This looks good ...

... Fame: from the Bronze Age to Britney by Tom Payne.

There's a review here and another one here.

Have you ever lamented the modern tendency to worship celebrities and indeed to make celebrities out of people with no discernible talent? Well apparently we've been doing it since the dawn of civilization, and it doesn't reflect too well on us. Tom Payne teaches classics and he knows his stuff, and cleverly shows the connections between the past and the present, even comparing the deaths of rock stars to human sacrifice.

As an avid reader of Heat myself, I must get this book.

The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller

Well, I didn't expect THAT ending. I liked this book, and thought it was interesting the way your sympathy for the characters changed. Lots of people didn't like it though - see their views here.

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories by Tim Burton was as bizarre as you might expect from the director of films like Beetlejuice. It was strangely touching in some places and truly horrid in others - and funny at the same time. A tiny, tiny read, ideal for my purposes at this stage in the Book-a-Day.

Day 319; Book 309

The Prophet by Khalil Gibran

Thank goodness this was so short. It's not meaningful, just overworked mysticism. One of the favoured formats seems to be the posing of apparent contradictions - but if you look more deeply into it, they really are just contradictions. I am sure this is the sort of book people would dip into at random to find the answer to a problem - but really if you had already prepared yourself to find an answer, you could do that with a phone book. It's written in the style of the King James Bible, which just adds to the effect of the pretentious faux-mysticism.

Some people actually like this stuff - read their misguided comments here.

Day 317; Book 307

My Family and Other Animals

I'd never read this so thanks to Philippa for filling in this gap in my reading. I loved this, mainly for the author's description of his family, rather than the wildlife, although I did love reading about young Gerry's pets who were all proper little characters. Those were the days when you could go out and dig up wild flowers or remove young birds from nests without thinking anything of it. Of course it was a much freer existence altogether. Gerry and his family certainly didn't worry about stranger danger. Of course if wasn't all idyllic because the family leave Corfu in 1939, just before the start of the War.

I also read a Dr Seuss which Jo thoughtfully lent me on the grounds I could read it really quickly - an excellent thought at this stage in my book-a-day year! The Rock Chick first learned to read with a Dr Seuss book, The Cat in the Hat. ETA no it wasn't! I've just looked this up and it's a different book ... in the Rock Chick's one somebody tries on lots of different hats. Wonder what it was?

Finally I read The Body Artist by Dom DeLillo. This is a very clever book but if that's your overall impression of a book I think there's something wrong. It didn't exactly employ the stream of consciousness technique, but it might as well have (grrr). Plus you are not exactly going to warm to a main character who is a conceptual artist of the sort whose audience walk out when they can't stand the tedium of her performance. I didn't walk out - I stayed to the end of the book but I won't be reading any more by this author.

Day 316; Book 306

Elizabeth's cunning plan

She thinks I should read the Beatrix Potter books to get me to the end of my book-a-day year without too much effort! I may stop off at the children's library on the way home ... although I won't read anything too whimsical. I don't like whimsical, which is why I could never make any progress with Winnie the Pooh.

The Hills is Lonely by Lillian Beckwith

Lillian Beckwith based her light, humorous books on her stay in the Hebrides during and just after the war. Read more about them here. I thought I'd read this but it must have been another one in the series, so it was fun to read the very first one. A nice gentle read (which nevertheless doesn't shy away from life in the raw). I wouldn't have been too pleased by my portrayal if I had been one of the locals, but then the author does poke fun at herself as well.

I think my mum would like to read these again too, especially as I've just read that Lillian Beckwith lived at Breakish on Skye during the War (so did Mum! I wonder if they ever met?)


Day 313; book 303

Cockburn's A-Z of After-Dinner Entertainment

£2 from an antique shop in Dunkeld! And Mr F paid!

This was an amusing book about after-dinner speaking, written by Giles Brandreth. It starts with some tips for the would-be speechmaker (practise a lot, be prepared for things going wrong and keep it short!) Then there's examples of jokes. Unfortunately as the book was sponsored by Cockburn's Port, there are a lot of references to it which make Mr Brandreth look rather sycophantic.

Day 311; Book 302