6 posts tagged “reading”
My web presence has been shamefully absent from this vox this year so far, so this is a part of one of my upteenth resolutions to post more regularly. Last month was a really poor reading effort - nothing was finished. This month things are looking up: so far I've finished:
Mansfield Park was my first Jane Austen. I quite enjoyed it but it isn't one of my favourites now or anything. I'm looking forward to getting into discussing it more at Rory's Book Club. I won't go into it too much here but Fanny really reminded me of the character Jane Eyre in some ways.
I enjoyed this and it was a very fast read. It didn't have the same subtlety of Atonement and On Chesil Beach that was part of what made those novels so good though. I thought the its main theme about the consequences of human selfishness was really interesting. I wonder if all of McEwan's novels end in tragedy? The three I've read all do. Maybe he's a tragedian (non-sequitor but that reminds me of Stranger of Fiction - good movie!)
Currently reading:
My friend Emma leant me this one as she thought I'd really like it. At first I'll admit I wasn't too keen - it didn't look like what I was in the mood to read. But I perservered and started it anyway and it instantly gripped me. I'm only 50 pages in and I'm totally hooked. It's basically about three people living in Nigeria whose lives intersect. That's all I've got so far, I'll update as more happens.
Next up on my tbr list:
I have to review these two for Vibewire
But it's really annoying me that I haven't read any of Allende's better known work so I've also added House of Spirits to my list.
After which I want to FINALLY read:
I enjoyed Summer Crossing and I Think of You more than Reading Lolita in Tehran. I Think of You was very melancholic and culturally rich - each short story had some connection to Egypt. I would like to read Ahdaf Soueif's more well-known novel Map of Love after enjoying this collection of short stories so much
Yes so not so many purchases this month, as usual I have spent nearly all my money on clothes and going out. I'm going to have to cut down on my expenses or my trip to Japan at the end of the year may be endangered :(
I find the best way to beat writers block in creative writing is to just sit down and read a really good book with beautiful writing for awhile. My writing improves a lot from reading. To beat writers block in a news story often the best thing is to think over the possible angles to write it from, and maybe ring around sources, that little extra tidbit of information can provide you with a great new angle more often than not!
The writing is really strong and vivid the majority of the time and I've written down some really fantastic quotes.
"I felt that there were few things in this world more horrific than the adult weep – not the rogue tear during a long-distance commercial, not the stately sob at a funeral, but the cry on the bathroom floor, in the office cubicle, in the two-car garage with one's finger's frantically pressed down upon one's eyelids as if there was an ESC key somewhere, a RETURN."
Some of my favourite quotes included:
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastical future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms further... And one fine morning –
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mass they had made."
" 'Her voice is full of money,' he said suddenly.
That was it. I'd never understood it before. It was full of money – that was the inexhaustable charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals' song of it...
High in a white palace the king's daughter, the golden girl..."
"Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season." I also thought the choice of Daisy's name was interesting, a beautiful flower, but transient and impossible to hold captive for very long. This quote highlights this, and shows how variable and inconstant she is, she changes with the seasons.
