413 Nanohertz

... and a reminder to self to read more Charles Bukowski. Any recommendations?

Reminder to self

read more Jean Rhys and Christopher Isherwood.

Incidentally I've only just realized that Rhys was one very nice looking lady.

Quite unexpectedly, Baudolino

When I stayed with Orchid in Shanghai I unexpectedly came across an Umberto Eco novel that I'd never heard of. She generously gave the book to me and I started dipping into it over the weekend. By the following Friday, when I was Taipei-bound, I had finished reading Baudolino, and I must say I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It made me miss medieval literature - just a little bit.

On coming home I discovered that my copy of The Temporal Void by Peter F. Hamilton had arrived. Talk about a shift in gears. Now I just need to pull up the wiki on Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, so I can remember who all these characters are. 

Lack of output

Yesterday I began to read Essays in Love (我談的那場戀愛) by Alain de Botton (艾倫．狄波頓) and I finished it today. It's been a long time since I've read a book in two days. (even longer time ago since I've read a book in one day). I have to recommend Essays in Love quite highly. It's very hard, I think, to find intelligent and candid discussions of romantic love that isn't full of recycled tripe. De Botton reminded me a lot of Annie Hall, another look at romantic relationships which I have always really appreciated. Whereas Allen excelled in the humorous and slightly rueful aspects though, De Botton was level-headed in his first person analysis (even whilst being passionate - and no, this isn't a contradiction) and really quite positive rather than wistful.

Junni said that perhaps Essays in Love is a strange book to give to a lover, but I don't think so. A long time ago I broke up with someone I was seeing and he dropped off a pile of self-help books on how to love on my doorstep. It's hard to top that for inappropriate.

The point is though such an intense bout of reading has also made me want to write. I wrote emails to three friends I hadn't been in touch with for a long while and now I'm writing the longest and most coherent blog post since forever. The thing is, the less I read, the less I'm inclined to write. When I was a lit student I used to churn out blog posts all the time simply because my head was filled with words. Now that I don't read so much (though I definitely still read), I find myself getting further and further away from the person I used to be.

Is that a bad thing? I can be very nostalgic but I'm not unhappy with who I am now. (though I do wish I had a clearer picture of what I want to do with myself).

This blog though, is turning dreadfully dull as I had always predicted.

Reversal

When I first moved to Canada I had to learn English almost from scratch. The house I lived in implemented a strategy: ban the kids from reading Chinese books. I think if we were caught reading Chinese books our pocket-money might have been deducted. Can't rightly recall now.

I've decided to implement a reversal of this ban for myself once I finish the English books I have on hand (not many more left). Since I moved back I've been buying a lot of English books (both new ones and old favourites, because libraries don't stock much English books here). I read English a lot faster and it seems much more natural to me now that I've been using English predominantly for over a decade.

Still, living in Taiwan it seems to make sense to polish up my Chinese again. Though I have been making an effort to read more Chinese, I do sometimes succumb to the temptation of easy reading. At the same time, I absolutely cannot read English books in Chinese translation. It's torturous to me because I spend half my energies second guessing the translator and wondering what the original must have said.

So it seems that I should read more Chinese literature. I've just finished 龍應台's 大江大海 and found myself at once impressed and mildly disappointed. There's a copy of 巨 流河 on my shelf which I'm meaning to attack...

Recommending

A friend of mine recently recommended Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. I have to say that it's both challenging and engrossing and hilarious in parts. I have only just gotten into it (about one tenth of the way through?), but I think this will get my heartfelt recommendation.

Dear Tolstoy

Re: War & Peace. Please stop reporting Prince Andrei's death only to remember later that he is in fact alive. The first time it was surprising but by the second time it begins to seem like a tiresome trick.

Ok, ok - I know we are suppose to be as surprised as the other characters are. But we are not the other characters. We are readers.

TSA & The Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books

I wrote up our trip to the Osborne Collection - the article and photos are available at: The TSA Art Blog.

It's all in the eyes

I came across the illustrations of Julie Colombet via Drawn, and really liked how she does the eyes of her characters. Being slightly obsessed with anthropomorphism, I've noticed that so much of what I read into the expression of a character (be it a human, an animal or inanimate object) is determined by how the eyes are rendered. Somehow her style of eyes look to me to be slightly alarmed and wary - perhaps it's the dark shadow under the eyes and the fact that the direction of the gaze is often averted from the viewer? Anyway, lovely illustrations to share with you.

[Julie Colombet via Drawn]

[Julie Colombet via Drawn]

[Julie Colombet via Drawn]

[Julie Colombet via Drawn]

Another series of children's illustrations I'm keen on is from Good as New (written by Barbara Douglass, & illustrated by Patience Brewster). It's a story about a boy and his teddy-bear. I'm not overly fond of the human figures - but I love how the teddy is always looking at the boy (often with love and adoration, like below). Kind of like a Calvin & Hobbes thing... Here's some pictures from it.

[from Good as New illustrated by Patience Brewster]

[from Good as New illustrated by Patience Brewster]

Back on track?

I've been struggling to get myself into the right head-space for a few days now. Ever since the deadlines passed things have been kind of adrift. Not bad, just floating. I've done a few things which are productive, which makes me feel good (I finished knitting the April Showers scarf!) - but left with time on my hands I just end up thinking to much.

Which does me no good at all.

There is a difference between thinking about a problem constructively and coming to terms with it or solving it - and dwelling needlessly on this that or the other. Also there are times when someone who is emphatically not who I am starts voicing negative opinions in my head. That's when I find myself talking to myself while walking dully along and I think it's a bad sign.

So today I am back in the Keble Library. A book which I ordered for my dissertation work arrived and I dipped into it a little just now (I love the idea of 'dipping' into a book, like slipping toes into the water's edge when sitting on a pier), and it's really well written and stimulating. The book in question is Seven Words You Can't Say on Television (read a review here), by Steven Pinker - published by Penguin 2008 (actually an extract from The Stuff of Thought).

Now I am going to go and take some notes while reading this - and think about our mini in-house conference in week 3 of Trinity term, where all of us MSt students are going to give a short paper on our research.

I look forward to swearing profusely, with impunity.