First Lines

Books Bought:

1. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier*
2. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
3. Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell*
4. Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
5. Microtrends by Mark Penn
6. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

*bought, but I already own a copy at home. 

Books Read:

1. Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan
2. The Complete Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
3. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

 

So I’m back from traipsing around beautiful Southeast Asia. Singapore has many charms including a stunning national orchid garden and a Borders bookstore. I wish I could have bought out Borders, but unfortunately the exchange rate + GST=no go. But I’m rather glad to be back here in my home away from home. It’s pretty chilly still so I’ve taken to grabbing books in the morning and heading over to a warm cafe to read for the afternoons. The less I turn on my heater (that doesn’t really do the job anyway), the smaller our monthly electric/gas bill, and the happier everyone is. 

But I’m writing this post because I just reread Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier today. What a great book. It’s so underhanded but a page-turner. But I think one of the best parts is the opening line because it captures so much of how the plot will resolve itself, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” And then because I read that opening line, I thought about another famous opening line, “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.” 

And that got me thinking, what makes a great first line? Why are those two so memorable? And I was going to some literary criticism search on it, but I don’t feel like asking the experts tonight. I think in the case of Mrs. Dalloway, it must have to do with how carefully chosen each word must be–because the story is such a short one. I can’t, at the moment, think of any other first lines that have always stuck with me. 

The other great thing about Rebecca is the anonymous narrator. I feel like the Anonymous Narrator should get more appreciation as a character. I haven’t sat down to think about it systematically, but I wonder if the anonymous narrator is a period thing or geographic or universal. But there’s so much character building by choosing to leave out names–a sharp contrast to Jhumpa Lahiri’s point about names. 

So yeah, I’m planning to read a lot more this year. I’m not quite sure why I rebought Gone With The Wind. I have the exact same copy/edition sitting on my bookshelf at home, and I have plenty of other things to read here. But I was feeling a little homesick, and I saw the red cover in the bookstore, and I had a strange craving to relive Scarlett O’Hara. Never thought I would identify myself so much with Atlanta, Georgia.

the polysyllabic spree

So I am leaving in two days for a two-week vacation of sorts in southeast Asia. Yesterday I spent about three hours in a bookstore that sells English books, and I in that span of three hours, I became indecisive to the nth degree. I was pacing around that bookstore trying to figure out what in the world I was going to read. This is precisely why I made my alphabet/names book reading system (I may have to post on that later): I can’t ever decide what to read next. And the worst is whenever I’m going away for a time because I hate that feeling of not having my library at my disposal. So then I always overpack and take way too many books. And I already know I’m going to do that for this vacation, but in the spirit of openness and vulnerability, here is my ever-changing list of books I’ll be lugging when I hop on a plane this Wednesday (in no particular order):

1. The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby: This is a memoir about making book lists much like this one. Nick Hornby is hilarious and related to McSweeney’s therefore I must read this. 
2. The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan: So I took this class during the spring of 2008 called Food and Cuisine in Europe and America, and ever since then I’ve been pretty interested in this new category of history. I don’t know how I feel about food as a category (I had another professor come down pretty hard on this new fad of strange history categories like food and fashion…he is of the opinion that we need to go retro and reconcentrate on political and military history instead of the fluff of social history), but I checked the bibliography in the back of this book and it had a ton of the books I read for my class. So I thought I’d check it out.
3. Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present by Michael Oren: I was so happy when I found this book yesterday!!! I almost took Professor Oren’s class last spring, but I needed to narrow down my class list at the time. But there’s so much going on in this part of the world right now, and I wanted to get a good overview from a respected historian. And this is exactly what I was looking for.
4. The Holiness of God by R.C. Sproul: I can’t believe that I haven’t read this book yet. I listened to R.C. Sproul’s sermon by the same name, and it was incredible. I don’t want to be a woman (indeed, person) of wimpy theology so I’m looking forward to learning from this book.
5. Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
6. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
7. A Treatise on Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards: Oh man, we didn’t get to do any justice at all in Ms. Huie’s class when we read Edwards. I don’t know if I’ll have time over vacation to really understand Edwards but I hope to at least start.

