1.38 metres of reading

I received the complete lot of books for judging today. 70 entries, 7 weeks til The Decision is due.

Luka very kindly helped me unpack the books:

I've judged this award once before, and I remember the stack of books was pretty tall, but I don't remember it being THIS TALL:

It's 138cm of books. Yes, I'm in my pyjamas. It's 7pm, aren't you in your pyjamas?

I'm also 179cm tall, which is pretty tall for a woman (or a man for that matter, but even more so for a woman) so having a stack of books come up past my boobs is kind of scary. Some of my friends only come up to my boobs. I'm not scared of them, though. That's different.

Looking back, in 2008 the stack was this tall:

I was about 3 weeks pregnant there, though I didn't know it yet. Aw.

There were 65 entries that year. Though there are only 5 more entries this year, it feels like a big difference in stack height.

Oh hey, but I'm wearing the same socks today!

Are books getting longer? Am I getting shorter? Can I get through 70 books in the next 7 weeks?

There once was a man from Nantucket (or, Why I love limericks)

As some of you know, I write poetry. So I would like to tell you about my most favourite, no competition, above-all-rubies sort of poem.

The limerick.

I love limericks. There, I've said it. I'd rather read a good limerick than a good sonnet. That bastion of information (Wikipedia), says the limerick is "sometimes obscene, with humorous intent."

(I think I'd like that on my gravestone. "Here lies Anna Ryan-Punch. She was sometimes obscene, with humorous intent.")

The reason they're known as 'limericks' is the source of a bit of debate, but most sources say it's because they fit into a song, the chorus of which begins 'Oh won't you come up to Limerick', and any limerick slots into the verse tune. (When I was a kid we sang limericks to a similar sort of song, where the chorus encouraged: "So sing me another verse that's worse than the first verse, make sure that it's foolish and silly.") As you all know, the limerick is a 5-line rhyming stanza (aabba) written in anapestic or amphibrachic metre.

There. Educational part of the blog concluded.

Limericks are funny, mostly naughty, rhyming poems. What's not to love? Well, apparently some people don't like them. When I professed my love of limericks to my fellow librarian Alana, she said: "But they're lame, and they're always rude." She's probably right. I think this is why I like them. They appeal to my love of bad puns:

'I must leave here,' said Lady De Vere,

'For these damp airs don't suit me, I fear.'

Said her friend: 'Goodness me!

If they don't agree

With your system, why eat pears, my dear?'

(Anon)

They appeal to my love of swearing:

There was a young man of Nepal

Who had a mathematical ball;

The cube of it's weight

Times Pi, minus eight

Is four thirds the root of fuck all.

(Anon)

They often poke fun at figures political, literary and academic. Being married to a philosopher (and in having majored in philosophy at uni in a past life), among my favourites are the ones that poke fun at philosophers:

An example of Kant's sterling wit

Was his theory that farts could be lit,

And it's said that all night

By the flickering light,

He composed his 'Critique of Pure Shit'.

(Victor Gray)

This one is obviously a firm fave in our household (especially when needing to bitch about academia):

When a man's too old even to toss off, he

Can sometimes be consoled by philosophy.

One frequently shows a

Strong taste for Spinoza

When one's balls are beginning to ossify.

(Robert Conquest)

I'm not a big fan of the Edward Lear limericks (the ones that end with pretty much the same line they started with, and aren't rude, and as a result of both these things, aren't funny):

There was an Old Man in a tree,

Who was horribly stung by a bee;

When they said: 'Does it buzz?'

He replied: 'Yes it does.

It's a regular brute of a bee!

(Edward Lear)

See? Yawn. But there's a reply to this limerick of his that I find absurdly funny:

There was an old man of St Bees

Who was horribly stung by a wasp.

When they said: 'Does it hurt?'

He replied: 'No it doesn't -

It's a good job it wasn't a hornet!'

(Sir William S. Gilbert)

I love this. It's poking fun at how Lear's limerick is so lame, but even when I didn't know it was a reply to Lear, I still thought it was hilarious. It gets recited often at our family gatherings (which gives you an idea of how I came to be the person I am today).

There are people who are even more into limericks than me. The OEDILF (The Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form) project aims to write one limerick on the subject of every single word in the English language. No joke. So far they've got 61786 'approved' limericks. I'm not sure of the details of the approval process, but I'm sure it's very rigorous.

