This is a blog to chart what I have been reading because I haven't read properly in a long time and I also furthermore think it is important to read to make sure you know how the world works, to enrich your mind and vocabulary, to take refuge, etc. It is also a blog to make sure that I am reading because perhaps I owe it to an imaginary audience here to keep to my word that I will: always be reading something, have no deadlines to finish something, but to contrariwise finish what I do start reading. Maybe I will subconsciously track and discover my reading habits and interests; authors and subjects I inevitably happen to return to.
There are lots of books on my bedside table at the moment, and a few of them are in French and I'm still sometimes kind of wary of tackling French literature, but the Harry Potter translation and Albert Camus' L'Étranger are currently on this list. I also want to reexamine Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée by Simone de Beauvoir because it is necessary that my French is up to scratch if I'm taking a senior level of it in university.
A paragraph dedicated to Ian McEwan is not weird. I love him. Atonement is one of my favourite films and fortunately I realised I hadn't read the McEwan novel it was based on, nor any of his other works. Reading Atonement would have been anti-climatic as I already knew the (brilliant) plot so I found his novella, On Chesil Beach at my local library and read it in one sitting. What a gem. How beautiful the language – not at all overdone, so clear and so direct with such a rich yet subdued use of vocabulary. How succinct the story with its ending that leaves you thinking about your own life, despite the events themselves having no connection to you personally – they leave you fully bewildered in thinking about "what if that one thing had been different, if I had done that single isolated action in a different way?" Sweet Tooth was the second McEwan novel I recently read and it was equal parts poetic, confusing, enthralling, and smutty (here I am a girl who reads erotic passages written by an old white man; make of that what you will). And, as is evidently McEwan's signature, the ending is shocking and lasting. As part of the plot which I won't give away there are a series of short stories within the novel itself, and the one about Sebastian, the French teacher, is so simple but melancholy to read, so touching. I promise that I am not being paid to say any of this, I just really highly enjoy everything he writes that I have read, and am excited to read more in the future.
I was under the impression that I liked the fluid style of Murakami according to his works that I have already read (Norwegian Wood sticks out as the novel I enjoyed the most). So I was happy and ready to sink my teeth into the 928 page wonder that is 1Q84. It is 928 pages, I have infiltrated perhaps 78 of those pages, and I could not continue. I love you, Haruki, but sir, nothing happens in your book. Isolated phrases are nice, the storyline you are creating is somewhat very intriguing, but do I want to read three novels in which I am not enjoying myself but rather waiting to enjoy myself? An unfinished task that I will tackle when my patience is better trained.
There are lots of books on my bedside table at the moment, and a few of them are in French and I'm still sometimes kind of wary of tackling French literature, but the Harry Potter translation and Albert Camus' L'Étranger are currently on this list. I also want to reexamine Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée by Simone de Beauvoir because it is necessary that my French is up to scratch if I'm taking a senior level of it in university.
For my first post I will provide an overview of what I have been reading since finishing the H.S.C.:
A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
So this is a short novel/memoir which sold out following the November 2015 attacks in central Paris. I am not fond really of Hemingway due to his misogynistic tendencies. As Kat says in the movie '10 Things I Hate About You', "He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers". Nonetheless, I felt I needed to read this acclaimed picture of this city which is very close to my heart. Evidently, I still don't know how to navigate the murky waters of appreciating a piece of of work separate from the shitty person who created, with their flesh and mind, said body of work. Anyway, the book lulls on a bit, and sometimes I didn't care really about what went on (the horse races, for example) but there are some timeless and beautiful sketches of Paris which Hemingway is able to conjure, and especially in the closing pages of the novel one gets a sense that both the city and the book, are in their own way, timeless. I liked what Hemingway had to say on writing having to be "true". I also really enjoyed reading about his experiences with the sick lightweight drinker writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, even though I questioned how true and how one-sided such experiences might be, but when considered as a work of "fiction" it was pleasurable to read. I don't know if I'd pick it up again.
A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway
So this is a short novel/memoir which sold out following the November 2015 attacks in central Paris. I am not fond really of Hemingway due to his misogynistic tendencies. As Kat says in the movie '10 Things I Hate About You', "He was an abusive, alcoholic misogynist who squandered half of his life hanging around Picasso trying to nail his leftovers". Nonetheless, I felt I needed to read this acclaimed picture of this city which is very close to my heart. Evidently, I still don't know how to navigate the murky waters of appreciating a piece of of work separate from the shitty person who created, with their flesh and mind, said body of work. Anyway, the book lulls on a bit, and sometimes I didn't care really about what went on (the horse races, for example) but there are some timeless and beautiful sketches of Paris which Hemingway is able to conjure, and especially in the closing pages of the novel one gets a sense that both the city and the book, are in their own way, timeless. I liked what Hemingway had to say on writing having to be "true". I also really enjoyed reading about his experiences with the sick lightweight drinker writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, even though I questioned how true and how one-sided such experiences might be, but when considered as a work of "fiction" it was pleasurable to read. I don't know if I'd pick it up again.
