12.06.08
Posted in Arts & Culture, Books, Career, Life, Media & Internet, Theatre, Writing at 10.47 pm by Caitlin
Gentle readers, I need your advice.
The biggest lesson I need to learn in life is that I can do anything I want but I can’t necessarily do everything I want. I have to choose and focus. That’s hard.
Actually, maybe I can do everything I want – just not all at once. Rose Kennedy apparently once said: “You can have it all, my dear, but you can not have it all at once. Life is a journey with many different adventures and each part of it is special. Sometimes you will have to focus on the task at hand.”
It still comes down to the same thing. I need to choose what to focus on right now.
I am doing a lot of things in my life, all of which I enjoy. Yet there is an opportunity cost with anything I choose to do and right now I don’t feel that I’m concentrating on the really important things.
Here are some of the things I’m doing right now:
- Working as a freelance journalist – balancing making a living, pitching for new and interesting work and trying to figure out how my strategy to survive and thrive in a changing industry.
- General life stuff, including trying to keep fit and healthy.
- Organising our wedding in April next year.
Once of my most important goals is to finish writing my novel. To be honest, I’m not really making great progress on this goal.
I’m wondering if there is anything I should give up in order to make the time for this. I’m loath to give up the theatre given that I really love doing it and also aspire to write plays in the future – though maybe trying to do the novel writing and acting at the same time is too much. The British Museum doesn’t take up much of my time and I’ve already cut back so I’m comfortable with that. I obviously can’t give up life, or wedding organisation, or work, even if I wanted to.
The area where I feel I can cut back is social media. As I mentioned, I have three main blogs, plus also the occasional dated update on my professional site or True Wild Catches and Century of Books. All of this takes time and it’s not just a matter of writing my own posts and forgetting about them – the fun comes in being part of a blogging community, interacting with other bloggers, micro-blogging on Twitter (where I am undoubtedly spending too much time), using tools like StumbleUpon and Digg.
All this stuff is a lot of fun but it takes up a lot of time. I find it very hard to do social media in moderation – it’s the kind of thing where you have to jump in feet first, and as my frequent Twitter updates show, it’s very addictive! And really, with my industry (media) changing so quickly and so profoundly, it’s essential that I keep abreast of it. If anything, I should be doing more, not less – it would be valuable for me to try podcasting and online video production, for example.
The problem with blogging, as novelist A.L. Kennedy points out, is that there’s no definable end. You can never say a blog is done and there’s always more you can do for it, whether in writing, site design or promotion. I’m beginning to feel that part of the answer for me might be to reduce my blogs. It’s very hard to put a blog to death though so the question would be how – should I consolidate everything under my real name or on this blog? Or should I merge my food and travel blogs in some way? Or just stop writing one of them?
The other thing I really like the idea of is the Secular Sabbath – one day a week where you don’t use the computer or a mobile phone. I find this really appealing – I love the internet but the truth is, my brain is sometimes filled with digital detritus. I don’t know if there’s been any research but I do wonder whether too much time online is just as stifling to creativity and deadening as watching too much television.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to best use my time? If you agree with my diagnosis, how should I rationalise my blogs?
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11.28.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 8.46 am by Caitlin
BookCrossing book is discovered and journalled after three years. Hurray!.
I released this on 19 December 2005 in the little stone play cottage in Birchgrove Oval in Sydney.
Three years later, an anonymous finder has picked it up and left this message:
Journal entry 8 by Members Plus details…AnonymousFinderMembers Plus details… from n/a, n/a n/a on Thursday, November 27, 2008
Found discarded in a local bin.
CAUGHT IN SYDNEY NSW AUSTRALIA
Read all journal entries on this book.
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11.19.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Books, Environment, Family & Friends, London, Media & Internet, Theatre, Travel at 3.16 pm by Caitlin
I’m feeling very excited because I’m off to see Monkey at the O2 tonight. I saw it at the Royal Opera House earlier this year and it was so good I’m going to see it again, this time with a group of friends in tow. I can’t wait!
I’ll write more about Monkey after the event. In the mean time, I have two blog posts to share with you today. Firstly, over on Roaming Tales, I’ve done some follow-up to the Travel Blog Camp in London last week. Secondly, I have a post up about how to combine being green with a love of books at EcoSalon. Enjoy!
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11.02.08
Posted in Books at 7.00 am by Caitlin
Published 1918, My Ántonia is considered one of the greats of American literature. It’s about pioneer families in Nebraska in the 19th century and in particular tells of the immigrant experience. The tale is narrated by Jim Burden, who moves west from Virginia to live with his grandparents after his parents die, but the focal character is Ántonia who moves with her family to Nebraska from Bohemia as a young girl.
