Silas Marner, George Eliot

I have been having a royal literary feast. In the last two days I read A Wrinkle in Time, Many Waters, Silas Marner and Narnia. All great stories, really stories told in grand tradition that can be read out loud.

Silas Marner is a fairytale. It begins with an evocation of time past "I have been having a royal literary feast. "IN the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses -- and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning-wheels of polished oak -- there might be seen in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race.", and is a tale with symbolic characters, lost treasure and cherubic infants, and a happy, heartwarming ending. It is the only George Eliot book I have read with a truly happy ending, one where there is no sacrifice or compromise. I wonder why it is George Eliot (and L. M. Montgomery's) favourite book, and the only reason I can come up with is that it is a simple tale, probably to popular taste, sophisticated told. George Eliot's writing is more refined here than in any other book, and the lilting rhythm of her prose is echoed in Montgomery.

But oh! It does not have the far-reaching grasp of humanity, and that delicate bond between humans who involuntarily torture one another, that is the hallmark of Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss. Silas Marner is too simple and... too happy. I can't see the piercing psychology in having a cheated man grow isolated, absorbed in his work, and miserly. That is how the fairytales characterize misers. I'm interested in Eppie, but I think the bond between Silas and his daughter is too sweet, too simple and idealistic. Were I in a place where I meant the sun and moon and stars to my guardian, I would feel fettered. And since Eppie falls for the first man we hear of her with, since there is no real love story or drama to her life save her birthright, I feel like we don't really know her, and I can care less about her fate. So, too, is the abrupt coming to light of Dunstan, and Godfrey's confession without true precedence or motivation. He really needn't reveal his secret since Dunstan had taken it to the grave with him, so why now? And after all, it is unsatisfactory that Godfrey should miss Eppie's wedding.

How strange - I am always happy to see a book end well, but I think I bear a grudge against Eliot for writing a happy story.

Many Waters, Madeleine L'Engle

I love Madeleine L'Engle and I think she is a wonderful, gracious, faith-filled person. Thus, even if I haven't read all her books, I like them because I like her. I do think the sequels to Wrinkle lack the graceful flow of pen, and the tightness of Wrinkle's plot, and the wide imagination.

Many Waters must have been fun for L'Engle to write: to revisit characters of a beloved family tree and to give them their own stories. I enjoy L'Engle's characterization of Sandy and Dennys, and find them realistic and hilarious for who they are.

I understand, too, some of the prevalent themes: that you have to believe for something to be (unicorn), that non-violence is the best policy (Sandy captured: "Sandy's rejection of violence had nothing to do with giving in. Anything but."), that goodness and purity (Yalith) are more attractive than physical beauty (Tiglah). I was glad to see the Seraphim and the Nephilim, all named: it is wonderful to see archaic names revived in a modern tale. I was, too, glad to know the people of the Flood story: know what their lives were like and the social atmosphere Noah faced when he built his ark.

But in general, the book made very little impression on me. I could care less about life in the oasis, and the complex dramas of Noah's family, and Lamech and Malah. I plugged on in the story waiting for something to happen, and I think it is a little disappointing to end the tale just before the great flood. This is an enjoyable book, but not a fable I'll remember and refer to.

The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis

I have never read Narnia growing up, and so I have been trying to read what I can of the series whenever I can find it. Lewis is also a master of storytelling, and his narrator's voice is conversational, so I think if the books were read to me out loud, I would be alive to their magic. I often wonder where the appeal lies in these stories that have captured the imagination of so many children. Is it the thought that there is this wonderful world somewhere, that exists parallel to ours, only their time runs so much faster? Is it the funny talking animals? Or the fun of engaging in battle and of being indispensible in saving the world?

My imagination fails me here. Growing up, I loved the Wizard of Oz, especially the walled china city where figurines ran to and fro, and it thrilled me to imagine that this microscopic world existed alongside one of real-life humans. So I can see how absorbing imaginary worlds, these "heterotopias" are. But it goes back to the issue of a heroine I can grow with and identify with. I grew up (really grew up, became who I am heart body and soul) on Anne of Green Gables, and Anne is such an absorbing and real heroine, that her soul is knit with mine. I don't know who I can attach myself to in Narnia - Jill? I hardly know her. The only person I really love is Lucy Pevensie, but not every book stars her. And here is, again, where C. S. Lewis's comment that his characters are pawns for his plots instead of vice versa come into play: you like his characters, no doubt, but you never get to know them intimately.

Coming to Narnia as an adult, I cannot fail to see the Christian allegory so evident in the plot and all the symbols. It is very, very effective at explaining the Christian faith. These books make me believe. How much clearer can you get with the stable that is light within for those who believe in Aslan? How much more clearly can you convey that those who say life is crap will find life crappy because that's what they choose to see, than the story of the dwarves who think they are tasting donkey dung when they eat the feast Aslan spreads for them, whose reality is of their own making? Faced with a picture like this, I yearn to proclaim proudly that I believe in God. It seems that it is always better to believe - believe in anything.

Doesn't this show that it doesn't matter what religion you follow, so long as your intentions and works are good? I was brought up Catholic, and brought up to be compassionate and forgiving, and all my religious education (through class, discussions, and books) only affirms my conviction that Christian acts are more important than professing to be Christian. I never try to convert anyone - I don't believe in it. Let each live according to his or her convictions, and be true to his or herself, so long as their faith - in whatever they name their God - causes them to do good. Tenets to the contrary I struggle with, and I hate to say that I have a stone wall in my convictions, but this is it: One can be Christian - "truly Christian", without being so in name.

"Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me... Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou has done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted.... Bloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."

