Out of all the books you've read this year, which was the one that:

moved you most deeply/"changed your life"?
Delta of Venus, by Anais Nin - sex has so much to do with one's psychological makeup, and Anais Nin's short stories are spot-on
The Gift of Wings, Mary Rubio - LMM's biography is probably the most disturbing books I've read this year. A human life can take so many sad turns.
The Alchemist, Paolo Cohello - I keep referring back the the lessons from this fable when I think about my own struggles and "quest" in life

made you laugh most?
Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine. It is really a charming rendition of a fairytale... Gail Carson Levine is a great storyteller.

you learned the most from?

Persepolis, by Marijane Satrapi
The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway

(both offered perspectives on political events I had never really thought about before)

you absolutely loved?
Silmarillion, by J. R. R. Tolkien
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen

(there's something so satisfying about classics)

was the biggest waste of your time?
The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier - terrible writing, cheesy.
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hossein - sorry, not a fan.
Before Green Gables, by Budge Wilson - BAD, but I guess I couldn't help reading it
Laughter in the Dark, Nabokov - just a rather unpleasant story

you are proud of yourself for finishing?
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy
Utopia, by Thomas Moore
Rememberance of Things Past v.1, by Marcel Proust
Purgatorio, Dante
Faust, Goethe

(These have been on my reading list for a very long time)

Which ones do you recommend to go on someone's "must-read" list?

Definitely Persepolis, by Marijane Satrapi. This graphic novel from a child's perspective of the war in Iran is so witty and moving.

Adam Bede, George Eliot

It's a mark of how tastes have changed, that Adam Bede was popular when it was first published, but both the story and theme are hardly engaging to me. "The world of Adam Bede": farming folk and dialect, and the plot of a poor girl seduced by a rich man, is neither scandalously exciting nor profoundly moving.

But such is George Eliot's gift that I learned to become interested in the fate of the characters.

Adam: I do not know why he is the title character, and do not admire him. He is made out to be strong, earnest, handsome, truly compassionate, and good, physically and emotionally and morally. There are probably many people like him in the world, but I would not like to marry them for I find moral righteousness like his hard and binding. I feel sorry for his brother Seth, who is secondary in status and affection to him always: his long suffering mother, Lisbeth, favours Adam blatantly although Seth is very good and gentle to her, and he has to win Dinah Morris's heart. I am disappointed that Dinah married him, and eventually gave up female preaching: all throughout the novel it was so clear that she had a vocation and was fitted to it, and that she was happy in it - to have her change her heart in the final chapters is sudden and such a damper on her independent spirit. I think George Eliot wanted to show that Adam finally arrived at a woman who was fit for him, but I do not think Adam is good enough for Dinah! I am not satisfied that he is giving her a love which "sprung out of his love for Hetty, and would not violate his memory of Hetty." A second choice to a woman much inferior?

This book has the only happy ending I have read yet in George Eliot. Oh, I suppose it is not very happy: Hetty and Arthur are both punished, Arthur most of all I think, while Adam is rewarded with love and success because he was honorable. Very idealistic - and dull. I prefer the note of tragedy and unwittingly hurtful character interactions in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch. Those characters are so much more truthful and larger-than-life. Adam and Arthur and Hetty are too unrealistically good-hearted, despite their actions.

A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

This book is horrible. Nothing good ever happens in it. The story is captivatingly told (who knew that so much drama could be told so that it's plausible?) but every time you begin to like or be hopeful for a character, nothing good comes to them. If there had been one moment of triumph and not just that abject oblivion we're plunged into at the end!

I read it in one sitting, and the theme and suspense is fantastic - but it's hard to read a book where you can't like any of the characters! The only one I could relate to and really liked, and believed in, was Ursula. I can't see how Rebeca had any of Ursula's spirit at all, and when Amaranta Ursula returned I had so much hope for the Buendias family. I hate that they came to such an end, and I hate unhappy endings, and Garcia Marquez is especially talented at describing scenes of fetid horror.

I recognize the story's merit (and am charmed by GGM's talent), but UGH. "Pine woods are as real as pig sties, and a darn sight pleasanter to be in."

The Tin Flute, by Gabrielle Roy

I have always loved Gabrielle Roy's writings. Her short story "The Move" was in my grade 11 reader, and I have read nearly every one of her novels since. I found that her voice was so akin to mine, that she had put into words just how I see the world.

