel.

My guest posts for this blog seem to come about on an annual basis, but I’m determined to make them more like buses. So, in the first of what might or might not be three guest posts, I am writing 7Reasons to read the Thursday Next books, which are written by the genius that is Jasper Fforde.

It was a trip to Hay-on-Wye, that place of the second hand bookshops and delicious Welsh Cakes, and a trip to the Guardian Hay Festival where I first spotted the first book in the Thursday Next series: The Eyre Affair. I don’t know why I was drawn to it, there were loads of other (brand new) books in the makeshift store. Maybe it was fate? I picked up the book and read the blurb, followed by the first paragraph. I always do that, if it passes the blurb test then it has to go to the first paragraph test and then I will buy it. I noticed that it was a series, I think only a couple of them had come out by then so I went and bought both. I do like to stick with a series. Unfortunately the only series error I’ve made was with the Twilight books, and that was a serious series error. But I digress.

I got home and started reading. I was hooked. Two books read in two days (it was the school holidays, it’s allowed). And if that’s not enough persuasion to go out and buy them I don’t know what is. Well, apart from these seven reasons obviously. Here they are:

1. They make Swindon look cool. I’ve been to Swindon. I’ve experienced Swindon. (Okay so I’ve only experienced a pub there) And it’s not cool. But the Swindon in the Thursday Next books is really really cool. It’s the epicentre of all the chaos and activity that happens in the books, a change from those great literary destinations such as London and Oxford. For such a plain place, Fforde brings out the fun that Swindon could still yet have. Who knows, maybe the parallel Fforde Swindon and real Swindon could merge and we’d get this…

2. George Formby is the President. Yes, he of Leaning on a Lamp Post and playing the ukulele fame,is the President of England. Oh and the Crimean War is still going on. In 1985. Wales is a socialist republic. You have huge taxes on cheese (I don’t know how I could have coped with that) and illegal smuggling of it across the country. There are dodos and Neanderthals too and even the odd mammoth migration too.

3. The Debate Over Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays Is Bigger Than The “Who Shot Phil Mitchell?” Storyline In Eastenders. Did William Shakespeare really write all those plays and sonnets? Or was it Christopher Marlowe? Could it have been Francis Bacon? How about the Earls of Oxford or Derby? All have good claims to Shakespeare’s plays. Some people in the Thursday Nextbooks are obsessed with this to the point that it can cause violence. Shakespeare is not just the scourge of the English student in these books, he’s extremely popular, and not just when well known actors are acting his plays in the theatre!

4. If You Don’t Watch Out You’ll Miss The Puns. You have to read the Thursday Next books very closely as they’re full of puns. There are character names like Landen Parke-Laine (London Park Lane) and Braxton-Hicks along with the more obvious Agents Chalk and Cheese. Millon de Floss writes Thursday’s biography. I’m not telling you all of the other ones; you will have to read the books to find them out for yourself! I might not have found them all! It gives you an excuse to read them again to try and spot more of them, that and the books are just great so you’ll want to read them again anyway.

5. Despite The Weirdness It Still Has All The Typical Generic Subplots. There’s the romance between Thursday and Landen, which has its ups and downs and general drama. Thursday has eccentric family members from the father who doesn’t really exist, the fussy mother, the religious brother and the aunt and uncle who out smart just about everybody. There’s the big bad guy, Acheron Hades, an even bigger bad guy with a huge corporation behind him. Plus there’s the multi-coloured Porsche. Eat your heart out James Bond.

6. There’s An Alternate World In The Parallel World. Yes, I’m being serious. So Nextian Swindon is a parallel world of real Swindon, but also in Nextian Swindon, our main character can go into the world of books. Pretty mind boggling, but you’ll get used to it. You might even get used to the thought of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations breaking land speed records, or the fact that the characters aren’t really allowed into the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Having studied Poe this can only be a good thing. The book world does come across as being really fun, it makes you wish that books are really written that way, maybe they are? Who knows?

7. Your celebrities? Not Reality TV Stars But Literary Figures Or Figures In Literature. It’s like the good old days, people aren’t famous for being famous, they actually have to do something first. In the case of the celebrities in the Thursday Next books they have to be written. The hero worship never seems to be stopping, with people changing their names to their favourites, but they have to have a number afterwards due to the multiple numbers of them. You don’t see people nowadays changing their names to Jordan or Kerry Katona, but you will see Anne Hathaways in these books.

March 5, 2011
7 Reasons That Writer’s Block is Frustrating

Whether you’re a blogger, a journalist, a novelist, a playwright or a poet, writer’s block can be both debilitating and frustrating. Here are seven reasons why.

Yes, It's Microsoft Word 1897!

