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thisbluespirit) wrote2011-10-29 01:03 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote2011-10-29 01:03 pm
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Happy Meme Answers - Pt2: G
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pitry gave me a G.(I was going to do the last 3 letters together, as I'd kept them shorter... and then G got epic, with a poem, a recipe and a sort of condensed version of my old Greenaway talk. I promise that L and D will be much more restrained.)
1. Georgette Heyer
There probably isn't another novelist who has made me so happy so often. Whenever I'm ill or facing a long journey, one of her 'Regency' comedies goes with me. My favourite is probably Cotillion, but there are so many I'll read over and over.
2. Genealogy
Detective fever strikes! History nut finds perfect hobby! And, really, I am more of a family historian than a genealogist, but you can't do Family History without the skeleton of Genealogy to hold it up. It's a dangerously addictive and fascinating thing.
3. Ginger cake
I am quite good at making this, and it makes the world a bit better while it lasts. The recipe is as follows (you'll have to translate measurements yourself):
8oz plain flour (half white, half wholemeal)
1 tsp mixed spice
1 tbs ground ginger
1 1/2 oz dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1/4 pt milk
4oz marg.
4oz treacle
4oz golden syrup (or 8oz of one or the other, but both is best)
Put marg, sugar, treacle & golden syrup in bowl & melt together. Warm up the milk & bicarb of soda and stir in. Add the egg, and stir. Then add in all the dry ingredients. And stir. (Do I need to tell you everything?)
Cooking time 30-45 mins (depending on depth of tin) at 180/350/Gas Mark 4
4. The Great Minimum by GK Chesterton
Just because.
It is something to have wept as we have wept,
It is something to have done as we have done,
It is something to have watched when all men slept,
And seen the stars which never see the sun.
It is something to have smelt the mystic rose,
Although it break and leave the thorny rods,
It is something to have hungered once as those
Must hunger who have ate the bread of gods.
To have seen you and your unforgotten face,
Brave as a blast of trumpets for the fray,
Pure as white lilies in a watery space,
It were something, though you went from me today.
To have known the things that from the weak are furled,
Perilous ancient passions, strange and high;
It is something to be wiser than the world,
It is something to be older than the sky.
In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.
Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.
5.The Greenaway (or The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal, as it is more properly known)
When I got to be a judge, I was told that the real battle would happen not over the Carnegie (for 'outstanding writing'), but the Greenaway (for outstanding illustration). We didn't believe them, but they were right. Bear with me, because I don't normally talk about this without waving picture books about, but as a children's librarian, I was forced back to picture books in a way that most people aren't. (Well, unless you have children & even then it does depend which ones small people take to heart and want over and over and over. And over.) This is a wonderful thing, and there will be some picture books that make me happy in this meme. The Greenaway taught me not how to be an art critic (of course I'm not!) but just how to look at a picture book as a whole and transforming experience in itself. So, okay, here's what you need to do. Go to a library or bookshop (and I'm sorry, I can mainly give UK examples) and find books by people like Lauren Child, Anthony Browne, Jan Pienkowski, P J Lynch, Mini Grey, Emily Gravett, Oliver Jeffers, Dave McKean, Roberto Innocenti, Colin Thompson, Chris Riddell, David Roberts, David Melling, Catherine Rayner or Bob Graham, or anyone else that catches your eye.