But I had not read her most famous book, The Tin Flute, until now.

I was surprised not to find the innocent optimism, the "enchantment and sorrow" that had breathed from her other novels, at first. The conditions of St. Henri were very harsh. I did not warm to Jean Levesque or Florentine very much, nor their cruel game of love. But I was intrigued - the plot itself was already very impelling, with Florentine placing her fate in the biting Jean Levesque's hands. I was annoyed, therefore, when the focus shifted to Manuel and then to Rose-Anna -- I do not like novels with multiple narrators and main characters, because then your sympathy for the protagonist is divided.

I did not understand Florentine - who is brazen and shallow - or Manuel, who is a little like Walter Blythe of Rilla of Ingleside in that he believes in a greater good to come from the war. I could understand cynical Jean Levesque, but it was impossible to like him because he was willfully brutal. But I did sympathize with every one of them, and Rose-Anna most of all - Rose-Anna, who must be like Gabrielle Roy's mother whom her other stories focus on, like my mother who is weighed by a tendency to see tragedy everywhere. I read on, only wanting the love story of Jean and Florentine, but every chapter was a blow. I began to despair of a happy ending, and found this story of the slums of St. Henri very cruel. I was revolted that things could be so dire.

But in true Gabrielle Roy fashion, there is "borrowed happiness" (Bonheur d'Occasion) at the end.

This book made me want to write. I dreamed a whole caste of personnages representative of the society I knew. I wrote last year that I should like to write like Pasternak - but I should like even more to have a voice like Gabrielle Roy's. There are stories I know, from all my life, clamouring to be written.

Fanfiction

I can't get into books lately but I'm addicted to fanfiction.

The Legacy of Terabithia by Wordsmith
Great premise, Leslie Aaron - 10-year-old daughter of Jess Aaron, famous author of Bridge to Terabithia - is sent to Lark Creek for the summer. She befriends Jamie Byrne, an imaginative, geeky boy. This story is so well written (great characterization, great plot, great descriptions (i.e. "showing not telling") and dialogue that's both natural and funny.) Leslie and Jamie's friendship fits so well. Their tweenage romance is *squeals* SO cute, and sends butterflies through my stomach - makes me relive my ten-year-old crushes and first kiss all over again. I love this and I'm already rereading chapters three hours after I read it through for the first time!

Ancient History Comes with a Helmet, Right? by orchidvines
Persuasion isn't my favourite Austen book, but I love its modernizations. I don't know who copied who, but all over fandom Anne Elliot is the jobless college graduate who doesn't know what to do with her life, and gawd I can relate to that so completely. I know people who are just as passive and nice as Anne, and this version partly convinces me how realistic Persuasion is. This version has great (if, yes, mature) language, and the story flows. I don't usually like lighthearted romance novels, but the writing style is clever, humourous and relaxing. There's a lot of character - Mary, and the younger Musgrove sister, are much more well-drawn out than in JA's version, and I love the personality she gave Sophie Croft. Karen Harville is a sweetie and just the friend Anne needs, and I would love to hang out on a beach with this crowd - bashing Danielle Steele and observing Fred / Anne tension, etc.

TOMORROW
I read rubygillis's TOMORROW in one sitting - all 50 odd chapters. It is so perfect a sequel to Gone With the Wind. She captured the spirit, the dialogue and atmosphere, and the southern belle dilemma perfectly. The pairings are perfectly satisfying for the demands of a fanfiction fan. And the plot is original and gripping, fresh, inspired, complex. She is an excellent plot-artist.

Snape Split
Completely original, and simply hilarious. This author's White Out and its sequel are also easily the best HP fanfiction I've read. Her writing style is impeccable, characters spot-on, and there's depth and thought in the plot.

Survival, Margaret Atwood

This book depressed me in its beginning- like the narrator, I was embarrassed by her trip and the shallow lives of the company she kept. As the story progressed I saw themes common to all Margaret Atwood's books. But the daring and controversial plot was absent, this was only rural Quebec and the maudlin problems of two couples.

Fasut, Goethe

What a fantastic world I have been thrown into in this play - all the tiers of hells, all the mythological creatures. I should love to see it performed.

