***STOP PRESS*** This bookring has been split into 3!
This is Ring 2. If you can't see your name here, you're either in Ring 1 or Ring 3.
Any problems please PM me.

Ring 2
Welcome to my Bookring: Watching the English - Kate Fox
Member / Location (Ring posted 20 June 2005)
1. Lady-Mondegreen / UK
2. tehuti / UK
3. yowlyy / UK
4. Psychjo wants to be skipped **
5. rahar109 / UK
6. Lutrus / UK
7. Gothmarcus / UK
8. aubriel / UK
10. katie1980 / UK
11. purplerosebud / UK
12. LyzzyBee / UK
13. coolboxuk / UK (near to end)
14 Cross-patch / UK 17. Sending to a bookcrosser as a RABCK! <-- Book is Here!

posted to Lady-Mondegreen 20 June 2005 B Post

It has arrived! Thanks for setting this up. Ooh first in the list! Thanks for the Nice Cup of Tea!

It was good fun to read some of Kate Fox’s amusing observations and insights arrived at after apparently spending a lot of time in pubs or queues in her role as a social anthropologist (aka a nosey parker with a university degree). I think she paints a fairly accurate portrait and I certainly recognised a lot of the key traits and behaviour patterns she describes that apparently sum up the ‘English’. I am not sure I agree they are all uniquely English. Some of the scenes she describes could be viewed from behind the sofa whilst squirming with embarrassed recognition, whilst others are quite endearing and I would be proud to own up to! These are generalisations of course and I have decided that the quirks and idiosyncrasies that I don’t recognise as my own can be put down to my being half Welsh. I must admit that I whilst I found this book mostly entertaining, there was an element of repetitiveness that began to irritate me about half way through and I also could not quite shake off the feeling that I was reading someone’s coursework! The book has been compared to Bill Bryson’s 'Notes from a Small Island' and Jeremy Paxman’s 'The English' (which are both quoted from by Ms Fox fairly extensively in this book) but I don’t think comparisons are can be made as these are quite “different horses for different courses”.

I will be posting this off to Tehuti either tomorrow or Saturday.

Safely received. I'm going to have to read this alongside some other ring books (yes, bookring nemesis has struck again!!!) but will try to be as fast as I possibly can.

This was an amusing and illuminating read. I was interested to see how much would apply, because I grew up in a Polish emigre family in a London suburb with a large Polish community. Of course, it is difficult to evaluate oneself totally objectively, but my conclusion is that perhaps I am less prone than the true English to some of the inhibitions that are discussed, although I am probably as socially dysfuctional as the best of them LOL! The class indicators were highly revealing, and I probably score about 95% or more on the indicators relating to the class into which I would place myself. I am also pleased to see that the remaining 5% show me to have no or very little class anxiety :) Interestingly, I think that my parents were less consistent with respect to class indicators, but had a higher level of inhibition than I do.
I hope to drop this in to Yowlyy very soon.

Received a few hours ago from tehuti directly at the Nottingham meetup. It is the fourth ring in my home right now, so it will take a few weeks until it can continue its travel. Thanks for starting this ring!

Hmmm...where to start? This book is absolutely funny, I was hooked after having read merely 25 pages, and couldn't put it down, so that I finished it within two days - and considering that I was also doing some work in between, it's quite an achievement for this book in small print!

I have lived in the UK for 6 years, and I recognised the majority of the characteristics that make the English what they are - a very peculiar folk indeed :) However, I have to say that living among the English left a mark on me, and I have noticed that at least one of their ways is now part of me too

I enjoyed the book as a whole, but surely my favourite passages were those on the grooming-talk, home rules, dress codes, food rules and rules of sex: at all of them, I had to suppress my laughter as I was reading the book mainly in public (on a plane, then train, then buses and underground)! As for the rules of the road, during my last visit in Italy I had the opportunity to observe a few "loud" exchanges of opinion between motorists , and a very entertaining show it was indeed - such a thing, not a chance to see it happening on UK roads...not if there were English involved anyway!

I am not so sure whether the class issue is still very deeply felt in the English - but there must be surely people that have inspired the creation of the series "Keeping up Appearances", right?
One puzzling thing: I've never heard in a pub the "one for yourself?" invitation to the bar staff. Is it really so common? Surely enough, my first visit in this country would have been full of "accidents" if I hadn't had the luck of getting a local guide :)

I enjoyed this book so much that I bought two copies...one will travel to a friend in Germany, who travels to the UK quite a bit, and the other will be for my private collection.
As for this copy, it's ready to travel to Psychjo as soon as I get her address confirmed. Thanks a lot to nice-cup-of-tea for sharing this one (in triplicate!).