This works better if you can take the book home and can do things like turn it upside down, put it on the opposite side of the room from you (and other things I really have done when working my way through a long list of 40 books), but you can't do that in Waterstones, so don't try. It's not just about the quality of the illustration, although that's fundamental. Does the illustrator have a distinct and recognisable style? How does the book feel as a whole? Cover, endpages, layout, and most of all the synergy between text and illustration. If the illustration is fabulous, but merely decorative, you must put it aside. You are looking for something that interacts with the text (in an appropriate way for the style/story of the book; & that doesn't necessarily mean 'wacky' or 'non-traditional at all) - so the illustrations will add more to the story, contradict the text in a humorous way, add in an unwritten subplot, or the text will become part of the illustration (for good reason). (The absolute master of the last is Lauren Child, who does it brilliantly). The illustrations should move you through the story - there shouldn't be any feeling of discontinuity between pages and double-page spreads, or the feeling that you're looking at the text or the illustrations. The reader should come away transformed to some degree, and find more in the illustrations on return visits. Now you've found a potential Greenaway winner. Also, picture books of the Greenaway standard speak to people very directly and become such an emotive thing. (That's what the old judges were warning us about. Blood on the carpet and tears before bedtime). I usually demonstrate this with Anthony Browne's shortlisted The Shape Game which is a picture book that is both a sort of spot-things game and a picture book about the transforming power of art, and partly autobiographical. But it's a picture book, so you can do that with visual jokes and a lot of sausages. Having been part of this and having learnt to spot a potential Greenaway fairly swiftly makes me very happy. I'm sorry about the epic answer, but you know where they say that a picture paints a thousand words? Well, I didn't have the pictures.
Also, it will be a while yet before technology comes up with an alternative to a picture book. Can you get a glorious double-page spread on an ebook reader? Once they invent pop-up digital things, maybe, but until then, no matter what may happen with adult books, let's enjoy the tail end of what was a pretty golden decade & more (well, here in the UK anyway) for picture books. I hope things improve again - I have a fear that picture books as they are now could easily become a luxury item, or with limited choice and not the selection of amazing talent we've seen of late, highlighted by the Greenaway.
6.Ghostlight
Call me crazy, and many do, but I LOVE Ghostlight. I only wish more DW stories were like it. :-p
7. Graveyards (or cemeteries)
Which is an odd thing, I know, but I used to live next door to one, and I grew up to be a family historian. I like reading all the inscriptions and thinking about stuff and things. It gives me a quiet, melancholy happy.
8. The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers
This is a picture book that is a comic detective story. With the best endpapers ever. (There are marvellous paper aeroplane instructions.) Not that the rest of his aren't great, but they don't begin with G. (The Book-Eating Boy, The Way Home etc.)
9. Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland
Or maybe even mainly the ending. But I loved his Arthur trilogy, which was followed by this lovely extra book. He's such a good writer. Gatty was a great character, and I really value his attitude to writing children's/YA historical fiction, which is a refreshing change from some of the conventions I'd become rather wearily used to, even in some very good books.
10. Hans Geering, or The Gateau from the Chateau (or anything that will gratuitously get me Allo Allo in G: Gorden Kaye, Guy Siner, Richard Gibson, Helga Geerhart, Lt Gruber, General von Klinkerhoffen, Germans, Gestapo, the van Gogh with the Big Daises, random people from Genesis of the Daleks...)
No, really. Sam Kelly as Hans Geering is still my favourite character in AA (mostly). He is a reluctant/lazy Nazi (his half-hearted alternative to Heil Hitler is one of the main things people remember from the show. Indeed, it seems to have grown a few instant myths of its own. But it's only "-tler!", or so Sam Kelly says, and he should know.) Sam Kelly is one of those people I pretty much adore in anything; no, I don't know why, I just do. (He was nearly in DW - RTD wrote a part for him in Midnight - but he broke his leg. Anyone who's heard the BFA The Holy Terror will know how brilliant he can be.) Anyway, Hans was sadly one of the first to leave - he was mistakenly sent to England while disguised as a British Airman. (My flist will be unsurprised that a show that has everyone smuggling British airmen into a POW camp via a tunnel amuses me a lot.)
'The Gateau from the Chateau' was the first Christmas special and probably my favourite episode. (Basically, everyone decides to kill General von Klinkerhoffen at the same time, by methods that rhyme: the candle with the handle, on the gateau from the chateau, the pill in the till, the drug in the jug... and Sam Kelly gets to say the lot.) Allo Allo is great because a) it is a TV sitcom that is really an ongoing farce in eight series (in which the 'sit' is Occupied France in WWII!), and b) we in Britain like to forget we're technically part of a nearby continent, but Allo Allo was kind of Europe's shared joke for a bit. (Also: sad moment in happy meme, among 2011's hall of the fallen, was writer/producer/director David Croft last month. *salutes*) I mean, I know it's daft, and I know it's all stereotypes (but that's the point, people!), but it makes me laugh a lot more, and more often than most things that are supposed to be funny.
