Lés Miserablés (And I don't mean the bloody musical)

I am a great believer in the fact that the most important things you should learn at school is to read. Forget maths and science, well don't, they are pretty important, but without being able to read it's pretty difficult to learn anything else. Absolutely everything you do in life from telling the time to finding out what's on tv to not getting stitched up when you buy something expensive. It's totally fundamental.

Sometimes though being able to read, and read properly, not just Janet and John stuff, is just a simple pleasure because it allows you to read books where it is a simple pleasure to wallow in the language and soak up beautifully crafted words so poetic and delicious that sometimes you could cry. There are few books that I've had that pure unadulterated pleasure from. The God of Small Things and The Amber Spy Glass are two of them but recently I have discovered Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, one of the greats of French literature has given me that same feeling.

It's not the most cheerful of books I'll grant you as it traces the trials and tribulations of it's often tragic and down trodden characters, but the prose and lyrical manner with it relates the story is simply wonderful. I'll leave you with just one short quote before leaving you to discover it for yourselves.

"The heart, that secret celestial flower, mysteriously blossoms, and one would not exchange ones darkness for all light. The angel spirit is there, always there; if she moves away it is to return, she fades like a dream, to reappear like reality."

Now isn't that just magical?

The Power of Words

I'vebeen reading a book called How to Breath Under Water by Julie Orringer. Its a series of short stories about child hood and one of them, called Notes to Sixth Grade Self I found particularly moving.

Its a story about the ugly geeky kid in school is bullied and ostriziced by the many of the others. It was written with such clarity, sensitivity and humanity that the author had clearly experienced it for themselves. I know because that geeky kid was once me. On that note it was interesting to see one or two removers describe that particular story as one of the less serious. Clearly those reviewers had not been in that position, but that's not really what I wanted to talk about.

What always fascinates me is the power of words. This book, like many others touched me in a way that films have never managed to do, perhaps its a personal thing, perhaps its because this story was about something that I had experienced, but it goes wider than that. Many others books, where I have no connection to, have touched me far deeper and have been more memorable than any image on the screen has been.

I wonder whether it's because a book is such a personal thing, the thoughts and creativity of just one person rather than a mixture of the many that goes into a film? I wont think too deeply on this one, over analysis can sometimes destroy the magic!

Someof the most beautiful lyrics I've heard in a long time,

"I saw two shooting start last night
I wished on them
But they were only satelites
It's wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish that you
I wish you cared"

Billy Bragg
New England

The fact is that there are much better crafted, more subtle lyrics out there, lets face it, Shakespear this isn't. Yet in this case that is half the beauty. These are the words of an average bloke (and no individual sums up the word "bloke" that Billy Bragg!) tying to express his feelings and he manages it with such clarity. I simply love this song.