So when one is ploughing one's way through mounds of reading on educational theory*, one's preferences for recreational reading tend to turn to the light, the frivolous, the frothy. If you see what I mean.
At the end of the day my bloodshot eyeballs have had it with the heavy duty language that passes for academic English. And given that most of the stuff I'm reading is about the importance of clear communication and good self-expression, the dreadful irony is not lost on moi.
Reading:
This week I've ripped through 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff and I've started on Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome. I'm not big on biographies. There are a few I've enjoyed but overall they don't have huge appeal for me. I do, however, love collections of letters; a love that Don Mary, god bless her blackened, charcoal heart, got me started on when I was a teenager with Helene Hanff's book. 84 Charing Cross Road is an edited selection of letters exchanged between Ms Hanff in New York and an antiquarian books shop in London over the course of 30 years. It's wonderfully funny and witty and a little moving. A personal relationship builds quite quickly between the writer and the staff of the bookshop - the letters become less formal, mostly thanks to Hanff's breezy style, her devotion to good quality English literature with good quality binding and papers, and her regular delivery of parcels of food to people she's never met in post-war England.
I love re-reading books I read as a child, either for the new insight I get on them, or because I can remember all the feelings I felt when I first read it. Usually a bit of both. This book was wasted on the youngster me. Without it who knows if I'd ever have discovered the marvels of letters (probably; I'm a busybody so poking around in other people's private correspondence would never be an opportunity I'd pass up) but I know I couldn't possibly have appreciated the humour and the pathos and the little glimpses of two different ways of life following World War II. You know, I'm so mature and worldly now.
The book also includes Hanff's diary of her trip to England in 1971. Very much worth the read simply to enjoy her thrill at exploring the places she'd dreamt of for so long.
I'll talk about Jerome K Jerome next week.
Top 5 Songs:
Shortnin' Bread - The Cramps
Hit the Ground Running - Smog
Harmony - Happy Mondays
Maga Dog - Peter Tosh
Pusherman - Curtis Mayfield
*Yes, hazelblackberry is doing a Grad Dip in Education. To be a high school teacher, you understand. Those little primary school kids freak me out, man.
5 comments:
High School Teacher? That is HUGE! I'd have never guessed. It's not because I don't think you'd be great (because my mind is now racing with what a trip it would be to sit in on Ms. Blackberry's class...) but because my current mindset is still hoping I don't return to teaching in a classroom.
I can't wait until you're teaching, to hear your wacky perspective on all the crazy antics of teaching.
Good on you! I have heard that a Grad Dip in Education is hard to get into - good luck with it.
Thank you both.
I loved *4 Charing Cross Road...also read it as a young teen(at my nanas...what was it about that grandma thing?) this is why I love your blog....I find out stuff about you that we miss in ordinary conversation.
"Conversation"? Is that what you're calling your morning diatribes these days?
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