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.