All this, plus common British trees
Dec. 14th, 2006 11:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyI had a most fascinating book as a child. It was about the height and width of a paperback novel, but with hard covers and about 800 pages. The cover design had pastel stripes of blue and pink and yellow, topped with line drawings of a boy and a girl. The boy was wearing a shoulder-padded sailor-stripe t-shirt and baggy pants and the girl was wearing a shoulder-padded long-line tartan jacket and a bubble skirt: the very best of eighties fashion. Within the covers, however, was a compendium of all sorts of timeless information: lists of longest rivers, largest countries, states of the United States, Nobel Prize winners, Academy Award winners, fictional detectives and who wrote them, and so on. It was, in other words, a child's miscellany, and a very good one. It disappeared when we moved house, and I've always regretted that. It was such a comforting book.
There's something of a publishing mania for books of miscellanea just now. I've leafed through them - I even own a couple - but they never seem to recapture the exuberance of the one I lost. They seem to treat the information within as trivial, rather than as something that's absolutely vital to know.
Anyway, yesterday I was poking around in a bookshop during my lunch break, as is my wont, when my attention was drawn to a "great gift ideas for Christmas" display. Am I the last person in the world to encounter The Dangerous Book for Boys by Con & Hal Iggulden? Why did no-one tell me about it? It's - and there's no other word for it - ace. Obviously, I'm not, nor have ever been, a boy, but I would have loved this as a child. In fact, I love it as an adult. It's so earnestly old-fashioned and utterly delightful. It doesn't have as many lists as my old book - no Nobel Prizes or Academy Awards here - but it's full of all sorts of stuff that boys (well, everyone, really) should know: history dressed up as ripping yarns, some basic Shakespeare, how to tie knots and what to do with them, and how to make a periscope. It's a beautiful looking book too, and it's hilarious: it's very good at conveying that it's a matter of life or death whether you know these things.
For example:
From the "Essential Kit" list:
6. Needle and thread: Again, there are a number of useful things you can do with these, from sewing up a wound on an unconscious dog to repairing a torn shirt...
From the "Advice about girls" list:
7. If you see a girl in need of help - unable to lift something, for example - do not taunt her. Approach her and greet her with a cheerful smile, whilst surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can't, try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation.
Anyway, if you don't have a boy of any age to buy presents for this Christmas, buy it for yourself. It's that good.
There's something of a publishing mania for books of miscellanea just now. I've leafed through them - I even own a couple - but they never seem to recapture the exuberance of the one I lost. They seem to treat the information within as trivial, rather than as something that's absolutely vital to know.
Anyway, yesterday I was poking around in a bookshop during my lunch break, as is my wont, when my attention was drawn to a "great gift ideas for Christmas" display. Am I the last person in the world to encounter The Dangerous Book for Boys by Con & Hal Iggulden? Why did no-one tell me about it? It's - and there's no other word for it - ace. Obviously, I'm not, nor have ever been, a boy, but I would have loved this as a child. In fact, I love it as an adult. It's so earnestly old-fashioned and utterly delightful. It doesn't have as many lists as my old book - no Nobel Prizes or Academy Awards here - but it's full of all sorts of stuff that boys (well, everyone, really) should know: history dressed up as ripping yarns, some basic Shakespeare, how to tie knots and what to do with them, and how to make a periscope. It's a beautiful looking book too, and it's hilarious: it's very good at conveying that it's a matter of life or death whether you know these things.
For example:
From the "Essential Kit" list:
6. Needle and thread: Again, there are a number of useful things you can do with these, from sewing up a wound on an unconscious dog to repairing a torn shirt...
From the "Advice about girls" list:
7. If you see a girl in need of help - unable to lift something, for example - do not taunt her. Approach her and greet her with a cheerful smile, whilst surreptitiously testing the weight of the object. If you find you can lift it, go ahead. If you can't, try sitting on it and engaging her in conversation.
Anyway, if you don't have a boy of any age to buy presents for this Christmas, buy it for yourself. It's that good.