I was surprised by the similarities between the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and My Ántonia. It’s true that both are set in the American Mid West in the 19th century but the Ingalls Wilder books are written for children so I was not expecting too many parallels. However, the landscape described in Cather’s book, with the flat land and waving red grasses and dug-out houses, was very familiar to me from reading Little House in the Prairie as a child. The description of Black Hawk, the small town where Burden goes to school and Ántonia works as a hired girl, reminds me of the town where Laura and her family move for her high school years in the sequel Little Town on the Prairie. However, I don’t remember the immigrant theme being particularly developed in the Ingalls Wilder books and this was central to My Ántonia.
It was really interesting to have the book peopled with Bohemians and Russians and Norwegians and to show the differences and commonalities with everyone else. For example, the importance the Bohemian family attaches to finding a Catholic priest to say masses for their father’s soul, rather than buying a new coat for the youngest girl to wear in winter. Or how the oldest children don’t get the chance to go to school because they have to work and help support the family, but the younger ones do. We see all of this through the narrator’s eyes and he is a great champion for the immigrants – passionate about how full of life and vigour the immigrant girls were compared with everyone else.
The structure of the novel is quite interesting – the story is told in episodes from various stages of the narrator’s life. Although it’s more or less chronological, in some ways it feels more like a portrait than a novel. I mean that in a good way – I found it very easy to read with wonderful language but the lasting impression at the end is a snapshot of particular people at a particular place over a number of years in a particular period in time rather than one character’s story.
This makes 41 down, 59 to go in my challenge to read the top 100 books of the 20th century. All previous entries are on this site, and also on a dedicated site Century of Books.
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08.26.08
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 8.59 am by Caitlin
I released this through BookCrossing at the Oxfam shop in West Hampstead on February 16, 2008. It was picked up by an anonymous finder who wrote this message:
Journal entry 3 by Anonymous Finder from n/a, n/a n/a on Monday, August 25, 2008
brilliant, what a good book. I didn`t want it to end but I still read it in about a week and a half (even though I had many things to do and am not the fastest reader). I recommend it to anyone who likes philosophy or has ever thought about society in a critical way, its complex and very relevant as well as being a beautifully written story full of human character and set in a deeply and thouroughly imagined futuristic world that is so reminiscient of ours and speaks of deep human meanings and purposes.
Beautiful, profound, easy to read, exciting… I don:t know what more to say except that I think its the first book that almost made me cry at the end not because it was sad or full of loss but because it felt so deep and meaningful…
CAUGHT IN LONDON UNITED KINGDOM
book rating: 10 out of 10
Read all journal entries on this book.
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01.25.08
Posted in Arts & Culture, BookCrossing, Books at 1.44 pm by Caitlin
Since I have just spent two or so weeks in Brooklyn, it is fitting that when I arrived home to London a copy of Betty Smith’s classic novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was waiting on my doorstep. It was a BookCrossing copy, and had come to me from the US via Canada and the UK and will be winging its way to Portugal next.
This is the tale of the Francie Nolan and her family, growing up poor in early 20th century Brooklyn. It’s a portrait of the poor people of Brooklyn and of Francie herself, an intelligent, imaginative child. The dogged determination of the tree growing up towards the sunlight, no matter what the obstacles, is a poignant metaphor for Francie’s coming of age. The writing has a deft but light touch and interesting in the way that it does not progress in a strictly linear fashion.
It reminded me a fair bit of Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South, which is set in the slums of inner-city Sydney during the Great Depression. It’s also about a poor Irish immigrant family in the new world and the challenges and prejudices they face, although it’s set about 20-30 years later than A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and in a different city, on a different continent.
The setting is Brooklyn, mostly Williamsburg and a bit of Greenpoint in north Brooklyn. This area is now very trendy, populated with young urban hipsters and also a large Hasidic Jew population. I spent a little time there and this was where the fabulous Queen’s Hideaway restaurant is. However, I stayed mostly in south Brooklyn, around the Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens area.
This is part of my challenge to read the top 100 books of the 20th century. All previous entries are on this site, and also on a dedicated site Century of Books. I’ve read 15 from the list since I started and I’m now at 40, with 60 to go.
