If the zeitgeist was on Mastermind, Twitter would be its special subject.
LEAVING EARLY
I come from a very anti-social family. Naturally, I tried to rebel. As an adolescent I promised myself that I’d be different. “I’m always going to have heaps of friends, and ask them around all the time, and lead a very busy social life,” I swore.
But now, in my 40s, I find myself declining every invitation that comes through the letter box. After a decade as a society/PR journalist, attending every free bun fight from Mt Eden to Melbourne, I find myself all partied-out and like nothing better than a social diary entirely free of engagements. It’s not that I dislike people, you understand. I just don’t like them en masse.
However, there are times when I am impelled to attend some festivity or other. On these occasions I arrive as early as possible. Thus, when everyone else rolls up about half an hour to an hour later they find me just leaving, my social duty done.
Often I arrive to find my hosts half-dressed, rushing about the living room, hiding old newspapers and children’s toys under the sofa. “Oh,” they say, somewhat distraught, “here already! Is that the time?”
“Sorry, am I early?” I say. “Let me help prepare and you go get dressed.” Gratefully they rush to the bedroom to complete their toilette while I check the ice, chill the wine and arrange the hors d’oeuvres. By the time the other pleasure-goers descend I’ve had a spot of sherry, eaten the best of the snacks and earned the gratitude of my hosts. Laden with Brownie points, I slip quietly away.
By leaving early, before the alcohol-fuelled dramas begin, I see everyone at their arrival best, all clean and pressed. I am thus spared making stilted conversation with complete strangers, and, far worse, the upsetting spectacle of dear friends eating too much, drinking too much and, in general, losing those finer qualities for which I admire them. Take my advice – if you want to enjoy your friends, don’t party with them.
The trouble is that couples work on Venn diagrams when it comes to musical appreciation. The overlapping bit in the middle on our particular Venn diagram does not contain many bands, and sometimes you can have too much Proclaimers or the free ‘Chill Out’ CD that was once taped to the front of the Observer newspaper.
I am a bit cross with her closed mind attitude.
“I think you should give it more of a chance,” I say. “I know progressive rock does have a bit of a bad reputation, but the interesting thing is that the best, most well-regarded stuff - your Genesises, your Tulls, even something like Tubular Bells - essentially consists of a series of cracking tunes linked by short musical bridges. So whilst it’s those bridges that define the genre, if you like, it really just goes back to those cracking tunes, which are the essence of pop music anyway.
“Aside from Yes,” I admit, “who sound like an explosion in a wank factory.”
I warm to my theme. “So whilst many people have likened Progressive Rock to classical music, I’d say that it’s more to do with the traditions of opera - big numbers with a theme and links.”
I am pleased with my analysis. Sometimes I think that I should have been a teacher; perhaps I might re-train one day. There is nothing quite as satisfying as imparting learning to people.
“I think it’s shit,” she replies.
I am annoyed once more. The problem with being a teacher in the twenty-first century is that trendy teaching theories have made it all but impossible to exclude pupils.
“We received a huge number of entries this year and the debate was furious as to which would be included on the shortlist. Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as Excrement in the Late Middle Ages and All Dogs Have ADHD were rejected,” said charts editor Philip Stone. “We also had to exclude a few titles because they were published before 2008 – Monumental Beginnings: Archaeology of the N4 Sligo Inner Relief Road and one of my personal favourites, Sketches of Hull Authors. The latter was first published back in 1879, but thanks to print on demand – the wonderful saviour of out-of-print books – you can still purchase copies to this day.”The shortlist is:
The prize was established in 1978, when it was won by Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice. This year’s winner will be decided by a public vote at www.thebookseller.com, and will be announced on 27 March.
Already darkness is expanding its hold over dawn and dusk, and soon enough there will be a sharpness at daybreak, indicating frosts are on the way. And as that time creeps up, so there’s a group of men and women who begin to “sort out their stuff” checking on back-pack straps, overhauling camping and cooking gear, making sure shirt-buttons are sewn on tight, that woollen socks don’t have holes, that thermal underwear is in good condition. Sleeping bags will be aired, tents and pegs and cordage inspected, knives honed, boots greased, rifles oiled and cleaned and sighted in, ammunition purchased or special loads put carefully together.Yes, hunting season approaches. Home Paddock writes occasionally about the urban-rural divide – here, for example – and hunting is a real marker. A metrosexual friend in Auckland was horrified last year by the rise of Sarah Palin: it wasn’t her ignorance, religion or political views that upset him most: “It’s that gun shit I can’t stand,” he said. I didn’t like to tell him that my father-in-law goes duck-shooting in the Manawatu, my grandfather used to take me along to the Tauranga Rifle Club, both my neighbours go hunting (they eat a lot of venison) and most of the dads at my children’s school have guns. All farmers do, all over New Zealand. It’s normal.
Farmers will take you for a walk around the farm, introduce you to the animals and explain how they grow crops. . . Every farm visit will be different. On some farms there will be games to play and activities like sheep shearing, milking cows and working-dog demonstrations. This is not a sanitised farm experience but an opportunity to see real farms and talk with real farmers.Twenty-eight farms across the country will be open to the public. This map shows the ones closest to you. It’s a great idea – see how the other half live and all that. My friend might even discover that farmers tend to be smart, well-informed and, sometimes, quite nice when you get to know them. Even if they do have guns.
It’s fascinating stuff all right. I actually agree to a large extent with John Makinson that publishers will and/or can benefit from digital publishing. It’s the conservative bookseller trade that should be shivering in their shoes, because in the long run they could be left stranded.
I think that for us the big danger is in a possible transition period (some say it has arrived) with bookshop sales softening and falling but income from e-books and the like not rising at the same rate. So our businesses could be in some trouble.
Penguin overseas is devoting huge efforts to adapt and to produce e-books. Us too: all our one-colour new books now have digital e-book files prepared at the same time as the physical book pages, ready to go.
The Kindle is being used in US publishing in-house. Editors now travel around with page proofs on their devices in digital form. Manuscripts too. And on the Metro, of course, they also read the New York Times and Publishers News.
I’m really impressed by the thought that these e-book reading devices are actually quite conservative in construction and use. They’re not very hi-tech, so it’s existing book buyers who are using them.
Now of course there is a honeymoon period, but this is like having a honeymoon with Angelia Jolie instead of Rosie O’Donnell.
. . . it appeals to passionate readers, who want no fiddling with cables (the Kindle works without a computer) or complicated pricing plans (Kindle users pay to buy books and other content, but do not have to pay wireless-subscription fees). It is, in short, perfect for older people. . .Bound books are expensive to produce but each electronic copy is free. As the Economist puts it, “A book sold via a Kindle thus has no marginal cost, but adds revenues.” I can’t find out where the money goes, as neither Amazon nor the publishers will say how revenues are shared. But I shall be very interested to see how the royalties are split between publisher and author.
The Kindle 2 can hold about 1,500 books, and one battery charge allows two weeks’ reading. And since the screen is not backlit but imitates real ink and paper, Kindle owners can read for hours without straining their eyes. . . this does not seem to spell the end of paper books, since Kindle users buy just as many bound books as before, so that their total consumption of books goes up by 2.6 times.
