Hello all,

I think it’s time to finally put in words what I’ve been denying for a long time – this blog is no longer a part of my life. It’s been great, these past three or so years, sharing thoughts and ideas and literature with like-minded folk, and discovering some great writers and people in the process. But I feel my life heading in new directions, and so amigos, I bid you all a bittersweet farewell : )

I’ll miss you all, especially Steph and Claire – who stuck with this dying thing until the very last post when everyone else left me, forgotten, at the bottom of their overflowing Google Readers. Haha love you guys! <3

Goodbye!

I don’t normally delve into the details of my private life, but just wanted to let you all know what’s happening, and why I’ve not been posting despite having read a few things since I last updated ; )

Family Happiness

I was sort of indifferent at this point, faintly curious about the style of Tolstoy’s earlier works, and also a little impressed by the depth of the thematic concerns that plagued his mind as he strove to make his way in the literary world (I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find it hard to imagine Tolstoy, young and unintimidating and not, well, famous). Then I plunged into the first novella/long short story, Family Happiness and I was really, pleasantly surprised.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina are works of immense grace and dignity, but Family Happiness is a little different. The prose is fresh, delicate, more flowery, more liquid – language and fluidity and beauty of a form I hadn’t experienced from Tolstoy before. I’m not sure whether it’s because it was written in his early days, or if it’s because he wrote in the first person and from a female perspective or whether it was a result of all these things converging into a perfect whole, but it just struck a chord with me.

I’m really bad at plot summaries, and but basically the story centres around the love and marriage of a young girl, Mashechka (Masha) and her much older family friend Sergey Mikhaylych. Sergey loves Masha, but is afraid to marry her because she’s so young and naive about marriage and life in general. Eventually though, the two marry and move into Mikhaylych’s home in the countryside. Masha is a naive little fox, and she ends up spoiling her marriage by flaunting herself in Petersburg society and carrying on flirtations with foreign princes, etc etc. Masha realises that her previous feelings for Mikhaylych have little to do with her previous idealised notions of marriage and love. I thought (wrongly) that there would be separation or divorce, or something along those lines, but to my surprise the novella ends with the two settling into a loveless, but comfortable (I suppose, for lack of a better word), life. The title ‘Family Happiness’ is essentially a paradox, or if not that, an irony at least.

Their “romance” in all its stages was immensely poignant and moving, especially because of the volatile nature of Masha’s feelings. I felt that at times that Tolstoy’s didactic nature stepped in and hindered the storyline from being as natural/realistic as it could have been. The way he described the romance in its early stages was a little clinical. It felt too structured and built up for the inevitable breakdown. As soon as I read the scene of the proposal, and the early days of their marriage, I knew something baaad was about to happen. But there were some great one-liners in there, such as Sergey’s ‘every stage of life has a different love’.

I give the plot details away so explicitly because Tolstoy’s genius lies not in his ability to tell fantastical and extraordinary stories, because they’re not really. His gift is rather the ability to so masterfully capture the more elusive emotions and dynamics of human nature. His characters are so immensely human that your heart aches for them all, despite their flaws and often detestable personalities.

(Next up: The Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil and Father Sergius)

(‘A Hundred Views of Edo’ – one of which is featured on the cover of Thousand Autumns)

After experimenting with tumblr for while, I’ve returned to WordPress. Why? Tumblr is convenient, but an organizational nightmare for archiving, comments, etc. So I’m back! For good, hopefully. Blog-wise, I’m in the process of cleaning out my old posts and reading projects. Will probably move a few of my tumblr posts over here, just for the sake of continuity. Book-wise, I’m currently immersed in David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which I bought with The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro – my last purchases until I’ve cleared out the pile of unread books in my study. I even borrowed a whole stack from the library to keep myself from reading the Mitchell first; I wanted to save it for later, knowing that his next work won’t be available for a while yet.

BUT IT’S SO TEMPTING!

To use the fat kid and cake analogy, it’s like the fat kid leaving the cake on display in his room, and having to eat carrot sticks until he loses weight. I know right, how perverse and torturous to the little soul is that? So after finishing Ilustrado the other day, (and after half-heartedly opening and adamantly closing shut a few of the books lying around) I finally settled for the Mitchell. Yes, I try to fool myself into thinking I can ignore the cake. And yes, I usually fail.

