My favourite book... Tricky. To reduce all the things I've ever read down to just one favourite? Harsh, Master. After all, there are different books for different seasons. I'm not really the world's biggest book reader either these days, as we shall see...
This is tough, actually! As much as I am a fan of definition like this, I can't just pick one over all the rest. I'd suck at Desert Island Books. And Desert Island Discs probably as well, and I'm sure later on this month I'll follow the same path of struggling to decide. I have an odd relationship with books. It'll often take me a while to really get into prose, especially fiction - I still have a hard time suspending my disbelief after all. I can't even watch Spooks or even my newest burning interest Doctor Who without seeing all the cliche tropes (dodgy Russian accents or space-time macguffins). There was once a Lord of the Rings Blu-ray marathon that I straight up ruined with an unending stream of D&D jokes and Harry Potter references. I am a bad man. Once again, it's about expressing both sides of the coin here - I still had a good time watching the films, sure, but it doesn't stop me from calling out all the things that are similar to other things.
Anyway. Books. I am just as likely to sit on the sofa with a cup of tea (ahahahaha I've now got lacto-free milk rather than that Soya nightmare) with a Nigel Slater recipe book (because food is important yah)
Actually, a real favourite does come to mind. I was about 8 or 9 years old when I first read it, and I picked it up because I didn't really know what it was. MAUS by Art Spiegelman is one of the best books I've ever read. It is the harrowing account of holocaust survival, told in graphic form. All of this stuff happened, guys. It's horrific and sad, a testament to man's inhumanity to man, YES, but this is one man's story. The story of Vladek Spiegelman, his life before and during the rise of the Nazi party, first as a family man running a business to a survivor of various ghettos and death camps, including the infamous Auschwitz. It is a difficult book to describe, of unavoidable history and a minimalistic style of illustration. Spiegelman uses animal metaphors, presenting the characters as anthropromorphised animals according to their ethnicity and nationality and even sympathies; the Jews are mice, Germans as cats, Americans are dogs and the Polish as pigs. Its austere monochromaticism is a reminder of the gravity of story therein, but also as a way of drawing the reader in, rather than having a coloured page; where the different colours may mean different things to the reader than the author. This isn't supposed to be any kind of analysis - there isn't time or room here, and I certainly don't have hold of the literary technique to do so - read it for yourself. Beg, borrow or steal it if you have to (don't actually steal): it is an immensely powerful volume, and even the memory brings a tear to my eyes. As I age, I re-read it, because I love it, and in a way, I have grown up with it. Maus always comes with me, wherever I go. It is the first illustrated volume I ever read, which is probably why it has such a lasting effect.
Onwards. Another book that always comes with me wherever I move to the first cookery book I bought for myself: Floyd's India. Keith Floyd, perhaps one of the most famous alcoholics to ever be televised, with an inimitable rapport with his camera crew and a constant glass of something-or-other is another figure that I remember from an early age. No, I never met him, and I will always be sorry for that. His serialised TV adventures, now repeated only in parts on Saturday Morning Kitchen every now and again take our eponymous hero off to all sorts of far-flung locations, from the south of France, to London restaurant kitchens, the Far East and back, with a glass of plonk on set at all times. Seriously, this man drank almost as much as the Big Man! As a firm lover of curry (even though I haven't eaten curry in weeks...), I thought that one of my hero chef's books was an essential purpose. I also picked up a beaten-up copy of Floyd on France while I was in Norwich. The recipes are of course, rather difficult to follow on the shoestring budget I live to at the moment, with real spices being rather difficult to track down in Truro anyway. The prefaces to each chapter, concerned with a different facet of Indian cuisine, are delightfully written, and brimming with more character than everything I have written myself put together. Like Nigel Slater in this day and age, he is a man who simply loves food, and puts heart and soul into it. Floyd himself is definitely an "Old-School" kind of guy, private grammar school education and a short career in the army, but his personal health record seems like a tragic warning for future generations everywhere. Heart problems, cancer, diseases of the lungs... Not to mention several episodes of bankruptcy throughout his life. Sad indeed, when news of his death broke in 2009.