Smileys courtesy of © Camilla Eriksson

Posting tomorrow to rahar109, as PsychJo has too much to read right now and will catch up with the book later before the end of the ring :)

received in the post this morning, thank you!
as it's a busy time of year, i think it's unlikely that i'll manage to read this before christmas. hope no-one minds!

I enjoyed this book, although like a previous reader, I found it rather repetitive.
Having a Swiss mother I wondered how "English" I was, but I found myself laughing out loud or cringing as I read certain behaviours that I recognised in myself.
I particularly enjoyed her description Of the English response to any disaster, no matter how great or small - put the kettle on! That I identify with - it's exactly what I do myself!

Posted to Lutrus today.

Arrived today from rahar109 with G&B travelling companion. I will read this next.

Scarily accurate, it describes and explains an awful lot about what the English do in just about every conceivable circumstance. At times its hard to read because it makes you squirm, at others you laugh out loud because its you to a "t". Fascinating and difficult to put down for any length of time.

Posting to Gothmarcus

Arrived with me, and arrived with chocolate! Thanks Tamsyn :)

This is one of the best books I've read in a while. Kate Fox has definitely done her research into the subject of why the English are like they are, and the result is this entertaining, funny and at time cringe-making volume.

I especially like how she reaches the conclusion fairly regularly that not much separates the working classes from the upper classes, with the middle classes stuck there, living in a different world at times, trying to distance themselves from the people they think are below them and move closer to those who are supposed to be superior to them.

Some of the other things she writes that I particularly struck a chord with me included the differences between front and back gardens - front gardens are our public view and how we present ourselves, through our home, to the world, back gardens we can leave to nature if we so desire. However, as we're English and don't like interacting with people, we never sit in our front gardens, in case others decided that we can be talked to.

- I'd never noticed the difference between American soaps and British soaps. US series are all glitzy, glamourous with attractive people living ideal lives. Our soaps follow the day-to-day lives of ordinary people in inner-city places like Weatherfield and Walford.

- The pecking order of who we care about was highlighted by the fact that the RSPCA was formed 60 years before the NSPCC!

- Our rules of the underdog (for example, at Wimbledon): "You must always support the underdog, but too much support for the underdog can be unfair on the overdog, who then sort of becomes an honorary underdog, whom you must support until balance is restored, or until the real underdog is clearly going to lose, at which point you must support the real underdog again."

- I learnt the correct time to buy a round of drinks. Apparently, it's when the majority of the glasses are around three-quarters empty, ensuring that the flow of alcohol is continuous.

- She writes about how the outpouring of grief after the deaths of Princess Diana and the Queen Mum weren't, as commentators said, un-English. Most of the things people did involved queuing (an English national sport)... queuing to buy flowers, queuing to sign condolence books, queuing to walk past the body. Nothing new there for the English!

At times it reads a bit like a greatly-expanded Peter Kay routine (where he does reminiscing and people-watching) and she acknowledges that her kind of anthropology is quite similar to stand-up comedy. It was also nice to see that she'd gone plenty of research amongst goths, who are awfully middle-class you know?!

Updated 20 April: On its way to aubriel

Updated 25 April: I forgot to carry on the chain of sending with chocolate, sorry *hangs head in shame* I shall drop a pound in the next charity box I see and hope that's considered suitable recompense.

Arrived safely this morning - many thanks :-)

It didn't take long for me to be sucked in by this book, it is very readable and great fun. A lot of it made sense, though I don't have enough experience with other things to know - like pubs and catching the bus/train to work.

Kangaroo has already read this book and asked to be skipped and so the book was posted off to Katie 1980 today.

Hi Helen :o) *waving*
Well, your book has made it to the South Coast, and I'm looking forward to reading it. I've currently got 2 books to read before it, but hopefully they won't take too long to get through and I'll get to this one quickly. It's actually good timing, because I've just finished listening to "Talk to the Hand", and the author references this book a few times throughout the text. So I'm even more interested than I was in the first place, which was difficult to do! *lol*

As I said, I'll get to this as soon as I can. Thanks for passing it on, aubriel, and thanks for sharing it with us, nice-cup-of-tea!

EDIT 18 July: I'm really enjoying this book, but it's taking a bit longer to read it than I'd thought. Apologies for the delay - I am reading it, and will get it moving again as soon as I can!

Well, I have finally finished it! I read loads of it last night, and made a concerted effort to get through what was left so that I could pass it on with no further delays.
I'm sorry it's taken me quite so long to read the book - usually I'm such a fast reader. But this time I've managed to stack up two more rings while reading this one, so I hope they don't take so long to read or I'll be in trouble ;o)

Anyways, I enjoyed the book, and I found a lot of it fascinating. Some aspects of "Englishness" I could definitely see in what I am like, but in others I feel I'm a bit eccentric - like sometimes talking to random strangers for no real reason! I love the privacy aspects, and can definitely see those in what people are like in England. I also like the "negative politeness" concept of not interacting in order to respect peoples need for privacy. I'd never really looked at it in that way, but then I'm not an anthropologist!

