Favourite things.

Memory pens have changed my world. I always hated floppy disks. Why don't they put music and films on to these memory pens. I can't stand CDs and DVDs and disks - they are always scratched and they have a short life span. If you could go down the video shop with your memory card, put a film on it that has a kind of two night self destruct rental mechanism then that would be good. DVDs are the biggest joke. Especially rental ones. You have to reload the god damn disc if its scratched and then rewind to a vague point after where you think it crashed. agh! I was watching Spider Man two and it happened about four times. I wanted to cry. Spider Man Two is good.

Those pen drives are great... I have an MP3 player which does the same thing... but I can't transfer it to my laptop as my laptop has no USB (it is so old its almost clockwork). I'm reading The Bell Jar (again) The Color Purple (again) The Goddess Myth and a couple of Northrop Frye books. I can't wait to be able to read things for pleasure, instead of sitting there with a headache, a stack of little sticky labels and a highlighter pen.

Is that pen expensive? Pen-drive I mean? Who wrote the Fortress of Solitude? I am re-reading The Reader, one of my very favourite books.

I recently ran out of reading matter and, after watching Wire in The Blood on Monday evening, decided to read an old Val McDermid paperback, Blue Genes, that my wife got free with Cosmo ages ago... I'm hooked. [%sig%]

Pen drive was about £18 I think. You can get them from Amazon, or mine was from Play.com. You can get other ones which store your desktop and email settings. So its like taking your own personal computer with you wherever you go.

Are you doing a feminism course Liana? And how did your essay on Blake go? F of S is by Jonathan Letham. His new book is a short story collection called Men and Cartoons. That looks good too. As does J Robert Lennons 'Pieces for the Left Hand', a collection of ultra short stories - how about that that Liana? You could knock one of those off between fags. I currently have over a hundred books on my Amazon wish list.

Currently doing a gender / race essay for American lit... it wasnt Blake, it was Keats, and it went well ... I hope anyway! Don't get it back for ages though. I cant read anything at the moment - takes all my time to summon up enthusiasm for reading things on ABC even, which I used to love. I'm hoping to get my love of books back when I've finished all this - i miss reading as relaxation.

I'm currently reading "The House of Spirits" by Isabel Allende - a big novel full of magic and politics set in Chile, and it is lovely. She does all this lovely stuff like one of the characters being able to fly and the first mention of it is just her husband asking her not to do it on the train, as it will be embarassing. And a lovely bit about a girl going mute and her grandmother deciding to scare her into speech, so she was continually jumping out at her in disguises, to the point where this girl eventually becomes utterly fearless. It's the first thing I've read since Jonathan Strange that has really impressed me with the writing, rather than being good in parts. And pleasantly, she seems to have written loads of other books, so I can dip into those. Still haven't read the latest Murakami, which is shocking, really, given that he's my favourite living author. Oh, and I bought that Sarah Michaelangelo book but have only read the first chapter, which is really good (I just bought two books at once, so it will have to wait)

Whoops, sorry. Blake / Keats, what do I know? You should try and read for pleasure though. I always made a point of this when I was a student. Find a few minutes here and there.

I liked Jonathan Strange but was disappointed with it in the end. I couldn't wait to finish reading it. I suppose that it was a collection of short stories really and the end was a bit of a ball of string. I want to read The Electric Michelangelo book by Sarrah Hall, if that's the one you mean. And the Murakami is good, but doesn't compare to Wind-Up Bird or Sheep Chase. Wind Up Bird will forever remind me of Thailand. I read it on the beach and there were loads of Wind-Up birds around us.