Such emotion! Lots of my belongings have similar deep connections to times and places in my life though. It's probably one of the reasons I always travel so heavily, so I have these memories around me all the time.
Another top book tied in to a very specific time of my life is Stephen Bicknell's The History of the English Organ. This was one of my research cornerstones for my dissertation, and I possibly would have gone stark raving mad without it. Stephen Bicknell, whose website still stands, worked for a long time as part of the English Organ building firm N. P. Mander Ltd, a company responsible for not only the construction, but also the care and restoration of many important instruments (not least the 'Little Giant' of Truro Cathedral, which received their attention in 1991). It is extremely informative, and a very well written book. I know that Organ building is quite a rare interest, but then again so is the Indian cuisine of an Englishman and Holocaust survival tales. Swings and roundabouts. Not only is the text provided excellent, and the black and white plates (in my paperback edition anyway) showing instruments, some of which have been since destroyed or remodeled beyond recognition (like ghosts?) illuminating, it is the best 'gateway' book into this area of study. Chock full of interesting technical detail, historical accounts from the amazingly pompous newspapers of the eighteenth century, and a list of instruments that still stand in their original (or near as) state, it's a book that kept me going through that terrible block. Can't write? Read! I stocked up on page references while I still couldn't churn out a sentence I was satisfied with.
Of course we have to have a music score. I think that for the purposes of this particular blog it will the the Universal Edition of Orlando Gibbons' Works for Organ. This is a score I have much history with as well. When I first began to teach myself how to play the Organ, I had no hope of playing the pedals. Thankfully, the old English schools of keyboard composition were there to flee to in time of trouble. This large green volume, with it's easy to read (if not easy to play) notation, discovered in the stacks of Derby central Library, became my book. All the datestamps in the front ticket can be traced directly back to me, and me alone. I once used a picture of a previous girlfriend as a marker, neglected to remove it once I returned the book, only to get it out again the next week, picture undisturbed. Leaving Derby, of course, took me away from it. I went to university, where I made other discoveries in keyboard music, not to mention a certain set of Suites for unaccompanied Violoncello. As a treat to myself, I finally ordered the book and have my own copy. It was rather expensive for a volume consisting of less than 20 compositions, but I didn't, and still don't care. It's mine. I rather like all the fantasias and preludes contained therein. They all have such different characters and often brilliant final passages to the last cadence! Gibbons is also the master of the English Cadence, which makes many appearances throughout.
Finally, a book I'm looking forward to reading - a favourite author. The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe is a mighty, weighty tome. Sat next to me here, in fearsome black and red leather binding and silver leaf lined pages, it is a considerable object - you may well have seen them in Waterstones, published by Barnes and Noble. It was a gift, bought and posted from America; namely the state of Maryland, where Poe eventually died in the city of Baltimore. It was sent to me by my very own best Georgia in the whole world, at great personal cost, but no personal peril. My first encounter with Poe, as I'm sure many others will agree with, was in the first Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Halloween special, where his 'signature' work, The Raven became the third act of the episode. I love The Raven. I think it's bloody brilliant. The fear of the unknown juxtaposed against an uncontrollable agent makes for a tense and atmospheric poem. That's right! A poem. However, Poe is responsible for more than just that, with famous prose works such as The Tell-Tale Heart and The Pit and the Pendulum. He is also responsible for one of the earliest-recognised detective stories; The Gold Bug, which I read as part of my GCSE English course. I have a lot to look forward to, and just like the complete works of Shakespeare that sits on my shelf, won't have to worry about rushing through by any respect.
Onwards and through the delay. I'll polish off Sunday's writing project off after a rest and a short sleep, I feel. This daily schedule isn't half beginning to take its toll...but we're nearly halfway there!
That's all. For now.
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