The monthly reminder from Kate:
London Awkward people will meet up at the Southbank Centre, SE1 8XX near Waterloo station, 11am onwards on the 5th of October.This time as an icebreaker & for fun we will have a Terrible Book SwapThis is in no way compulsory, but if you would like to, please bring a book you think is terrible in some way (prose, gender politics, plot, etc.)Preferably terrible in a an entertaining rather than traumatising manner?
See if you can persuade someone to take it off your hands! Or failing that, I guess we could donate them to a (very unfortunate) charity shop?
Please let me know if you have other icebreaker ideas for the future.This venue is working out really well.
They sell food in a cafe (standard sandwiches etc.), but they also don’t mind people bringing food in from outside. There are several other local places where you can buy stuff as well. There is a farmers’ market outside with loads of different food options, which can fit most food requirements, or you can also bring a packed lunch.
To avoid confusion, we will meet at one of the inside tables, in one of the windows in the side facing towards the Queen Elizabeth Hall. The large open area is on what a British person would call the first floor, but is labelled as floor 2 just to be helpful.
I will have my Cthulhu with me, which looks like this: http://forbiddenplanet.com/3950-cthulhu-baby-plush/ I have long brown hair and glasses.
The venue is accessible via a lift, and has accessible toilets.
The London Awkward group has a Facebook page, which is here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/549571375087294/. There is also a thread in the new forums for saying hello.
My email is Kate DOT Towner AT Gmail DOT com
See you there, with the worst book you can find!(November meetup will be on the 9th.)Cheers,Kate
CaptainAwkward.com 
Yay! (and thanks, Kate, for organising.)
And now to think which book I shall inflict on someone…
I’m tempted to bring a truly dreadful book that I own, but sadly I could never bring myself to get rid of it. It’s awful beyond compare and MINE, ALL MINE.
Oh yeah, I have one of those. Written in about 1960 about a new UK political party formed entirely of women, and how they won an election and the totalitarian policies they introduced (mandatory lesbianism, men kept in stud farms, etc.)
No-one can have it.
http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/day_of_the_women.html
This book!
oh my god Kate I would buy that book. For the cover alone.
elodie – I’m now really curious…. what is it you’re reading?!
I have a stunningly bad book from the early 1900s called “Pin Money: One Hundred Ways to Make Money from Home.” Aimed at women, it is by turns uplifting and horrific. Suggested ways for a turn-of-the-century woman to earn her own money (for buying her own sewing pins, of course) include hunting down and aggressively looking after disabled children (in a wretched, ableist way), throwing tea parties for people higher up the social scale (and charging them) or selling jam. Or teaching courses for young wives so that they can learn how to cook and clean, for – as the book points out – some young wives may not leave their mother’s homes while trained to the proper standard! One can also pick up cash by making and maintaining clothes for unmarried men. Advertise your skills in this manner by approaching unmarried men and telling them that they need new shirt collars, or ask a boardinghouse to advertise for you.
I adore it because you picture the writer feverishly coming up with all these ways for women to gain financial independence while working in this ridiculous system. Some of the ideas are even kind of good? Like running schools and courses out of your house. There’s a desperate creativity in the way she tries to come up with 100 income streams for American housewives in the 1920’s. APPROACH NEGLECTED URCHINS ON THE STREET AND CHARGE THEIR PARENTS MONEY TO TEACH THEM MANNERS. MAKE UNDERWEAR. BREED AND SELL RARE DOVES. HARVEST, SPIN AND KNIT THE HAIR OF HOBOS INTO WARM HATS FOR CHRISTIANS!
She also wrote other helpful manuals like “How to make your own cosmetics” and “Marital discords and how to avoid them” which I would probably actually read, even though I already suspect that they consist of things like “lead paint” and “agreeing with your husband” respectively….
Like, you know that article, “We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle and Slaves Narrative” that points out how women, across times and cultures, have always been perfectly good warriors? This is a kind of version of “We Have Always Leaned In.”
With a side order of “dear god, THIS is what we’re talking about when we talk about rooting our feminism in intersectionality, because our feminism is currently rooted in kicking marginalized people in the teeth in a mad scramble to center able, middle-class white women.” If I recall correctly, “Pin Money” notes that households that cannot afford a “colored maid” may well employ a White Lady Such As Yourself to secretly cook and clean. For god’s sake.
So that is why it is my terrible book.
I actually ADORE terrible books (I read them aloud to friends during a weekly meetup), so I’m disappointed that I won’t be in London until the spring. 😦
Just wanted to leave a comment that I have changed my name, in case anybody wonders: given how much time I’m spending on this site and with the Awkward Army, I felt I needed a proper pseudonym.