Mansfield Park, Jane Austen

I have been reading Mansfield Park and it is so delightful. It has given me more pleasure than anything else in my past weeks. Fanny Price is the character I should have written for my Dora - half caricature, but so well developed and so convincing in her emotions that I do not know if I want her feelings, or Edmund's, to prevail. She is the only Austen heroine we meet as a child, and it is easier to form an attachment to a younger heroine. I can hear her, as I can hear Mary Crawford's banter off the pages - though I do wonder at how the people of the Regency amused themselves, pacing idly about drawing rooms hours on end, and how Jane Austen is so decided in her judgement of characters as "ill" or "selfish." Is there no room for redemption, do people never change?

I finished it in a sitting, thrilled that every time I turned the page the story had not ended yet. My only regret is that the denouement happened too quickly. I would like to know "just when, and not a week earlier or later" Edmund finally made his professions of love to Fanny.

The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway

read it today and "liked" it... liked the loose, abstract writing style and the questions of morality raised, i guess. arrow is the most fascinating character in the story by far; not sure if i really "get" the point of dragan and kenan. actually, i tended to mix them up. i thought dragan's encounter with his wife's friend, was very well done; and the pessimist/optimist joke stands out: "a pessimist believes things can't get any worse, an optimist believes things can always get worst."

Looking for Anne, Irene Gammel

I read this today, and it's very good, well-researched, fascinating. It pieces together bits of LMM's life from her journals and letters, the books she read and the magazines published around the time Green Gables was being written, searching for clues of what inspired Anne. I like how there are no direct implications that any character was based on a specific person, or that any incident was actually drawn from life - but rather an amalgamation of people and events in LMM's life, and there is a lot to do with the subconscious; for instance, names in the Anne books suggest other literary works. Green Gables suggests Hawthorne's The House of Seven Gables (which LMM read), and a short story in a contemporary magazine (which LMM might or might not have read) where the heroine goes to live at "Gray Gables." It's not that LMM was directly inspired by these books, but their influence may have filtered into the fabric of the novel. Two magazine stories published a few years before Anne featured orphans named "Ann" who are similar to Anne Shirley, one with a knack for taking care of babies, the other with red hair and freckles.

I also find myself a lot like LMM as Irene Gammel describes her. Shy, soft-spoken, and self-critical - LMM is not at all like chatterbox Anne, neither in appearance nor personality, and Anne perhaps resembles some of her enemies (a redheaded boy) and ex-lovers(a very talkative man)! LMM has a photographic memory, is proud and snobby, isn't always "nice" despite her petite and feminine aspect. She reconstructs and manipulates her relationships and memories. This book is a fascinating psychological portrait (of a fascinating subject).

The Leaving, Budge Wilson

i read the first story, "The Metaphor" today and it's very well written. The writing style is precise, the characters intriguing, and there is just the right amount of pathos. The story is complex, "deep", and engaging. Every paragraph was significant and an integral part of the plot. The story was very charged; it did not lag for a minute. I really loved it.

All the same, I wonder why Wilson was asked to do the Anne prequel. Her world-view and themes aren't really LMM-like. I can see how her style translates into Before Green Gables - there are well-described but not particularly loveable characters like the narrator's mom; and even Ms. Hancock is exaggerated. I thought the narrator's remark that her father "was not a very original man" was pretty harsh for a 13 year old. It reminded me of when Mrs. Thomas's parents said she wasn't very pretty and needed to be married off soon. I've just never found sentiments like that, written so bluntly, in LMM.

"The Diary" seems more LMM-ish... the diary format and the meek wife who's always lived under her father/husband's thumb shows up in LMM stories. Allison's finally standing up for herself is LMM-like, too.

"Mr. Manuel Jenkins" is a good story, and Mr. Jenkins reminded me a little of Mr. Tillytuck in Mistress Pat. A good story, although LMM stories are again open-ended.

"Lysandra's Poem" starts with an evocation of the sea... which is sort of LMM-ish, because it shows that the climate is a large part of maritime life, but the description is in no way as beautiful as LMM's. This story is the first one that doesn't deal with mother-daughter relationships; instead, it's a very realistic story of a best-friendship gone sour, and it's something so morbid you'd probably read it in LMM's later works, like The Blythes are Quoted/The Road to Yesterday. I could also see Margaret Atwood taking on a similar plotline.