Thanks again for sharing this, Helen, and you can now breathe again, knowing that the book is on its way to the next reader, finally! {{hugs}}

RELEASE NOTES:

As I've had the envelpoe with postage ready for this book since the weekend after I received it, I was able to pop this into the postal system via work this morning. Hopefully it won't take too long to reach its destination, and will be enjoyed by those left in the ring as much as it seems to have been by those of us who have read it so far.

Received today via Purplerosebud who has asked to be skipped. Argh! A surprise bookring! Well I am working my way through a hefty one at the moment, so I won't be able to start this for a week to 10 days - hope that's OK!

Ooh wasn't this great! I galloped and gulped my way through it (it was my home, as opposed to bus-and-lunch read and I couldn't wait to get home to it!) and so enjoyed it. So many reading-out-of-bits and laughs, and smiles of recognition. At last I know why I kept moaning about why it took such a SHORT time to buy our house... and I seem to be in all the classes at the same time, how did I manage that! I thought it was fair and very well researched, I loved the personal bits she put in (interestingly, as I decried the personal bits and informal talk in two literary biographies I've read recently) and was so pleased it was a good, solid, meaty book, written by a "proper" social anthropologist. I've actually read the Mikes book quite recently, and I think I'll look out for the Paxman now, too.

All in all an excellent, thought provoking read that got me out of my slight reading-dyspepsia (too much indigestible stuff I had to force myself to get through recently) and worth the wait!

Ooh wasn't this great! I galloped and gulped my way through it (it was my home, as opposed to bus-and-lunch read and I couldn't wait to get home to it!) and so enjoyed it. So many reading-out-of-bits and laughs, and smiles of recognition. At last I know why I kept moaning about why it took such a SHORT time to buy our house... and I seem to be in all the classes at the same time, how did I manage that! I thought it was fair and very well researched, I loved the personal bits she put in (interestingly, as I decried the personal bits and informal talk in two literary biographies I've read recently) and was so pleased it was a good, solid, meaty book, written by a "proper" social anthropologist. I've actually read the Mikes book quite recently, and I think I'll look out for the Paxman now, too.

All in all an excellent, thought provoking read that got me out of my slight reading-dyspepsia (too much indigestible stuff I had to force myself to get through recently) and worth the wait!

PM'd coolboxuk for address today

RELEASE NOTES:

Posting to coolboxuk today.

Received today, thank you very much.
It's third in line of my ring books to read, so shouldn't be too long... Looking forward to it!!!

I finally finished reading this book and I do admit that it took me an extraordinarily long time. I found the content interesting, but contrary to most people here, not very readable - at least not in large quantities. I agree that to start with, I found it highly amusing - but also found the jokes as well as the findings repetitive and it took me longer and longer to finish each chapter. (And yes, I AM aware of the fact that her repetitions were on purpose to proof her facts, but to me that didn't make them any more readable...) The book is quite an insight, no doubt about that. As a foreigner in England for over 10 years now, I had worked out her basic findings myself but it was kind of gratifying to by validated by an anthropologist and to be given all these extensive examples to the rules I had "felt" were there. Most of them I never before perceived as weird as much as I probably do now...

Arrived today. Thank you nice-cup-of-tea and coolbox for getting it here.

I found this quite a slow read - lots to take in and I'm not a fast non-fiction reader. So saying, it is such a well- researched and presented book that I was unwilling to give in. Kate Fox is perceptive and made a lot of sense to me. Very enjoyable.

I'm struggling to find anyone to send on to. Psychjo passed and I'm still trying to get a reply from hellie, but I'll try an ISO if I don't hear soon.

RELEASE NOTES:

As requested by nice-cup-of-tea, I am sending this as a RABCK to a special person.

Thank you!! When I journalled this book originally I was going to buy a copy for myself - but NCOT kindly suggested I had one of her 3 copies. Forgot all about it and now it's here!

Going into the Permanent Collection, however always available for loan or ring!

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

I found a copy of this book to keep, so am releasing the BC copy!

This book is being released for the Never Judge A Book By Its Cover release challenge 2008 Week 33: "A", "An" or "The", release # 2.

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Now available on the Official BookCrossing Zone bookshelf in the Kitchen Garden Cafe, York Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham.

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This is no longer on the OBCZ shelf. Marking the book as travelling, pending a journal entry, in case anyone goes to look for it in the meantime.

If you have picked up this book, thank you for visiting the website (and the cafe!). Please take a moment to let us know you have the book, then post your review when you've read it, and pass it on to someone else. If you join, you'll be able to see what's happened to it afterwards - for ever!