I’m on page 30, so I have a long while to go before I reach the end. Already, my presumptuous thinking is getting me in a knot. Despite my love for Mitchell, I can’t help being cynical – would this really be considered a ‘masterpiece of our time’ (Richard Eder, The Boston Globe) if it weren’t written by David Mitchell? Can he really deliver, and meet my oh-so-high expectations? Will I be disappointed? Will I be ever more convinced of his genius? It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.

For now, I’m enjoying the ride. I haven’t seen much yet, but there have been glimpses, here and there, of his love for word play and spectacular/flamboyant – verbose but delightful – style of imagery. And I have to say, I like the cover on my edition (the one with the Edo print) much more than that flaccid, lifeless powdery blue and ivory cover I’ve seen around. This one has so much more oomph to it, and makes it look less cutesy. Because cutesy is not a word I would use to describe David Mitchell’s literary prowess.

Wouldn’t say I’m ‘collecting’ these as such, but they’re so pretty I want them all! So far I’ve read two -The Lemoine Affair by Marcel Proust (which didn’t captivate me at all, probably because I didn’t understand the satire behind the parody….), and The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac. I’ve read a few of the other titles – Mrs Dalloway, A Simple Heart, The Awakening, etc – but as I already own copies, I can’t justify the purchase.

They look like paint samples :)

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? (And by all means, discuss everything, if you are reading more than one thing!)

It’s funny how reading habits can change so drastically. I used to be a book hoarder, compulsively reading three, five, seven books at a time. Devourer, reading early in the morning, on the train, during lectures, before bed. Now I’m a slow reader: one book at a time, a few snippets – just pages here and there when I have a spare moment to myself. Maybe it’s because of lifestyle changes, maybe it’s because I’ve (dare I say it?)  fallen out of love with literature.

I’ve become so lax in maintaining this blog anyway. It’s died, I don’t even know if I have any readers left. But I think I’ll keep posting anyway, now and then. Simply because I feel like it, every so often (i.e. once every four months). Also, out of the blue, felt like answering a Booking Through Thursday question – which is something I haven’t done (literally) in years. This week’s question is nice and simple, real easy to answer. Didn’t have to give it much thought at all.

Currently, I’m reading Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which I thought won the 2006 Booker Prize quite undeservedly – the first time I read it. This book didn’t make much of an impression on me when I read it three years ago. I thought the language was pretentious, over-wrought, horridly self-conscious. Without substance. Trying too much to be like Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things. That’s what I thought the first time round anyway.

Yet I couldn’t deny that the book was very evocative. The images Desai wove into my mind stayed with me all these years. And one afternoon I just had the sudden urge to read it again; to give it another go. So I did. Right now I’m about 3/4 of my way through it, and I am enjoying it. Not madly in love, but I do have some respect for Desai now. To be honest, I was a little biased in my thinking the first time I read The Inheritance of Loss because I knew her mother was the renowned Anita Desai.

At first I felt like this gave Kiran Desai an unfair advantage over other writers; I positively envied her her childhood, her experiences, the things she must have been taught by her mother, even just by absorbing her environment. But now I see that far from simply giving Desai a stepping stone into the world of literature (and the freaking Booker prize, damnit), it’s a beautiful tradition, in a way. Passing down that love of books and writing and literature to the next generation through your daughter. And that’s what Anita Desai has done.

(1) The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh

I have this love-hate relationship with Ghosh, where I don’t much like his writing style, and yet I find his books so compelling. The characters in The Glass Palace were very endearing. In scope, it was impressive, though overly-ambitious. Lovely book, flawed execution.

Ghosh is one of those sort of fairly traditional storytelling types but is immediately ‘postmodern’ and ‘post-colonial’ and ‘exotic’ because he’s a 21st century non-white novelist who writes in English. Reviews on the covers of his books will generally read along the lines of:-

‘One of the most dazzling post-colonial voices of the subcontinent!’

‘You feel that Ghosh speaks with the true voice of the sub-continent, wise, superstitious and set firmly in age-old ritual’ (Birmingham Post) – ah, right.

Sweet Buddha, he’s not Ghandi resurrected. Let’s do away with the Orientalism, and the anachronistic stereotypes. Could it be that this, in the age of political correctness, is a subtle refusal to criticize ‘postcolonial’ writing?

