The Great Gatsby: What Next

post from Stuck in a Book on 23 May 2013 06:41:08 PM. © Stuck in a Book

I thought, with The Great Gatsby (1925) being a big film at the moment, there might be people out there who are looking for other novels of the 1920s to enjoy. I haven't seen the film, and I have to admit that I wasn't particularly impressed by the novel when I read it a decade ago, but I do know a thing or two about the 1920s. So do a lot of you, of course, but I thought, nonetheless, in case people stumble across Stuck-in-a-Book wanting to read more from the 1920s, I create a little decade Stuck-in-a-Book best-of (clicking on the title takes you to a full-length review). Most of these don't have much in common with The Great Gatsby except for decade of publication, but - whisper it - I'd argue that they're all better.

1920 : Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
To see how the Bright Young Things were behaving on the British side of the channel - or, rather, the Bright Middle-Aged Things - you can do no better than Benson's hilarious series Mapp & Lucia, featuring the warring heroines and their sniping, fawning, and eccentric associates. But don't be one of those people who starts with Mapp and Lucia, the fourth book - start at the beginning, with queen bee Queen Lucia.

1921 : The Dover Road by A.A. Milne
If you've never read any of AAM's books for adults, or never read a play, or both, then this is a great place to start. It was P.G. Wodehouse's favourite play, and is definitely one of mine too - an eloping couple stop for the night in a hotel, and curiously can't leave in the morning... it's all very funny, ingeniously plotted, and surprisingly poignant in the end.

1922 : The Heir by Vita Sackville-West
A short, powerful novella about a man who inherits a house unexpectedly, and slowly falls in love with it. There is more passion in this tale than you'll find in most romances, and if you can find the beautiful Hesperus edition, all the better.

1923 : Bliss by Katherine Mansfield
The link is a slight cheat here, since it goes to Mansfield's Selected Stories, but I had to include KM somewhere. Her writing is modernist without being inaccessible, and she is one of a tiny group of authors whose short stories satisfy me whatever mood I'm in. Observant, striking, entirely beautiful.

1924 : The Green Hat by Michael Arlen
The British equivalent of The Great Gatsby, at least in terms of parties, glitz disguising melancholy, and an enigma of a central character. Also rather better, I'd say - although a writing style which perhaps takes some getting used to. I described it as 'like reading witty treacle'.

1925 : Pastors and Masters by Ivy Compton-Burnett
If you've never tried any of Dame Ivy's delicious, divisive fiction, this is a good litmus test. Set in a boys' school, it's Ivy-lite. If you like it, you'll love her richer works - if you don't, then you'll know to steer clear forever.

1926 : As It Was by Helen Thomas
A biography/autobiography by the poet Edward Thomas's wife (followed later by World Without End) - together they are exceptionally good accounts of marriage, in all its pitfalls and peaks, and subsequently its fragility.

1927 : The Love-Child by Edith Olivier
One of my all-time favourite novels, this tells of a spinster who inadvertently conjures her childhood imaginary friend into life. From this premise comes a very grounded narrative, which is heart-breaking as well as an increasingly clever manipulation of a fanciful idea.

1928 : Keeping Up Appearances by Rose Macaulay
Rose Macaulay is one of those bubbling-under authors - both from critical acceptance and middlebrow adoration. She deserves better in both categories, I think, and this delightful, thoughtful novel about a lightweight novelist and an aspiring highbrow woman is both funny and clever.

1929 : A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
You've probably heard of this essay, and you probably know it's central tenet (about women needing an income and a room of their own, in order to write) but if you haven't read it, you're missing a real treat. If you find her fiction too flowery, this is a perfect place to sample her exemplary writing.

I hope you've enjoyed that quick whirl through the 1920s! Why not do the same mini project for the 1920s - or any other decade - on your own blog? Pop a link in the comments if you do...