The image of Aslan's judgement as all Narnian beasts came rushing through the portal is very powerful, and the joy I felt in seeing all our dear Narnian friends again was unsurpassed. I think there is no greater happiness than reuniting with beloved friends, and I agree that there is no better promise for heaven. That is the only idea of heaven I want. Lewis's heaven is lovely, though: a place that resembles those we love best, only better, since this is the true and perfect Platonic ideal. Where countries are connected by mountain ridges, and places that have ceased to be continue here. Where Narnia (or whatever fantasy-lands are dear to our hearts) can be found.

And then, I was shocked to hear that all the friends of Narnia had died in a railway accident. Died! When they are all so young! Without them there is no link from our world to Narnia, (even if Narnia is no more), and there will NEVER be. Unless someone finds the magic rings. Poor Susan, what will she do when she finds out she has lost her siblings and parents? Is THIS Lewis's test of our faith: after a long glimpse of heaven, to see if we would be satisfied with this ethereal place or our own attachment to earthly life? If so, I've failed the test, for I can't help but rebel and be aghast at the thought of Lucy and Edmund and Peter and Jill and Eustace's death. That revelation fast plummetted the book to one of my least favourites of the series.

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle

I love this book so much. Here is another book on par with Mockingbird for perfection: everything hits the right note. There's the classic and entirely effective opening sentence "It was a dark and stormy night". The whole exposition in the first chapter (introduction of characters, especially the characterization of Meg, and then the stranger in the night) is just enough. Meg is another character you can really love from the start, because she's a teenager struggling with normal teenage problems: hating school, not fitting in and getting bullied; imperfect and unhappy in her shell. She embarks on a great adventure that changes that: and here is the grand and universal theme of love that can defeat all evil. Her adventure is so wonderful, and peopled with such symbolic people: feisty Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who who quotes multilingually because she hasn't learned our speech, wise Mrs. Which who struggles to materialize, the Happy Medium, the two-dimensional planet, the planet of Aunt Beast's where you can't see, and Camazoztz where the horror is conformity and not thinking. Quotations liberally but always aptly used. Perhaps most wonderful of all is that subtle blossom of love between Meg and Calvin that is so sweet, and surprising, and affirms Meg's being. Like Lyra and Will, one journey bonds them forever, but though Meg and Calvin get very little real "romance" time, you love their love.

Madeleine L'Engle is a writer who *can* write. Let me prove it to you:

"It was a dark and stormy night.

In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, creating wraithlike shadows that raced along the ground.

The house shook.

Wrapped in her quilt, Meg shook.

She wasn't usually afraid of the weather. -- It's not just the weather, she thought. -- It's the weather on top of everything else. On top of me. On top of Meg Murry doing everything wrong."

Then you are - all on the first half-a-page you have a catching opening line, spectacular imagery, and an introduction to Meg that all ties in to the weather and her problems.

"Curled up on one of her pillows, a gray fluff of kitten yawned, showing its pink tongue, tucked its head under again, and went back to sleep."

Concise, again does not waste words in painting a picture.

Some Meg and Calvin love:

'"Calvin continued to look at the picture [of father.] "He's not handsome or anything. But I like him."

Meg was indignant. "He is too handsome."

Calvin shook his head. "Nah. He's tall and skinny, like me."

"Well, I think you're handome," Meg said.'

"'Mother,' Meg pursued. 'Charles says I'm not one thing or the other, not flesh nor fowl nor good red herring.'

'Oh, for crying out loud,' Calvin said, 'you're Meg, aren't you? Come on and let's go for a walk.'"

Can you say romance?

"Calvin led Meg across the lawn. The shadows of the trees were long and twisted and there was a heavy, sweet, autumnal smell to the air. Meg stumbled as the land sloped suddenly downhill, but Calvin's strong hand steadied her. They walked carefully across the twins' vegetable garden, pickign their way through rows of cabbages, beets, broccoli, pumpkins. Looming on their left were the tall stalks of corn. Ahead of them was a small apple orchard bounded by a stone wall, and beyond this the woods through which they had walked that afternoon. Calvin led the way to the wall, and then sat there, his red hair shining silver in the moonlight, his body dappled with patterns from the tangle of branches. He reached up, pulled an apple off a gnarled limb, and handed it to Meg, then picked one for himself."

"'I wish I were a different person,' Meg said shakily. 'I hate myself.'

Calvin reached over and took off her glasses. Then he pulled a handkercheif out of his pocket and wiped her tears. This gesture of tenderness undid her completely, and she put her head down on her knees and sobbed. Calvin sat quietly beside her, every once in a while patting her head. 'I'm sory,' she sobbed finally. 'I'm terribly sorry. Now you'll hate me.'

'Oh, Meg, you are a moron.' Calvin said. 'Do you know you're the nicest thing that's happened to me in a long time?'

Meg raised her head, and moonlight shone on her tearstained face; without the glasses her eyes were unexpectedly beautiful...

Now she was waiting to be contradicted. But Calvin said, 'Do you know this is the first time I've seen you without your glasses?... Well, you know what, you've got dreamboat eyes.'' Calvin said. 'Listen, you go right on wearing your glasses. I don't think I want anybody else to see what gorgeous eyes you have.'"


"Calvin came to her and took her hand, then drew her roughly to him and kissed her. He didn't say aything, and he turned away before he had a chance to see the surprised happiness that brightened Meg's eyes."

Not much, but every bit worth savouring.

Oh, and wisdom in so many ways.

"We want nothing form you that you do without grace, or that you do without understanding."




I REALLY like that evil is simply not thinking. I'm less fond of Calvin calling everyone "morons", but this was the 60s, and that derogatory name didn't bother me the first time I read it.

Someone NEEDS to make a movie of this book.

