I'm no Ghandi, I certainly haven't travelled to India, Indonesia and Italy (well Italy yes but only for the cultural experiences, not gelati scoffing, wine guzzling and perving, honest) so I can't write about becoming enlightened, nor can I write about helping to change the world through world peace or joining an action group in Africa to build housing for starving children. I've never climbed a mountain higher than my driveway, cycled through Antarctica or somewhere cold and I've certainly never shaved my head for a cure or done anything outrageous apart from a select couple of tattoos and piercings in discreet and hidden places.
No the one thing I can write about, the topic I do know a lot about is men and specifically relationships. Not the secrets to them, but the misfortunes and most importantly the laugh out loud cringe moments when you realise what you never thought would ever happen, is happening and its happening to you.
Boys. Men. Sex. Love. It’s the perennial topic, I know it’s been done to death but I've always found it them to be the topics everyone wants to talk about. When you've had a few wines, you don't want to talk about that guy who cured cancer (which should definitely be applauded) instead you want to talk about the guy who you shagged recently who has a nose picking problem. Fact.
Just recently I was watching a documentary where an international counsellor was talking how she was responsible for assessing the mental health of female refugees who'd escaped an African nation awash with civil war. These women had experienced rape, murder and all kinds of atrocities first hand. Naturally when she went to speak with them individually she was prepared for tales that would make most shake in their boots. Instead, the one thing most of the girls wanted to talk about was love or guys they had met in a refugee camp and how their lives were torn upside down by it.
Even in the midst of all that grief and despair, there is a very human part of us that just seems to come back to one thing: boy + girl.
Many have a complete disregard for so called 'chick lit' books, fluff and nonsense, but at the end of the day I'd rather read about a girl who I can relate to rather than a girl who lives a dream life or achieves some far flung global peace prize act. Everyone has the obligatory books on their book shelves that make them look smart and educated. The ones which are cultural and speak volumes about the owner as being one of those 'creative types'.
But what about the books you always reach for? For me, the books that always have stayed with me and are the ones I go to recommend to others or re-read are those who have made me laugh out loud or cry with laughter. Just thinking about some chapters in Danny Wallace's Yes Man or Jessica Adam's Single White Email make me start to smirk and smother a giggle. And if I'm completely honest, while they didn't change my life in any profound way, they certainly made me smile and laugh and for that I'm grateful.
So as I use this blog to procrastinate about the book I'm trying to write, why I'm writing it and how it will be written I hope for three things really;
A) to finish it
B) for at least one person to read it
And C) for it to make someone laugh.
If I can do all that, then and only then will I consider it an accomplishment:)
x
J
Ps. attached are a few pics of books I've come across in the local book exchange. Classic country western books that are traded like comics by fully grown men. Awesome.
It is also home to rows and rows of corset ripping mills and boons. It seems mills and boons are doing a roaring trade in gympie :P I've never actually read one so perhaps my next challenge should be to read one and see once and for all what all the fuss is about.. til next time ....
rows and rows of mills and boons..
country and western comic anyone?
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