1. Because You Call Yourself A Writer. I sometimes call myself a writer. Mostly because that’s what I do. I write. Every day. I didn’t start doing it regularly until my thirties, but I’ve studied literature my whole life, from pre-school to university. And I feel comfortable when I refer to myself as a writer; because I do it all the time and, I like to imagine, quite well. I don’t make my living from writing: I’ve never even been paid for writing; in fact – owing to the vagaries of the publishing system – I’ve been offered more money not to write than I have to write. Yes, actual soft cash (made of paper, so better than hard cash), and I turned it down. Because I’m an idiot. And I would have had to have called myself a not-writer. A professional not-writer. And that’s not who I am. But you can only call yourself a writer if you actually write something.

2. Because It’s Hard To Explain. It’s hard to explain not being able to write to non-writers, because – to them – it’s a natural state. How would you explain the absence of writing to someone that isn’t a practitioner of the art? I’ll have a stab at it: Imagine that you’re reading a blank page. But that page is important. In fact, the words on that page are fundamental to your very life, soul, being, self-image and existence. But you can’t see them. And you need them. They’re vital. Oh, and you’re naked. Well that’s pretty much what it’s like. But much worse. Because your foot hurts and it’s cold where you are.

3. Because You Can Think Of Things To Write, They’re Just Not Appropriate. I could, right at this moment, fashion a discourse highlighting the influence of John Mayall on the British blues movement or analyse Romania’s under-reported role in the holocaust. But I’m not writing a piece on the development of British music, or on World War II, I’m writing for a humour site. Which is a shame as there’s very little else in my head except for: “There’s nothing in your head you silly man”, “My foot hurts” and “Oooh, I quite fancy a sandwich”; yet eating the sandwich won’t help you because…well…it’s eating a sandwich, which is different to writing (it’s more Marmitey and less like Tolstoy) and your audience probably won’t appreciate a piece entitled 7 Reasons I Stopped Staring Blankly at a Screen and had a Sandwich Instead as it would be at least six reasons light and it would probably make them hungry. Well, half of them, the other half probably don’t like Marmite.

4. Because You Have A Deadline. Yes, there’s always a deadline that you need to hit. And, when I was staring at my blank screen it was imminent. After all, I have other things to do in addition to writing. I’m a man, I need simple things; that sandwich, sleep, words to magically appear on my screen (or in my head, I’m not lazy, I’ll happily type them out), but mostly sleep. Because I’ve been busy all day and I’m tired. But I need to write these words, so with bloodshot eyes I continue to stare at the screen, because inspiration will strike if I stare at it for long enough, surely?

5. Because Of Modern Technology. And I’m staring at the blank screen on a computer. That’s right, a computer. A machine connected to the world that contains many, many distractions. So when you find yourself failing to write words on a screen, you’ll soon find yourself watching people falling off bicycles on Youtube. And shortly, you’ll find yourself on Twitter. Not tweeting about WWII or John Mayall, but about other topical and funny stuff. And you’re actually being funny on Twitter. In the written word! But not in any way that inspires your next day’s piece, and that doesn’t help matters; in fact, it’s bloody frustrating, as the irony of the situation won’t escape you. You will briefly toy with the idea of tweeting tomorrow’s piece, and disregard it. Eventually. But not before you’ve wasted much precious writing time considering it, while sucking on a pencil: A pencil without any lead in it.

6. Because Of Self-Doubt. Why do I write? If you ever found yourself asking that, you would never, ever do it. Because writing defies all logical sense. Why, in the name of all that is holy, in the name of all that is unholy, or in the name of all that isn’t there (I think I’ve covered everyone) would anyone choose to spend their time spewing-forth words from their brains to their fingers to their screens. “I could be doing other things at the moment,” you’ll find yourself thinking. “I could be doing other things that normal people do like watching other people sitting in a “jungle” or watching other people dancing badly or watching other people that can’t sing, sing or”…and suddenly writing makes sense again.

7. Because You’ll Get There In The End. And eventually, you’ll think of something to write about. Because that’s what you do, you’re a writer. Even if you do end up writing about not-writing, even if you end up raw-eyed and sweaty, even if you end up writing with the rapier-like-insight and élan of an addled baboon, there’ll be something. Because however much you think you have nothing to say, however hard you think it is, there will always be something. And that’s when you know that you should write. And that you should have a shower.

November 23, 2010
7 Reasons You Should Choose Your Holiday Read Carefully

There’s so much to think about when choosing your holiday read and so much can go wrong. Here are seven reasons that you should do it carefully.

1. The Cover. People say you should never judge a book by its cover. But they do. Which is why everyone who sees your choice of book will automatically form an opinion of you. And it will probably be the wrong opinion. Take Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for example. The Penguin Modern Classic version depicts a glass of milk. If I see someone reading a book that has a cover featuring milk I immediately think, ‘Cows. The reader likes cows’. They probably don’t. In fact, had I asked them, they would have probably shrugged with indifference. But that’s the peril of the book cover. To me, that person will always be a cow lover.

