Today’s random number is 1410, which corresponds to The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman.

This seems to be the graphic novel that, if you own any graphic novel at all, it’ll be this one. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, this is Art Speigelman’s rendering of his family’s experiences during the Second World War. Here’s an overview, pinched straight from Wikipedia, I’m afraid:

The book alternates the stories told by Spiegelman’s father Vladek Spiegelman about life in Poland before and during the Second World War with the contemporary life of Art, Vladek, and their loved ones in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. Vladek’s embedded story, often framed as a dialogue with Art, recounts the struggle of Vladek Spiegelman living with his family in Radomsko, Częstochowa, Sosnowiec, and Bielsko in the late 1930s and his tragic odyssey during the war which ultimately led him to Auschwitz as prisoner 175113.

Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman confronts his difficult relationship with his father. For example, Vladek exhibits racial prejudice against blacks despite his own experiences of anti-Semitism. He is also presented as stingy and a person who makes life very difficult for those around him, including his first wife Anja (Art’s mother, who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala, themselves concentration camp survivors. Spiegelman presents the Vladek he knows and contrasts him with the man in the concentration camps and comments within the books about his difficulties presenting history and Vladek’s remarkable personal story accurately.

This is where I confess that I haven’t actually read it yet. I bought it on a bit of a whim some months ago, and I do keep meaning to get around to it, but… you know how it is. What is clear, though, is that this is an important book with a formidable reputation. I don’t know about you, but the idea of reading a graphic novel feels like a very different sort of experience compared to your standard book. Will it take a big shift in mindset? I don’t know. I must pick it up and find out.

Today’s random number is 1628. This means that I’ll be talking about…

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

In particular, my lovely 1942 Hogarth Press edition of Mrs Dalloway. Now, regular readers will know that this is one of my two very favourite novels. I first read it at university, and I have to admit that my first encounter with it, aged 19, didn’t enthuse me. I couldn’t get along with it at all, but then, it was my first real experience of her celebrated stream of consciousness writing, and I wasn’t prepared for it at all. In my fourth and final undergraduate year, however, I had to read it again as part of a Modernism module, and this time I was a bit more clued in about what to expect. This time, I loved it. I loved it so much that I started reading it again as soon as I’d finished it. Then I wrote a bloody good essay on it, if I do say so myself.

Anyway, since then, it’s been a constant companion. I turn to it every so often just to read a few pages, and in fact I’ve recently been thinking about reading the whole novel again. It’s been three years since my last reading! I’ve lost count of the number of people I have pressed it on, and unsurprisingly I now have four copies of my own. One of them is this one, my favourite.

Not only is it amazing for a book geek like me to own a Hogarth edition at all, but this has extra sentimental value for me as it was a present from my fiance the second Christmas we were together. I also have Hogarth editions of Orlando, Night and Day, and The Years. Lovely.

For those who missed it, the basic premise is this: I go to random.org, and the number it throws up is matched against my LibraryThing catalogue, and I talk about the book in question. This week the random number generator has given me number 1233.

I Found My Horn: One Man’s Struggle with the Orchestra’s Most Difficult Instrument by Jasper Rees

Honestly, I cannot for the life of me remember when I bought this. I think it must have been two or three years ago. I do know that I bought it on a whim in the dearly departed Borders in Oxford. The music section of a bookshop isn’t where I usually gravitate to, but if my fiance has ever been dragged into a bookshop with me, I can guarantee that I’ll find him, often cross-legged on the floor, in the music section. And there I found him one day. While he was finishing up his musical browsing, I spotted this, and thought it sounded good, so I bought it. Simple as that. Random, impulse purchase.

I have never played the french horn, but I did play the cello in orchestras from school right up to university (I lost interest in my first year of undergraduate). I have very fond memories of it. Indeed, I much preferred playing in an orchestra to playing solo. I don’t like lots of attention being directed at me, so being one of several cellists was an altogether preferable situation. I miss it. I still have the cello I was bought for my 12th birthday (my first full size cello) and I keep promising myself that I’ll take it up again. One day.

But what of this book? Well, I never finished it. From what I remember, though, our author had played the french horn as a youngster, but put it down and never picked it back up again. As an adult he was prompted to give it another shot, and set himself the challenge of playing a solo piece, in public, one year from then. Now, as the subtitle tells us, the french horn is a notoriously tricky beast, and many professional horn players were staggered at Rees’s intention. Interspersed with his humorous tale of trying to (re)learn this difficult instrument, there are chapters detailing the history of the french horn and the composers who wrote for it.