Read The Full Article:
http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-great-gatsby-what-next.html

Digg this

Attack of the Gnomes

post from So Many Books on 23 May 2013 06:35:05 PM. © So Many Books

We have someone coming over this evening to talk to us about new kitchen countertops. Exciting! So in lieu of …

Read The Full Article:
http://somanybooksblog.com/2013/05/23/attack-of-the-gnomes/

Digg this

Kai and Uncle Ruslan: When Memes Go Dark

post from The Millions on 23 May 2013 03:00:40 PM. © The Millions

??It?s important to realize how the funniness in these videos [such as those featuring Kai the axe-wielding hitchhiker and Uncle Ruslan] is really close to something that?s desperately unfunny,? says Mark O?Connell, who wrote Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever.?Related posts:

Kindles Your Interest Do you like to badger your friends with good reasons...
The Year of the e-Single Some say 2012 was ?the year of the e-single,? and...
Epic Fail Gets Epic Press We?re thrilled by the early buzz surrounding Epic Fail, our...

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/themillionsblog/fedw/~3/YR0L-ozPVIc/kai-and-uncle-
ruslan-when-memes-go-dark.html

Digg this

Lea Michele to Publish Book Called Brunette
Ambition

post from ReadersRead.com Book Blog on 23 May 2013 03:00:00 PM. © ReadersRead.com Book Blog

Glee star Lea Michele has cut a deal to publish her first book, Brunette Ambition, with Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group. The book is described as part memoir, part how-to and part how-to style guide. The publisher says Lea will provide "practical advice and lessons" for aspiring actresses that want to follow her career path.

Lea said in a statement, "There wasn't a guidebook when I was growing up, that detailed everything I would need to do, and know, to get where I am today. But I believe I can write one of sorts: not a how-to-make-it-in-show-business book, but a guide to harnessing tenacity, passion, enthusiasm and hard work to make your dreams come true."

Lea also tweeted, "So excited to FINALLY get to share my exciting news with you all!!!"

Lea's fans are calling for her to do a book tour. A release date for the book was not provided.

Photo: Crown Publishing Group

Permalink | Recent Headlines | Facebook | Our News Feeds

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readersread/~3/yrrf8Eb45J8/lea-michele-to-publish-
book-called-brunette-ambition-52320131

Digg this

Go Go Gadget Classical Compositions

post from The Millions on 23 May 2013 02:00:28 PM. © The Millions

Fun Fact: the Inspector Gadget theme song is actually based on Edvard Grieg?s ?In the Hall of the Mountain King.? Seriously.Related posts:

The Classical Goes Old School The Classical is launching a monthly magazine....
The Scream Edvard Munch’s The Scream recently garnered a record breaking $119.9...
Pandora Goes Classical I haven’t bought music in years, my interest in seeing...

Read The Full Article:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/themillionsblog/fedw/~3/6USjFOBlxec/go-go-gadget-c
lassical-compositions.html

Digg this

Tiger Eyes Official Trailer Released

post from GalleyCat on 23 May 2013 01:23:00 PM. © GalleyCat

An official trailer for the Tiger Eyes film adaptation has been released. The trailer includes a first look at Willa Holland as Davey and Tatanka Means as Wolf.

We?ve embedded the video above?what do you think?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tiger Eyes will be the first time a Judy Blume title has been adapted into a feature film. Lawrence Blume, Judy’s son, directed this project. He worked on adapted the screenplay with his mother.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/tiger-eyes-official-trailer-released_b70972

Digg this

Shakespeare Apps Coming for Students

post from GalleyCat on 23 May 2013 01:00:24 PM. © GalleyCat

Simon & Schuster and Folger Shakespeare Library will release a set of interactive apps aimed at helping students explore the work of William Shakespeare.

AppNewser has more about the upcoming apps:

Coming this November, the joint effort will release app versions of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, and A Midsummer Night?s Dream. They will continue to release plays thereafter until the entire collection is available. The app versions will include audio recordings, videos and photos, which are designed to help teach the texts. This includes audio performances produced at the Folger Theatre, as well as expert commentary from Shakespeare scholars. The apps will also have social networking reading tools on a private network so that teachers and students can take digital notes and share them with each other within the networked text.

