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