Bloody Keats! We had him as part of our O level syllabus. Whenever I see the name my heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense... ooops [%sig%]

Ahhh, but Yeats is an entirely different matter. I got my best mark in a Uni exam - a 78 - for a wonderfully enjoyable essay question on Yeats' Leda and the Swan, about Leda representing Ireland and the Swan being the Brits (the royal bird and all that) and a whole load of other stuff. I love Yeats. The Bell Jar is such a good book, eh, Liana? There is something uncannily true about it, but it is so dry and funny - like Catcher in the Rye, but older, more female, and very Plath. I'm reading, I have to admit, Heretic by Bernard Cornwell. I bloody love his writing, because I get into the story, and sometime I just want to get into the story. I've read all the Sharpes, and The Grail Quest, and anybody who has a hero called Rider Sandman and has the guts to act as thought that is acceptable and not a bloody cheek is a star in my eyes. i'm also reading a book by Olaf Olafsson, but I can't remember the title, stupidly. I am always reading Shakespeare's sonnets because about 25 of them are perfect, wonderful poems that do everything a poem can do. (some of them aren't so good). I, like a goon, always carry my copy of The Great Gatsby around with me because I like it, and if I'm ever in the mood to read a brilliant paragraph or two, that's the book for it. Erm...I've ecclectic tastes, and like what I like. High-brow, Low-brow, whateever takes my fancy.

I have an MP3 player that doubles as a USB hard drive, it's very useful, particuarly whilst waiting for the broadband people to sort their act out. am reading Great Expectations and crawling slowly through Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, I also just got a book of Vern's movie reviews that I dip into now and then, Vern is by far the best and funniest reviewer of films I know, read him here (ooh look he's selling t-shirts)

Great Expectations is one of my favourite books of all time. I just think he's got the naive narrator down pat, and Pip gives so much away by the way he says things. And how he represses the Magwitch episode and it slowly returns throughout the book is fab. It's also just a good, succint read. No excess (like some Dickens).

I'm reading Great Expectations too - how odd... enjoying it, I didnt expect to. Yes, Bell Jar is a cracking book... it's a huge long poem in prose I always think. Isabelle Allende is one of my all time faves Andrew. Great Gatsby I read for the first time whilst floating on a lilo in a pool last summer - couldnt put it down (it wouldve got wet ho ho). I loved it.

my favourite thing is our dog, mo ... she was just sitting at the table next to me (on a kitchen chair) and looking at me ever so adoringly while i sang her a karaoke version of the carpenters "we've only just begun" ... nobody else on this EARTH would do that - my singing is awful ... now she is trying to get me to play with her mickey mouse glove ... dogs are perfect at living in the moment ... i am not reading any fiction at the moment which is very unusual ... we are both snowed under with loads of things and i am supposed to be writing the scheme of work and lesson plans for a brand new course for prison library assistants which i have never delivered before ... so i am reading library user surveys and NOCN criteria ... balls to learning outcomes and assessments ...

wish I had a dog. I miss my dog I grew up with still exists out there, although she is very old, and now belongs to my dad's wife who I don't see very often, as do my two cats. When i can afford to rent a place of my own (yeah right Hayley, dream on baby) I will have a dog or a cat or both. I forgot to say I'm also reading Cawdor by Robinson Jeffers. God it's good (although noone agrees with me). dogs can be perfect at living in the moment. Living in the moment doesn't cost them any money.

Agree with you about the ending of Jonathan Strange, Drew - the whole thing seemed built up for a confrontation with the Raven King which never happened; but I did really feel like the lead two characters were very real and the footnoting was so lovely. I've always got a soft spot for footnotes in novels. (yeah, it is the Electric Michaelangelo book - it has some lovely textured description in the opening chapter, made me very, very jealous) Wish you'd told me about Allende, Liana! I hardly read anything that I really, really loved last year - in fact, I've not adored something without reservation since Jonathan Safran Foer, but this really is the stuff. All of the characters are rich and varied and she constructs prose without resorting to high-faluting words, which is something I always love in a writer. And she is interested in her characters. I'm desperate to read some Icelandic stuff - anyone got the new McSweeneys and prepared to scan/photocopy it for me?

When I was in Norway and had taken Toby Litt with me as reading matter, my boyf at the time did a ceremonious chucking out of it out for me and gave my first Allende... havent looked back since. There was a big piece recently in The Observer about her - did you not see it? Might still have it in the log basket actually. If I have I'll save it for you.