I agree that Ghosh’s novels are wonderful. I love the detail, the scope, and even the pompousness with which he writes. But Ghosh is sort of an acquired taste, like a slightly cloying musk perfume that lingers in the air long after you spray it. It mellows on the mind after a while, but on the first read it’s like, “wait a minute. This isn’t, as the Belfast Telegraph puts it, a voice which ‘renders even the most historical of passages wonderfully readable’! It’s like he’s inserted paragraphs from Wikipedia articles straight into the novel”. Or even, “did I see this in The Bold and The Beautiful?” (or insert whichever daytime soap you prefer).

After a while, though, those things are kind of endearing. You can’t deny that he’s a great storyteller. And as much as those gasping and applauding critics annoy me, there is something extremely alluring and exotic about his novels.

(2) Fictions, Borges

First encounter with Borges. Love that he is so bizarre, and otherwordly, dazzlingly surreal and playful yet earnest at the same time. Still, I felt as though I was grappling around the edges without really digging into it.

(3) The Map of Love,  Ahdaf Soueif

This book is rampant with Orientalism, in the Edward Said sense of the word. Not an altogether bad read, but full of romanticism, poorly constructed (absurd at times) cookie-cutter romance, Middle Eastern stereotypes and long political digressions. Unsure if it’s a homage or a parody. Soueif claims she was aspiring towards something ‘Mills and Boon-ish’ but I can’t understand why any writer would do that unless it was with satirical intent.

(4) War and Peace, Tolstoy

Took me a while to complete this one (no surprises there). More thoughts later – it deserves a full post.

(5) Kafka on the Shore, Murakami

My second Murakami, after Norwegian Wood. Reading Murakami is like watching a Hayao Miyazaki film. Surreal. Dreamlike. I don’t wish to sort of push the two together simply because they’re both Japanese, but I re-watched Howl’s Moving Castle the other day, and they have the same sort of ethereal feel. When they infuse their literature and art with the supernatural, the metaphysical, the fantastical, it doesn’t seem at all out of place.

(6) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez

Sensuous, boldly written, masterful. The characters are horribly flawed and in some cases perverse, but ever so human, and ever so quirky and lovable. What I love most about Marquez is his ability to write such delectable, evocative prose. I get chills down my spine just from reading his charming, well-formed sentences.

(7) The Calligrapher’s Daughter, Eugenia Kim

Quite poorly written, but because it’s so rare to find any sort of literature written for/by the Korean diaspora, I always find it necessary to read things that are written by writers like Eugenia Kim. I had high hopes for this book (such a pretty cover too), but the writing was far from polished. Still an enjoyable read, though. More so because I feel such a cultural affinity towards the people and themes in the book, and because it did have a uniquely Korean flavour to it.

Austen, as you probably very well know, once wrote in a letter to her brother:

the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush as produces little effect after much labour…

Whenever I read her novels, I find this description so fitting. Things that appear ostensibly effortless are hardly ever so. The world Austen captures and describes with so much intricacy is perhaps smaller in scale than Tolstoy’s Russia, and yet scope is somehow irrelevant here. Within the daily happenings of provincial England, Austen manages to render – in such fine detail, too – the workings of human nature.

When I first read Northanger Abbey – probably when I was about fourteen? – I thought it was meant to be a solemn, sombre things. Jane Austen was ‘canonical’, ‘high-brow’- never anything else. Idiotic notion, really. But I liked to entertain the thought that I was reading real, serious literature. Yet Northanger Abbey is a reminder that the novel has always been a modern and highly playful art-form more than anything else.

What I like most about Northanger Abbey is that it’s more raw and revealing than any of Austen’s other novels. Though in her other novels, Austen lets us know exactly what she thinks about her society, she does it from behind a mask of propriety and gentle mockery. In Northanger Abbey though, she very openly launches into (what I think are very entertaining) all sorts of attacks on her contemporaries, and novel-bashers, and romance-distorters -

I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of a heroine’s dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of  wild imagination will at least be all my own.

But the heroine. Ugh. Catherine Morland is sweet, and yet she annoys me senseless. She’s just like Anne Elliot – impossibly naive (blockheaded), unexposed to the ways of the world (ignorant) and blind to the ‘coquettry and vanity’ of other girls (senseless). Isabelle Thorpe, two-faced, scheming, [insert appropriate word here] that she is, is much more tolerable than Catherine Morland, simply because she’s more of a realistic heroine.

