This month’s book was Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller which we all enjoyed.  I liked it so much, I borrowed the DVD of the film from the library and not just because the book had only taken a few days to read and I therefore needed a recap as I couldn’t remember what happened. 

The book is narrated by Barbara: a lonely old spinster with an obsessive streak.  Her latest obsession is Sheba, the school’s new art teacher who starts an affair with a 15 year old boy.  Sheba confesses the affair to Barbara and Barbara has the perfect opportunity to manipulate Sheba until jealousy takes over and Barbara betrays Sheba.

The book is more about friendship and betrayal, rather than the affair.  None of us had any sympathy for Sheba as there was nothing wrong with her marriage and we decided she was just a naive, self-absorbed crap teacher.

One of our group is a teacher and since reading the book, had spent his time in the staff room looking at his colleagues, wondering who would be most likely to have an affair with a pupil and he decided that yes, it would probably be an art teacher.

Next month we’re reading (or trying to) The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie.  I’ve never read any of his books, so I’m not sure why I’m not keen to read it but I’ll give it a go in a case of “don’t knock what you haven’t tried”.  And as the next meeting will be the last before Christmas, it’s going to double up as our Christmas party in Pizza Express.

If you’d like to join the Maidstone Book Club, contact me.

I’m not entirely sure what morning pages are.  Are they just whatever comes to mind when you first wake up?  I’ve been writing down my dreams, but I decided to write down what I saw out of the window  this morning, which turned into a freewrite.  I like freewrites.

Mist, can’t see in the distance.  On a landscape, desolate.  Morrisey’s bicycle.  Cars with their headlights on.  One cottage stands out above all the others.  Two windows.  A green hedge.  A gold car.  Cars going slowly.  Brake lights on.  Yellow chimney pots.  An empty bus.  Golden headlights.  Beams.  Rays.  Sunlight.  Blue sky.  Just getting light.  No streetlights.  Cat hungry.

Now, had that not been a freewrite, I could have utlised my new Dictionary of Colour and looked up something more descriptive than “green”.

How about:

mushy-pea green
sludge green
spinach green
swamp green
ocean green
olive
rifle green
porret (a yellowish green – a porret being a baby leek)
smaragdine (emerald green)
mythogreen (a brilliant yellowish-green)

I could go on, there’s loads of ways to describe green (and every other colour of the spectrum, it’d be a bit of a crap book if it only contained words relating to to the colour green).

It’s a great book.  With 520 pages in four parts, it covers:

1. A listing of colour phrases (e.g. blue funk)
2. The colours (over 1100) arranged in alphabetical order
3. The colours arranged according to colour groupings
4. Adjectives of colour (over 800)

I will never describe something as plain as green again.

Right, I’m off to buy a pair of smaragdine shoes.

Because I’m such a Billy-no-mates and don’t have anyone to go to the pub with, I put out a couple of adverts in the hope of recruiting some people to join the book club I wanted to start.  After a slow start, I got a few people interested and last night four of us had our first meeting to discuss A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.

I’ve never even been to a book club before, let alone started one up, so I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do.  We chatted for a bit about where we lived, what we did and so on and then it was suggested that we talk about the book, what with it being a book club and that.  Good idea.

A Long Way Down is about four people who decide to commit suicide on New Years Eve.  Martin’s TV career is in tatters after sleeping with a 15 year old girl, JJ’s depressed because his band broke up and his girlfriend left him, Maureen’s got a severely disabled son and can’t cope anymore and Jess is full of teenage angst and Special Brew.  They all meet up on the top of a North London tower block, a notorious suicide spot nicknamed Toppers House and an unlikely friendship is formed.

The book is written from each of the character’s point of view and while this is a bit confusing at first, they each have a distinctive voice so you always know who’s speaking. 

We all agreed that Maureen was the only likeable character but that all the characters were believable although Jess wasn’t portrayed very consistently.

Not Hornby’s best book, but a good read nevertheless. 

Next month’s book, chosen by Gillian, is Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller.

Maidstone Book Club meets the second Thursday of every month, if you’d like to come along, please contact me.

I’m not sure how much rhyming poetry we’ll be doing in A215 but I was browsing amazon for rhyming dictionaries and got some recommendations from others on the course, and decided upon the Oxford Rhyming Dictionary
which was delivered today.

Obviously, I couldn’t wait to try it out, here’s the result.

Prawn

There once was a young man called Shaun
Whose girlfriend forced him to eat Quorn
One day he fought back
And fixed a quick snack
Of sandwiches made out of prawn

We cover poetry in A215 and although that’s not until the New Year, The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry has been recommended by various people on the OU A215 forum.

While I was in Cornwall last weekend visiting Emily and Michael, I spied a copy of The Ode Less Travelled on their bookshelves.  “Ooh, I said, do you write poetry?”  I asked Emily.  “No, Michael’s sister gave it to me for Christmas,” she replied.  I said I’d been recommended it and promptly took it off the shelf and gave it a quick flick through.

I didn’t understand a word of it.  Ok, maybe the odd word like “a” and “and” but apart from that, complete gobbledegook.  I very ladylikely said “Bollocks to that then” and put it back on the shelf as promptly as I’d taken it off.

After returning to Kent, I went on the forum and said I’d had a quick flick through it but didn’t understand a word of it.  Someone sensibly pointed out that if I read it from the beginning it would make more sense.  Wise words, I thought, but didn’t want to splash out on it via amazon so logged on to my good old fashioned bricks, mortar and dust library’s website and reserved a copy, which I picked up yesterday.

This time, I started reading it from the beginning.  I hadn’t got very far (in fact only the third page in the Foreword) when Mr Fry says “While it is perfectly possible that you did not learn music at school, or drawing and painting, it is almost certain that you did learn poetry.“

Now, while I don’t consider myself an inverted snob or suffer from any class insecurities, I would like to point out that in my school we most certainly did learn music, and drawing and painting but most certainly did not learn poetry.  At least, from what I can remember.  What school did he go to where he didn’t learn music, and drawing and painting?  Certainly wasn’t an East London comprehensive, anyway.

What, you don’t think he went to an East London comprehensive?  Blimey.