If you are looking for un-interactive versions of these famous plays, follow the links below to download free copies of Shakespeare’s most popular works on Project Gutenberg.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/shakespeare-apps-coming-for-students_b71057

Digg this

Soman Chainanis The School for Good and Evil
Acquired by Universal Pictures

post from GalleyCat on 23 May 2013 12:23:49 PM. © GalleyCat

Universal Pictures acquired the rights to Soman Chainani‘s The School for Good and Evil in a seven-figure deal.

The newly released novel is the first installment in epic fantasy trilogy published by HarperCollins. Slated for three films, Jane Startz will produce and Chainani will write the script with Malia Scotch-Marmo. Deadline Hollywood had the scoop:

Deadline revealed last Thursday that the Oz The Great And Powerful producer had partnered with Jane Startz Production to acquire movie rights to The School For Good And Evil. After a spirited auction, Universal Pictures won the property in a seven-figure deal for book and scriptwriting fees.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/soman-chainanis-the-school-for-good-and-evil
-acquired-by-universal-pictures_b71037

Digg this

The Children's Nurse - The True Story of a Great
Ormond Street Nurse ~ Susan Macqueen

Yes, it's time to drag out the 1976 funny-hat-blue-belt photo again (fourth year of training, finals taken, results awaited) and tag another post under The Sufferings of Student Nurse collection, and If I'd known then what I know now I think I would have been rightly terrified at the mere thought of my student nurse ward allocation to Cohen CD, Infectious and Skin Diseases at Great Ormond Street, on March 10th 1974. My last ward before heading off to secondment at the London Hospital for the SRN part of the training that combined RSCN (Registered Sick Children's Nurse) with it.

I know the exact dates because (this being me) I still have my Pink Book with all my ward experience logged and signed. It was on Cohen CD that I worked under the tutelage and eagle eye of Sister Macqueen, (the author of The Children's Nurse - The True Story of a Great Ormond Street Nurse) for the next twelve weeks. Tucked in my Pink Book I have even discovered a scrap of paper with some of the Cohen patient names and diagnoses, obviously an attempt to drill it into my head in readiness for a ward round, and reading it now I am even more retrospectively terrified at how my twenty-year old self gaily dealt with such things as tubercular, e coli and meningococcal meningitis and herpes encephalitis amongst other things, and with never a thought that somehow I might catch something. And then the young teenager with epidermolysis bullosa, a debilitating conditon where the skin blisters and falls off at the merest touch... her distress was not surprisingly manifest in tantrums and teenage angst, and the daily bath sheer, unmitigating torture for all concerned.

But imagine my delight when I heard news that Sister Macqueen, known to us then as Sue ( though never to her face of course, heavens the earth would have opened up and swallowed us) had written a book (with the help of a ghost writer) about life as a nurse at Great Ormond Street. Being a completist with regard to my shelf of books about G.O.S I ordered a copy there and then, but this being me and wanting it yesterday, I downloaded the Kindle version too.

Sue Susan Sister Macqueen (old habits etc) had actually completed her initial nurse training at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge where she first encountered the GOS nurses out on adult secondment as part of their combined adult and children's nursing course...

'... their GOSH uniforms marking them apart from everyone else...the pink nurses were renowned for their attention to detail, not only in the way they looked, but in the way they cared for their patients..'

It was all enough to convince Susan (OK, I'm over it now, I'm sixty this year after all) that she wanted to do her post-registration paediatric training at GOS and that is where she headed at the earliest opportunity. With her nerves in shreds (no...I can't imagine this, she was a formidable ward sister) Susan walked onto 1A, the ward that would put the fear of god up most of us bright young things, Cardiac.

It is an indication of the terror that Susan, though already a qualified nurse, felt out of her depth amid the noisy hubbub that was an old GOS ward. The wards in our day, now almost obsolete, were a rare mix of medical and nursing care of the highest standard to the backdrop of the laughter and shrieks of children playing and riding tricycles up and down the corridor, and with the radio singing along in the background.

Do you remember that song Lullaby of Broadway, a hit again in 1976. Wiz and I were both staff nurses on the same ward, 2DE (metabolic diseases and burns) and as soon as we heard that song on the ward radio we'd all head for the corridor for the tap dancing bit...no matter what you were holding...baby... potty... syringe.

