| Random Musings and Writings A journal of my reading experiences
A journal of thoughts and ideas on writing | | by | |
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Item Size: 10 Entries
Created: 2:53pm on 12-10-2010
Modified: 4:41pm on 01-01-2012 | |
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I like to keep track of what I've read. I'll try to link this to Visual Bookshelf on Facebook.
I plan to keep this as a journal of random thoughts and writings.
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| 10. The Lollipop Shoes - Joanne Harris | ID #743003 |
Posted: 1-1-2012 @ 4:40 pm EST
Edited: 1-2-2012 @ 5:14 am EST |
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I was a bit surprised - delightfully so - at the really magical turn this story took. I liked the different perspectives of the three protagonists in the story, but that's perhaps because I like to look at different perspectives. I can imagine that for someone who likes the quick pace of a thriller, the pace would have been much too slow towards the end where the tension is supposed to be at breaking point. I wasn't glued to the book either. On the other hand, the three perspectives served the story well for the largest part, and it would have left me unsatisfied if left with only one perspective towards the end, just for the sake of a quick pace.
I've always been intrigued by her way of using all the senses, especially those of smell and taste, to pull you right into the thick of all the chocolaty things she's surrounded herself with, in this story as well as in Chocolat.
I can't make up my mind whether it was on the same level as Chocolat, but I won't bother about it too much. It was a lovely book to keep me busy while we were on holiday, and I'll recommend it to anyone who loved Chocolat.
 
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| 9. Chocolat - Joanne Harris | ID #743002 |
Posted: 1-1-2012 @ 4:35 pm EST
Edited: 1-2-2012 @ 5:12 am EST |
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This book is altogether chocolicious. Joanne Harris has a way with imagery that engages the difficult senses of smell and taste to transport you right into Vianne's chocolaterie - without the calories... unless, of course, you can't resist some real chocolates with every reading session.
In addition, Harris has a fine sense of observation, and she is not scared to go and scratch in all the dirty alley ways of the human psyche, there where the human race turns a blind eye to the free reign of its holy cows.
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| 8. The Cleft - Doris Lessing | ID #742999 |
Posted: 1-1-2012 @ 4:20 pm EST
Edited: 1-2-2012 @ 5:11 am EST |
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I don't think I must express an opinion at this stage. I was in transiation between countries, and maybe that had something to do with the fact that, after an exciting start, I just couldn't get into it. I finished it, but only because it was Doris Lessing.
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| 7. The Ghost Writer - Robert Harris | ID #730371 |
Posted: 8-2-2011 @ 2:26 am EDT
Edited: 1-2-2012 @ 5:10 am EST |
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I’m not into suspense and thrillers at all, so I wasn’t very excited when I received The Ghost Writer as a gift from a friend. She insisted that it wasn’t a thriller in the usual sense though, and promised me a good read.
The fact that it wasn’t full of blood and guts made it a perfect ‘thriller’ for me. It kept me awake until 02h30, but didn’t wake me up in a pool of sweat, screaming, an hour later. So, if you want the blood and guts, you may be disappointed.
The insights into the life of a ghost writer were a surprise. I had been interested in writers’ ways of being for a long time, but somehow, the ghosts never crossed my mind. Is it because they’re invisible? It was like learning about a whole new sector of the writing community, even though they’ve probably been around in some form or another for as long as ghosts have been.
The other aspect of Harris’s writing that I find refreshing, is his imagery:
“It didn’t take me long to realise that I was in a bad state. I’d been kept going, I suppose, by Lang’s ‘wonderful humour & compassion & energy’, but once he was written out of me, I collapsed like an empty suit of clothes.”
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It wasn’t the best book that I had ever read, but it made me turn the pages, for sure.
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| 6. A Sad Day | ID #730368 |
Posted: 8-2-2011 @ 2:18 am EDT
Edited: 1-2-2012 @ 5:09 am EST |
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I've seen recently, that my favourite application on Facebook - The Visual Bookshelf - will be closed down soon. I have moved my reading list to GoodReads.Com, but somehow, I think I'll miss the Bookshelf. I got used to the format, and the search engine showed more information about new books than the search engine on GoodReads seemed to do. So, here's to Visual Bookshelf. May you not rest in peace, and resurface at some time in the future.
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| 5. Oor en Weer - Hennie Aucamp | ID #718377 |
Posted: 2-22-2011 @ 11:44 am EST
Edited: 2-22-2011 @ 3:48 pm EST |
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Hennie Aucamp is an Afrikaans writer from South Africa, especially renowned for his short stories. This collection of interviews with him reveals someone who has lived, and is still living, with the totality of his being. He says about old age: It doesn't mean that you have to live less, you just have to live slower. He talks about religion. He talks openly about gay issues, about being single, and about personal happiness.
He talks about writing, about the publishing world in South Africa and how it has changed. He talks about the short story as his favourite genre, about the fact that he started two novels, and each time after page 30, condensed it to yet another short story. He talks about poetry, cabaret and drama - the other loves of his life.
In short, he reveals a life that is filled with the personal meaning he has invested in it.
I will try to translate the following from one of his interviews with JP Smuts (1971). It touched the very foundations of my life:
When you travel [in my case live] in countries of which you don't know the language [Polish is a 'makabra tragedia'], you go into exile. To survive it, you become vigilant; your experiences sharpen, because you virtually transform into your senses. ... And as a defence against loneliness, you start eavesdropping on yourself; you listen to things that you never even dared to think about before. In the fullest sense, you are exposed to yourself, and sometimes you come to terms with yourself - if only for a moment. It is then that you frantically start writing in an attempt to save your experience from oblivion.