"My Mother and Father" - I rather really like this story. The mother in this story is the most motherly of all the mothers described so far, and it's not as harsh as all the other stories where there is anger directed towards someone, usually the cold/uncaring mother. The only person at fault in this story is the narrator herself, and there is a happy ending.

I just finished it, and I really liked every story.

"The Leaving" is good, abstract, and unexpected.

"My Cousin Clarette" reminds me a little of Gwendolyn Lesley in Magic for Marigold. I understand completely what Victoria is going through, and have felt that way about visitors in my adolescence. The ending is morbid, though: but I can see a teen "liking" the depth and melancholia of it

"The Reunion" is one of my favourite stories in this volume. Once again, it has the atmosphere of something I might read in "The Road to Yesterday/ The Blythes are Quoted," only it's far more well-written than LMM's later work. I like this story because it makes me think of Love in the Time of Cholera, and it has a sweet, triumphant ending.

"Waiting" has very realistic characters. In this story, Juliette is an overachiever (whom I can especially relate to) and her twin sister is very meek. I have seen twins and best-friendships where one leads and the other submits. I thought Juliette's scorn was a little overdrawn, though: I can't imagine anyone being so harsh about someone they love. And so callow and self-righteous about their own cruelty and hypocrisy. Here is a quote, italics mine.

(Juliette is the lead actress, director of their play, and Henrietta helps out backstage)

"She did a truly good job, and if it weren't for the fact that I can't stand conceited people, I probably would even have told her so... I didn't want her strutting around looking proud of herself and putting on airs. One time one fo the kids said, "Hey, Henrietta, that's a really great royal bedroom you made,".... I hate that kind of thing, and I knew the others wouldn't like it either. So I said, "Oh, sure! And the king must have just lost his kingdom in the wars. Who ever head of a king sleeping on a pile of branches or having an old torn distowel at the window? Some king!" And everyone laughed. I always think that laughter is very important. It makes everyone happy right away, and is a good way to ease tensions"

I feel like the irony's too obvious and Juliette's self-assuredness was exaggerated.

"Be-ers and Do-ers" once again deal with a demanding mother and a peaceful father, who love each other very much although the mother nags relentlessly. This family dynamic reminds me of ones I know in real-life.

"The Pen-Pal" has a very humourous twist ending; I love the diary/correspondence format, the small teenage problems are very LMM, and I can relate to the narrator completely. The twist ending is the best display of humour I've seen in the whole volume, which deals with rather serious, troubling issues (and has a sombre tone). I wish there were more stories like this one - which talk about growing up, but are lighthearted and comical (in the sense that the narrator laughs at herself, and without bitterness.)

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine

I was a little ashamed when I picked up this book - anticipating something cheesy and popularized. The quote from Sharon Creech on the back of the book bolstered my faith a little. I started reading and was completely engrossed. I didn't even realize it was a fairytale of Cinderella until the second chapter. The characters are so aptly named, names I've always disliked for evil characters and ones that sound beautiful for the good. There is just the right mixture of romance, adventure, and plot twists. The castle/glass slipper scene makes me sigh. I love Ella, I love Mandy, and Ella's self-conflicts are just right for a teenage novel. Ella is your classic natural-witty-human-princess (Princess Diana-ish) heroine. I wasn't too satisfied with the description of how Ella overcame her curse. All in all it's a lovely little story.

Mama's Going to Buy You a Mockingbird

Jeremy Talbot is an amazingly sensitive and perceptive sixth-grade boys. I'm not sure why they seem to exist in fiction and rarely in real life.

Jean Little's tone is very different from C. S. Lewis - of course. But it's another very well written book! This one plunges right into sadness and never truly lifts from it... the ending is almost too altruistic.

But Jeremy's relationship with his sister is a very convincing one for a boy of his age. The Talbot family's relationships are very well rendered. Tess 'the outsider' is stereotypical of the ... Newberry award fiction of the 90s. seriously! I appreciated the reference to Gilly Hopkins. I didn't know Mockingbird was published after that.

And I have no idea why it's entitled "Mockingbird."