Plus, all of Gorden Kaye's recaps as Rene ("You may wonder what I am doing hiding in the cellar of my cafe while disguised as a member of the Communist Resistance/Waitress/Undertaker/German Officer etc.") especially any where he says anything like: "I, of course, have been shot dead and am now posing as my twin brother..."
Anyway, for those who don't know it, I found its Comedy Connections episode up on YouTube, which is a much better intro than my waffling (though there's an odd cut that omits part of the section about Gruber): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFW-YQp7Mxk
(Although I'm amused to see that the actual Comedy Connections format fails about ten minutes in and they spend the rest of the time trying to give an overview of the plot and characters without even managing to get to Carmen Silvera/Edith, Richard Marner/Colonel von Strohm, Kenneth Connor or Jack Haig, among others. The plot just kept picking up new threads and rarely dropping the old, so, :lol:...)
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I confess, my absolute fave illustrator (not that I have lots of faves or even known masses) is Quentin Blake - he makes me smile or even laugh very often, and his drawings are so full of life and energy, humour or pathos, that I can look at them for an hour at a time (and given how very non-visual I am, that's saying a HUGE amount!)
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Ah, yes, Quentin Blake! He is one of the very, very best, of course (and has won the Greenaway twice, I think?). Of illustrators, he's the only one I'd count as too obvious to mention (which is why I didn't, heh). Except maybe Arthur Rackham, and Edward Ardizzone, and he's the only one who's still living and drawing. (Well, I sincerely hope!!) I can't think which of his I'd pick, but in recent years his illustrations for Michael Rosen's Sad Book were certainly enough to move anyone to tears. And, as we all know, Quentin Blake = Roald Dahl. Or the other way around. :-)
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I'd also pick Edward Gorey, to whom my late American friend Margo introduced me...
Roald Dahl + Quentin Blake = awesome!
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Ooh, ginger cake! I love anything with ginger in it.
Was Hans Geering the German with the "little tenk" he'd park outside? I loved him too, though I don't remember that much of the show. My favourite quote though was von Smallhausen (is that right?) warning someone else to be careful driving a staff car because "Ze Gestapo do not haf sird party". :-)
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:-)
That was Gruber (Guy Siner), who was v sweet & a much more sensible choice for fave character. (My second favourite is the heroic Michelle of the Resistance, but I couldn't get her in under G.) This is Hans. I suspect, because I was quite small when I first watched it, my sister and I latched onto him because he's a v childlike character. Or the way he's always forgetting he's a Nazi...
Yes, Von Smallhausen was Herr Flick's assistant, that's right! I love it for all the daft stuff like that.
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Ah yes, I remember him now! For some reason Gruber stuck more in my mind.
Ahahaha, you even have a Herr Flick icon. And it was him I meant, not the little guy. :-P
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And me, I love cemeteries too, the ones here aren't as old as Europe's but they're still fascinating...
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Well, most of ours aren't that old, either, really. Only Churchyards, but most of the older ones are just worn down & of course the majority had no headstones to start with, not until the 20th C. The inscriptions can be so sad/strange/fascinating or just terse. I think one of the strangest I've found was on the grave of a Welsh ancestor, which was this verse (no idea why!): "If I wait the grave is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness."
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(Also. The Radio Times letters page just gave me a massive unhappy spoiler for the Spooks finale! Argh. Argharghargh.
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But... you never know with Spooks! It could be deliberate misdirection in the media! There could be a gag order!
*burns Radio Times*
*and letter-writer*
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But, um, I don't think a random letter-writer got that wrong. Plus, I then accidentally spoilered myself looking at an icon post... and now I know something else that I can't quite believe, as well as confirming the other spoiler. Clearly this must go on my Christmas list right now!! :-)
Also, the next letter in the RT was amusing - someone was claiming they were going to have to sell their TV, their DVD recorder and RT subscription - all worthless now that Spooks had finished. It's nice to know some people have got their priorities sorted. :-)
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:-)
(Bed and Sleep are indeed happy things!!)
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