And now I am here.
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| 4. Good Bones - Margaret Atwood | ID #717130 |
Posted: 2-3-2011 @ 9:58 am EST
Edited: 2-22-2011 @ 11:36 am EST |
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I had such a laugh at the way Margaret Atwood was able to get outside her own body - all our own bodies, in fact - and describe it - them - from different points of view. Yes, include that of aliens and moths as well.
From the whole collection of essays, the funniest one, for me, was 'Making a man'. She instructs women readers of some magazine "how to create, in their very own kitchens and rumpus rooms", a man for themselves - "both practical and decorative". She even gives different methods - you know, the different strokes for different folks thing? Just be careful of the gingerbread man, because although they are so scrumptious, you could just eat them, they tend to take off down the road - sometimes even on motorcycles - singing: "Run, run, as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread man!"
This collection is not only funny. At times it is endearing, and at others even heartbreaking, and let me tell you something: Margaret Atwood isn't afraid of anything, and she'll be willing to rip apart any of the sacred cows so dear to all humankind.
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| 3. If I could write like this... | ID #714301 |
Posted: 12-29-2010 @ 5:28 pm EST
Edited: 12-29-2010 @ 6:10 pm EST |
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On 15 December 2010, in my first entry in this blog, I told you that the book in my handbag was Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind. I haven't had much time to read since then, because a dear friend of mine is visiting from South Africa, and of course we spend each possible moment catching up on the more than four years since we've last seen each other.
However, dentist appointments don't go away when you have fixed appliances in your teeth that have to be tightened and screwed every two weeks, so I left my friend in a shopping mall - no less, a Polish shopping mall while she can only speak English - and duly went off to the dentist. Of course I had to wait a bit, and got to pull Zafón out the handbag.
The main character goes for a walk. No, I'm not going to tell you who he is, or anything about the story, because if you haven't read it yet, do yourself a favour and read. This is his description:
I will always prefer Barcelona in October. It is when the spirit of the city seems to stroll most proudly through the streets, and you feel all the wiser after drinking water from the old fountain of Canaletas.
I just sighed, and thought, if ever I could write like this, I'd be ready to die and go to heaven.
Soon after this, another character from the story had me in stitches when he told the main character about the makings of men and women in the bedroom department.
The trouble is that man, going back to Freud - and excuse the metaphor - heats up like a lightbulb: red hot in the twinkling of an eye and cold again in a flash. The female, on the other hand - and this is pure science - heats up like an iron, slowly, over a low heat, like a tasty stew. But then, once she has heated up, there's no stopping her. Like the steel furnaces in Vizcaya.
Glorious giggles brought the orthodontist from her consulting room to see what was going on.
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| 2. To be Lost | ID #713768 |
Posted: 12-17-2010 @ 7:16 pm EST
Edited: 2-3-2011 @ 10:11 am EST |
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I am inspired today by a poem from the pen of Lebogang Mashile, a South African poet who has won the 2006 Noma Award for her poetry collection, In a Ribbon of Rhythm.
In the first stanza of her poem, ABCs, she says
It takes just 26 letters to create a universe
The world is dismantled and then reassembled
Through the lens of a pen and verse
I have lost myself in books
And then found myself in words
Living in a world without imagination
I can think of no fate that is worse
The complete poem can be found here, http://www.african-writing.com/hol/lebogangmashile.htm, and in its entirety it delves into the psyche of all South Africans.
But here, I want to ask her permission to use it for my own selfish purpose, just to lose myself and to wonder
in which words i will find myself
in which world my (uni)verse will unfold
where i could imagine myself on paper
having only 26 letters to narrate with?
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| 1. Books! Books! Books! | ID #713625 |
Posted: 12-15-2010 @ 3:00 am EST
Edited: 12-15-2010 @ 3:02 am EST |
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I'm sure you all love to read, just like I do. I found a simple way to keep track of what I've read, what I'm reading now, and what I still want to read on the Visual Bookshelf application of LivingSocial.
http://books.livingsocial.com/people/1700347431.
The number of books that I'm reading at the moment may puzzle you, but then again, I'm sure many of you are as crazy as I am, and read five books at a time.
I've started in July 2009, working my way through David Lodge's The Art of Fiction, but instead of just reading it through, focussing on his examples of the different aspects of fiction writing, I've started using the book as a reading guide. So, I still haven't actually finished it.
He led me to Jane Austen, and I became fascinated with her knowledge of how people operated in her time, and with her way of making fun of them. So Jane Austen became my bed-time-story project. As I immersed myself in Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Pride and Prejudice, I became fascinated by the lifestyle of her time, and started reading a bit wider, so when I find myself in a coffee shop or waiting at hubby’s office, with enough time on my hands, I read Jane Austen: The World of her Novels by Deirdre Le Faye. The bed-time story for the moment is Emma, and there has been an interesting development around the little princess. 
My husband loves a good detective story, so, for fun, I read Sherlock Holmes to him when we both have time and he doesn’t fall asleep after the first paragraph.
Of course, there’s always the ‘handbag book’ for the dentist’s office or the doctor’s office or some other bureaucratic waiting room. The latest one is The Shadow of the Wind. Yes, I know I should have read it a long time ago. There are just so many books to read and so little time.
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