The Horse and His Boy, C. S. Lewis

I like this story - it's very well told. C. S. Lewis's writing isn't lyrical, but very narrative - I think it's best read aloud. Shasta and Aravis (and Bree and Hwin) are lovable creatures who change and grow within a story. Lewis conveys Christianity very well - Shasta's moment in the mountains, with the voice of the lion is a powerful scene. And the way Aslan talks - never does he really speak in a Biblical way, but the reverence and awe is achieved nonetheless. I wonder what Aravis's father ever did about her. The invovlement of Lucy et. co. was very satisfactory - neither too much nor too little. and I wonder if all children become royalty in the Narnia books.

Before Green Gables, Budge Wilson

Disclaimer: I'm prejudiced against the premise of this story. I don't think an "official prequel" should have been sanctioned and I tremble lest people will henceforth consider it part of the LMM canon.

But I read Wilson's book as judiciously as I could. I believe she writes well - her sentences are well formed. I write rather like her - precise, piercing. I agree that it's not necessary to imitate Montgomery. And yet her writing reads rather dry. I should never want to write like that.

Wilson's caste of characters add dramatic interest, but I find them very two-dimensional. Do good, well-meaning, semi-genteel parents ever sum up their only daughter as Mrs. Thomas's did? "With her looks, she won't last, let's marry her off." Mr. Thomas, Eliza, Jessie, The Egg Man are all archetypes - they each have their own plotline but there's little insight into how they change and grow, and little divine justice for their actions.

Montgomery writing is replete with mathematical errors, but I have a harder time condoning Wilson's logical inconsistencies. Why didn't Mrs. Thomas give Anne to Jessie when her husband died? Why didn't the Egg Man and Miss Henderson adopt her? Why does Anne hate her hair if Mrs. Archibald praised her for her beautiful red hair? If Anne was so loved by Eliza, why did she never talk about her to Marilla?

Overall, I had a hard time holding my interest in this book. It was too long and too consistently doleful. I cannot imagine myself reading it if it weren't for the Anne connection. I especially wouldn't have enjoyed it as a young adult.

Persepolis, Marijane Satrapi

i love Marijane - the vividness of her childhood memories make me want to tap into my own. I was a child like her, blunt, imaginative, inquisitive. The book awakes that old desire to rewrite my memoirs, childhood memories remembered photographically, with poignant social-political implications.

yeah.

The ending - I want to know what next in Marijane's life. I like that the return wasn't the answer, as I don't believe it always was... but there are idealisitc overtones in Marijane's mother's prediction that she won't be back. Did she ever go back?

Once Upon a Time in the North

I love Lee Scoresby - how much like Lyra he is! and York Burningson! fantastic.

But I daresay Pullman has stopped writing books. This is a commercial product, with its antique cover, pictures, and a pull-out board game.

And of course, spread out your short stories in separate collector's volumes. Why make an anthology?

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

what i loved:> the history; i didn't know much about what life was like under the Soviet Rule and/or prior to the Taliban; i've only ever been exposed to post 9-11 war-on-terrorism Taliban outrage. all very interesting because it's current history; titanic from a different perspective, etc.

what i disliked:

the hollywood ending. GRRR. did they really have to find a bag of money?

plus the implications that - what - reconstruction is only possible if you have a pile of gold stashed away for your somewhere? i'm sure the overthrow of the taliban doesn't mean a happily-ever-after ending, and not that i want to read anymore hardships, i'm glad the love story of laila and taliq worked out, but this just seems too easy.

Jalil and Rajeed are both very 2-dimensional characters; Jalil especially - his repentence at the end just doesn't sound very convincing and sounds very soap-opera-sy. Rajeed is too consistently cruel.

I don't get Aziza's stutter and "t"'s - what is that about?

it's moving alright but rather gruelling to read.

Mistress Pat

"I know." Rae squeezed Pat's hand. "And I know it must all seem like indecent haste to you. But if you count time by heart-throbs as somebody says you should, it's been a century since I met him. He isn't a stranger. He's one of our kind . . . like Hilary . . . knows all our quacks, really he does. You'll understand when you meet him, Pat."

Pat did understand. She couldn't find a single fault with Brook Hamilton. As a brother-in-law he was everything that could be desired. Tall, lean, with intensely blue eyes and straight black brows. Certainly he and Rae made a wonderful-looking young pair in spite of his "rather ugly" face. She couldn't hate him as she had hated Frank, even if he were going to take her sister away. But, mercifully, not for a long time yet. And there was no doubt that Rae loved him.

