Currently Reading (4)

1. Les Misérables Volume 1 by Victor Hugo 

'The Paris of 1862 is a city which France has for its suburbs... a maelstrom in which everything is lost; & everything disappears in this whirlpool of the world as in the whirlpool of the sea.'

500 pages of fainting women, the French Revolution & Paris' failed sewage system of the 19th century... Only took two months to read. Only. It's undoubtedly a classic of our time, of course, & I'm glad I finally trawled through the French epic novel but it's going to be a while before I pick up volume 2.

2. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

'No matter how dreary & gray our homes are, we people of flesh & blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.'

Delightful. A classic, albeit in a different way. Anyway, there was a sore need for children's literature after two months of reading Hugo ;)

3. The Cider House Rules by John Irving

'What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered most to us wind up in parentheses.' 

I read John Irving's A Widow for One Year sometime in 2012 & swore of his novels forever. A Widow for One Year was an absolute nightmare with its sparse story lines, tiresome characters & unbearably long-winded writing style & I swore I would never put myself through 600 pages of something like that again except that one day whilst youtube surfing, I saw the movie trailer of The Cider House Rules & with an inward groan, decided to give it a go. No regrets at all. While there isn't much of a plot in this novel, the settings are rich & powerful, the events, visceral, & the characters are strong enough to drive the story forward. Irving's writing in The Cider House Rules is also inarguably excellent, with its plot starting slow but swelling like a wave while also tackling sensitive issues without exaggeration or hyperbole, making it believable to readers. Enjoyed it immensely.

4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

'Listen, Robert, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that.'

The first novel Hemingway ever wrote, & a personal favourite. In The Sun Also Rises, the cityscape of Paris & the violent throes of Spanish bull-fighting are merely embellishments to the main attractions, which are the spirited, but lonely characters & the quick dialogue exchanged between them. There's really nobody who writes witty banter & captures the restless spirit of the Lost Generation better than early Hemingway.

5. By Grand Central Station I Sat Down & Wept by Elizabeth Smart

'Under the redwood tree my grave was laid, & I beguiled my true love to lie down. The stream of our kiss put a waterway around the world, where love like a refugee sailed in the last ship. My hair made a shroud & kept the coyotes at bay while we wrote our cyphers with anatomy. The winds boomed triumph, our spines seemed overburdened, & our bones groaned like old trees, but a smile like a cobweb was fastened across the mouth of the cave of fate.' 

I love love love this book. It's an obvious re-read: the slim volume of prose-poetry is criss-crossed with lines & heavily-marked with circles, the margins filled with ink & exclamation points, simply because this book is so full of beautiful phrases that every line stands out in its own way to me.  Prose-poetry is still a relatively new field of literature to me but even as I explore more of this genre, I am constantly pulled back to this one because of its brilliance. Lovely.

6. Tales of the Jazz Age by F. Scott Fitzgerald

'...as if borne on the dreamy revolution of a slow merry-go-round.'

More literature from the Jazz age. Schizophrenic, quick & grand, & nothing short of the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald.




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It's been kind of a slow 2013, reading wise. I've been savouring every chance I get to do some reading, but it's hardly ever enough.Need to set aside whole days for this! Besides work & late-night coffee/ice-cream sessions & random trips to IKEA, nothing much has been happening. Still, I can't help but feel that a full two weeks of sleep would do me some good. So far I'm holding it together, if only by God's grace!

Loads of exciting things are coming up but as far as tonight goes, I'm too tired to type them all out ;) I'll just have to update this space as the events unfold. For now, au revoir!





Other book lists from other times
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