From Virtual Information Hoover to Revelling Reader (and back again)

A personal counter-cultural trend has accelerated this week catalysed by a week of working from home. Whilst I sucked up and spat out a barrage of information snippets, data points and piano-playing cats via email, friendfeed, text and tweet, I also found myself on a complementary novel-reading jag in my non-working hours.

At the end of days spent staring at screens, tapping into keyboards and instantly responding to vibrating devices, I finally finished John Fowles’ The Magus then polished off the week with a quick sojourn to Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac. I revelled in the blissful escape via stories that twisted and turned in less frenzied alternative worlds, tempted in by the slow strip tease as characters and details were revealed to me with no more effort than eyes tracing along lines and the turn of a page.

So I was struck by this sentence towards the end of an article in yesterday’s Guardian about the decreasing popularity of non-fiction books,

“many publishers think the noise and immediacy of the web will make slow, quiet immersion in a book seem more, not less, appealing.”

Because this week it's certainly felt that way for me, although I confess I’ve always been a reader, from the most embarrassing of my letters to Father Christmas, containing the should-be-lisped phrase “books, books and more books!” to my current membership of readers' social network Goodreads*.

But I genuinely hope that as gigs and festivals have risen in popularity and importance alongside the file-swapped and mashed-up world of music, and the slow food movement emerged amidst our pre-packaged, fast-food nations, so there will be a trend (who knows? maybe Kindle-driven), in support of the mental nourishment and resuscitation a good book can offer.

With this in mind, please find the following recommendations meant for particular types of my virtual and media-saturated friends. As a break from our networked worlds full of fast, shallow, aggregated knowledge I believe we could all benefit from the occasional slow, deep wallow in words.

1. ARG and Lost fans – The Magus
   Bear with it, you’ll gasp more than you did when The Others popped up.
2. Peep Show and In-betweeners self lovers/loathers – Portnoy’s Complaint
   A culturally specific and self-revelatory journey with some great masturbatory anecdotes.
3. Twitter addicts – Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
   In your quest for information and your constant need for innovation, the pace, wit, style and sheer ingenuity should suit.
4. Virtual World Inhabitants and Hardcore gamers - A Clockwork Orange
   Learn about societal trends and tribes via this imagined violent world, with real pleasure to be gained from cracking the language.
5. Guilty Grazia readers - Hotel du Lac
   Learn about love through an array of fabulously dressed female characters more interesting than Madonna.

Disagree? Too obvious? Add your own recommendations as you see fit.

*Apologies for the distraction, but there’s a great article I received via @zeroinfluencer’s friendfeed about the benefits of asymmetric friending on Twitter vs. Goodreads (I know, I can’t help myself.)

Too Damn B. & L.

I've moved house and work is nuts. This has left me with a racing mind, mentally spinning Welsh dressers full of plates and unfortunately dropping a few - of which my regularish updates here have been one.

I am now in Starbucks (no broadband at our new house yet), wondering why their wireless internet access isn't free, and hoping I don't have another accident on my laptop with my grande skinny latte.

I refuse to sound like one of these chaps, I've just been too damn busy and lively for my own - or this blog's - good. But instead of running away from the guilt that I feel about my lack of updates I've decided to share my confession of a selection of other things I'm feeling a whole lot guiltier about:

Not Having Flossed Regularly
This week saw the first in a series of industrial dental cleaning appointments due to years of having a literally dirty mouth. After a slightly traumatic appointment, I shopped in Hampstead (see below) talking like John Merrick as I drooled blood down my chin, one side of my mouth still frozen from the local anaesthetic. I managed to cheer myself up with the realisation that the shopping assistants of Whistles, Karen Millen and Nicole Fahri no doubt assumed I had had a bad botox job rather than the more plebeian truth.

Rash Purchases
When I find myself in times of trouble, large, stiff paper bags with soft rope handles call to me. In the past week I have bought trainers, a dress, a jumper, a shirt, a pair of shoes, two different kinds of over-priced moisturiser and a t-shirt. I realise I am lucky to have this disposable income but even I admit it felt like a bit of a problem when I described the collection of bags in the hall as "Presents!" and was then congratulated by my partner for my organisational skills. One pair of velvet gloves does not a Christmas make (the rest were for me, from me as a sign of my appreciation - of me).

Smoking (again)
The other night I found myself looking straight at the woman in Oddbins and as she handed over 20 Marlboro lights and a lighter saying to her "I am such a loser". I am also tending to smoke Marlboro Menthols in the desperate hope that my breath won't smell as bad even tho I think they gave me a nose bleed the other day as I was combining them in a lethal menthol cocktail with Airwaves gum (don't try this at home).

Reading Crap
This has included Heat, the National Enquirer (Go Britney!) and even resorting to reading free newspapers on the tube (the London Paper is my preferred option, it doesn't have offensive spelling as does "London Lite" and has at least two gay columnists - yes, I am that easily pleased). I also bought Private Eye the other day and only read the cartoons and letters.

Enough already. My latte has grown cold, I'm sure there are some pictures and captions in the Saturday Guardian I could manage (maybe just the wallchart), and the chemist in Golders Green has a good selection of makeup and perfumes I could be perusing. And I'm gasping for a cool menthol draw...

Can anyone absolve me?