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01.01.08
Posted in Books at 1.00 am by Caitlin
Top five books of the year (excluding re-reads)
1. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (memoir about being the New York Times food critic)
2. Small Island by Andrea Levy (novel about the West Indian immigrant experience in post-war Britain)
3. East of Eden by John Steinbeck (American classic)
4. 1688 by John E. Wills (history of the world in 1688)
5. Toast by Nigel Slater (childhood memoir by leading British cookery writer)
Books read for Century of Books project to read the top 100 books of the 20th century
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Animal Farm by George Orwell (reread)
Books read for the Five books, Five countries, Five continents challenge
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón SPAIN
The Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee SOUTH AFRICA
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys DOMINICA
The Outsider by Albert Camus ALGERIA
Cook Island Legends COOK ISLANDS
The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi NIGERIA
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka GERMANY
Rachel’s Song by Miguel Barnet CUBA
Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez COLOMBIA
Books by men: 28
Books by women: 20
Fiction books: 37
Non-fiction books: 11
Books by UK authors: 17
Books by US authors: 14
Books by Australian authors: 2 (both by Peter Carey)
Books by authors from other countries: 16
(Adds up to 49 because one book was by two authors, one from the US and one from Romania)
The full list for 2007 (in reverse order, starting with the most recent)
48) The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan USA
47) The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society by Christine Coleman UK
46) Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life by Roald Dahl UK
45) Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe NIGERIA
44) Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez COLOMBIA
43) Toast by Nigel Slater UK
42) Dance, Dance, Dance by Haruki Marukami JAPAN
41) Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake UK
40) In the Most Beautiful Life by Virginia Joffe & Carmen Firan USA/ROMANIA
39) Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin USA
38) Illywhacker by Peter Carey AUSTRALIA
37) Scoop by Evelyn Waugh UK
36) Lessons to Learn by Natasha Judd NEW ZEALAND
35) Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Food Critic by Ruth Reichl USA
34) A Certain Age by Rebbecca Ray UK
33) Rachel’s Song by Miguel Barnet CUBA
32) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling UK
31) A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka GERMANY/UKRAINE
30) Wrong About Japan by Peter Carey AUSTRALIA
29) The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi NIGERIA
28) Cook Islands Legends by Jon Jonassen COOK ISLANDS
27) The Outsider by Albert Camus ALGERIA
26) On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan UK
25) East of Eden by John Steinbeck USA
24) A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby UK
23) Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine UK
22) The Zahir by Paulo Coehlo BRAZIL
21) The Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula Le Guin USA
20) Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys DOMINICA
19) Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap US/THAILAND
18) White Teeth by Zadie Smith UK
17) Ptolemy’s Gate by Jonathan Stroud UK
16) The Golem’s Eye by Jonathan Stroud UK
15) The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin USA
14) The Life and Times of Michael K by J. M. Coetzee SOUTH AFRICA / AUSTRALIA
13) Small Island by Andrea Levy UK
12) How to Get Things Done by David Allen USA
11) Caitlin: Loving by Joanna Campbell (from Francine Pascal) USA
10) The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje SRI LANKA/UK/CANADA
9) Linda McCartney’s Sixties: Portraits of an Era USA/UK
The Fresco by Sheri S. Tepper USA
7) Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson UK
6) How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy by Orson Scott Card USA
5) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón SPAIN
4) Teach Yourself Creative Writing by Dianne Doubtfire UK
3) 1688 by John E. Wills USA
2) Schaum’s Quick Guide to Writing Great Short Stories by Margaret Lucke USA
1) Animal Farm by George Orwell UK
See 2006 in books.
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12.01.07
Posted in Books at 1.22 pm by Caitlin
Things Fall Apart is about the loss of identity and sense of self of the tribal people of what is modern day Nigeria during the colonisation by England in the 19th century.
It is told through the experience of one man and his own loss of identity and sense of self as he grapples with the changing world around him. He was once a proud and strong – and often cruel – leader of men but now everything that was once certain is changing.
It’s a slim book; very short and very easy to read. It provides a fascinating insight into the culture of the Nigerian tribes (it reminded me in many ways of the Highland tribes of Papua New Guinea) and it is also a moving emotional journey.
It was interesting to read the foreword about how Achebe wrote the book longhand over a period of three years and then sent the completed manuscript to a typing firm in England, where it went missing. It was only through the intervention of a friend who went to England, tracked down the manuscript, ensured that it was typed and then sent it to a publisher, that the book ever came to light.
39 down, 61 to go…
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07.29.07
Posted in Books at 2.29 pm by Caitlin
I released this at Offshore Cafe in Glasgow, where I am currently visiting family. It was picked up by another BookCrosser who left this journal entry:
Journal entry 14 by MikeWoods from Glasgow, Glasgow City United Kingdom on Sunday, July 29, 2007
I’ve just found this book whilst leaving another bookcrossing book in Offshore cafe. Lucky me or what ?
book rating: not yet read
Read all journal entries here.
See all my wild catches here.
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07.07.07
Posted in BookCrossing, Books at 6.52 pm by Caitlin
I released this on the mass releasing walk at the 2007 BookCrossing Unconvention in Brighton on Sunday 1 July 2007. I left it under the stone archways at the entrance to the Brighton Royal Pavilion. It was picked up by a member of the public, who joined and left this journal entry a few days later.
Journal entry 5 by charliebean from london, Greater London United Kingdom on Wednesday, July 04, 2007
i didnt like the illustrations at all.
but its funny because ive learnt french this year, so i understamd all the text, but i was a bit disappointed by the story.
CAUGHT IN BRIGHTON SUSSEX UK – ANGLETERRE
book rating: 3/10
Read all journal entries here.
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