Reading & Eating...Reating

So I thought it was about time I wrote a real and serious blog post about an important aspect of publishing. It had to be something current and on-trend, something clever and insightful.

Then I thought, "Naaa. Those poor publishing folk already spend too much of their time reading important and insightful things, their brains probably hurt. What they actually want to know is what food is good or bad to eat while reading. THAT’S what is really troubling the minds of the mighty book industry, so that is the need I shall satisfy." 

It should be noted that all observations are made on the assumption that one hand is being used for holding your book, no use of book prop is allowed, and the one-hand eating technique is being applied sufficiently. The book being used in my experiments is Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch, a trade paperback of 380 pages and an excellent read. 

Dish 1: Thai Noodle Salad

For one thing, way too spicy, never trust a veg man when he says it's a mild chilli. I thought this dish would work quite well, the one-handed technique essential for reading/eating harmony was easily applied due to my intense belief that noodle and pasta eating is best done in the slurpiest manner possible. This was mistake number one: huge splash-back. Worse, orange splash-back. If I was the type to be precious about my books then I would have been mightily upset, but I'm not, most of my books have bent spines and wrinkled pages and now, orange splashes. Second mistake was the colour mix. I am usually a huge fan of colourful food, it's aesthetically pleasing and gives an extra enjoyment factor to eating. When trying to read however, it's a bit of a distraction. So dazzled was I by my colourful culinary concoction that my usually masterful book was paled in comparison. 

Dish 2: I-Can't-Afford-Meat-Salad

This was generally a success. As you see, the colour ratio was tipped in the favour of the greens so the mix didn't distract. The spatula did a bit, in the sense that considerable restraint had to be enforced so not to jump up and pretend to play All Along The Watchtower. It was mainly a one-handed meal, only a fork was necessary for the majority of the eating time and the spatula was not actually used in consumption, I just think it's funny. 

What let down this dish was the significant lack of any carbohydrate or anything, actually, of much substance. While you may imagine this would draw the reader deeper into the 'substance' of their book instead, it actually resulted in a need for crackers. This in turn led to a need for a knife and use of the other hand, therefore, the technique was ruined and downwards fell Western civilisation as we knew it. 

The Orange: Disaster! That is all I need to say. D.I.S.A.S.T.E.R

The Cup of Tea: Absolute perfection. BUT, be very careful what you dunk, risky business that can end in a very sad face.

Dish 3: Vegetarian Chilli

Finally, we have a good'n. I promise this was very nice, it just looks a little like uncooked meat and rice with tiny slugs in, but I think that's due to my poor photography skills and forgetting to take the photo before I started eating. 

I could go as far as saying this was a dream of a reading/eating meal. Just apply a nice scoop action to get a good mouthful, ensure a nice balance to the fork before raising it to the mouth to avoid dropping calamities and simply enjoy! I say 'dropping calamities' because with food that red a spillage on the clothes does tend to look like a 'I always empty the dishwasher!' fight gone horribly wrong. However, get those simple steps right and it's not a meal that involves too much concentration. I would say pairing this dish with a good book, such as Moon Over Soho, actually has health benefits. Getting lost in the story slows down the usual warp-speed inhalation usually applied to eating, which I believe, correct me if I'm wrong Michael Mosely, is good for your health. 

THE WINNER

Maybe this was an obvious one considering I'm 24 and a wannabe-publisher. Consumption definitely only requires one hand, unless it's been a really bad day and you need it quickly, then it's the double-handed motion, grasping it to your bosom like an anxious squirrel with an alcoholic nut.  

Do let me know of your experiments, the successes and the failures, together we shall gather together enough reading/eating recipes to publish a book to outsell Jamie Oliver. It shall be called 'How to Reat, a collection of one-handed recipes for those who can't put a good book down'. Some irritatingly clever person may have thought of this genius idea before me so I may need to trademark the term 'reat' as soon as possible (reading/eating for those of you who still aren't with me). 

My World Is Not Enough

Last week, for the seemingly annual celebration of my birth, my oh-so-grown-up friends and I, notably all over the age of 22, went to the most magical place you could possibly imagine: 

                                    Harry Potter World

 I think it’s actually called Warner Brothers Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter, but our name was better. As we see it, we have a better claim to be overly excited by the prospect of Harry Potter World than the many seven year-olds that ran around us at Leavesden Studios. We grew up with Harry! We may have been only eight when Harry first discovered he was a wizard, but with book publishing not dove-tailing exactly with human growth the age gap eventually evened out. We are the generation that fancied him, pined after him and so desperately wanted to be a part of his world that our contentment with our own has been considerably damaged since.