A Bird in the House, Margaret Laurence

I was surprised to encounter a child narrator reminiscent of Scout Finch when I began this book. Vanessa MacLeod is precocious and defiant. She is also a budding writer. The book opens with a description of a brick house, "an ancestral home" in a small-town world, dominated by striking female characters. I was reminded of Margaret Laurence's statement that "all Canadian women's fiction began with L. M. Montgomery" - for of course, Vanessa is an attic-cat Emily, a shrewd observer, perceptive and calculating like the girls in Munro's stories, and sensitive to the tenor of human tragedy like Gabrielle Roy's Christine. Grandmother MacLeod has precedent in Montgomery's stiff, starched grandmothers of a bygone generation whom the young cannot relate to, and Aunt Edna has all the fire and spunk of a Montgomery heroine. In a typical Montgomery twist, Grandmother Connor shows unexpected strength, meanwhile, domestic tyranny and clash of (female) wills reoccur.

I have no doubt that the writing is autobiographical. The theme is no more than the web of family relationships and a portrait of Canadian life, but the writing is erudite and the dialogue captures the atmosphere easily, without pretense. When I read something like this the images that have been engraved in our own minds and heart require much skill to be told with great subtlety. Even telling a story that is based on one's own childhood is an art.

There is something to be said for the short story format. Montgomery knew it well, and Anne of Windy Poplars and Anne of Ingleside (as well as her journals) are particularly full of "other women's stories" and gossip, for this is the pre-WW2 female perspective. The stories deal with external incidents and have psychological meaning. Munro and Gabrielle Roy are notable short story writers, too (Munro, of course, becoming arguably the world's best short story writer). Even Mockingbird was originally a chain of short stories: each chapter is poignant and complete unto itself, each tells its own finished story and advances the plot. That is the beauty of the short story format, versus conventional chapter-books where the ending is no more than a section break, and cliffhangers are desirable. I think the short story format is very effective in conveying life lessons.

The chapter that moved me most of The Half Husky. What a cruel story!

Well, one of these days I need to read the rest of the Manawaka books. I really enjoy Laurence's writing: it is less stylized than Munro's and Atwood's, but very readable. Again, great "representational art."

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

I have been friends with this book for a long time. I won it, long ago, in Mr. F's class for a reading award or somesuch, and he bequeathed it to me with remarks that it was his favourite book. Which is slightly awkward, after all... favourite books are such intimate things. I don't quite know what my honest assessment of Mr. F is, because I didn't know him very well and was influenced by the malicious class atmosphere and petty gossip. Besides, he came after Ms. J., whom we admired so wholeheartedly that he was no rival. But judging by the repertoire of fiction that he really, really loved: LotR and Mockingbird amongst others - and tried to impress that love upon us (I don't know how many of us appreciated it), there were probably unsounded depths to his personality.

I have always admired Mockingbird, and upon rereading after many years my assessment is still the same: this book is so PERFECT. it does everything right. it's an essay about an important issue, and it has a heroine you can really love and grow up with. it's so easy-to-read, and not a single thing is out of place or amiss. There are books that are instructive, not preachy but designed to enlighten on a certain issue: The God of Small Things, or the Life of Pi, fall into this category. Singular of purpose and meticulously executed works of art. Then, there are books where the plot is a breathing ground for the main character: Anne of Green Gables and Harry Potter are novels of this type, with heroes/heroines you really learn to love. Mockingbird does both. You can be friends with Scout and Dill, and you come away moved and wiser by the events of the story.

I began Laurence's A Bird in the House just after closing this book. I was surprised to find the same erudite prose and child's eye view I found in Lee. I began thinking of "traditional" prose, like in Lee and Laurence and even Harry Potter, and Austen and Tolstoy, versus stylistically beautiful prose like Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pasternak and Ondaatje. Even Mark Haddon's Dog in Nightime falls under the stylistic category. And I think, masterpieces as Love in the Time of Cholera and The English Patient are, there is nothing like a traditional, "storytelling" story. I guess it's the equivalent of the debate between representational and non-representational art. As beautiful and moving and profound as abstract art is, there is nothing as comforting and easy to relate to as a really well-done realistic painting. I admire experimental fiction and art, and I think it's necessary that we seek out new means of expressing ourselves and to react to societal change, but for me, there is nothing quite like the classics. A really great work of art relies on more than style, of course. Nevertheless, I think it is more challenging to paint or write really well within classical constraints. Orwell, for instance, has not defied the "elements of style and grammar," but his prose is well-tuned, sound.

Lastly, I will have to track down some Truman Capote. I'm increasingly intrigued by the friendship between Harper Lee and Truman Capote, given that Lee seems to be influenced by Capote to pursue a writing career, that she "toiled for years" while he was successful and popular. Given that Capote seems to be the quintessential affable, social homosexual. And given that there are some nostalgic paragraphs in Mockingbird that make me think she must have loved him.

the Curious Incident of the Dog at Night-Time, Mark Haddon

I wonder if Mark Haddon is one of those writers who write, or those who must write. I'm inclined to think the former.

I have high praise for this book. The writing is easy and approachable. The book is clear, in purpose and execution, too - it is like a very well-formulated, clearly illustrated essay. It is exactly one idea that has been completely fleshed out: everything in the book works. The plot was unexpected, unpredictable, and so the suspense is part of what makes this book such an engaging read. I did not know that the trivial scene of a dead dog would blow into such a drama. At first I doubted whether the incident was real, or a deranged figment of Christopher's imagination. I questioned the timeline. I expected it to have a different catch, really, one deeper and more psychological. I hardly thought it would be a family drama, so I can see how it makes for dramatic film material with a unique perspective. I really expected Christopher to get caught when he ran away, but I can see how well it works that he succeeded in his quest to London. I think the ending is realistic, but a little flat and "factual" after the intrigue of all the other chapters. It lacks Christopher's unique voice, and is too motivational.