---

It is true - there are certain types of people you can feel irritated by, despite the fact the they're nice people. There are others whom you know from sight, that they are "your kind."

Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell

I am enamoured by writers on writing.

Maybe this explains

pg. 4

(George Orwell's four great motives for writing)

1) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after your death, to get your own back on grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc. etc. It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon individual ambition - in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sens of being individuals at all - and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong to this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.


pg. 149

Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If it seems so it is because when you look back things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin. It is largely because of the books, films and reminiscences that have come between that the war of 1914-18 is now supposed to have had some tremendous, epic quality that the present lacks.

pg. 241

Indeed it is remarkable how Nature goes on existing unofficially, as it were, in the very heart of London... There must be some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of birds living inside the four-mie radius, and it is rather a pleasing thought that none of them pays a half-penny of rent.

... But Persephone, like the toads, always rises from the dead at about the same moment. Suddenly, towards the end of March, the miracle happens and the decaying slum in which I live is transfigured. Down in the sqaure the sooty privets have turned bright green, the leaves are thickening on the chestnut trees, htet daffodils are out, the wallflowers are budding, the policeman's tunic looks positively a pleasant shade of blue, the fishmonger greets his customers with a smile, and even the sparrows are quite a different colour, having felt the balminess of the air and nerved themselves to take a bath, their frist since last September.

pg. 346

I have not enough animosity left to make me hope that Flip and Sambo are dead or that the sotry of the school being burnt down was true.

----

Orwell is a very - opionated man, mured in his belief that people (he himself included) are hypocrites. Age certainly did not mellw his bitterness with humanity. He must have been trying - unpleasant - conflicted to live with. Extremely interesting to converse with.

Maybe his most successful story deals with animals in allegory, because his political views and cynicism is so - witty and unpalatable.

The Alchemist, Paolo Coello

I can't help but think how ordinary and captivating this story is. Am I on my personal quest? Am I on the verge of giving up? Will I find love, unexpectedly, love that will then wait for me?

Delta of Venus, Anais Nin

"And you can be Henry Miller, and I'll be, Anais Nin
But this time it'll be even better we'll stay together in the end
Come on darling, let's go back to bed."

Jewel's Pieces of You was my first CD, and still an enduring favourite. I've wanted to read Anais Nin, because of her ringing name, her cameo in my favourite song, and the imminent separation.

Erotica aside, Anais Nin writes with such clarity. Her sentences are precise. Nin speaks of creating a "female sexual language," whatever the stereotypes, her language is scientific, psychologic, more than flourid or sensual. Fetishes are the main subject matter: but there is a plot to the stories that is not merely coincidential to lucid details. Events progress because of someone's sexual desires.

What marked my own maturity this year was the awareness, by hearsay, of people's sex lives. My desire to be a write had for a long time been accompanied by some vague notion that it required a bohemian lifestyle, a familiarity with the nuances of casual sex, the intimate knowledge of an enigmatic other? I think Anais Nin illustrates that casual sex is not merely a lifestyle imbued with glamour. I think her characters' sexual fantasies are a... key to their character. One's sexual comportment has so much to do with how s/he perceives him/herself.

how true this is of first loves:

When she first met him they were mere children ... Miguel had been drawn to Elena magnetically, following her like a shadow, listening to her every word, owrds no one could hear, her voice so small and transparent. ... a romantic attachment, in which each one used the other as the embodiment of the legend or story or novel they had read. Elena was every heroine; Miguel was every hero.

When they met, they were enveloped in so much unreality that they could not touch each other. They did not even hold hands. They were exalted in each other's presence, they soared together, they were moved by the same sensations. - pg. 81

Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence

It is just by accident that I'm reading this simultaneously with Anais Nin. Anais Nin has great veneration for Lawrence, and of course we have the inevitable comparison between male/female depictions of sexuality. But all I can draw is that Lawrence uses mythic language like "loins."

Otherwise Lawrence's novel... is exactly the sort of psychoanalytical, philosophical treatise (where characters converse in grand discussions) that I'm wont to write, but is fairly dry to read. I'm confused on his whole take on bisexuality. I may research it. I'm also surprised at the choice of female names - are Gudrun, Ursula, and Hermione typical midland English?