Disagree with me, if you will, but the Catherine Morlands of this world don’t exist. And if they do, I have yet to meet one. Elizabeth Bennett might not be as snarky as Isabelle Thorpe, but at least she has her head screwed on right. Emma Woodhouse is spoilt rotten and naive, but at least she’s got wit and a bucketload of personality. Catherine, Catherine, Catherine…

» Northanger Abbey was read as a part of the 18th and 19th Century Women Writers project

I am reading again! Properly, I mean. Not half-heartedly picking unread books off the shelf and then forgetting about them the day after. I’ve tried to be ‘modest’ in my selections for the month (as in, not overly ambitious with myself) so I won’t do anything drastic, like go into hibernation again.

• One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Kristin Lavransdatter pt. 3, Sigrid Undset (reflections here)
• Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
• Orlando, Virginia Woolf
• The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh

And I’m maybe thinking of participating in a few readalongs. Would really like to read some Borges this month, but seeing all my essays are due in the next few days, I’m a bit stretched for time. Also, a few of the books chosen for the yearly thing seem to be obscure. Hence, hard to attain. And if they don’t stock it at the Book Depository, then I ain’t buying it. So we’ll see :)

At the moment, I’m just glad to have rediscovered something that I thought was lost to me forever. Because for the longest time I didn’t read anything at all, and I’d never thought it possible that books would ever not give joy to me. But Claire gave me a beautiful (but sad) quote from The Thirteenth Tale the other day -

“I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy. And yet I cannot pretend that the reading I have done in my adult years matches in its impact on my soul the reading I did as a child. I still believe in stories. I still forget myself when I am in the middle of a good book. Yet it is not the same. Books are for me, it must be said, the most important thing; what I cannot forget is that there was a time when they were at once more banal and more essential than that. When I was a child books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic yearning for the lost pleasure of books.”

I hope that at the very, very least, I’ll never lose that nostalgic yearning.

Why, hello there. Feels rather awkward to just pick up where I left off because it’s been a while. A long while. So long, in fact, that I don’t know if I have any readers/visitors left.

Confession: Since the last time I posted (October 2009) I have not read. Anything. At all. I have been reading piles and piles of books for my research essays, but you know what I’m referring to. The leisurely, voluntary type of reading. While I don’t want to force myself into anything, I think I need to be more deliberate about my (currently non-existent) reading habits, or I might just find myself in a perpetual bookless rut for eternity.

I want to rediscover the magic of reading.

Writing a blog entry isn’t really going to solve anything, I know. But it’s a step forward. At least this will sort of keep me accountable right? Hopefully, the next time I post, I’ll have something more book-ish to write about. But until then, au revoir, and happy reading :)

I’ve sort of made a 180° turn over the last few months. Now, I find myself reading lots and lots; once again, I can read for hours on end without being interrupted by the world around me (though this is usually in the late/early hours because of uni). It’s strange, though, that blogging once again fails to be a priority in my life. I value your thoughts on my thoughts & on the books I read; I love to read your blogs. But right now, I’m content with reading books and then placing them back on the shelf. I want to cherish these moments, and sometimes I think that involves not overthinking things. So it’s goodbye for now (once again). I’ve posted one last review on Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, and I’ll probably keep writing little things about Kristin Lavransdatter every now and then, but that’ll be about all.

Was it Murakami’s intent to leave me feeling cold, or was this my first proper experience of what a lot of readers refer to as the so-called ‘emotional reserve’ of the Japanese? I  would hesitate to attribute this, or any other of my thoughts concerning Norwegian Wood to anything cultural. Especially because this book was anything but reserved. It was frank, rather brutal in its treatment of love, and overflowing with emotion. But it was unconvincing. I can certainly understand why people might think it an ‘Asian’ or Japanese thing, though. Often, I felt the same coldness while reading Ishiguro – When We Were Orphans, particularly (Remains of the Day, I didn’t like, but thought it quite poignant and moving; the coldness I felt while reading Never Let Me Go, I attributed to the fact that dystopian fiction normally creeps me out). I really hate to bring Ishiguro into this, since culturally, he is very much British but he’s the only other prominent ethnically Japanese writer I’ve read (shameful, I know).

It got terribly erotic, particularly towards the second half of the novel. Nymphomaniacs, lesbians, porn films. That, I must admit, was very much a Japanese thing. I’m always surprised at the deep divide between cultural conservatism v. oversexualisation in Japan. But it definitely exists; weird sex, that is.