Scholar of rudey humour Gershon Legman maintained that the true limerick is always obscene. But in case you think I am a bawdy old wench who just likes to make jokes about balls and boobs all day (you can lead a horticulture, etc.), I also love those rare limericks that manage to be delightful without being rude at all:

A psychiatrist fellow from Rye

Went to visit another close by,

Who said, with a grin,

As he welcomed him in:

'Hullo, Smith! You're all right! How am I?'

(Stephen Cass)

A combustible woman from Thang

Exploded one day with a BANG!

The maid then rushed in,

And said with a grin,

'Pardon me Madam - you rang?'

(Spike Milligan)

A wonderful bird is the pelican

His bill can hold more than his belican.

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week

But I'm damned if I see how the helican.

(Dixon Merritt)

One of my favourite books of poetry that I used to nick off my mum's bookshelf is the Penguin Book of Limericks (ed. E.O. Parrott). It is now housed on my bookshelves between Ovid and Rilke (which is funny in itself). I probably wasn't really supposed to be reading it (given that it contains more sex and swearing than Deadwood and True Blood combined) but I thought it was great. I loved how the rhythm and rhyme scheme of limericks made me laugh even if they weren't terribly funny or I didn't really get it, and how the really good ones can still make me cry laughing. And I suspect that that the randy old Dean at Harvard was right:

At Harvard a randy old Dean

Said: 'The funniest jokes are obscene.

To bowdlerize wit

Takes the shit out of it -

Who wants a limerick clean?

(Anon)

(Meal) ticket to read

Pretty soon I'll be embarking on another judging-related reading binge, which will mean even less blogging than usual (again!). But hey, I get paid to judge (why don't I get paid to blog?) and I like to know where my next meal is coming from.

On that note, I've been rekindling my love affair with John Forbes. Perhaps I'll keep him in mind when I can't face another novel:

Reading

funny
how the eye
goes right
to the line
where we left off
reading
but the brain
can't accept
how serenely
at one
with the book
we are,
the way
hunters once knew
- just knew -
when to throw
the spear & where
exactly,
in all
the bright world,
their next meal
was coming from.

- John Forbes

A different sort of Mother's Day present

This Mother's Day, Luka has decided to wean himself from breastfeeding. He's 15 months, he's definitely finished up, and I'm more than a little sad.

It's been a slow process really. Since he started sleeping all night (by some kind of freaking miracle) of his own accord by mid-February he dropped the night feeds. Then he dropped the feed after his daytime nap (which was great, as it didn't mean I had to express for Paul to feed to him on the days I was at work). But he had still been having his early-morning feed with great gusto until about 2 weeks ago. Then, suddenly, some mornings he'd want to feed, and some mornings he would complain, and just want a cuddle or to get up and play.

At that point, I kind of knew we were finishing up with breastfeeding. So for what is now his 'last feed', I took careful notice of everything.

I walked into his room, grey in the half-dark of early morning, to find him standing up at the end of the cot. When he saw me, he lifted his little arms up and I gathered his warm little face up to mine. I sat down on the chair next to the cot, badly aiming as usual and nearly falling onto the floor. I righted myself and tipped him sideways into the crook of my arm. It's a movement that I never thought would have become second nature, given how ridiculously uncoordinated breastfeeding was at first.

As I pulled my singlet down, he opened his pink mouth, wide, like a little bird that's seen food coming. Every time I fed him it reminded me of Sylvia Plath's wonderful poem"Morning Song" about being mother to a newborn: "Your mouth opens clean as a cat's". He began to suckle quietly, slowly opening and closing his eyes, and winding his fingers through my hair. He always pulled at my hair, it always hurt, and I never minded.

I stroked his arm, his cheek, his side. I registered every curve of him. Eventually, he was nearly asleep again, and just rested his warm hand, fingers splayed, against my chest. When he rolled off me, full, I stood up and laid him back into his cot. His eyes stayed closed, but he stretched in that wonderful "punching the sky" move babies have, then lay softly asleep.

And the next day, when I tried to feed him and he complained and just wanted to get up and eat toast, I cried. And I cried for a few days after, but I'm not going to cry any more.

I'd always intended it to be his decision when to wean, but I'd always assumed I'd get sick of breastfeeding before he did.

