19/365 Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers - BEWARE: LOTS OF HOT AIR

I re-read this for the zillionth time.  Don't judge me, I had a bruiser of a day.  Sometimes you just need something familiar and comfortable.  I will say in my defense that I began on a selected poems of Emily Dickinson as well, and am going very slowly and carefully. So.

Brace yourself for a lot of jawing.  I do love this book so. 

I read somewhere that it's reckoned the first feminist detective novel.  Well, I don't know anything about feminism, but the ideas in the book seem fairly logical and, well, obvious to me, so I wonder if I'm a feminist myself.  I certainly agree with the idea that men and women are equal - equal, but not the same.  I don't know that that qualifier is in the book, but I believe it.  I suppose that if we got rid of gender and all it's accompanying hormones and what not, then we could take it off.  I feel like I've heard people, or heard of people, getting offended by the whole "equal, but not the same" thing.  Frankly, it would offend me more to be told that we are equal and the same.  I like my differentness. In quite a basic sense, claiming sameness seems like nonsense to me.  But I haven't given it too much thought.  I always tend to say, "well, you can't generalize about anything," and then change the subject.  I don't know enough about it.  Plus, I dislike arguments.  And I've never talked to anybody besides my mum and the wise ladies of my church who could truly make it a discussion and not and argument.  Most guys are too afraid of offending to say what they honestly think. 

And I really do think it's silly to talk about men and women in general terms, particularly regarding vocations - you might obviously meet a man and a woman who are more similar than two women.  Humans are so different. 

I realized this evening that I have rather strong personal feelings about children - and it tends to screw with my judgement.  I know it is not something to be proud of, but I don't really like children. Particularly small children.  Sounds ridiculous, coming from a 21 year old, but I never really have.  However, I firmly believe that, if I ever had my own kids, it would be very different.  I see an odd, fierce part of my character come out when I hear women complaining about their children, how inconvenient they are, and about how much daycare costs.  I know, I am not a mom.  I know, kids can be trying - heck, I know I was trying!  But when I hear that sort of thing, I have to admit that my first thought is, "well why on earth did you have them then?"  I know - I know - that if I once had children, something inside me would snap, and I would want to be with them always.  I don't mean that I'd try to keep them babies forever, or never let them leave the house - at least, I hope I won't.  But I am going to want to be very present in their early lives.  It would kill me not to be.  And this very strong conviction screws with my ability to be impartial.  I will never be able to talk to people about this sort of thing, because my personal feelings make me incapable of understanding opposing viewpoints.  I guess it's good to know that, but it feels rather awful.  I would so like to be detached and logical about everything. 

But all this is just gas.  Blah blah blah. 

This book has become one of the most personally important I've read this year.  Vocation is addressed, and, as you've probably noticed, that's been an issue for me lately.  And all my friends seem to be galloping down the aisle right and left.  I never imagined I'd be thinking about marriage and its implications at quite this early an age.  I know I'm not ready to be married yet.  And not only because I'm not quite settled in who I am, or ready for the responsibility, or even remotely financially solid.  I just think I'm not mature enough.  It's like... moving back home after you're married.  It might be fine for some people, but I know I'd want to be treated differently, but wouldn't behave differently, and then would be upset when my treatment matched my behavior.  Did that make one iota of sense?  I think I would go into a marriage wanting, needing to be treated like an equal - head on, going in like a fighter.  But I think I would actually go in with childish desires.  I'm not talking about "wives submit to your husbands" at all - I mean that I would probably try to replace my mom with my husband - even while I would consciously want nothing of the sort.  There are things I need to grow out of before I could enter into marriage on the footing I'd like.  I want to actually be a helper to my spouse - not a dead weight. (This makes me think of a whole side line about "helping" my spouse, but I really must go to bed, and nobody wants to hear it.  So I won't torture you any further, my dear blog.)

This is, of course, assuming that somebody on this planet would actually want to marry me.  A long shot, I know.  And I don't blame them.  

CONCLUSION:  I don't know what all this had to do with Gaudy Night.   It really is much better than my blabber would make anyone believe.   Makes you just weep to be at Oxford.  Also, it makes me wonder how hard it is to punt.  I would love to go punting, but I'd much rather be punted than punt.  If you can only look either "graceful or ghastly" doing it, I'd rather not take the chance.  Vanity, vanity. 

18/365 A Presumption of Death

Gah! Almost forgot about this project - lucky I happened to read this in the bath this evening.  I have to go to bed, so I'll just say quickly that I will always be a quite absurdly prejudiced against novels finished by other people (Sandtion and the Charles Osbourne Agatha Christies made me howl), and they will never seem the same to me, and I am so hopelessly in love with L.P.W. and Harriet that I will read anything about them.   So, in a modest kind of way, I still enjoyed myself.

