(no subject)

[flemmings]

Oh really, Guardian readers, how small-souled can you get? Reading every book on a single library shelf sounds to me like great fun, but the comments are all toffee-nosed disapproval. Is she not taking reading seriously enough? Is the exercise not improving enough? Why do people go idiotic when books and reading are concerned? Like the person who was roundly panned for making sculptures out of books-- OMG it's a *book* how could you desecrate it like that!! (Same for 'OMG it's a *book* how could you throw it out/ break the spine/ leave it facedown and open/ dogear the pages??!!! You'd think things were still handwritten on vellum, and every mass market paperback was the sole copy of Saphho's odes.)

I like arbitrary reading projects. A book for each letter of the alphabet. A book for five different genres. The first ten books offered on the Frontlawn Library. The arbitrary makes you expand your reading horizons, and not a bad thing either.

Comments

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

I read the Grauniad mainly for the movie reviews.

Some of the comments give off a distinct vinegary odour of "I wish *I* (or "my husband, in the case of one of the commenters who freely admitted it) had done that/got a book deal for pitching that."

(personal variations on the theme:
- first/last book on the left of every shelf
- first of every author in the shelf; if same author, move to next
- eyes closed
...and so on, which works best if you are spoiled for choice. Alas for the internet which takes the fun out, superior in most other ways though it is, not least in terms of hygiene)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I read it because it's free and has international news, unlike the local useless papers and the 'same ten stories' BBG and CBC sites.

It's not just a cheap idea to make a fast buck. IIRC the review itself says the author is an intelligent reader and commenter. It's a book about books, and as many later bloggers have said (oursin et al) whats wrong with reading about reading? One can read reviews of movies one has no intention of seeing because the reviews themselves are worth reading; why not accounts of books?

I've done the eyes closed thing too and came away with a book set in east Africa which included female circumcision. Not quite what an eleven year old needs.

Never even thought about the germs. But one wouldn't, after all.