20 September 2010

summer books

what i hate about lists is that i'm never able to conform to them. the only book on my summer reading list that i managed to read was "Letters to a Young Poet" by Wilke. i am, however, in the process of reading "The Master and Margarita" though so not all is lost. otherwise, i went on a tangent and read kafka on the shore by murakami
and disgrace by J.M. coetzee.

on disgrace: i didn't really enjoy the beginning of the book; it seemed that the professor/student affair was written a bit slapdash and trite, or how a lovelorn person would imagine a professor/student affair to be. i also had an issue with the orneriness of each character and found myself kind of hating them because it was so difficult to understand where they were coming from. simplistically, it might have been a way to inform the reader of the hardiness of the times and landscape, but the point was lost, to me at least, in what seemed like unmotivated stubbornness. these issues aside, i liked what Coetzee accomplished in the rest - well, most - of the book. the situations in the countryside, especially the neighbor, were strange, awful, uncomfortably foreign - but expressed the characters in a way that wouldn't have been possible off the farm.

15 July 2010

4.

chantepleure, noun; to alternate singing and weeping.

07 July 2010

going going back back

heading back to california tomorrow. so excited to see mumsy and the fam!

also looking forward to beach days, tan lines, the quiet and clean air, redwoods, my cat. here's my reading list for the summer:

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Sorrows of Young Werther - Goethe
Letters to a Young Poet - Rainier Maria Wilke
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

AND HOW COULD I FORGET?!?!

Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Stieg Larsson

only, i kind of don't want to read it because i never want the trilogy to end. UGH