Books I read this semester (note how many I read in four months and then note, above, how many I expect to read in two weeks…):

1. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
2. Generation Ex by Jen Abbas
3. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
4. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
5. Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling
6. The Princess Diaries Volume III, Princess in Love by Meg Cabot
7. The Princess Diaries Volume IV, Mia Goes Fourth by Meg Cabot
8. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Books I’m still in the middle of reading:

1. The Supremacy of Christ by Ajith Fernando
2. Instruments in the Hands of the Redeemer by Paul Tripp (this book is so amazing that I have reread parts of the beginning over and over which is why I’m taking forever to read it, I’m sure to the dismay of my friend who leant it out to me)
3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitgerald (so I just picked up this book as sort of a comfort read and I have written all over this book…there are so many thoughts I had never really processed until I started writing in books)

So yes, here I am, well aware that I will not finish the books I take with me, but still blissfully optimistic about it anyhow.

names

I’m not sure which is harder: watching someone age daily, waking up one day and realizing mortality or having been away for years seeing a person you hardly recognize. This summer I spent about 10 days in California with my maternal grandparents. Neither are doing well. My grandmother is so weak physically she can’t even stand or sit up on her own, but she has all her mental faculties while my grandfather is strong physically but doesn’t recognize his own son. I spent many hours during that trip learning the meaning of forbearance and long-suffering by sitting in a room with my grandfather and having the same conversation with him. He always wanted to tell me about his schooling background and want to hear about mine. He wouldn’t stop talking about Pyongyang, North Korea, his hometown. And I didn’t have the heart to tell him the latest news about that particular country. Some forgetting is merciful. Soon, we figured out that my grandpa communicated a lot better when I wrote things down for him. And one day it dawned on me that soon we might not even have that anymore so I seized the moment and asked him to write my name in Chinese characters for me.

Koreans name their babies using Chinese characters and then convert them to Korean phonetics. Unfortunately, my dad was a fan of going renegade and decided to name me using Korean phonetics and my relatives had to frantically search for Chinese characters that sounded phonetically similar but still retained the original meaning of mine name: Ji Na. Luckily, there are a lot of Chinese characters. A lot.

But though he made his inlaws and older brothers hate him for a couple of weeks, I’m glad that I’m named non-traditionally.

Names should have stories. One of my favorite living writers is Jhumpa Lahiri. Her book of short stories Interpreter of Maladies is probably the only collection of short stories I’ve read continuously without feeling overwhelmed (there’s something about short story collections that overwhelm me; can’t quite put my finger on it…). I once wrote a term paper on her first novel, The Namesake (now a movie, but I haven’t had the heart to watch it yet). The family in the book is from the northern region of India (I want to say they are Bengali) and apparently it is a custom among some there to give their children two names. One as a formal name for the birth certificate and one given much later after they are born to reflect their personality and habits.  I learned from that book to avoid flippancy with names.

Sometimes I wonder if it is a good thing for a child to have many names. And I mean functional names, not like those royal wannabes who give their children like 40 middle names but never use any of them. I have always had two names. Korean. American. And I go from one to the other in one fluid motion without a single thought. Is it good to answer to many names or just to one?

marking books

I’ve always tried to keep my books as clean as possible. No dogears, no bends, no wrinkles. But recently read this article.

now I understand…

Dostoevsky=genius. two months of trudging through Crime and Punishment was definitely worth it. The book is so rich. I just finished and feel like there’s already so much I missed and wish I had the time to go through certain passages and work out the imagery and symbolism. Luckily, my copy is a first-edition Norton Critical Edition so in the back there are lots of amazing criticism essays. I’m going to have to place this amongst one of the books I appreciate the most for quality.

“This was it: I wanted to make myself a Napoleon, and that is why I killed her…Now do you understand?” 

 

multitasking

I’ve heard that girls are better at multitasking than boys. 

I feel like that’s true.

I often like to read multiple books at once, alternating chapters of the books. I’m still reading in order (if you don’t know what that means, that’ll have to wait for another post when I explain how I read systematically) so I just make sure I finish the right book first.