Floppy drives have gone the way of the old five-and-a-quarter inch disks (what I like to call "floppy floppy disks"). Computers don't even come standard with them anymore. But all new computers have a front USB port! My mom got me a little USB drive (it was called a Cigar Bus for some reason) a while ago, and then my boyfriend upgraded me to 256 MB last Christmas. Best thing ever! I kind of want the iPod Shuffle now -- it looks like basically the same thing, except I can take it to the gym and listen to my iTunes music. (Can't get the MP3 plugin for my Cruzer -- the iTunes MP3 format is proprietary...) As far as what I'm reading -- I've been working on The Brothers Karamozov by Dostoevsky for a few weeks now. (It's a book I like to digest slowly, one or two chapters at a time.) I think characterization and character motivation are very weak points in my fiction, but Dostoevsky is amazing... Must have been from all of those "psychological studies" he wrote. I'm already fond enough of Alyosha that I want to get a kitten and name it after him (ha!). Before that, I read Samuel Shem's House of God (a recommendation from my brother in med school). Amazing novel -- totally changes your view of medicine (even though it's representative of American medicine before many essential ethical standards were passed). Anybody else read it? Amazing. Ha, this post kind of sums me up -- techno geek and lit nerd all rolled into one! -Elaine.

Hm, I hadn't heard of this Ishiguro person before, but he sounds intriguing. Does his Japanese heritage come through much in his writing? I'll have to get a hold of a book of his. -e.

The Unconsoled by Ishiguro and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations.

Is the Unconsoled good Marc. It's the only Ishuguro I haven't read, (apart from the new one.). When We Were Orphans made me cry. And I love his first two books, Artist in the Floating World, and Pale View of the Hills. There was a piece on him in the Observor, or the Guardian recently and I got the impression he didn't have to work hard to be a writer at all. He never really read books, decided on a whim he wanted to write a novel, signed up on the UEA writing course and the writing he did there became the opening of his first novel which he got a largish advance for. Strangely enough I had been looking forward to reading his new book all year. I read the interview and I won't buy it now. I once read an interview with Magnus Mills and it had a similar effect. He doesn't read fiction. And he just does the odd bit of writing here and there. Mills and Ishuguro have the same kind of style. Perhaps there is something in that. Perhaps their deadpan, spare prose which hints at profundity is in fact, a lack of profundity. James Herbert seems more inspirational. He was a workoholic, who wrote late into the night, early in the morning. He desperately wanted to make it. In fact, these days I write a lot less and have fewer expectations. I force myself to enjoy it more. Although I write every day almost, it is only for an hour or so. A few hours on my days off. This morning I got up at 7 and had written a thousand words by about 10. I've just done a bit more. I'm off for a haircut soon, then the gym, then a restaurant for food. A few years ago I would have been writing 10, 12 hours a day, every day. Not anymore. When do other people write, and how often? Do you set yourselves targets - if I have written a thousand words I am happy? And I mean literally. If I am not writing I am bad tempered and miserable. Also if I can't see a space in any day when I won't have an opportunity to write.

A hot-tub on a snowing night. A bottle of S. African Shiraz. Two glasses. a Billie Holiday CD and ....make up the rest.

When We Were Orphans - did you think it was a rewrite of Great Expectations, because I did (still enjoyed it though). I don't make myself write, although I write massive chunks one day - once I wrote 20,000 words of a novel in one day and 25,000 words the next. Others I'll write a paragraph, or a line, or think of a plot idea (I had a really exciting one today which makes sense of all that's come before in my new one). I never tell myself I have to do anything. As soon as writing becomes something I 'have' to do I buggered. I was talking to a writer I really admire and she said that in her life writing is the one thing she doesn't have to compromise on, the one thing that can be all hers, and I like that. It doesn't mean I don't take criticism, but it does mean that I'll write for my own reasons.

'have to', in the sense that I'm miserable if I don't. Not 'have to' as in the sense of 'have to' go to work. I agree about the compromise bit totally. I'm also reading McSweeneys Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. This contains new stories by Margaret Atwood (not very good), David Mitchell, Roddy Doyle, Steven King, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snickett) and so on. Doesn't look like this one is getting uk publication but is available from Amazon. It is worth the cover price for the Mitchell Story alone.