The perpetual, never-ending references to Fitzgerald annoyed rather than pleased me, despite being a lover of The Great Gatsby. It was a rather contrived and pretentious thing to do, unless there was an allusion to the futility of Tohu Watanabe’s life that I missed. Unless Toru and Naoko’s life relationship was meant to be juxtaposed with that of Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. Oh, wait, here we go:

All I had to do was find the one window towards the back where a faint light trembled. I focused on that point of light for a long, long time. It made me think of something like the final pulse of a soul’s dying embers. I wanted to cup my hands over what was left and keep it alive. I went on watching it the way Jay Gatsby watched that tiny light on the opposite shore night after night.

I don’t know. As I say, it was unconvincing. Despite the stupidities in the logic of ‘Gatsby & Daisy’, there’s something tragic and beautiful about their relationship. ‘Toru & Naoko’ though was more creepy and warped. The ending, I’ll admit, was quite beautiful in a chilling way -

Midori responded with a long, long silence – the silence of all the misty rain in the world falling on all the new mown lawns of the world. Forehead pressed against the glass, I shut my eyes and waited. At last, Midori’s quiet voice broke the silence: “Where are you now?”

Where was I now?

Gripping the receiver, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place.

Well rendered. But the same sort of thing was used very unconvincingly throughout. For instance, the time Toru first sleeps with Naoko, Murakami writes something along the lines of “she never stopped crying. Forever”. He likes that a lot: the forevers. But then in the next paragraph, life goes on as usual. It’ll be something like “I met so-and-so at the bar the next evening for a drink or two”, and it messes with the momentum.

Overall, I don’t think this is a very positive review. But I’m optimistic about my budding relationship with Haruki Murakami, because Norwegian Wood is apparently the anomaly. ‘Accustomed to his cool, fragmented, American-flaoured narratives on mysterious sheep and disappearing elephants,’ writes his translator Jay Rubin, ‘some of Murakami’s early readers were dismayed to find that Norwegian Wood seemed to be ‘just’ a love story – and one that bore a suspicious resemblance to the kind of Japanese mainstream autobiographical fiction hhat Murakami had rejected since his exciting debut in 1979″. I disagree that it’s ‘just’ a love story; clearly, there’s more to it. Yet I’m immensely glad to hear that this is of a different flavour to Murakami’s “normal” novels.

• Finished Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood on the train home this afternoon.
• It’s a dreary sort of day so considered picking up Jane Eyre for a re-read. When I was younger, I used to always read it on rainy days.
• Decided against it. Dickens sits on my shelf – the four-in-one volume I mentioned the other day – but in the end, settled on Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. Have attempted The Age of Innocence, but will consider this my first Wharton.
• Making steady progress through Kristin Lavransdatter, by Sigrid Undset. Thoughts over @ readalong blog.
• About halfway through War and Peace. Reading Tolstoy makes me happy, though so far there has been a lot of war and not much peace.

Posted in Reading Notes ]]> http://tuesdayinsilhouette.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/thoughts-5/feed/ 0 tuesday http://tuesdayinsilhouette.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/thoughts-the-girl-with-the-golden-eyes/ http://tuesdayinsilhouette.wordpress.com/2009/10/11/thoughts-the-girl-with-the-golden-eyes/#comments Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:18:41 +0000 tuesday http://tuesdayinsilhouette.wordpress.com/?p=5634 Continue reading »]]>

“They talk about the immorality of the Liaisons Dangereuses, and any other book you like with a vulgar reputation; but there exists a book, horrible, filthy, fearful, corrupting, which is always open and will never be shut, the great book of the world – not to mention another book, a thousand times more dangerous, which is composed of all that men whisper into each other’s ears, or women murmur behind their fans, of an evening in society.”

I’m a very visually-oriented person, which is why I suppose I also love words. Language, for me, is so powerfully evocative and expressive. In hindsight, that’s the only thing I liked about Honoré de Balzac’s The Girl with the Golden Eyes: the language.

