The part you throw away (reading old blogs)

You know how sometimes you find a blog and you want to read all of it?

I do that a lot.

In fact I do this in general when reading. I sometimes base my choice of beginning a book or a series (over beginning a different book or series) on “is there a lot of it?”. I don’t want to start something good and discover after 300 pages that that’s it. At least, not unless I am prepared to deal with the sadness of having loved it and lost it again in so brief a time.

So here’s a link to a series-of-posts-within-a-blog called the part you throw away, which I am currently working my way through. I need to do some clearing out so I am hopful that it will inspire me to throw things away, although so far all I have learned is that if you don’t know what something is, don’t throw it away, because you might need it.

Although my counter-argument is that if I don’t know what something is I definitely should throw it away, because even if I needed it I wouldn’t know that I needed it because I wouldn’t know that it was the thing that I needed. Because I don’t know what it is.

Do you follow?

Women’s magazines

I bought some women’s magazines for the first time in ages this weekend. I used to have quite a habit, when I was about 16 and had a Saturday job but wasn’t old enough to spend all my earnings on driving lessons, but I’ve stopped because, well, there’s rarely £3.50-worth of entertainment in them.

This weekend there was, however, more than £3.50-worth of nice freebies. The question is, have I sold my soul (or poisoned my brain) with the writing that comes with the freebies?

Cosmo, at £3.50, had a choice of Clinique freebies. I chose to get a mini lipgloss (which I didn’t really want, and will be giving to a friend) and a tube of pink moisturiser that apparently costs £30 for 50ml. Bargain. So what do I get with this?

Crazy Sex – real women push the limits and tell all
We did know Cosmo was all about the sex, but at least it’s not “how to please your man”

Holly Willoughy as you’ve never seen her before
Can’t actually remember who she is, I guess she’s the blonde girl on the cover with a hand on her hip and plenty of cleavage on display

Salary Wars – are you being paid what you should be?
Sounds useful actually

104 handbags you’ll heart
“Heart” as a verb? I don’t think so

Look-hot fashion – dressing up has never been such fun
“Looking hot” not really a great goal, sounds as if it’s all about pleasing men, but dressing up being “fun” sounds more positive

Men confess – all about break-ups, sex worries and your orgasm
Because of course men are from Mars and women don’t understand them

Glamour is cheaper at £2, and I have to confess to having bought 4 – yes 4! – to collect all of the different hair products on offer. I haven’t seen them in the shops, maybe they are new, but they supposedly sell for £12ish each. With this I get a lot of paper to put in the recycling bin, and…

839 looks – more hotness – less ££££
That’s far too many IMO, and I would write £££ with just three

The Hunger Games’ Jennifer Lawrence – talks, swears – and eats! – like a normal person
I am looking forward to this film, and I suppose they are trying to say that it’s good when an actress eats, but I really wish there wasn’t such an obsession with what people eat or don’t eat

What you DON’T know about plastic surgery – the cost – the cowboys – and the truth about recovery
I wonder if they will be warning against entirely or just saying to be careful?

1200 men talk sex – 37% of them do WHAT at work?
Masturbate, apparently – what does that say about their sample?

WIN A £20,000 wardrobe from my-wardrobe.com
There’s definitely more of a fashion-based slant to this one, not too surprising considering the name

“I said Dad raped me, I was wrong”
Ugh. I don’t think I want to read that. I’m not into misery-lit or those “real life” magazines

So, what do you think? Are the freebies worth the brain-meltingness? I think if I read selectively I’ll survive. Interestingly the very first article in Cosmo has the editor wearing a t-shirt saying “I use the F-word” where the F-word is Feminism, so clearly they are at least trying to be about more than just sex-and-fashion.

Eating (well, drinking) seasonally

I can’t pretend that I am a local-butcher-baker-candlestick-maker sort of person. I could say that I am too busy, but I spend enough time pissing about on the internet so I can only conclude that I am actually too lazy and that it just doesn’t matter enough to me.

I do go to the local ethnic food shops, because they have interesting things that I can’t get elsewhere, and also to the greengrocer. I’ll admit my laziness even further, I don’t buy all of my fruit and veg from the greengrocer, not even close. What I do buy is interesting things or fruits that are a treat, because I know they will be in season and tasty.

Today’s purchase was blood oranges – 3 for £1. From Italy, apparently. I never actually eat orange-oranges (as opposed to satsuma-tangerine-clementine–oranges) because they are fiddly and messy, but red oranges are tempting enough that I will just squeeze them.

That wooden thing is called a reamer.

Since it’s Friday, I will be drinking the juice with a slosh of vodka. I am quite impressed with the redness of the juice, even though the oranges look completely normal from the outside.

Cheers! Here’s to seasonal produce!

Lunch of champions

Combining the homemade with the breadcrumbed-from-the-freezer.

Roasted tomato and cumin soup from a Leon recipe, and fish finger sandwich.

As usual I didn’t quite follow the recipe to the letter – I didn’t bother to take the skins off the tomatoes because I was planning on blitzing them anyway, and I roasted some red pepper alongside the tomatoes.