Anyway, at the moment I’m still working on Crime and Punishment and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I’m pretty proud of myself because the first chapter in Mysterious Flame is titled “Cruelest Month,” and I immediately thought of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland…and it turns out the allusion in my mind was correct!

Mysterious Flame is another novel by the illustrious Umberto Eco. And by illustrious, I’m being literal because there are illustrations randomly throughout the book. I really like the concept. It’s about an old rare-book dealer in Milan who has suffered a loss of memory. But no worries, it bears no resemblance to Korean soap operas which also feature loss of memory quite frequently. No, the main character, can’t remember personal details of his life but he still has all his faculties and remembers every plot of every book he’s ever read and every line of poetry.

Lots of allusions in this book, obviously. But not in an annoying way.

kindred spirits

When I was first writing this post, I was thinking about the word “homage.” I used to really like that word. When I lived in Maryland, my piano studio made a CD recording called “Homage to Chopin.” But I have recently gotten really annoyed with that word. I couldn’t figure out why, and then I realized that it was because I had heard Stephenie Meyer use the word in an interview. She said that she considered her novel Eclipse to be an homage to Wuthering Heights. This greatly offended me because Wuthering Heights happens to be one of my favorite books of all time (and more and more I’m thinking it might be #1, though I have commitment issues when it comes to books). Not only does Eclipse not live up to Bronte, but I really cannot stand how often Meyer uses allusions in her books as if to prove that she can read. 

Now you are probably thinking that this post has absolutely nothing to do with its title, but that is where you are wrong and where I start putting all the pieces together. I was thinking about the word homage and then thought of Stephenie Meyer which made me think of Wuthering Heights, which made me think of a rather beat up copy I own of it. That’s probably my most treasured piece of literature that I own because of the woman who gave it to me: Ms. Huie.

For some reason whenever I think about Ms. Huie, I can’t help but think kindred spirit, the little expression Anne Shirley (from Anne of Green Gables) gave to those people she just clicked with in life (Gilbert Blythe, btw, is another one of my literary crushes). I don’t know what it was about Ms. Huie, but as soon as I started hearing about her from my sophomore friends during my freshman year of high school, I couldn’t wait until I was sitting in her classroom. Maybe it was the fact that everyone said she was so hard, and I wanted a hard English teacher finally. Or maybe it was how she tried to put negative grades into the gradebook for fun. Or how extra credit in her class involved going to an art museum. But I have a sneaking suspicion, the magic lay in her earrings. Her long, crazy, dangling earrings had me convinced that Ms. Huie and I were going to be very good friends.

Now I have my own outrageous earring collection. So outrageous that one of my best friends in college thought we wouldn’t get along because I had too many accessories (Read: high maintenance). haha, hopefully you know me well enough not to judge me .

trading spaces.

I’ve sort of been feeling like I live out of my suitcase ever since I went away to college, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had everything in my room neatly organized and put away, and, well, livable. The biggest problem, though, was the abduction and takeover of my room by books. Don’t believe me? Take a look at these pictures before I took the time to clean:

so finally I decided enough was enough and set about the monumental task of organizing my books. After buying two more bookshelves and throwing out some books I just knew I’d never even want to read a single word of again, I finally had enough shelf space to house my library.

I’m pretty pleased :]. If I ever have my own house, I hope I can have a room of just shelves for my books. According to my bookpedia (a super awesome program for macs that catalogs your books for you based on ISBN!), I’m at something like 470 books. That was kind of a self-satisfied post. But I’m kind of just really happy that I have my room back.

Hello world!

Well I always (unsuccessfully) try to keep up with blogs. The last time it really worked was in high school when everyone still had xangas. But I find this is generally more useful than writing tons and tons of mass emails so I’m going to try again. I think this will end up being mostly a literary blog. I don’t know if I’ll put up actual full-length reviews as much as some random thoughts and maybe some quotes I found interesting/provoking.

But I think this first post is going to have to be dedicated to my now nearly-one-week-old half brother, Eliot, who was named for my (and I guess my dad’s) favorite poet. I think I’m going to have to reread Four Quartets in honor of his birth soon.