Signing Captain Corelli

Yesterday I bought a signed copy of Captain Corelli's Mandolin in the hope that at some point in the dim and distant future it may be worth more than the £7.99 I just paid for it. It's a future modern classic, you know.

There was a little smidgen (did I just make that word up?) of disappointment when I learned that Louis De Bernieres has a fairly lifeless signature. Given the levels imagination and creativity oozing out of his novels, I expected something a little more... literary. Great floral swirls and diving swoops of ink next time, please, Louis. Those book collectors of the future will want something impressive for their money.

Who am I to talk? My straight forward signature is as dull as it comes. First name and last name neatly (or not so neatly, depending on how the mood takes me) written in my normal, every day handwriting. For some people signing their name is like scrawling a (very short) symphony; for me it's like... writing. My name. No, I'll never be a doctor. Or famous. No celebrity flourishes for me.

Incidental aside: Corelli only has one "R". Just thought you'd like to know.

Back to the plot, Salman Rushie will be available to sign a book for me in a couple of weeks, should I feel so inclined to go and visit him in the great shrine of bookness known as Borders. I'll have to check my diary; I may be too busy practising writing my name.

Harry Potter and Bluenettle's shame

After the ambling through The Da Vinci code, I finally sucumbed to persuasion and picked up a copy of another book I've been resisting for a while. Years, in fact. Yes, Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone has finally made it onto my bookshelves. After being unimpressed with the films and uninspired by all I've heard so far, a copy was ultimately thrust upon me, and I gave in.

All done and dusted in fact, since the first in the series is remarkably thin compared to later offerings. I imagine if J.K. Rowling had gone along to a publisher with a six hundred page long children's novel a few years ago they would have laughed in her face. Fortunately for me, this makes HPATPS (people call it that, right?) a fairly short-lived affair.

So, what can I say? I firstly must congratulate the author for managing to use an apostrophe of possession correctly, because I don't think I could have got past the first page for worrying about it if she hadn't. As for the story... ultimately I'm left feeling cold.

I really hate to admit that, because generally I find things are never half as bad as I think they're going to be. That's not to say I think the book is bad; it was well written, had a well thought out plot, and was reasonably humorous to boot. It just it did nothing for me. Much as I try, I'm can't raise any enthusiasm for a story about a gang of children waving wands about and chasing monsters.

Don't get me wrong here - I'm not an unimaginative dullard immune to fantasy. I think I crave something more intelligent than this, which I suppose is more than I'm entitled to expect from a children's novel. Now, if you spiced up the plot a bit, made the main characters over eighteen and threw in a bit of gratuitous allegory that I only half get, then I'd probably be raving. Some morally ambiguous characters would be great too. The whole good versus evil storyline is overhyped and overated.

Cast a spell on me if you like, curse me forever and condemn me to the dungeons until the next full moon, but I'm just not a Harry Potter fan. Is there something wrong with me?

Invisible queuing

In the pub there is an invisible queue. I say so and so does Kate Fox in her book Watching the English.

Everybody waiting to be served in the apparently random cluster of people knows who was there first, and the staff behind the bar know it too. Any person who tries to jump the queue by smiling, gesturing or otherwise trying to attract the bar person's attention will recieve nothing except a polite smile in reply. A polite smile means wait your turn, you impatient so and so. Thus is pub harmony acheived.

A similar system operates in the travel centre at Oxford train station. That jumble of people in chairs is really a queue and everyone in it knows it, everyone joining it recognises it and anyone attempting to jump it will be politely smiled at.

The moral of the tale is this: no one ever said queues have to be a straight line. No one ever said anything.

Unputtadownable

I admit it, I'm hooked.

The Da Vinci code is positively, irrefutably, completely deliciously unputtadownable. The prose bumbles along happily, with dialogue so contrived that you'd think you'd want to scream at the pages, but you don't. You want to keep turning the pages, because the plot is so magestically intruiging that you know you won't be able to sleep for wondering. Every chapter ends leaving you wanting to know what's next.

Yesterday, a young librarian was reported missing having been last seen with a copy of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci code clutched to her chest. Police fear the book may have swallowed her, and hope she will be freed from its hollow belly in a couple of days.

Seriously, you're lucky I even got as far as the computer to compose this post. I can still see the book out of the corner of my eye...

Composing this post has forced upon me the realisation that the world is in need of a campaign to get unputtadownable in the Oxford English Dictionary. Well, any dictionary will do really, as long as it's a real one. You know, with pages. Commonly found in libraries and on my bookshelf.

Unputdownable may already be in the dictionary, but as I was writing the first paragraph above it was unputtadownable that tripped of the ends of my fingers and on to the screen without hesitation; unputdownable just feels contrived. Bland and rhythmless. Unputtadownable is as it should be, without a doubt. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it as bouncebackability, but it's getting there.

All it needs is for people to start using it. What is a dictionary but a record of how language is used? If you use it, they will come... or something.

Use it. Please? Let's be rid of the boring unputdownable forever. I just can't cope knowing there are people out there using a five syllable word when six is so much better.

Da Vinci mode

So, I've finally sucumbed. Sitting at the foot of my bed, waiting expectantly for me to open its pages and be consumed by its brilliance, is my mother's charity shop bought copy of The Da Vinci code.

My expectations are that I will be gripped by the intricacies of mystery at once, yet at the same time be laughingly horrified by the factual inaccuracies and giddy with hilarity at the awkward, muddy prose. I imagine I will be left with the notion that, when it comes to creating a best seller, over the top plot is more important than literary skill.

I'm hoping my expectations are wrong. Except for the being gripped bit, because that's always good.