…but I haven’t forgotten this blog! Life kind of got on top of me; I’ve been reading a lot and working a lot and doing a lot in general so I let the blogging slide. But I find as I’ve been reading I’ve been coming up with more topics that I want to blog about, so hopefully over the next few weeks you’ll hear more from me.
So what have I been reading recently? Well, I’ve just updated my ‘Books read in 2011’ page so you can see exactly what I’ve been reading. But I think there are some in the list that deserve a special mention.
Moab Is My Washpot & The Fry Chronicles, both by Stephen Fry: The first 2 books in Fry’s biography are nothing short of fantastic. He’s honest, self-depreciating, critical, humorous, and passionate and throughout it all his language and vocabulary keep you grabbing for the dictionary (in a good way). His love of words resonates across the pages and you can’t help but smile at the loquacious style and wealth of word play. I loved these books and heartily recommend them.
Travelling with Che Guevara by Alberto Grenada: I think I’m safe in making the assumption that everyone has heard of Che Guevara. Many will have heard of or watched the film based on Guevara’s book, The Motorcycle Diaries. I’d heard of Guevara and the film, I knew a little about his politics but my knowledge was vague. This book is the diary of Guevara’s travelling companion when they took off on an old motorcycle to cross South America and explore their own continent and how the locals live, work and survive under a variety of different regimes. They meet a variety of characters along the way and Grenada’s descriptions carry you along with them. You can smell and envision their surroundings; you can hear their conversations with locals. You can sense their frustration at the lack of democracy and the influence of American capitalism on the impoverished locals and indigenous peoples. It’s a great book and an excellent insight into the early formation of Guevara’s politics. It’s so good, I went straight out and bought Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries.
Am I cultured?
Posted in Fiction, tagged commentary, culture, fiction on August 21, 2010| 1 Comment »
Are we book snobs? Prejudiced against certain books? Think they’re not literary or good enough to class as a serious read? Do we class certain books or genres as non-cultural reading?
A friend of mine recently commented, on seeing the list of books I’d read in the last year, that she’d read hardly any of them and felt very uncultured. My automatic reaction was to correct her, just because she hadn’t read certain books didn’t make her uncultured. Plus can we call someone cultured if all they do is read books? What do we mean by cultured?
I called this blog ‘culture and cake’ but I’m really only focusing on books rather than any other form of culture. Surely to be truly cultured a person must experience a variety of literature, music, theatre, cinema, foods, people and places. It’s easier to have an opinion on a variety of topics if you’ve had a variety of experiences. People often have something to say about a book or a film and can provide an opinion but that doesn’t make you cultured, just opinionated. Just because you’ve read Chaucer or Proust doesn’t mean you’re more cultured than the person who’s read Harry Potter or spends 8 hours in front of the telly every day. It’s just a different side of culture. If everyone read the same books and listened to the same music the world would be a very boring place. What would we have to debate about? The great thing about cultural diversity is just that – culture is diverse and everyone’s opinion is worth something. Just like everyone’s choice of reading material is worth something. I may not be a fan of Salman Rushdie novels, that doesn’t make me uncultured.
I don’t believe we should pressure people into reading certain books. Embrace the variety and make your own choices. There are days when I love reading Harry Potter and days when I can’t get enough of George Orwell, doesn’t make one day better or more cultural than the other, just different. And that’s great.
There may be an argument that reading literary prize winners provides people with an introduction to a variety of styles of writing and language and therefore can enhance a person’s own language skills. But that’s more about a broad vocabulary and grammatical skills than culture. I’m sure people reading this blog will find plenty of grammatical errors to comment on, and I believe I’m pretty well read, so obviously reading doesn’t guarantee a perfect level of grammar!
But I also regularly read up on current affairs, visit the theatre, watch films, travel, and listen to an eclectic enough range of music! So am I cultured? Perhaps to an extent but there’s still a few million books to read and plays to watch, so I don’t think it’s even nearly time for me to stop experiencing new things just yet! And thank goodness for that; wouldn’t it be awful to think there was nothing left to experience, that you were as cultured as you could get? My friend may think she’s uncultured but she’s most definitely not, she has children, goes on holiday, reads, listens to the radio and has many experiences I don’t. So I reckon we’ve just had different contacts with culture and that makes catching up and chatting even more fun as we get to share what we’ve done and learnt with each other. So choose a cultural experience of your own and get stuck in.
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