We had a very good run. I was lucky, and I acknowledge it. I had the usual scrapes, cracks and bleeding nipples but really, we got breastfeeding established early and relatively easily. I can't remember much about the days in hospital - apparently the day I gave birth I had lots of visitors, and I've seen myself smiling in the photos, but I don't remember any of it (possibly as I'd been awake for 36hrs, plus *oh yes* I gave birth).

But I do remember the midwives at Cabrini were a huge help (apart from the crazy Irish one that slammed shut all the windows in my room, proclaiming "You let in a fly, the baby die!")

I remember my favourite midwife stopping me when I was trying frantically to get Luka to attach and saying: "Look at him. See how he's looking up at you? He's getting to know who you are, what you look like, how you smell. Don't rush him." She moved slowly and with difficulty, and only had full use of one of her hands, but that woman could handle a newborn baby like she had 8 good hands.

Luka was a frequent feeder, sometimes getting up to 13 feeds in 24hrs (which, like a lot of Luka's habits, I thought was abnormal til I got on the ABA forums).

There were some seriously difficult periods of breast refusal that I didn't really talk about or let myself think about at the time. The first was at about 3 months where I had to force his head against me to get him to feed (in our house it became known as the "fighty feed"), but he was still little and I usually won, and was determined not to feel rejected.

At about 6 months he suddenly went through a period of feeding round the clock every 2 hrs, and then backflipped to screaming and screaming when I tried to feed him at night (though nothing else would settle him). Paul had to walk him around until he settled, and then sometimes I was able to slip him onto the breast, although usually it took several rounds of settling.

These aren't great dramas by comparison to what other mothers have gone through, but they were dramas enough at the time. I wasn't the sort of mother that falls in love with their baby at first sight. When he was born, I didn't want skin-to-skin contact, I just wanted someone to take him away so I could go to sleep. Feeding him was a big part of our getting to know each other. I wrote in my diary at the time: "I am learning to love Luka by breastfeeding him." If I couldn't have breastfed, I know I would have got to love him in other ways, but that was the way it happened for us.

We breastfed for 15 months, and I will miss it. I will miss his quiet body against me, the thought that I am nourishing him with no help from anyone else, and how useful it made me feel when I felt I couldn't do anything else right.

So, a different sort of Mother's Day present. We have lots of cuddles, still. But it's the end of something important.

We've come from here:

to here:

The boobs are off-duty til next time round. But I'm glad to have had this chance.

Sending them into the wild

This afternoon I will release The Poky Little Puppy and The Velveteen Rabbit into the wilds of Carlton.

Want to catch them?

Details are here for Poky Little Puppy

and

here for The Velveteen Rabbit.

Happy book hunting!

Species of Spaces and Other Pieces by Georges Perec

From the favourer: "For me, it's a guidebook to the everyday; a framework for our immediate spaces; an elevation of the small things into special things; a gentle reminder that we create our own worlds everywhere, all the time, in all the smallest ways. Sometimes I read it just to reset my mind. It's a favourite because it makes new things possible."

Is it wrong that I decided to read this book next because the author has cool hair? It's in pretty good shape on the cover of the book, but there are other, even more spectacular versions:

And he obviously loves his cat:

So basically I was already rather fond of Georges Perec before I even started reading this collection of his non-fiction pieces. He's probably best known for his novel La Disparition - English title 'A Void', a novel of more than 300 pages that completely avoided using the letter 'e'. He also wrote a palindrome of more than 5000 characters!

The title piece Species of Spaces, is a gentle exploration of everyday surroundings and objects, starting with the page (that is being written on) and gradually moving outwards to examine the apartment, the street, the town, the country, the world, and outer space. Perec looks at common objects and places (the bed, the staircase) and the worlds we create around them. I suppose it's essentially a kind of philosophical exploration of our ordinary spaces, but it's written with such lightness that it's fun to read, rather than being...well...'improving'. Those of you who know me will know I'm a bit over Being Educated, so for me to persist with a non-fiction book it has to be accessible, and preferably funny. This book is often both.

There are lovely asides, such as the sub-section of the 'Bedroom' chapter, delightfully entitled: 'Placid small thought no. 1'. It reads:

"Any cat-owner will rightly tell you that cats inhabit houses much better than people do. Even in the most dreadfully square spaces, they know how to find favourable corners."

Some sections are quite touching, even if you can't quite pinpoint why: "We don't think enough about staircases. Nothing was more beautiful in old houses than the staircases. Nothing is uglier, colder, more hostile, meaner, in today's apartment buildings. We should learn to live more on staircases. But how?"