This book made me reflect upon and become more deeply convinced of some things: one, that there is truth in stories. I would learn more about autism reading this, or watching its film rendition, than a thousand textbooks or an "awareness" pamphlet. Literature arouses compassion, and changes lives. And that is why I would really like to write.

Also, I can see how I'm... not autistic, but has the germs of it. I'm not truly affectionate and I'm selective about physical contact. I have trouble deciphering facial expressions (and I actually have trouble remembering faces, but that's another story.) I like logic, but I share Christopher's implicit convictions... or superstitions about signs for good and bad days. My memory is fairly remarkable, and I detest it when furniture is moved. I could not talk or eat for extended periods. My world is so delicate that very little could make me erect a wall to protect it and to shut out what hurts or frightens me.

Perhaps that is Haddon's best achievement: to make autism so accessible and easy to relate to. I'll think twice from now on about the crazy man in the subway. The prime numbers, observation (like the billboards in London - oh how nostalgic this makes me for London!), the Hound of Baskervilles book report, the lists, his Mom's spelling mistakes and the slightly awkward turns of phrase like "do sex" really make it real.

Haddon's math and logic does have flaws though, and I do nitpick. For instance, if Christopher's fear of his father and his feeling of safety are an inverse relationship, fear(constant)≠ fear(father) x safety. it would be fear(father) / safety. And Christopher says he does not like metaphors, but at the very end he describes the pain of missing his A-levels like putting a finger on the radiator. That's a metaphor. What Haddon means is that Christopher doesn't get idioms and common expressions, like "you're the apple of my eye." That's *not* a metaphor.

I find Christopher's family entirely realistic in the modern context. I think it's realistic that his Mother felt trapped by taking care of him, and envious of her husband's ease of managing him. The partner swap is maybe a little too soap-opera. And lastly, it's realistic that there is no resolution for his parents' relationship, but they do work together to ensure the best possible for Christopher.

But that's not how my family would've handled it. I'm not too conservative - over the years I've become a fan of non-traditional families (and, in all honesty, desensitized to and sympathetic of having affairs), but Christopher's family makes me sad. It troubles me how much a person has to give up to care for their child. I don't think I could ever handle such a responsibility - what a daunting thing it could be to bring a life into the world! It also troubles me that Ed showed no mercy to Judy even though they both had Christopher's best interests at heart. You'd think that, if she was his wife, if they both still love the child they brought into the world, he'd let her stay in the house. I don't know, it's not very realistic, and I'm not talking in terms of romance, but my family would have different values in this situation, and I'm ashamed to say that my rebellious ways would probably make me shirk duty (to the child and to one another), and my parents wouldn't.

And last of all, the book is a well-presented argument, but it is JUST a well-presented argument. I learned from Christopher, but I would not grow in him. That is the difference between a stand-alone piece of this sort, and a true classic like Anne, or Jane Austen, or even - I daresay - Harry Potter. And if I ever made it, I do not know what kind of writer I should prefer to be, after all.

HP3 (also HP1 and HP2)

HP3 is definitely the most coherent book in the series. Everything fits. There's huballoo in the beginning over a convict, Black, amongst Muggles and wizards alike. Padfoot appears, and McGonagall's first lesson is about the Animagi. Hermione's timetable require a time turner. Hagrid's Hippogriff in the first lesson is a major part of the plot. Crookshanks and Scabbers... of course, and Ron and Hermione's fight is the natural consequence. Harry hears his parents for the first time, and the story is all about his dad's friendships. The Marauder's Map is all about his dad's friends. And everything, everything is resolved in the end.

There isn't a single extraneous element in the story. Everything works together.

To add to that, Lupin is one of JKR's best creations I think - someone who is so likeable, kind, and confident. There's a happy beginning with the sunny days in Diagon Alley, and a happy ending. Easily the most heartwarming book.

In the other books so far, I think the Dobby storyline is extraneous to HP2, and HP1 I never "get" because there's so much going on. The Dragon incident is a climax in itself, but it's not the real climax and takes away from it. The unicorn and the Forbidden Forest fiasco takes away from the climax, too, I think. HP1's ending disappoints me because Harry is simply physically saved from Quirrell by Dumbledore, and a pile of housepoints are awarded to an incident which the rest of the school hasn't even witnessed. HP1 has a strong exposition, I think, but the ending is too glossed over. HP2 is more coherent than HP1, and would be perfect if there was no Dobby - although then I guess Dobby would have to wait until Book 4.

Confessions, St. Augustine

I'm reading Augustine of Hippo's Confessions, because I think it would be good for me. I have read it once before, summarily. I believe (I could be mistaken) that Augustine is considered rational by philosophers, and that his Confessions is an intellectual piece of conversion literature. I am reading it slowly, because I want to really process the somewhat dense text.

Book 1

You can imagine my surprise when the first chapter begins: "Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you."

I think a non-believer would find that difficult to relate to and presumptuous. Even I think it's quite an assumption. Augustine doesn't explain why he believes man will instinctively praise and glorify God, and will never be happy unless they worship him. Instead, he wonders if it is necessary to know God to pray to him, or if through prayer we come to know him. Yes, the methodology should be discussed, although I think it's fine either way. What surprised me was that Augustine really does accept the basic truth of Christianity from the outset and does not question it, but is seeking guidance to be a better follower, and thus to truly turn to God.

Yet as I read on, perhaps spurred by growing up in Catholic doctrine, perhaps by the events of the past few days when I wanted to openly thank God for a few good tidings in my life, I found myself agreeing with him that yes, those who find God will praise him. But if Augustine's intention is to explain and convert, I don't see how these assertions answer the purpose.

