friday routines and books.

[_fissures]

Every Friday this semester I have a midday tutorial for world politics on the Camperdown campus and a legal research seminar later in the afternoon at the Law School on Phillip St. Usually I catch a bus into the city, get off before King St and wonder around David Jones Food Hall for the hour. At lunch hour, it's all hustle and bustle and I'll buy

Comments

[girlafraid_]

I borrowed five books again today. Two were Martin Amis. I ought to borrow Kundera, but I forgot, and I was too upset about not finding The Adventures of Augie March in Research. If you want to buy Martin Amis, the store in Central Station has cheap (but very intact) copies of Yellow Dog and Success intermittently, as well as Trainspotting yesterday and Tropic of Capricorn, and plenty more titles you can find out for yourself.

I quite like Beloved.

"Liverjournal" is an excellent tupo.

[_fissures]

I like how you phrase 'very intact' as though to reassure me that if the spine isn't falling out, it must be fine! Nevermind the typo, typos are needlessly evil and plague me. I noticed I mistyped 'Laurie' in a comment I left you as well. Twice. But once we get this damned voice recognition technology on wide-spread use, I'll have less typos than most because I can actually enunciate. *shakes fist at today's youth*

The Unbearable Lightness of Being is easily the best novel by Kundera. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting was...odd. In fact, too many of his novels are odd. They're beautiful studies of human psychology and emotions, but they sort of limp together in a pretty patttern of disarray, leaving you somewhat unsatisfied toward the end.

After year ten, I am never going to read Henry Miller again. For at least three years.

I was tempted to grab Songs of Solomon and Paradise as well, but, well, there are only so many books I can carry. The only offputting thing about Beloved, and for that matter, any other book, is when they

[idolatrie]

Have I mentioned that I found Identity by Kundera to be rather disappointing? It's very...not special. Bland. Almost felt like it was trying too hard in some places, used too many poignant phrases intended to move the reader that it seemed like a novel apeing at grandeur. And this is coming from me, a self-confessed pretty-phrase addict. Slowness was good though, the subject was far more interesting and I managed to find the set-up clever rather than irritating, which it could easily have been. I know I've been told that Kundera's only worthwhile novel is Unbearable Lightness of Being, and I'll get around to it eventually. But I think his celebrity from that novel is perhaps what sells his other attempts.

(and damn, I was planning to get you History of Love for your birthday. thwarted!)

[_fissures]

Kundera writes beautiful essays. That's often what is lacking in his books. So much beautiful exposition, but a failure to write a compelling plot. His celebrity is also due to his being Czech and writing about the Czech experience in the latter half of the twentieth century and his violent hate for the Soviet regime, which is both sympathetic to Western audiences and thus bouyed upon the momentum of history. But the unbearable Lightness of Being was simply such beauty. All devices he used in his other novels which at times cloyed seemed to glean instead. I read and read and read and it was unnatural and unreal and even if this is THE novel which sells all his others, then that is perfectly sensible, for it is quite a novel.

(a! thwarted! I checked out the prices for the LRB today and pouted. By the way, your birthday present is STILL with me and I STILL can't give it to you. Don't you hate bureacracy?)

I've just started Kafka on the Shore and how good writing does trump Callinan's! I'll have to force you read The Lawyer and the

[castorandpollux]

Haruki Murakami has been on my to read list for ages, but I'm just not sure where to start with him. Do you have any advice?

Have also been meaning to pick up that Kundera novel as well. So many books, so little time.

Also, not sure if you've read it yet, but I loved Death in Venice. I studied it for class two years ago and despite its depressing view of Venice, I really liked the way the story unfolded and just the writing style in general.

[_fissures]

I'm also a Haruki Murakami novice - I read a while ago a collection of birthday stories he edited, and more recently The Elephant Vanishes, once again short stories. Kafka on the Shore is my first Murakami novel, though I've heard brilliant things about The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. However, I feel confident that I can recommend to you, with a full-heart, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I read it early last year and it affected me so deeply it proved to be a decisive stylistic influence on my eventual major composition for senior year.

I've read parts of Death in Venice before - in strange places, at strange times. (One was in a hsitory book about WWI.)Looking forward to reading it together now! I'll never have the pleasure of studying it in class however - which is good as it leaves the text pure, and bad, because I really do like literary analysis on the whole.

[winterspulse]

Have you read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle before? I finished it a week ago and frankly, I was disappointed. He has really interesting ideas, but it felt like it wasn't planned out enough and kind of sloppy. Maybe it's just me. Everyone I know whose read it liked it a lot.

I have The Human Stain sitting in my filing cabinet waiting to be read! :p

[_fissures]

Oh, I haven't yet. The name sounds so delicious (and I do judge on Titles - not exactly kind, but on the whole a rather good indication, I've found, of quality) and I've had such recommendations! But I've also heard that it's very divisive, so bearing your critique in mind, we shall see how I react to it. Apparently, it's very different to Kafka (which I'm having a good time reading, though nowhere near the end, so no judgement yet - it slips down so nicely), which also divides the audience, only along different lines.

Ah! We could start Roth together! (or close enough.) Have you read anything else by him? I haven't - my forays into American Lit. are sad and thus must be recitifed. I was also searching for Portnoy's Complaint, but the library only had it in Spanish. Shocking.

[winterspulse]

I felt the same way about the title! And had many reccommendations that I felt it was God's will that I read it, almost! I'm curious to see what you think and hopefully my opinion doesn't bias you in one way or another.

I haven't read anything else by Roth. Actually, The Human Stain was on my reading list for one of my English classes last year but I ended up not taking it so I didn't get around to reading it during the school year (did another course) and now I have the book and have been meaning to read it.

[_fissures]

It's incredible how compelling other people's recommendations are. I started to read American Lit. only by the force of cajoling by others. But I think there's a tenuous fear in the recommendation scheme. I'm afraiad of disappointing the faith of other's that I will appreciate what they do (or else be proved a plebe!) and of giving a recommendation that sinks. It says: Love what I love because you love me! And then rejection...all the same, I overanalyse.

[rainbowskin]

let me know what you think of Death in Venice. particularly-- the very last paragraph. it has been bothering me for YEARS. (so hurry along & read it, haha.) xx

[_fissures]

a few weeks shan't harm your years of bother, ha. no! i shall dive into it presently and fish out from it as much coherent thought and judgement as i can. (which may be nothing to report of, though i shall make something of nothing)
♥