12/365 The Four Loves

"That our affections kill us not, nor dye." - Donne

I think I made up for Mrs. Tittlemouse.  By, George what a book.

I almost can't say anything because there is too much to say.  About 40 pages in I began tearing bits of newspaper to stick into the pages I just had to remember.    Yet:

And I was discriminating. 

I adore C.S. Lewis.  He can explain anything.  Just from a shallow enjoyment standpoint he is probably my favorite writer purely for his style or voice or whatever you call it.  A review on the back of this book declares that he, "writes with one of the most self-effacing and congenial pens in the language".  His writing makes me want to weep, it is so perfect.  

Anyways, I liked this book.  I accompanied every other page with a ghastly soundtrack of "Oh my gawsh that makes so much sense!" noises.  I really can't say much else, because if I try to just hit highlights we will be here all night.  (And I really made an effort to be diligent and was done reading by 11:00.  Be proud of me, imaginary readers.)  Much was explained to me.  Learned much, I did, Master Yoda.  I won't say it was a breeze to read - I had to go over a few sentences several times before I got them.  But then, my usual literary fare isn't particularly strenuous.  

His books always throw my balance off, or something like that.  They mess with the ideas I was standing on, make me really evaluate where I am.  Dash it all, they make me go wacko for at least a week.

For me, reading a C.S. Lewis book usually results in, among many other things:

1. Better living.  This is sort of to be expected. 

2. An increase in thoughtfulness.  Not, like, being nicer to people - I mean thinking more.  (Writing more coherently is, unfortunately, not a side effect.)

3. Exponential increase in my awareness of my own ignorance.  Just being confronted with how little I've actually read, thanks to his constant (though never obnoxious) literary references, makes me want to crawl off and hide under my blanket.  I was proud of vaguely recalling that I read Lovelace in British Lit a year or two ago  - and I couldn't tell you the name of the poem (yes, singular) we read to save my life.  By and large, I have no idea what he's talking about.  Most of the time I fancy that, for a slightly lower middle class kid, I had a jolly good education - but C.S. Lewis is very shattering.  Dorothy L. Sayers too.  Major ouch.

4. Lots of tweed-wearing.

Okay! I have to stop now or I never will.  

CONCLUSION:  HOW HAVE I NEVER READ THIS BEFORE?  It was rather good.  I love, love, love, C.S. Lewis.  Imaginary readers, if you haven't read it, I urge you to check this book out.  And everything else he's written too, while you're at it.  

8/365 The Small Rain

Blah, blah, I'm mad for Madeline L'Engle right now.

Liked this very much.  What a first novel! (Not that I know what first novels ought to be or are like, but I feel very grown-up and idiotic saying that.) Every day I am more and more convinced that I could not, would not want to be a writer.

This story, like all of her's, had a lot to it.  Tons about love.  And it also made me think a bit more about callings and doing what you're supposed to do.   It has also joined the handful of books I've read about artists (musician, in this case) that seemed genuine.  She talked enough about Katherine's playing, but not too much, and it made it believable to me.  I felt like I realized gradually how much it had consumed her - just the way she herself did in the story.  In my limited experience, people haven't realized important things with a bang and a big dramatic confrontation scene - they creep over slowly.
Katherine seemed like a very real person, and I don't often get that feeling.  I found her insight into her own character almost unbelievably perceptive, but more on that later.  I liked her.  Wish I had a good dollop of her forthrightness.

I was thinking about ME ME ME for a while after I was done with the book, about how contradictory I can be.  Believing and not believing at the same time.  I don't believe in mad love - yet I still sort of do.  I believe that thinking moving to a new place can save or fix you is nonsense - yet a part of me still wonders if it can help.  I mean, there has to be something in up and moving to the English countryside if people still do it and say good things about it.  It can't save you or make you whole, but it can still be good for you, right?

This is all very stupid and basic, but I never can take simple things as they are.  I have to get my knickers in a twist over something.  And as my life is quite remarkably happy and conflict-free, I have to fall back on these sorts of things to be angsty about.  Because if I don't have some angst in my formative years, I won't have any chance at being great at something.  I need some Personal Tragedy to fuel my Art.   Everybody really great has something scarring to talk about in interviews - you just look and see.

