Friday, July 15, 2011

Boz-ian Friday Random Ten

Reading Barnaby Rudge now. In fact I was reading it in a coffee shop tonight, and that broke the ice with a barista who's a Dickens fan. Now the barista is male, I'm not gay, and I don't think he is either, so you may have to adjust your icebreaking expectations down a little, depending on where they were. But positive social interaction is never a bad thing.

The book's 22nd chapter contains a robbery that also stands as a vivid scene of barely-averted rape. It's very effective, and Victorian English novelists were working under more content restrictions that French writers of the same period. But you knew that.


1. Grizzly Bear--Central and Remote
2. Devo--Mongoloid
3. Nancy Wilson--The Nearness of You
4. Roxy Music--Out of the Blue
5. Yo La Tengo--Nothing to Hide
6. The Dresden Dolls--Good Day
7. Talking Heads--I'm Not in Love
8. They Might Be Giants--(She Was a) Hotel Detective
9. Soul Coughing--Collapse
10. Patsy Cline--Strange

3 comments:

susan said...

Someone here, not me, just finished re-reading The Old Curiosity Shop. Dickens was a very remarkable writer for any time and the book I have on my Amazon list is this one. What he managed to pull off is almost unimaginable.

It's always good to find someone with common interests.

Yet another interesting 10. I can imagine the way most of them would lead into the next. Who needs dj's now?

Ben said...

Oh, there are plenty of good DJs. What there aren't that many of are radio stations with decent formats, which is a shame.

Which book were you referring to? The link didn't quite work out.

susan said...

Sorry about that. You could google:

Charles Dickens by Michael Slater - Guardian Review