Pop Culture Postcards: First book- Into a World Unknown

Hello! This entry is long overdue, so my apologies for not blogging sooner. At times I can be a fast reader. I usually average a few books a month. Last year I even managed to read a 432 page book in less than 24 hours. But the first book in the project was a real challenge. If I’m honest it was tougher than doing Tough Mudder!

The first book recommended to me was Dune by Frank Herbert. It is a science fiction book which was written in 1965 and is a whopping 577 pages. Possibly one of the longest books I’ve ever read, and it was a real struggle.

The book is about the planet Arrakis and the struggles in the planet. And that’s pretty much all I can tell you. Every page I read I was still none the wise about what was going on. It made no sense whatsoever. I read in silence, I read with classical music on to help get into a rhythm. Slowly but surely I got familiar with the characters, and by that I started to remember their names. But that’s about it.

There is a film of the book which I’d be interested to see, as it may make the book clearer. The book took months to read and at times I did want to abandon it, but in a way I can see why people like science fiction books, even if I didn’t really understand Dune, as the genre can create fascinating worlds, so it provides pure escapism which is probably needed now more than ever.

Fingers crossed the rest of the books in the project won’t take as long to read.

What's it all about?

This year I decided not to go the cinema. Considering that I love films and have screenwriting as a hobby, everyone apart from my parents thought this was a crazy idea. What I also did which some people didn't think made any sense, was that for every film I wanted to see this year at the cinema that I didn’t, I read an autobiography instead as this meant I was still getting a new narrative to experience.

Towards the end of last year I rediscovered the library and upon entering again after over 10 years or so I was like a kid in a candy shop. I instantly wanted to be the 5 year old me that would sit on the bookshop floor and read books. There was way more choice and variety than I thought there would be. Libraries have come a long way!

I’ve been reading autobiographies throughout the year, the large majority from the library and I think by the end of the year I would’ve read close to 25. One of them I read was called 60 Postcards which was sort of an autobiography about a woman called Rachael Chadwick who sadly lost her mum to cancer 16 days after her diagnosis. To help celebrate her mum Rachael went to Paris and scattered 60 postcards around the city in memory of her mum, and the postcards asked for people to get in touch. I loved the whole idea of this and wondered how I could do something similar?

As a side note I instragramed about how much I loved the book and how it inspired me to do this project. I tagged 60 Postcards in the post and Rachael replied saying to get in touch when my project was up and running. So Rachael if you’re reading this thanks for reading!

Back to the project; I loved doing my 29 challenge (which I did from October 2014 to October 2015.)
If you’re reading this you’re probably a family member or friend, but if you’re not I’ll quickly say what happened. I realised when turning 29 that the following year I’d turn the big 3-0. Ahhhh!!! And so I thought of a challenge to do as much as I could over my 29th year; I called it the 29 Challenge and it took over my life. I had over 300 things to do spread over 11 categories. It was a lot to do but I completed the challenge the night before my 30th birthday.

The two parts of the challenge I particularly enjoyed were reading 29 new books and listening to 29 new albums. Many of these were recommendations from friends and family and I felt as a result I knew a bit of their personality a little bit better. So I thought I’d use those two elements for my own project.

Over the summer I have been writing endless postcards saying the same thing; asking whoever finds a postcard to recommend an album for me to listen to and a book to read. It’s that simple and then from my birthday (which was on the 11^th October) for a year I’ll work through the recommendations. I’ve set up an email address for people to write to with these and I’ve called this whole project: Pop Culture Postcards.

With some helpful friends and family we’ve been scattering postcards all over the world in a variety of places; coffee shops, trains, art galleries, with the main rule being not to give it to an individual, as it’s all about who finds them.

                                                       One of the places I scattered postcards

Even though my birthday has been and gone, I’m still writing postcards as the more recommendations the better. I chose not to scatter them in Hertfordshire where I live, but if anyone wants to scatter them anywhere else then let me know. And once a month I’ll be blogging about what I’ve read and listened to.

I’m really excited about working through these recommendations and if you want to work through these as well, please feel free. It would be great to hear what you think.

So here’s to a year of a broadened mind, and as preview to the next blog post the first stop on this Pop Culture Postcards journey involves a train station and shorthand.

See you in November!