Some years ago my CFI chapter ran a banned book club. We hit the hits on the standard banned/challenged book lists like Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird and other stuff I hadn't read before/heard of. Made for very interesting discussions over beer. I was one of the only women in it
I was in a dollar store (poundland) and a customer and employee were looking with despair that there were no tweezers in the makeup area, so I guided them to the auto repair department and showed them that there the tweezers were 3 per card
The great thing about 'The Pillow Book' is that there are several diaries that survive from the same period and some of the authors refer to each other. They all have very different personalities and gives a real humanity to such a remote period. My favourite recollection is that Lady Murakami (author of 'Genji') in her diary talks about how she has written a few more pages of her book and hides them under her pillow, but the other ladies in waiting insist on her reading them to them which she does under duress; meanwhile Shonogan in 'The Pillow Book' talks about how that bloody woman keeps making them listen to her reading from her awful book.... One other little point of these Japanese diaries. They were only written by women, because that form was considered not apporpriate for men who should limit themselves to important court histories and documents. However the earliest diary we have, the 'Tosa Diary', was actually written by a man, but because the form was inappropriate he writes it as an observing woman, refering to himself as a character in the diary.
Just to connect the first and last facts, for Taskmaster Josh Widdicombe counted the number of baked beans in a tin, and he counted 406.
Some years ago my CFI chapter ran a banned book club. We hit the hits on the standard banned/challenged book lists like Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird and other stuff I hadn't read before/heard of. Made for very interesting discussions over beer. I was one of the only women in it
I was in a dollar store (poundland) and a customer and employee were looking with despair that there were no tweezers in the makeup area, so I guided them to the auto repair department and showed them that there the tweezers were 3 per card
The great thing about 'The Pillow Book' is that there are several diaries that survive from the same period and some of the authors refer to each other. They all have very different personalities and gives a real humanity to such a remote period.
My favourite recollection is that Lady Murakami (author of 'Genji') in her diary talks about how she has written a few more pages of her book and hides them under her pillow, but the other ladies in waiting insist on her reading them to them which she does under duress; meanwhile Shonogan in 'The Pillow Book' talks about how that bloody woman keeps making them listen to her reading from her awful book....
One other little point of these Japanese diaries. They were only written by women, because that form was considered not apporpriate for men who should limit themselves to important court histories and documents. However the earliest diary we have, the 'Tosa Diary', was actually written by a man, but because the form was inappropriate he writes it as an observing woman, refering to himself as a character in the diary.
I didn't fast forward
*promo sm*