I honestly can’t remember why I put it down. I think an essay might have got in the way. Perhaps I should finish it. Or, even better, take up the cello again, and write a book about my adventures.

Trawling teh interwebz, as I tend to do, I stumbled upon All Lit Up, a newish blog by Jenny and Fliss, about – unsurprisingly – books. I’m already following Jenny’s personal blog, Babblings of a Beligerant Bibliophile, so I don’t know why it took me so long to find this blog. Hey ho.

Anyway, they have a Weekly Wednesday Waffling feature, in which they take their LibraryThing catalogue, a random number generator, and bring the two together in spectacular bloggy style. The premise is simple: choose a random book via said number generator, and talk about it. Have you read it? How did you come by it? Any special anecdotes around it? And so on.

I’ve totally stolen their idea. Because I really like it.

Welcome, then, to Random Monday. And the number that random.org has thrown up is… 182!

1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die by Dr Peter Boxall

That’s the first edition, in case you were wondering. This was a Christmas present from a friend in 2005 (the first Christmas after I moved to Oxford, which is why I remember it). It appeals to my book geekiness and my list geekiness all in one go, which makes it the ideal Kirsty book. Firstly, it’s a great book for discovering things that you might otherwise have missed, especially in the 20th century section. Secondly, it’s deeply satisfying to go through with a pencil and mark off the ones you’ve read, the ones you own but haven’t read yet, and the ones you want to read.

Or is it just me that did that?

Tell me it isn’t just me.

Guys?

Now, there has in fact been another edition since this one, which I think it a little unfair. Presumably, to make way for newer essential books, they’ve had to get rid of a few entries that are in this edition, which rather casts doubt on the categorical statement of the title. Here are 1001 books you must read before you die. Except this one. And maybe that one. Oh, and this one too.

Hmmph. I’m ignoring the second edition in protest. I feel a bit sorry for the excised entries from the first edition.

It seems to me to be the perfect sort of day for curling up in front of the fire with a good book. Go carefully in that snow, everyone.

From 22-28 June, Al Kitching will be taking part in a survival course in Devon to raise money for The Anthony Nolan Trust, a charity which helps provide donors for patients in need of bone marrow transplants. His Just Giving page explains some of what he’ll have to do:

The event will contain fundamental (with the emphasis on the mental) aspects of survival which “will challenge participants from dawn till dusk and beyond” (oh, good). I shall be expected to build a shelter, locate and prepare safe drinking water, light a fire without matches, forage for food, identify edible plants, navigate by sun and stars, use improvised first aid…OK, I’m talking myself out of it now…I’m assured that it’s a “fantastic mental and physical test” which will also give me a “huge sense of personal achievement”. Hmmm.

Rather him than me, I must say. He has also previously donated bone marrow to a little boy in Belgium, who had leukemia, but who, happily, is now healthy and off the ‘at risk’ register.

Anyway, to help raise funds for this admirable endeavour, The Art Field is auctioning two Matisse lithographs, the profits of which will be donated to Al’s sponsorship fund.

More information can be found on Al’s Just Giving page and on The Art Field website. Pleas do take a look. This is an incredibly worthwhile cause; my nephew had to have a bone marrow transplant when he was four, so I know from close family experience how important this is.

Thanks all. Now, I’ll be back to books and feminism any moment now.

This might actually be the strangest thing I’ve ever seen. My office-mate, who is from New York, tells me this is well-known in America, but I’ve never heard of it before.

I kind of love it though. Chaaaaaaaarrrr-leeee…..

Throughout the diary are lots of pictures of original book covers, poems, and quotations from Faber books. This week’s quotation is from Alan Bennett’s collection Untold Stories. I just had to share:

2 January. I am sent a complimentary copy of Waterstone’s Literary Diary which records the birthdays of  various contemporary figures from the world of letters. Here is Dennis Potter on 17 May, Michael Frayn on 8 September, Edna O’Brien on 15 December, and so naturally I turn to my own birthday. May 9 is blank except for the note: ‘The first British self-service laundrette is opened on Queensway, London 1949.’

Apologies for the radio silence people. It’s been a bit of an odd week. Normal service will resume shortly (when I am less like the above kitteh).

Meanwhile, follow me on Twitter.