If you had asked me a week ago what one thing I would most want if I was about to live through the collapse of Western civilisation, my answer would almost certainly have been “Ray Mears”. As a life-long urban dweller who has only once been camping, my only means of survival should we lose all the comfy trapping of civilisation that most of us have come to depend on for food, warmth and safety is a battered old Swiss army knife dating from the days I went on archaeological digs; a pair of hiking boots (ditto); a torch, and a husband who was once a boy scout. Thinking about it now, it seems quite a trivial haul to last until rescue comes (you will be on your own for 3-5 days is case of a major disaster according this book, if help comes at all). In an emergency, people apparently respond in one of three ways, known as to 10-80-10 rule: 10% would be utterly useless and a potential liability to their fellow survivors, 80% would be too shocked to think or act rationally, and 10% would remain calm and become the leaders of the group. A sneaking suspicion that I would definitely fall into the second group if not the first suggested that it would be no bad thing to read Neil Strauss’ “Emergency”; it may not make me into a Ray Mears, but I might just pick up something useful from it.

Neil Strauss

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Having read and been so impressed by several of Margaret Atwoods works of fiction, I imagined that a book written by her about the art or activity of writing would prove to be an interesting read. As explained in the introduction and prologue to the book, the chapters here are based on the Empson Lectures given by the writer at the University of Cambridge in the year 2000.

Chapter 1, entitled Who do you think you are? is mainly autobiographical, tracing Atwood’s early years from her birth in Ottawa in 1939 up until her undergraduate student days at Victoria College, the University of Toronto.

Margaret Atwood

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Tama Janowitz is a favourite of mine and I love her fiction, the titles in particular – “The Male Cross-dresser Support Group” and “A Cannibal in Manhattan” are just two of her greats. So even though I don’t really like books of essays, the strength of the Janowitz ‘brand’ was enough to draw me to this book. It was an opportunity to get to know a bit more about the woman behind the name.

‘Area Code 212?’ I hear you ask ‘what’s that about?’ I really couldn’t tell you how I know that, I just do, that 212 is the New York telephone area code and appropriately enough, this book is both a collection of essays on living in New York. It’s a bizarre and sometimes irreverent homage to one of the world’s most famous cities.

212, New York, Tama Janowitz

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The Complete Prose of Woody Allen is a bumper collection of comic fiction and essays and consists of the three Woody Allen books of humorous prose – Getting Even (1971), Without Feathers (1975), and Side Effects (1980). There are over fifty pieces of comic writing here which makes the book both great value for money (my paperback copy is 473 pages long) and a handy companion to dip into on a train or when you are stuck for something to read. The book is a good example of Allen’s versatility and comic flair and the pieces, mostly written for The New Yorker originally, are very much in the spirit of SJ Perelman and Groucho Marx, absurdist but with a cerebral comic twist courtesy of Allen and plenty of references to history and classic literature.

comic, Essays, Woody Allen

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