The Girl with the Golden Eyes is chock full of motifs and decadent language and imagery. It’s concise, it’s fast-paced, it’s got so much condensed into it that it’s impossible to take everything in. I was so mesmerized by the visuals Balzac was offering me, that I hardly glanced at the deeper meaning behind the racy storytelling. If you’ve read this (or anything else by Balzac, probably – I wouldn’t know, this was my first time reading him) you’ll realize that it’s quite hard to miss the point, because Balzac likes to ‘insert slabs of philosophy, religious discourse and politics’ wherever he sees fit. Sorry, just quoted myself there. There’s a lot of social criticism, and it’s very blatant too. It takes Balzac quite a while to reach the actual characters, because he’s so wrapped up in describing the immorality of Parisians, and everything else that was ever wrong with France up until the July Monarchy. I rather liked that part of the novella more than the ‘romance’ between Henri de Marsay and Paquita Valdes, though. Call me prudish, but there was something nasty about the experience of reading it; like swallowing bitter medicine, only to find afterwards that it’s petrol, not medicine.

If I were to compare The Girl with the Golden Eyes to what I’ve read in the past, I’d say it reminds me most of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Les Miserables. For different reasons, of course. Les Miserables probably more contextually, because you know, French writers, 19th century, heavy focus on society. Dorian Gray, because of language and themes. Wilde has a more flamboyant way of storytelling; he really cakes on words, and seems to like drowning his readers in the opulence and sheer magnificence of his language. Though Balzac is less wordy, and actually quite minimalist in his writing, The Girl with the Golden Eyes had the same quality of richness that I found in Dorian Gray. What I liked best was the gold motif. Gold is linked to immorality,

Every passion in Paris resolves into two terms: gold and pleasure.

to Paquita:

And in chief, what struck me the most, what I am still taken with, are her two yellow eyes, like a tiger’s, a golden yellow that gleams, living gold, gold which thinks, gold which loves, and is determined to take refuge in your pocket

to Parisians in general:

One of those sights in which most horror is to be encountered is, surely, the general aspect of the Parisian populace–a people fearful to behold, gaunt, yellow, tawny.

It’s the thread of continuity that links Balzac’s more general observations of society with the story of Henri and Paquita. Lust, homosexuality, incest, murder – there are hints of it; though you’d miss it if you weren’t paying close attention. Can’t say much more than that; I think I need to read more Balzac before I can say anything meaningful.

» B for Balzac: this book was read as a part of the A to Z challenge

Currently reading Balzac’s The Girl with the Golden Eyes. Oh ho ho, such an innocuous, picturesque title for a malicious and snarky little novella. Really, it’s very slim. I’m not even actually ‘currently reading’ it; two evenings ago when I began typing up this post I was, but then I finished it by tonight – and it only took little snippets of time here and there to read the whole thing. I reckon if I had a full hour or two to do nothing but read, I could certainly finish it in that time.

Haven’t read any Balzac before this so don’t know what he’s normally like, but he rather reminds me of Monsieur Victorrr Hugo. No, not really. It’s more that his writing is infused with that style of prose typical to 19th century writers, i.e. they insert slabs of philosophy, religious discourse and politics wherever they see fit. It’s seems to be a habit – almost tradition – of all the ‘greats’: Tolstoy, Hugo, even to a lesser extent Dickens, and Rushdie today (see Comments of previous post for extensive discussion on pompous, head-swollen writers).

Speaking of Dickens, I don’t know what induced me to do it, but I went to the bookstore and bought a fat Wordsworth volume of his shorter novels. I think it was Rebecca’s post on Oliver Twist that sparked my hatred for him into an obssession to conquer! I must and will read a Dickens, and not think it abominable, etc etc., and while I’m in that sort of mind frame I might as well read four. Also, from the library this week:

• Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami: the title of this book sounds so, so lovely and prompted by uncertainprinciple‘s equally lovely post (you’ll have to dig through the archives to find it) I finally convinced myself to read it! Interestingly enough, I’ve actually been reading a lot of books from the Someday List this year! Now I’m roughly halfway through the list; it’s very encouraging to see myself seeing things through :)
• The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger:  really, I’ve been meaning to read this book since I was ten.  Better read it before I turn 20 (apparently, the older you get, the less loveable the book is likely to be?)
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath: I’ve always liked Plath as a poet, not sure how much I’ll appreciate her as a novelist, but how can I ignore this book? It’s one of those books I feel I need to read, regardless of whether I’ll like it or not.
• Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton: I have The Age of Innocence on my shelf, but haven’t had much luck with it. Maybe I’ll enjoy this one?

Unfortunately, most of my time is spent away from home (i.e. on campus, at the library drowning in assignments, etc), so I’m finding it harder to fit in War and Peace and Kristin Lavransdatter. They’re too heavy to carry around!