Then Augustine says that, throughout his childhood (even from infancy), he was a sinner: vain, disobedient, non-studious, given to overindulging in his own dreams and emotions. In fact, he thinks that a baby's cry is sinful, because should an adult cry for food he would be regarded as abnormal. That seems like an illogical comparison: he even acknowledges it is the norm for babies to cry and adults not to. He also claims that just as people know reading and writing is more valuable than daydreams, obedience to God is better than indulging in fantasy. Says who that literacy is worth more than imagination? Finally, he asserts throughout that his attachment to worldly things makes him sin and distances him from God. I have always struggled with this doctrine. For instance, in one section he claims that studiousness is good, in the next that his pride in his intellect is bad. Okay, I get that his intelligent makes him arrogant and unkind, but you can't blame that on worldly attachment in one chapter, and say that dreams (not academic intelligence) was worldly attachment in the last. I think Augustine is advocating some things here: humility, and restraint, two things that are not easily found in a world that values humility and self-indulgence. Well, I like the world and I find many things in it intellectually stimulating. I'd like to win my way into it. And like Augustine, I've grown up Catholic so I feel guilty about my wanton lust for everything luxury (success, romance, intellect) in life. But I can't see how it's wrong to seek success in this world that God created. This is the gap I can't leap: that it is better to be humble and content, I hate the thought of being mediocre and complacent and I'm not sure my faith can make me happy about forfeiting ambition. I know Augustine has equal trouble renouncing his self-destructive ways, so I'll see what he thinks, but I still can't see why he can so easily accept it's a sin.

HP1

Upon rereading I think HP1 is more well-written than I remember. I still stand by that while I think JKR's imagination is extraordinary, her powers of description could be improved upon. The exposition, with the Dursley and their horror of anything extraordinary, is excellent. (In my opinion, easily the best part of the book and a classic way of beginning a story, although according to JKR's website it's not very popular: http://www.jkrowling.com/textonly/en/extrastuff_view.cfm?id=1) Harry's life with the Dursleys is pretty unrealistic. The characterization, though, is realistic: Harry, Ron, and Hermione are all realistic people. I still think most of them are caricatures, like Jane Austen characters. I still don't understand how Harry's adventures in this first book made such a sensation, though. At around 10 years old, I would have liked the details of the story - Quidditch, dragons, owls, etc. - but I wouldn't have been very keen by the plot to find out what's being hidden in the castle. And I think Dumbledore's rescue of Harry from Quirrell is a bit of a cop-out.

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

Dr. Zhivago, Pasternak

If there was a writing style I should like to emulate, it is Pasternak's. I don't know what it takes to be a writer like him - political strife, disillusion, poverty, sexual passion - but I admire his writing style exceedingly.

The intro by John Bayley of Oxford notes the unconventional form, and poetry, of Pasternak. The poetry refers to the material richness of the descriptions, the mesmerizing everyday details. "This is Pasternak's remarkable power of conveying the wonderful oddity of objects which is the life force of his poems..." The unconventional form is the somewhat chaotic rythmn of the novel, the fairy-tale abruptness with which events occur and people appear.

The lyricism of the prose, and the zeitgeist (the temporality but richness of life?) resonates with Michael Ondaatje's The Skin of a Lion.

When I read Lord of the Rings a week ago, I loved the epic form, the archaic turn of phrase, and how multiple characters and viewpoints are handled. It struck me how personal an epic can be - the greatest events are handled from the viewpoint of a bystander, recounted by someone, instead of being narrated directly. But sometimes Tolkien delved into the personal emotions of a hero, as well as of a more common (but nonetheless heroic) character.

All the same, in the grandeur of the world the narrative voice seems removed in an epic as such.

I read somewhere C. S. Lewis conceived of his stories in terms of plot, and the characters were mere pawns by means to achieve this end. I tend to generalize that to the fantasy genre in general. In a bildungsroman, however, I've often felt that the plot is only occasion for a character to breathe and have their being in; it's the character that matters.

I like the epic scale of Dr. Zhivago - it assumes "the dimensions of a national myth" , has that wonderful coincidential cast of characters- but it remains Zhivago's story.

---

As for Zhivago himself - have I ever met anyone like him? Intelligent, introspective, with a circle of friendly acquaintances despite his ineptitude for common life - he is idealistic and perhaps he is so absorbed in his ideals that he deteriorates. What makes him attractive to Lara, to Marina? What makes him love Lara with no wholehearted contrition, or dimunition of love for Tonia? Women are attracted to that introspective type - perhaps with a maternal desire for someone to care for, perhaps their unkemptness is coloured with romance.

And is sexual passion essential to intelligentsia?

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisnero

I found the novella in my mother's laundry room and fell to reading it, more shamelessly to fulfill my "read 52 books a year" quota than anything else. But I picked it up because I've heard the title long ago, and was intrigued.

It's a candid telling of childhood poverty, coming of age, tragic and comic characters, in the same era and social setting of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. (So much of it must resonate with my mom's childhood.) The chapters pages are brief as poems, each a tribute to a character or incident.

The author is of course hispanic, and falls into the category of "writing what we know." Will I, too, write what I know? Will my stories (which lately have been developing along the lines of character sketches, of tragic and the burden of parentage and immigraion) be a social product too?

Kilmeny of the Orchard, L. M. Montgomery

Upon re-reading (I love my LMM's so well, that most of her novels I have reread countless times) I find that Kilmeny is underrated. The characters are original: they vary from the LMM formula. Robert Williamson, the gossip of Lindsay, for example, is a man, a rare choice for Montgomery; and a defiance against stereotypes. His wife, on the contrary, holds her counsel. Thomas Gordon is reserved, stoic, but intellectual- he can be fired up by discussion. There's a very conventional but colourful flavour to teh way Eric's father talks. Eric is a good depiction of a charming young man. I know (or holds someone on a pedestal by fancy, esteems) people like that: genuine, truly charismatic.