Sister Macqueen might have had a bit of a conniption and of course that would not have been possible on Cohen where she became sister in 1972, the year that I arrived at Great Ormond Street to start my training. Cohen was all about barrier nursing... masks, gloves, gowns and hand-scrubbing a way of life, and your hands were even more sore than usual. Susan recounts many tales of life on the ward, the small details all very familiar to anyone who worked at GOS during that era...Z-beds in the waiting room...'specials' providing one-to-one nursing care...the old Engstrom ventilators...

Amongst all my own memories of Cohen ward several stand out....

The day that I was supervising a nurse more junior than I was, though she was considerably more confident, and made that very plain indeed. She was getting her first taste of caring for a baby in an incubator and we had run through what she needed to do, it was only changing a nappy and I had said I'll join you in a minute and probably nipped off to do some observations or something. Imagine my horror when I returned to find that she had lifted the lid of the incubator and put it on the floor (germs...OMG) in order to handle the baby. When I pointed out that this wasn't what we did her reply was priceless...

'Dont be ridiculous, you don't expect me to be able to do anything through those stupid holes in the side do you?'

I think I was more terrified that Sister Macqueen would come around the corner and see this debacle in progress, and I often wondered quite how long it was before Confident Student was cut down to size...she would have been, no question.

'I tried to be firm but fair with the nurses and students who worked under me...I demanded a lot from them. If my nurses worked hard, I made sure I praised them and made them feel at ease...'

Conversely, step out of line or slacken off and you would be told in no uncertain terms. No risks can be taken in the hospital environment full-stop, but on Cohen ward any short-cuts could lead to further infection for a child already compromised, or to a nurse catching a serious illness. We learned the form very swiftly indeed.

Susan Macqueen put all that experience of infection control on Cohen to good use, eventually becoming the hospital's leading expert on the subject, and responsible for ongoing excellent outcomes in the management of hospital-acquired infections in children, before also working at the Department of Health, all of which is charted in the book. In that case I now feel quite reassured by the fact that it was Sister Macqueen who examined me on the first of five practical assessments completed during our training. My Aseptic Technique under her watchful eye (2nd April 1974) must have been up to snuff because I passed and I have her signature to prove it (click on this picture, it should enlarge) and I would still use it now and did, even on the cat's stitches.

Susan describes herself as a firm but fair ward sister and interestingly, before I had even opened the book I was pondering my experience of working with her and, in my mind, had used the exact same words. She talks in some detail about that role and I found it fascinating to hear about it from the other side, ward sisters were slightly terrifying goddesses in our eyes, little did we even imagine they had a social life...or a home...or a boyfriend. Surely they slept, immaculately uniformed and poised in a cupboard on the ward before jumping out and apparating right next to you the very same second that you'd decided to cut that corner, or touch that door with your hand, or...or... And who knew about the love-hate ongoing battle of words and sparring with Dr Marshall, the Australian ward Consultant, who was also the physician for the Chelsea football team.

I have another lasting memory of Cohen too...

It was night duty and the ward desk had a line of visibility through to the vase of flowers in the front hall of the hospital. There were always white flowers in the arrangement, and one would be collected by a nurse when a child had died to be placed in the child's crossed hands when they were laid out. On one particular night I saw Wiz, my flatmate come down to that vase not once but three times, it's a salutory reminder of what we were all dealing with at the age of twenty, though thankfully with the support of each other and sisters like Susan Macqueen to guide us through it all.

A lovely book which it has given me much pleasure to read, though I am aware this may also be because the old alma mater is so close to my heart. But if you are enjoying the current run of nursing and midwifery memoirs then certainly add this one to the list.

Happy Birthday to...

Read The Full Article:
http://dovegreyreader.typepad.com/dovegreyreader_scribbles/2013/05/the-childrens-
nurse-susan-macqueen.html

Digg this

Finnegans Draft

Ordinarily I would caution against reading a novel?s first draft, however in the case of Finnegans Wake, perhaps all rules should be tossed out the window. With this one, it seems as though any and all supplemental material might help unlock the finished product?s mysteries. Case in point: the entire first draft of Joyce?s most [...]Related posts: