Reading in the boudoir

[j4]

Tidying my room, these were the books I discovered kicking around on my floor:

Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Gay Lambert at the Chalet School
H. P. Lovecraft, Omnibus 1: At the Mountains of Madness
Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus
Jacqueline Wilson, Vicky Angel
Glen David Gold, Carter Beats the Devil
Pauline Réage, Story of O
Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Moves Up
Sue Cowley, Guerilla Guide to Teaching
The Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Boudoir
Stanley Fish, Is there a Text in this Class?
Charlotte Yonge, The Little Duke
Mrs Molesworth, Hoodie
Robert Hughes, Culture of Complaint: the fraying of America
Amante P. Marinas, Pananandata Guide to Knife Throwing

So, y'know, I'm trying not to imagine what would happen if these books got together and merged into one grotesque composite ... but all the same, I can't quite shake off the idea of de Sade, Réage, Nin and Lovecraft collaborating on "Through the Gates of the Chalet School".

Comments

[acronym.livejournal.com]

Mine are: Eric Hobsbawn, "Age of Extremes"; Simon Reynolds, "Blissed Out"; "Sound On Sound", current issue; Chris Brookmyre, "Country of the Blind"; a Carl Hiaasen omnibus.

- A

[bibliogirl.livejournal.com]

Couple of days back, I found what amounted to pretty much an entire box of books which had been scraped up from beside and/or under my bed when we moved.

Not like the shelves aren't already full (indeed, mostly double-stacked).

Bother.

[rmc28]

There are no books on my floor. Except for the Tom Clancy ones in bags by the overflowed to-read shelves.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

On a quick area-sample-and-extrapolate survey, there are over two hundred books on my bedroom floor. The 'put up more shelving' round tuit is down there somewhere, too.

Anaïs Nin, my oh my. What a life. I didn't know there was anything of hers in print! Is she any good?

I've read Donatien-Alphonse's 'Thousand Days of Sodom', or tried to: anyone who has completed this monumental work is entirely desensitised to suffering. And to boredom.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Always thought most of Anaïs Nin's work was in print, though not exactly the sort of thing that your local W.H. Smith's would stock. Not a bad writer at all, but not quite in the same class as Henry Miller.

sheesh

[vinaigrettegirl.livejournal.com]

So light humour isn't Your Thing at the moment, then.

Good God... it's not a sick reading list, but it does strike me as rather rich mental pudding to try and digest at night. Ergh. Much tossing and turning looking for a comfortable way to lie on one's bed and sleep.

Thoreau or Emerson or Holmes or Wodehouse or Allingham or Innes (I have just finished the latter's Weight of the Evidence and laughed myself silly over the portraits of English provincial university life, not as funny as Lucky Jim but very, very funny).

Hope your hols are full of Good Things.

Re: sheesh

[j4.livejournal.com]

it does strike me as rather rich mental pudding to try and digest at night

I should probably point out that I only really noticed the weirdness of the reading material once I had cleared away the enormous stack of Saint books and James Bond books... And hey, Dimsie & the Chalet School are fairly fluffy mental mousse. :)

Don't know most of your suggestions... Thoreau -- read Walden a long time ago, but wouldn't go out of my way to reread; Wodehouse is great in small doses but I find myself getting bored with them quite quickly; Allingham -- i.e. Margery of that ilk? -- never really got into them, tried one or two when I was reading my way through my mum's Agatha Christie mountain but wasn't convinced.

Hope your hols are full of Good Things.

Thank you. They certainly should be full of sun, and sans internet; right now these are the two key things I'm looking for in a holiday, and anything else is a bonus!