The plot holds, and it's a story well-told.

Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

The flyleaf bookcover writes that Edgar Allan Poe is the father of short stories. The tales, though I have long known and thrilled to some of their very names - the Tell-Tale Heart, the Masque of the Red Death, the Cask of Amontillado - aren't as delightfully engaging as classics sometimes are. The turn of phrase sometimes chimes with my very soul in Dickens or Tolkien.

Poe's stories make me wonder if a short story isn't really an essay, illustrated with a fictional incident. There is a thesis on human psychology preambling every tale.

The prose - constant prose, verging towards stream of consciousness, little dialogue - gets very tedious at times.

I thought I would delight in a good volume of ghost stories, but I struggled to stay focused on them.

Middlemarch, George Eliot

I finished Middlemarch awhile ago. It affected me so much that I have not been able to accurately review it. I have thought about it much, and dreamed of discussing it with my mom. It is one of the most accurate and incredible portrayals of human life I have read; like many classics, I find it to be true.

to quote more of its genius:

Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy. 570

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. Miss brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utteranace: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must kept the germinating grain away from the light. 17

Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retinaed very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted... any of those great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty - how could he affect her as a lover? -5

Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions? 10

There are characters who are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in drams which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilitis will clash against objcets that remain innocently quiet. 200

Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbour's lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of the unity which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness. 342

our good depends on the quality and breath of our emotion; and toWill, a creature who cared little for what are caleld hte solid things of life and greatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a feeling as he had towards Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune. What others might have called the futility of his passion, made an additional delight for his imagination: he was concsious of a generous movement, and of verifying in his own experience that higher love-poetry which had charmed his fancy.

I like Mary best out of all the characters, for her imperfectness of character (upon meeting her, don't we know she is surly because of her plainness, but compensatingly endowed with a clever tongue and good humour?) in her fidelity are traces of my heart:

It has taken such deep root in me - my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. 550


If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions ,partings and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.

I could never relate truly to Dorothea's passion for Will, though, who seems lacklustre, mediocre, what our society calls a "loser" and theirs a "vagabond."

I like Mary's father Caleb, too, who is generously good, who manages to convince others of their folly in a simple, logical way. (re: Railroad fight scene.)

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. and we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.

I find Lydgate and Rosamond's marriage very tragic and realistic. In the young and charismatic doctor Lydgate's sacrifice of anything, even manlly pride, and ambition, for domestic comfort, I understand how some men are unerringly tender towards their wives. The inevitable softening comes because it must.

His marraige would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on loving eachother. ... His wife had a hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, 'She will never love me much' is easier to bear than the fear, 'I shall love her no more.' Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to excuse her, and to blame the hard cicumstances which were partly his fault. He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had made in the morning, and it was not in Rosamond's nature to be repellent or sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husbnad loved her and was under control. But this was something quite distinct from loving him.

Rosamond's depiction is very accurate too - there are women like her, whose smallest words and expressions bring others to blame and make them yield to her. In a thought-out, but not malicious way.

It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's bond has turned into this power of galling.

He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irevocable loss of love for him, nad he consquent drearines of their life. The ready fullness of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the first violent mvements of his anger.

His mariage... if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, must be a state of effort to go on loving without too much care about being loved...

The affair of Raggles' sinister information, which brings about the catastrophe of the novel is a little overblown and unrealistic. But its effects are accurately drawn enough.

Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it, for conjecture soon became more confident than knwoledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.

Dorothea's impetuous generosity is made of this:
Some of her intensest experience in the last tow years had set her mind strongly in oppostition to any unfavourable constructions of others... she disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force.

more of Tertius (what a horrible name) and Rosamond:

"Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed to regard as if it were hers alone. He was always to her a being aprt, doing what she objected to.... For he had almost learned the lesson that he must bend himself to her nature, and that because she came short in her sympathy, he must give the more."

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the greif of one who falls from that serene activity into absorbing soulwasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech - one does not at least hear how inadequate the words are."

I liked the ending about Mary and Fred's successes, each being attributed to the other.

There is really an odd reversal of foturnes in this story - Fred irresponsible, finally successful, Lydgate having always seen himself as sold out. I liked the portrait of how the Bulstrode dealt with their tragedy, too, but neither acknowledging the crime. That is how soem people work.

He burst out crying and they cried together... his confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Openminded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "how much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I am innocent.

I think it is one of my favourite books.

Vanity Fair, William Thackeray

I just finished "Thackeray's masterpiece." - and liked it. I tried to read it years ago and ran short of time. I don't think I would have liked it at seventeen... like Middlemarch, it is a "classic for adults."

I would have thought Becky evil incarnate years ago, perhaps. But I admire her Becky and almost wish for her success. We wish for Dobbin's success, too, we want a happy ending and are satisfied! Becky is not subdued but remains as intriguing as she ever was. Sometimes you are inclined to pity her for being an orphan. You wonder in what way of life can she otherwise find happiness. I find that in her I get a glimpse of people who are "too pretty and clever for their own good" - people who strive to please, and succeed.

quotes:
The best of women are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidentaial, how often those frank smiles, which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm - I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models ,and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman dhide the dulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth. 137

By humbly and frankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no knowing, my son, what good you may do. I knew once a gentleman and very worthy practitioner in vanity fair, who used to do little wrongs to his heighbours on prupose, and in order ot apologise for them in an open and manly way afterwrads - and what ensued? My friend Crocky Doyle was like everywhere, andd eemed to be rather impetuous but the honestest fellow. 179

As his hero and heroine pass the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended: as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasant there: and wife and husbnad had nothing but to link each other's arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy and perfect frution. (But our little Amelia was just on the bank of her new country, and was already looking anxioulsy back towards the sad friendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from teh other distant shore. 216

I really like the picture (how sad, stirring, bitter) of Rawdon's departure to battle:

Faithful to his old plan of economy, the Captain dressed himself in his oldest and shabbiest of uniform and epaulets, leaving the newest behind his wife's 9or it might be his widow's) guardinaship. And this famous dandy of Windsor and hyped Park went off on his campaign with a kit as modest as that of a sergeant, and with something like a prayer on his lips for the woman he was leaving. He took her up from the ground, and held her in his arms for a minute, tight pressed aginast his strong-beating heart. his face was purple and his eyes dim, as he put her down and left her.


concerning Geroge's burial:
Which of us can tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how selfish our love is?