Ian McEwan
A paragraph dedicated to Ian McEwan is not weird. I love him. Atonement is one of my favourite films and fortunately I realised I hadn't read the McEwan novel it was based on, nor any of his other works. Reading Atonement would have been anti-climatic as I already knew the (brilliant) plot so I found his novella, On Chesil Beach at my local library and read it in one sitting. What a gem. How beautiful the language – not at all overdone, so clear and so direct with such a rich yet subdued use of vocabulary. How succinct the story with its ending that leaves you thinking about your own life, despite the events themselves having no connection to you personally – they leave you fully bewildered in thinking about "what if that one thing had been different, if I had done that single isolated action in a different way?" Sweet Tooth was the second McEwan novel I recently read and it was equal parts poetic, confusing, enthralling, and smutty (here I am a girl who reads erotic passages written by an old white man; make of that what you will). And, as is evidently McEwan's signature, the ending is shocking and lasting. As part of the plot which I won't give away there are a series of short stories within the novel itself, and the one about Sebastian, the French teacher, is so simple but melancholy to read, so touching. I promise that I am not being paid to say any of this, I just really highly enjoy everything he writes that I have read, and am excited to read more in the future.
1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
I was under the impression that I liked the fluid style of Murakami according to his works that I have already read (Norwegian Wood sticks out as the novel I enjoyed the most). So I was happy and ready to sink my teeth into the 928 page wonder that is 1Q84. It is 928 pages, I have infiltrated perhaps 78 of those pages, and I could not continue. I love you, Haruki, but sir, nothing happens in your book. Isolated phrases are nice, the storyline you are creating is somewhat very intriguing, but do I want to read three novels in which I am not enjoying myself but rather waiting to enjoy myself? An unfinished task that I will tackle when my patience is better trained.
'Mao's Last Dancer' - Li Cunxin
Something that I had found in a second hand store that had been on my bookshelf since 2011 at least, a book that everyone seemed to have read at some point in high school; naturally I read it immediately upon finishing high school. Very interesting and sad, and as someone who really enjoys studying modern history it was great to read an account of Maoist China alongside the uplifting plot and clear and tranquil writing style in use by Cunxin.
'The People's Republic of Amnesia' - Louisa Lim
Reading Mao's Last Dancer pushed me into an area of history which I didn't know all that much about – China's history. The People's Republic of Amnesia is a terrific… update, of sorts, on the current Chinese perspective (or lack thereof) on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in Beijing. Lim, sometimes quite clandestine, interviews mothers, students past and present, and others, alongside recounting the lesser known protests which took place in a town named Chengdu. The recount is confronting and grounding, the event still lingers in those who know of its existence like a poisonous gas. I think I will be telling my high school history teacher about it because there are a lot of good historiographical aspects to consider within the book, such as the writing and recording of history – I wish I had read it a year earlier so that I could have written my major project on issues that it raises, it is just so fitting.
* * *
Next on my list is Dostoyevsky's Devils – one of many names this book is known by. It also has a strange link to my apparently preferred theme of Maoist China and related material.
Jessica
Something that I had found in a second hand store that had been on my bookshelf since 2011 at least, a book that everyone seemed to have read at some point in high school; naturally I read it immediately upon finishing high school. Very interesting and sad, and as someone who really enjoys studying modern history it was great to read an account of Maoist China alongside the uplifting plot and clear and tranquil writing style in use by Cunxin.
'The People's Republic of Amnesia' - Louisa Lim
Reading Mao's Last Dancer pushed me into an area of history which I didn't know all that much about – China's history. The People's Republic of Amnesia is a terrific… update, of sorts, on the current Chinese perspective (or lack thereof) on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 in Beijing. Lim, sometimes quite clandestine, interviews mothers, students past and present, and others, alongside recounting the lesser known protests which took place in a town named Chengdu. The recount is confronting and grounding, the event still lingers in those who know of its existence like a poisonous gas. I think I will be telling my high school history teacher about it because there are a lot of good historiographical aspects to consider within the book, such as the writing and recording of history – I wish I had read it a year earlier so that I could have written my major project on issues that it raises, it is just so fitting.
* * *
Next on my list is Dostoyevsky's Devils – one of many names this book is known by. It also has a strange link to my apparently preferred theme of Maoist China and related material.
Jessica