However, as much as I would love to write an entire post on the wonders of the magical world, believe me I could, I haven’t. Instead, I thought about how incredible it is that one story has done so amazingly well that aspects of it can be put on show, miles away from anywhere I might add, and people will pay a considerable sum to go and see them, even purchase replicas. We went just as crazy as the children, more so in fact. I don’t think they squealed quite as much at Robert Pattinson’s Quidditch uniform, and I was more than enthusiastic when allowed to push open the doors of The Great Hall along with the other birthday people/children. You could see The Knight Bus, Dumbledoor’s office and Buckbeak the hippogriff, to name but a tiny few. For us, it wasn’t all about the film memorabilia, that wasn’t what was exciting, it was seeing everything you’d imagined when reading the books brought to life and sitting right there in front of you. I walked up Diagon Alley! I really did! And for that briefest of moments you completely forget it’s a film set, to you it’s as real as the gasps you made when Pettigrew got away, or the laughs you had at Lee Jordan’s Quidditch commentary.

“Um, Evie, this is sounding an awful lot like an entire post on the wonders of the magical world.” 

Yes, it is, sorry, but I do have a point and will lead seamlessly to my blog-post question. 

What other books should have visit-able worlds?

For example, Charles Dickens World. Though I’m not sure this would be quite so fun: mainly dark, smoggy London streets and a feeling of damp foreboding. Unless you had people dressed as the characters, that would add a nice, dramatic element and you could have a Christmas Carol section where you were visited by the three ghosts…doubt it would be as fun without the Muppets though.

But you catch my drift? It’s actually quite hard. I had suggestions of Alice and Wonderland or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but that’s creating an actual place that the characters go to in the books. I mean more of a world created out of everything you remember from the books, such as a Philip Pullman, His Dark Materials World where you’d find your daemon, meet a dangerous but ever so nice, giant polar bear, go for a ride in Lee Scoresby’s hot air balloon and try not to get caught by the Magisterium.

So in true publishing condiment tradition, I now give the floor to you. Comment away on what worlds you would like to visit, I look forward to your imaginative suggestions.  

P.S. Photos kindly taken and donated by the beautiful Subha Chelvam. 

Be Quiet Mr Fry, I'm Trying to Read

Happy New Year to you all dear ones. I hope you enjoyed Christmas and New Year as much as I did. Well, Christmas anyway, some fool gave me the end/start of year plague so while the fireworks went off at midnight I wearily raised a toast with my parents and went to bed. Rock and roll indeed.

Anyway, I'm on the mend now and have been spending my sofa-filled days thinking of what wonderful publishing related jewels I could bring you in the New Year. I understand the grievance you must have felt in my absence since my last post, this was due to me thinking it was a great idea to fasten two longs bits of plastic? Metal? I actually don't know...anyway something, to my feet and hurtle down a mountain in the snow. Skiing I believe they call it, not that I'm sure that's what I was doing, but I got down the mountain in one piece so that's all that matters.

Now I bet you're expecting me to reel off a list of books I'd like to read this year in true New Year's resolution style? Well I'm not.

This year, 2013, I'm going to start with a little bit of schizophrenia. What better way to start the year? "Explain please" you cry in ernest, well OK. Now don't think I'm crazy, but have you ever noticed what voice you read with in your head? I noticed, when revising for our law exam, that to be able to concentrate I have to read out loud but in order not to have slippers thrown at my head I have to read out loud in my head. Following? Good, it doesn't seem that weird yet does it. Until, however, I noticed that I couldn't identify the voice reading. It didn't sound quite like me, though I think it's considerably hard to know what you sound like. I once heard myself on a tape recorder and thought I was a boy. I voiced this thought to my mother who is usually quite receptive to my 'quirkiness' shall we kindly call it, actually raised her eyebrows and when I announced "I shall blog about this" just replied with a mmmm. At the time I took this as 'yes, good idea darling' but may, in hindsight have been 'your funeral darling'. See what revision does to the sanity?

Later, when I returned to my revision, about half a page down, I noticed it definitely wasn't my voice this time, it was Stephen Fry. Now stop it, stop edging away from your screen and come back at once, it's not as insane as it may appear. I did not believe that Stephen Fry was in my head, as delightful as that sounds, but I had been listening to the Harry Potter talking books earlier that day while tidying (I find it impossible to tidy without an audiobook and Stephen does read them so sublimely). So while I had been absentmindedly listening to Mr Fry and tidying, my brain must have got so used to hearing his voice that when I had to listen to someone talking from inside my head for revision purposes it was his voice that came out. This makes perfect scientific sense I assure you.

It's certainly made revision much more entertaining. I watched an episode of Gavin and Stacey and suddenly I was revising in a welsh accent, I can't even do a welsh accent but the one in my head is perfect. It can be an irritating habit, for a while I couldn't stop reading in a 40s wartime radio presenter-voice, goodness knows where that came from, and found I was listening more to the voice than what he/I was saying...Ok that last sentence did sound a bit crazy but I bet you it happens to everyone.

So challenge of the New Year, identify your 'reading-allowed-in-your-head-voice' or 'head voice' as it shall be more affectionately known. Just try sitting down with a book, paper, magazine or anything and try reading allowed in your head and try thinking about who or what the voice sounds like. It will probably sound like you the first time so if you trust me and want to experiment with your mentality, go and listen to or watch something with prominent and memorable voices and I BET YOU when you read something again you'll get a pleasant surprise.

If not, and it turns out it is just me, um well, in the words of Lewis Caroll.
“You're mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”