I don't set myself targets, but I know what I mean by writing because you are compelled to. My big thing is not to force it - I'd written all bar the final chapter of my novel in first draft three months ago, but I sat down once or twice to write the final chapter and it just wasn't having it. So, I left it and waited until it wanted to be written. Actually took four months, but in those four months I came up with some new ideas for the main body of the book and the ending I've got is very different to the one I thought I was going to write. When I get really in the mood, I get very crabby if I can't get the sentences down due to lack of access to computer. I rarely write in pen or make notes, only if it is absolutely vital. When I'm going at it, it is about three thousand words a day, or a first draft of a novel in about six weeks. Second draft grinds to about three hundred words a day, because I have to deliberate much more about each one.

Yep I could probably go at that speed. But I like to stop when I'm at a good bit. For example today - the widow of Victorius Snaft and Aventine have just escaped Viminal from the lunar cafe after he attacked them from the back of a giant crab. Widow Snaft is about to reveal the secret of the Book of One. In the other story which runs parallel, Casket, son of Benny Lieberman is about to be forced to dance by Himmler's three daughters at the opening party of the Hotel Auschwitz. I want to write the next bit, but I will leave it till tomorrow. And I haven't even got to the strange traders who take up residence in the hotel....

Three thousand words a day!!! I'm lucky if I manage a thousand on a really good day, two hundred is closer to the mark, zero is closer still. I normally write in the evenings after work when I am not too tired or too fed up. Actually I can write pretty well when I am fed up but I do tend to have a drink (attitude adjustment, as pilots put it) and that's it, can't struggle out a sentence. I keep promising myself I will write at the weekends but I very rarely seem to manage it. I am currently supposed to be writing a short movie script which people are waiting for and I set myself lots of deadlines for that, and miss them with unerring regularity.

It's hard after work, get up early and do it before.

I've read an interview with Ishiguro and he strikes me as a person who works extremely hard on his fiction and is a perfectionist. What I like about him is that he knows he's been lucky at the beginning. After the third attempt at reading The Unconsoled I'm enjoying it. A brilliant failure, if there is such a thing. It is hard work at times, when you start rolling your eyes, yawning, and longing for the laughter of something like Bukowski's letters. Nonetheless, there are some wonderful and clever ideas, characters and scenes which are mushed into a whisked up narrative. It's the first one of Ishiguro's novels that I've read and I bought a whole stack of his older stuff the other day which I suspect I won't like. He creates a mood in The Unconsoled that lingers after you've been reading the book. I walk to work and often think of scenes and characters. Some things work and other things don't. The pitch and tone of the book is unusual. I wonder if he constructed a hard, straight narrative and then had another idea, paring it all down, cutting up the scenes and reconstructing the novel to create a rational surrealism (erm...). Are some writers that methodical? Bes' understanding of the mechanics of writing is amazing. I suppose he would know. My brain does physically hurt when I try to figure how Ishiguro did it. When it comes to writing, I still scribble down bits and pieces, but getting it to sound how I envisage is waaayyy off. Note to self: Must try harder. As for when to write, if you have a job it has to be early, very early, as I think the writing mindset gets raped by a day at work. Although I am a morning person. Truth be told, I haven't sat down and concentrated on fiction for ages. Then there's the job, long hours, feeding the cat, a relationship, coffee to drink,... blah, blah. [%sig%]

nothing at the mo. I just got some new sequencer software and my heads stuck in that. I suppose I'm reading the t-racks user manual in pdf.

Lipgloss. U can stuff ur lipsticks. It's lopgliss that counts. 1 2 3.

Thanks Marc, yes I did get the impression that Ishiguro works hard at writing, and to be fair the other people on his course did say that what he was writing was just brilliant. It was him not reading fiction which surprised me, or his own surprise at how he became a writer. And I think he does read now. I read that when he was writing When We Were Orphans, he spent a year on a sub-plot then decided he didn't like it and deleted it. That surprised me at the time. Now I understand it. I've heard that The Uncolsoled is a difficult book. I want to read it though. I don't think his other books are particularly straight-forward. You may like them. ** And definitely early. I can't write after work. Luckily I often start work at 3.

Oh, and Marc, I miss your writing.

A year....TWELVE MONTHS OF A MAN'S LIFE...at a sub-plot?...which he didn't use....Be-jaysus! But that does figure. Cheers Drew. [%sig%]

He became very wealthy from Remains of the Day. Sold over a million in this country alone, so he can afford to be fussy.