(Actually, I think the answer to this 'how?' is to live for a while in a residential college - most of your time is spent sitting, lying or hovering on staircases, not-quite-willing to part from new friends when you should have gone back to your room to study or sleep.)

Like Alain de Botton in The Art of Travel, Perec suggests ways to look at our surroundings in new ways - to really notice what is around us, rather than just assuming we have seen it before:

"Force yourself to write down what is of no interest, what is most obvious, most common, most colourless...antique shops, clothes, hi-fi, etc. Don't say, don't write 'etc'. Make an effort to exhaust the subject, even if that seems grotesque, or pointless, or stupid. You still haven't looked at anything, you've merely picked out what you've long ago picked out."

A section on tourism recalls Des Esseintes' discovery (in Huysmans' Against Nature): "Rather than visit London, stay at home, in the chimney corner, and read the irreplaceable information supplied by Baedeker" (a travel guide).

(An aside - isn't it funny how the more favourite books I read, the more they connect up? Or is it just that I remember books better if I write about them?)

Just as Perec can make a bedroom seem as vast as a planet, he can also make the world at large as relevant to us as our own bedrooms. Even though the keenest travellers will only ever see a fraction of the world's umpteen objects and corners, we each make our own world from what we do see. From cats in corners and beds to countries and continents, we create our own personal sense of "the world, no longer as a journey having constantly to be remade, not as a race without an end, a challenge having constantly to be met, not as the one pretext for a despairing acquisitiveness, nor as the illusion of a conquest, but as the rediscovery of a meaning, the perceiving that the earth is a form of writing, a geography of which we had forgotten that we ourselves are the authors."

(I had a little cry when I read that passage.)

Species of Spaces is undoubtedly the centrepiece of this collection. The rest of the pieces in the book (some of which grabbed my interest more than others) all show Perec's love of play - both wordplay and playful writing. My favourite pieces are (typically) the more flippant ones - like his list of 'Some of the Things I Really Must Do Before I Die', which reaches point #37 ("Make the acquaintance of Valdimir Nabokov") and then promptly concludes:

"etc., etc.

There are lots of others for sure.

I gladly stop at 37."

There is a brief musing on American and French verbs - Perec notes that while the French have no verb for zip fastening (while Americans have the verb "to zip up"), neither Frenchmen nor Americans have a verb that means "to drink a glass of white wine with a friend from Burgundy, at the Cafe des Deux-Magots, around six o'clock on a rainy day, while talking about the non-meaningfulness of the world, knowing that you have just met your old chemistry teacher and that next to you a young woman is saying to her neighbour: 'You know, I showed her some in every colour!' "

A piece examining small, everyday things ('l'infra-ordinaire' or the 'infra-ordinary'), challenges the reader to "question your teaspoons." Ours are quite questionable, having been mostly nicked from cafes by Luka, when we give him our coffee spoons to play with and he tucks them quietly behind his knees in the pram, only to be discovered once we get home again. Perhaps we will be able to measure out his childhood with coffee spoons.

There are even examples of the intricate wordplay puzzles Perec would send his friends at New Year, and 'indexes' that place "Freud, Sigmund" between "Fat men" and "Fruit jelly".

But my favourite moment is in Species of Spaces itself, where a particularly impenetrable sentence displays a footnote sign "1." at its conclusion. Oh good, I thought, he's going to explain it and I won't have to look up any of the words.

I look down to the 'explanatory' footnote, and it reads:

"1. This is the best phrase in the whole book!"

Georges Perec: Word-tease.

And what was this 'best phrase in the whole book'?

I suppose you'll have to read it for yourself.*

*I can be a word-tease too.

Free kids books

I have a copy of Anne of Green Gables, Mrs Frisby & The Rats of NIMH, The Velveteen Rabbit (new Donna Green illustrated version) and The Poky Little Puppy to give away.

They're secondhand, but in pretty good nick.

Would you like one?

Email me at greenknowe@hotmail.com and I'll send it out to you. But be quick! I've registered them on Bookcrossing (hence the post-it notes and bookmarks you can see in the photo). In a week, any unclaimed books will be released into the wild, where they will roam free and forage for readers of their own accord.

_______________________

* Anne of Green Gables has been snapped up already - 3 books left...

** Mrs Frisby has been claimed - 2 books to go...