2. Trilogies. These are a big no-no. No one reads more than one book on holiday, so never start on a series that is going to take you a further two holidays to finish. By the time the second holiday comes around you’ll have forgotten what happened in the first book. This means you’ll have to read it again, only for the process to repeat itself on the next holiday. Basically, you’ll spend the rest of your life holidaying with the same book. And you’ll never find out who kills who or what the wizard said to the pixie or why the girl next door is so addicted to sex with vampires.

3. Love. Lots of people meet the love of their lives (or their night) on holiday. The last thing you need – having plucked up the courage and charmed a beautiful lady at the bar – is for her to come back to your suite and see your copy of How To Talk Women Into Bed resting on your pillow. That kind of behaviour is strictly frowned upon by the fairer sex. Apparently.

4. Language. When you take a book abroad, it’s disrespectful to your hosts to read an English translation of a book originally written in their language. In Barcelona, several people were upset to see me reading a translation of Lorca’s Yerma, but that was nothing compared to the reaction of Berliners to my English version of Mein Kampf. Never read a translated work. They were livid.

5. Practicality. The Da Vinci Code is the ideal book to take on holiday. If the weather takes a turn for the worse you can use it as kindling; if you spill your drink on the table, it’s quite absorbent; if you need to hold a door in your villa open, you can fashion a papier-mache doorstop from it; if you find that people are trying to engage you in conversation, you can pretend to read it (they’ll soon leave you alone). There’s almost nothing that this versatile book can’t be used for. Except as reading material, obviously. That would be stupid.

6. The Lord Of The Flies. If you have teenage children, do not take this book on your island-break with you. Okay, so it’s pretty unlikely that they’ll put down their iPods and PSPs for long enough to read it, but if they do, they may descend into savagery before you know it. And savages do not make relaxing holiday companions. As anyone that has vacationed in Ayia Napa will testify.

7. Airports. A copy of Frank Barnaby’s How to Build A Nuclear Bomb and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction would be a particularly poor choice of holiday read. It’s sobering, serious and thought-provoking; none of the things that are conducive to the holiday mood as you attempt to relax and get away from it all in your detention cell at Heathrow Airport.

September 8, 2010
7 Reasons These Opening Lines Are Not Classics

It is said that the following seven opening lines are some of the best written. I disagree. In fact I believe them to be vastly overrated. This is why.

1. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen. 1813. I think one only has to look at the case of Sir Elton John to realise that this is not a truth universally acknowledged at all. Nor is it acknowledged locally.*

2. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” 1984. George Orwell. 1949. Bollocks. I suppose the sundial was pointing to half-past twenty-seven too.

3. “He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.” The Old Man And The Sea. Ernest Hemmingway. 1952. If the old man doesn’t have the sense to move to a different location after eighty-four days then I fail to see how I am going to be inspired by his intelligence for the ensuing chapters. Nor his fishing technique.

4. “It was love at first sight.” Catch-22. Joseph Heller. 1961. Now I am a romantic. I know this because I have Notting Hill and Love Actually on DVD, but I can’t believe in love at first sight. Lust, yes. Nausea, certainly. But not love. This wasn’t love. It was just a deep attraction to this person’s physical appearance. I assume it was a person. I didn’t get beyond the line to find out. It could have been a new toaster. But even so, it wasn’t love.

5. “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.” Dodie Smith. I Capture The Castle. 1948. I suppose I should have had an idea what to expect when I read the title. This book is about a drug addict. Who owns a large sink. Not for me.

6. “When Mr Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventyifirst birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.” The Fellowship Of The Rings. J.R.R Tolkein. 1954. How the hell did this get made into a film? In fact, how the hell did it get made into a book? For two years I have been trying to get my book published and I can guarantee you my first line makes more bloody sense than this rubbish. The next 10,000 lines maybe not, but the first line definitely.

7. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Charles Dickens. A Tale Of Two Cities. 1859. I don’t know whether Mr. Dickens is being hypocritical on purpose here or just can’t make his bloody mind up. Poxy fence sitters. I bet this was on the Liberal Democrats reading list in the pre-Nick Clegg days. It’s probably been replaced by something with a nice cover now.**

*This is not a subtle attempt to come out. I’m not coming out. Because I don’t need to. And that’s not because I have come out in the past. I haven’t. Mainly because I don’t think like Sir Elton John.***

**The Conservative Party’s book of choice is, Slaughterhouse-Five, while Labour’s is, The Catcher In The Rye. You can look up the first lines.

***So, to sum up, I’m straight.

May 5, 2010