The shops are currently full of leafy clementines, just like the orange-with leaf that the scantily-clad lady is picking. I don’t know why. Do leaves indicate freshness, like vine-ripened tomatoes? Or is it just to look pretty? All you do when you start to eat the fruit is pull the leaves off.

I have discovered the tastiest thing ever…

… other than MSG. The tastiest sweet thing, definitely.

Sainsbury’s Taste The Difference Elderflower liquer. Liquer. Not cordial. Booze. 20% alcohol. I got a some as a Christmas present (in a very nice little swing-top bottle) and have only recently cracked it open. It tastes magical.

Unfortunately I can’t find it on their website so I am now rather worried that it is a Christmas-only thing.

They do have Elderflower Cyder though, which I am now very keen to try.

Only 300ml, very disappointing.

Do you think it would be wrong to take the poshest-looking elderflower cordial I can find and cut it half-and-half with vodka? Then drink it on the rocks?

This one looks the poshest, definitely

Or maybe I just need to up my scavenging program to include elderflowers in the summer (is it summer? or spring? I need to know this stuff) as well as sloes in the winter.

I could (not) care less

Things I could not care less about:

• Big Brother of any kind (especially “Celebrity”)
• Football teams, the games they have played, and their relative positions in any “tables”

Things I could care less about:

• Having number 6 extra mature cheddar rather than number 5 quite-mature cheddar
• Free-range eggs

Things I probably should care less about:

• The correct folding of dry clothes
• Nail varnish co-ordinating with what I am wearing (yes, I am shallow)

Things that I care about exactly the right amount:

• The fact that “I could care less” means that you do care some, if you did not care at all then it would be impossible to care less

Sort-of book review – Hikkikomori

I admit it, I wrote the title from memory and it may not be exactly correct. But it appears at least once that the author did the same, so I won’t apologise too much.

There we go, a nice bitchy start, and now anything I write from here on can’t be as bad as that. I am reviewing a self-published book, and I’m afraid to say that you can tell. The “typos” (to put it generously) are not frequent but they do illustrate the reason why the world has editors.

I read a book because I followed the author on Twitter. I really don’t remember why, presumably he said something interesting, which was RTed by someone else who I followed for no-reason-that-I-remember, so I followed him and he wasn’t annoying and therefore I didn’t unfollow him. Then when he said that he had written a book, a horror-ish book no less, I thought “I like books, and I spend far too much time on trains with nothing to do, and it’s 77p, so I will read it and then maybe even blog about it”.

I’m writing this blog straight from my head onto the screen (via the keyboard of course) with very little plan so I apologise for any incoherency.

To summarise without spoiling (difficult) the book is written from the point of view of a man who is a recluse, he lives alone with his imaginary girlfriend and never leaves his flat, spending his nights (he is nocturnal) regretting the last words he said to his actual-human-being girlfriend: “And don’t come back!”. “Hikikomori” (I looked this time) is what his imaginary girlfriend calls him, a cutesey Japanese-inspired name meaning recluse or hermit. Neither of them is Japanese by the way, they are just the sort of people who think that everything is cooler if it is Japanese.

I fundamentally disagree with the front-cover blurb, by the way:

• The Sixth Sense – this is a big neon sign saying “there will be a twist” – I prefer my twists to be unexpected
• speed-written by Chuck Palahnuik - actually I can’t comment on this because I downloaded Fight Club and haven’t read it yet
• until all the pages blurred into one - one of the noticeable stylistic features of this book is the short choppy chapters, nothing “blurs into one” at all

Particular things of note:

• Practicalities of being a hermit are spelled out quite nicely – I am the sort of person who will read books and think “how did they eat/drink/go to the toilet” so I was quite pleased
• Uneasyness (if that’s a word) in tone works well, if your imaginary friend doesn’t behave as you expect then is there something wrong with your imagination?
• Not sure if “uneasyness” conveys what I meant correctly there – it is quite spooky in places and I want the first-person narrator to turn around or look in another room so I can see what is there
• The imaginary girlfriend is an incredibly shallow caricature of a human being – a reflection of the depth of imagination that the character is capable of, or perhaps the level of interaction that he requires from “her”
• Slightly spoilery I’m afraid, but parts written from a female point of view seem rather less fleshed-out than those from the male perspective
• Ending… hmm. I suppose it could be exactly what the author intended, but I feel unsatisfied and not in possession of enough information to come to my own conclusion

I suppose the main question when someone tells you about a book they have read is “do you recommend it?”. I’m afraid my recommendation will have to be not-entirely-wholehearted. If your reading time is precious and limited, there are probably better books to fill it. If you find that it is the supply of books that is limited, then go for it – there are far worse ways to spend a few hours. If your kindle is full of books that you “meant to read” but haven’t gotten around to, well maybe you don’t need another book or maybe you just don’t really want to read those books and should read this one instead. Who knows?

Note: I wasn’t sure whether I should write this as it’s not entirely complimentary and I feel that it is a bit more personal than if it were a properly-published paper book by someone who was actually paid for it. (this is probably wrong anyway) But Twitter told me to write it anyway so I have.