I think the tale is a very clever one of reversals and opposites. Rebecca goes from poverty to wealth by din of her wits, Amelia from wealth to poverty for too gentle affection. Rebecca does not love her husband, who is devoted to her; Amelia adores her too much for her own good. Ditto for the sons. Amelia ruins her husband, but Becky makes hers' fortune.

I think Dobbin's move at the end was very wise. Even though I am a patron of fidelity and tragic love, I wanted Amelia to be happy, I wanted Dobbin (who is endeared to me by his awkwardness) to finally gain his long endeavoured prize.

And how like Rebecca to be involved in the blackest, most intriguing scandal! She triumphs to the end.

It's a jolly comedy.

My Name is Anne, she said, Anne Frank by Jacqueline van Maarsen

The memoir lay on a display table at Waterstones and I don't know I picked it up merely because it was simple to read. No - although it was a short book that I knew I would champion in the course of a few stolen evening's peaking - it was the fly-leaf synopsis describing Jacqueline van Maarsen's survival because her french mother managed to unlist her from being a jew, that intrigued me.

I have never read Anne Frank's diary, though I have read fragments. Jacqueline's memoirs were fascinating. I liked from the beginning the descriptions of Jacqueline's mother Eline and her triumphs in the fashion industry. I liked the explanations given for everything, like Eline's decision to pursue fashion in defiance of her unfaithful father, or her desire to have children to console her parents for a lost grandchild.

I liked Jacqueline because she was artistic, and often her descriptions diverted to descriptions of art nouveau art and architecture. I liked that they lived on a street of flourishing new young families, involved in art and music.

When Anne entered the scene, her friendship immediately reminded me of my friends CE's. How friendships where the best friends are utter opposites have always bewildered me! Jacqueline writes: " We were complete opposites, but we were kindred souls." Jacqueline admired Anne for being bubbly, spirited, extraverted and full of zest for life. On the contrary, I sympathized and felt for Jacqueline who suffered under Anne's tyrrany. Anne was jealous of Jacque's other friends, writing slanderingly of them in her diary. Anne seemed very possessive and "full of herself" to me. Just the other day, though, my roommate mentioned how she liked a certain bold coworker of hers "because I'm not like that." And Jacque suffered from loneliness at her new school, withdrawn because after her intimacy with Anne other friendships were hard to come by.

I even mourned for her how she would never have suffered if her mother had had her unlisted as a jew from the beginning of the war. I mourned the secret correspondence Anne proposed, that was never realized.

It surprised me how short the period of their friendship was - only a year in their 12th or 13th spring. And yet its poignancy endured for a lifetime, Jacque is an old woman now. I wonder who she finally married. I liked that the theme of the book was really her parents marriage, the mariage of the french lady and her dutch jewish husband, and that the memoir primarily pays tribute to Jacque's family. Her sister, I suppose, is mentioned only in passing for privacy reasons.

The book affected me, and I already like Anne's friend better than Anne herself.

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

I hadn't known that Margaret Atwood had a "new" book.

So I walked to the next nearest library (it was signed out at the nearest) to fetch it. The cover illustrations by nina chakrabarti really half enticed me to hold a copy of the novel.

It was an enjoyable read. Typical Margaret Atwood witticism and subversive feminine perspective of a male world. Penelope was a believable character whose logic and "unprettiness" I could relate to. But she was a bit of a wimp... you wonder if the maids' farcical version didn't have some truth in it. After all, Penelope does claim to be a liar.

The mock anthropology at the end (also very typical Margaret Atwood) made me laugh.

The real problem with the novel is that it doesn't have "enough meat". We fly through years of Penelope's life and nothing remarkable happens... but more importantly, we learn nothing more of her. She is an unchanging creature. At thirty-five is she less impressionable, less weepy, more guile-ful as she was at fifteen? I wish we saw more of her personal growth, palace strife in the intervening twenty years. Her conversations with her maids and the blarney of her suitors, and the slander of the minstrels. I read the book in two hours: it felt rushed, Margaret Atwood could have elaborated.

Not that I'm not glad to have another book done and listed on the record!

Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar

Of late I have loved, loved Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. I love writing translated from french - it resonates with my own "writing style." It is so easy to read. I love the complexity and grace of her writing. I finished it right away because it was so hard to put down. Even without a word of dialogue the memoirs read.... never fail to hold my interest for a moment, never lack for fascinating detail which I wish I knew more about. If I could write a book like that....

the most secret aspirations of a young man impatient of the present, uncertain as to the future, and thereby open to the gods. 56

The condition of women is fixed by strange customs: the yare at one and the same time subjected and protected, weak and powerful, too much despised and too much respected. In this chaos of contradictory usage, the practices of osciety are superimposed upon the facts of nature, but it is not easy to distinguish betwen the two. THis confused state of things is in every respect more stable than might appear: on the whole, women want to be just as they are; they resist change, or they utilize it for their one nad only aim. The freedom of the women of today, which is greater, or at least more visible, than that of earlier times is but an aspect of the easier life of a prosperous period; the principles and even prejudices of the old laws have not been seriously disturbed.... The weakenss of women, like that of slaves, lies in their legal status; thye take their revenge by their strength in little things, where the power which they wield is almost unlimited. I have rarely seen a household where women do not rule; ... In financial matters they remain legally subject to some form of guardianship, but in practice it is otherwise. In each small shop of hte Suburra it is ordinarily the .. wife who sits firmly ensconced in command of hte counter. 105

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)

Despite having heard about it for all of my childhood, I only recently read this novel, and I believe it's one of my favourite fantasies thus far. I'm currenlty reading the last book of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass.