The Silmarillion, Tolkien

I think I like this book more than LOTR. I don't think its appeal is as wide as the trilogy, which has both comic appeal (hobbits) and epic language (men, elves). As I wrapped up RoTK over Christmas, pouring delightedly over the appendices, my dad asked " so where did sauron come from?" Of course - the question had never crossed my mind - in novels, as in our very existence in this world, we inherit a given world full of mythology, traditions with forgotten origins, a history grander than ourselves. It was AAragorn's veneration for the mysterious traditions, and his equally... intuitive?... knowledge of them that made half the magic of the book. As for the rest, my perspective was as limited as the hobbits.

I read that Tolkien crafted the myths of the Silmarillion, working prior to and simultaneously on the other Middle Earth stories, partly because so many questions were left unanswered by LOTR. The Silmarillon (which I understand were later compiled by his son) begins with a Biblical creation story, told with artistic license; and an imminent Paradise Lost. That and the hubris of all creation sets a thread of good vs. evil, inescapable curses, that bind all the stories of Tolkienverse history. The language is archaic, "biblical," regurgitative, the place and character names sonorous. (There are also more females in these stories than in LOTR!) Somehow - I would rather not write like Tolkien; I can mimic it almost addictively but it MUST be an art that takes only a genius to master - only be appropriate to original subject matter - anyway its mimicry is a dangerous art.

And then to compare Tolkien's view of history to Tolstoy!

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier

My first book of the year - and a friend's favourite novel. "Tell me what you read, and I will tell you what you are." Knowing that a book is beloved by someone makes every page of it sear with their personality.

Griet is a well-illustrated, believable character: her methodology in all her tasks and in dealign with people, and process of mind makes her so. The girls she associates with, especially Tanneke, are also vivid. But static. Villains are villains, the virulent is inexorable, Maria Thins is a fairy god mother. I think this is where the discord lies between my writing style and my friend's - her attention to detail lies in the human, mine in some sense of larger cosmic meaning. My favourite authors (Dickens, Eliot, Gabrielle Roy), no matter their realistic subject matter, bring their psychoanalysis to a revelation of human life and history. For me anyways, "The Girl with the Pearl Earring" is just a good story.

Booklist 2008

The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier
The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien
Women in Love, D. H. Lawrence
Delta of Venus, Anais Nin
Puck of Pook's Hill, Rudyard Kipling
Remembrance of Things Past: Swann's Way, Marcel Proust
Invisible Man, Ralph Elliot
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
*The Story Girl, L. M. Montgomery
*Magic for Marigold, L. M. Montgomery
*The Blue Castle, L. M. Montgomery
Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell
Remembrance of Things Past, Book 2, Marcel Proust
Demian, Herman Hesse
*Mistress Pat, L. M. Montgomery
*Rilla of Ingleside, L. M. Montgomery
Le temps , ce grand sculpteur, Marguerite Yourcenar
*A Tangled Web, L. M. Montgomery
*Anne of Ingleside, L. M. Montgomery
Utopia, Thomas Moore
The Duel, Anton Chekhov
The Parasites, Daphne du Maurier
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
Once Upon a Time in the North, Philip Pullman
Before Green Gables, Budge Wilson
The Flight of the Falcon, Daphne du Maurier
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
Othello, William Shakespeare
The Horse and His Boy, C. S. Lewis
Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
The Magicians Nephew, C. S. Lewis
All that is Solid Turns Into Air, Marshall Berman
The Leaving, Budge Wilson
The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway
Looking for Anne, Irene Gammel
Persuasion, Jane Austen
Faust, Goethe
Kamera Oskura, Nabokov
Purgatorio, Dante
Six Memos for the Millennium, Italo Calvino
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
Heroides, Ovid
How to Travel with a Salmon, Umberto Eco
Fire, Anais Nin
* Anne's House of Dreams, Montgomery
* The Story Girl, Montgomery
* The Golden Road, Montgomery
* Rainbow Valley, Montgomery
Magic Island, Elizabeth Waterston
Survival, Margaret Atwood
The Tin Flute, Gabrielle Roy
The Gift of Wings, Mary Henley Rubio
The Cashier/Alexandre Chenevert, Gabrielle Roy
Adam Bede, George Eliot
A Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
* HP7, JK Rowling

* signifies reread
italics signify non-fiction