The Book Grocer

By Julie PH Last edited 189 months ago
The Book Grocer
Ulysses.jpg

Happy Bloomsday, friends. If on this, the 104th anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s epic wanderings around Dublin, our column is even less coherent than usual, don’t blame us and our second-rate attempts to mimic the master. On the other hand, maybe you should. Do we contradict ourselves? Very well then, we contradict ourselves. Come, mess.

Bloomsday: Alright, so perhaps you have no idea what we’re babbling on about because (GASP!) you’ve cracked the cover of Ulysses on seven different occasions but never gotten past page 11. Fair enough – your head it simply swirls. To up your cool quotient among the Joycean set, stop over at the Montague Arms tonight for an epic evening of poetry and music in celebration of this finest of fake holidays. (Sorry, did we say cool? We meant geeky – but adorably so!) Come this time next year, you’ll be pumping your fists in the air with each allusion we subtly weave into our literary listings (8.30pm, £5/£3 concessions).

Tuesday: E-mail, texting, blogging – what do all these communication innovations mean for the English language? At the ICA’s Talking in Text, Mark Abley, Jean Aitchison and Simon Biggs will unsheathe their dagger definitions and share with us their insight on the topic. We’re secretly hoping that the night culminates in the circulation of a petition to ban the ubiquitous LOL. Shudder. (7pm, £10 nonmembers/£9 concessions/£8 members)

Also on: Historian Mark Mazower discussing Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe at Daunt Books (7pm, £5); and Alastair Humphreys’ A Cycle Odyssey: Around the World on a Bike at Stanfords, in celebration of National Bicycle Week (7.30pm, £2).

Wednesday: Housmans hosts a screening of The London Nobody Knows (7pm, free). What’s the literary connection here? O, rocks! It’s admittedly rather tenuous. But the film is bound to appeal to London junkies. Also, it’s being shown in a bookshop! (7pm, free)

Also on: Esther Freud, reading and discussing Love Falls at Muswell Hill Bookshop (7.30pm, free).

Thursday: Is homework a nightmare from which you are still trying to awake? Us, too. No need, though, with the second instalment of Homework, It Looks Like Your [sic? please sic?] Writing a Letter, highlighting the techniques of the Oulipo poets and featuring Ross Sutherland, Joe Dunthorne and Tim Clare (8pm, £3).

Friday: Austenites will want to head U.P.: up (or down, or over) to the V&A for Re-telling the Regency, in which Andrew Davies, scriptwriter of the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and actor Dan Stevens discuss the challenges of Regency-era adaptations (7pm, £8/concessions available).

Saturday: Housmans hosts a solstice party to celebrate the lonnnnngest (much like this column) day of the year with drink, music and a psychogeographic stroll led by Laura Oldfield Ford of the Savage Messiah zine (late afternoon until late, free). But wait, you say, wasn’t the solstice yesterday? It’s true, but remember: A (wo)man of genius makes no mistakes.

Sunday: The ICA’s Booker at the Movies series continues with a screening of A Month in the Country (featuring Colin Firth in a fabulous ’stache) followed by a discussion with its adaptor, Simon Gray, along with screenwriter Deborah Moggach and Booker judge John Mullan. Will you enjoy it? Yes I said yes you will Yes.

Know of an event that belongs in the Book Grocer listings? Please e-mail us at londonist-at-gmail-dot-com.

Image courtesy of It’sGreg under the Creative Commons Attribution license

Last Updated 16 June 2008