I love the premise of Pullman's fictional universe - namely that growing up, is about gaining consciousness. I admire how he explains this (and many other philosophical matters) in such a simple and appealing way to children by creating a world where each child has a daemon, that is a symbolic animal. It's extremely well written, complex, and controversial - rebelling against ideas of the church, family, dealing with mental illness etc. VERY interesting material, especially for "just a children's book."

finally finished it some weeks ago... i drew it out, reluctant for the story to end, knowing it wouldn't end happily.... which at the same time makes me think of anne shirley's dictum "only a genius should try to write an unhappy ending." beautiful... and torturous! when will and lyra are so perfect for each other. i am haunted by the story.

i read lyra's oxford immediately after to squelch my cravings... and i don't know if i am happy with the lyra in it. has she lost her spunk?

speaking of which, what on earth is a pine marten? i very well expected pan to become a wildcat.

and while pullman wrote "more lyra"... what about more will? i can't help thinking will will have a much harder time adjusting to his world than lyra. a much harder time "creating more dust." lyra is naturally friendly and it's no surprise that she will make friends at st. sophia's, patiently and cheerfully... but will isn't really a people person. he is earnest, honest, but oh god... the burden on him is SO much harder.

i can't say i'm too happy with the ending. what temptation did mary malone offer... and wasn't it both will and lyra's choice, not just lyra's? WHAT is this means of travelling between worlds without windows, and who is the friend who knows it? serafina? mary? what does it mean, that lyra's oxford and will's oxford will one day overlap but never touch?

arghhhh... i'm so unsated.

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Marcia Marquez

There are several quotations in Love in the Time of Cholera that I love so far.

"in the solitude of his soul"
"Little by little he idealized her, endowing her with improbable virtues and imaginary sentiments, and after two weeks he thought of nothing else but her."
"a vocation for complicity"
"... after having renounced not onlly their family name but their own identity in exchange for a security that was no more than another of a bride's many illusions. They alone knew how tiresome was the man they loved to distraction, who perhaps loved them but whom they had to continue nurturing until his last breath as if he were a child, suckling himm, changing his soiled diapers, distracting him with a mother's tricks to ease his terror at going out each morning to face reality. And nevertheless, when they watched him leave the house, this man they themselves had urged to conquer the world, then they were the ones left with the terror that he would never return.
"to cry with her in rage at the loss of paradise"

I just finished Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. So well written - original in thought, in conclusion, convincing in description and metaphor. I love the writing style; I love it a lot. Stunning, joyous ending.

It is really a "life story."

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

In the relative quiet of morning - or what mellowed into the quiet of morning, I huddled in bed to finish memoirs of a geisha. It's a convincingly written story, rather true to an oriental sensibility. Hatsumomo and Sayuri's rivalry, and the subtle brutality women, especially lesser women, display towards one another is an ancient theme since the dawn of civilization. It recalls "Wan jue gak gak" and the like.

And so, I imagined criticizing the novel with my parents. I know they would find the Chairman's magnamity unrealistic, and so do I - mainly because he remains a dream figure whom we do not know or understand as well as Sayuri, Mameha or even Nobu in his arrogance. We only see the Chariman through her eyes, and his hidden passion for her is hard to believe. I don't know if it is forgiveable. So the ending fails to reconcile my anxiety for Sayuri's fate.

Sayuri's story and enduring faith in the Captain does not convince me that hope will bring true love into fruition. All along I had a stake in Sayuri's enterprise, for winning the affections of her Chairman - how could I but relate to her romance, and wonder if this was the stuff true love is made of? All that she had done in her life was fueled by her dream-life of romance with the Chairman. He permeated her every thought. When she had sex, she wondered what it should be like with him.

And what filled my nightly dreams, or as I sat reading with my skirt inadvertently hiked up under the blankets?

What is truly admirable is Golden's thoroughness in creating Sayuri's character. The novel is by no means flawless; as convincing as Sayuri's voice sounds, the writing style and tone flow but in an amateur way. The "nature similes", in speech and thought, seemed overdone in western writing yet I know how common that sort of thing is in Oriental speech. But very rarely does a male writer portray the female psyche realistically, and Golden's heroine is thoroughly female in her conniving cleverness, studied winsome charm (a reminder of how women inviegle their way into cracks and spaces in civilized society, and what intelligence it requires to achieve what one wants indirectly and with subtle arts!), memory for minute detail and impassioned longing. I'm not sure about the malice and kindness. But never once did Sayuri seem to be painted sentimentally, to beggar pity, to speak without confidence of her past. Retrospective reflection, analyzing situations and uttering proverbs of psychology - eg. "I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it." - probably passe since the day of Dickens, adds to the authenticity of Sayuri's voice even when I do not believe in her convictions.

In all I loved the novel even despite, or perhaps for its flaws. And finishing it leaves me with a sort of heaviness, of the same weight Sayuri describes her sorrows and desolate plight. A mingling of no choice, and that this is fortunate. Peppered with questions of choice and fate. It's easy to read and easy to comprehend, and causes a comfortable amount of self-reflection. The proof of a good, successful novel. And Golden's success is inspiring because you can see the flaws indicative of how it might be achieved, the details that create realism and the unrealistic fictions readers are hoodwinked by.