Anyways.  I also wondered, during my happy evening of narcissism, if people can really understand themselves or their abilities as perfectly as they do in books, without bias at all.  Or, I guess, I wonder if I can.  Sometimes I think I do.  For instance, I don't think I could be a good actress because I don't have enough self-control.  I feel very sure that it's true.  But then a tiny part of me wonders if I tell myself these sorts of things because I'm a coward or have low self-esteem.  I've never really tried acting, so how can I know?  But on the other hand, how could I not know?   How could I not know myself well enough to answer a question like that?

Ho-hum.  Enough ME ME ME talk for tonight.  I'm tired.  I wonder when deep insights about the books I'm reading will... um... show up.  I'm trying to wait patiently.

CONCLUSION:  Good.  I will read A Severed Wasp.  Oh, let's face it - I'll probably read everything of L'Engle's.  I will try not to worry that I don't have one particular thing that consumes me (like piano or acting or taking pictures), and be happy with being a jack of all trades and master of none.   I will tell myself once a day, "Kelsey, darling, you may not be brilliant but you are great to have at parties and know how to lay tile."

7/365 A Wind in the Door

"Progo! Help me! How can I feel love for Mr. Jenkins?"

Immediately he opened a large number of eyes very wide. 

"What a strange idea.  Love isn't a feeling.  If it were, I wouldn't be able to love. Cherubim don't have feelings."

"But--"

"Idiot," Proginoskes said, anxiously rather than crossly. "Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do..."

Darling mummy.  She got me the books.  And I don't care, I don't care - it's summer and I will read as many "kid's" books as I want to. So there.

Okay.  I didn't totally understand this book.  It is certainly less straightforward than A Wrinkle in Time.   I didn't like it as much, but I did like it.
The two things in it that really hit me were love and the naming.

WARNING: This post is about to get looooong.  And I was just telling myself that truly snappy blogs confine themselves to one witty paragraph.  Oh well.  (Dear me, that new Katy Perry song is going through my head... and I don't even listen to Katy Perry!  Totally does not go with this book either.)

I've been thinking about love a great deal lately.  Love between men and women, love for enemies, just love, love, love in general.  In the bodies of the elephants too.

For example:

Mum and I have been devouring the Up series lately, and in last night's installment (49), every other person seemed to have gotten divorced.  When the couples were interviewed pre-divorce, a really ridiculous number said things like, "And who knows how long we might be together." It felt like they weren't expecting to make it, giving themselves an out even before troubles came along.  "Well, I always knew it might not work out..."  I'm not condemning the people in the Up movies - it was just such a vivid example of an attitude I encounter every day.  Just thought a little outside example might make things a bit more crystal, what?
(Also, I've been dying to tell someone about the Up series.  It's fascinating.  I wish I could be all serious and moral and say "how pointless!" and refuse to watch because it's invading lives and all that.  But I can't.  56 up is coming out this year or early next.  I'm so glad for Bruce.)

Lately I've been wondering if we sometimes go into relationships with an idea that love is a feeling which ought last forever.  Particularly in romantic relationships.  The way I'm beginning to understand it (with help from C.S. Lewis) is that love is not a feeling that is going to stay all dithery and wild the way it does when you first meet someone.  Nor would you want it to, really.  Life would be so stressful. (I imagined that last sentence in a 7 Up John Brisby voice - "So crowded!")  L'Engle is totally right: love has to be something more than feelings that can change.  Jesus could never have said things like "Love those who hate you" if love were just a feeling over which you have no control.  There's a lot in C.S. Lewis about how you can learn to love people by behaving the way you would if you did love them.  You have to be able to do love, not just feel it.  Rather a practical thing to find in a kids' book.

The naming bit made me think about a Dorothy Sayers thing - if you're doing what you're truly good at, then you're doing the right thing, no matter how trivial it may seem.  It reminds me of how I worry about the way I don't feel like I am ever being my true self with people.  And then I remember that C.S. Lewis thing about how you can't be a social success until you stop worrying about being a social success. "Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."  Very convicting, that always is.  A lot of problems could be solved if I could just wrench my focus away from myself for one second.

I am now running on reserve battery power. Poo.  ("Thank God!" said the imaginary reader, wiping the blood from his ears. "Thank God!")  Must be off to bed.

CONCLUSION:  I'm very awed by people who can write books that are actually about something. Three more L'Engle books are sitting on the bookcase in a very tantalizing manner. Yay.

6/365 A Wrinkle in Time

Good heavens, what a perfect book for a wet evening.  Truly splendid.  I sat in the bath and had an apple and a cup of extremely unhealthful chai tea, and pretended it was fall.   I've been taking piano lessons and learning "Simple Gifts," and it kept going through my head.  Sappy, sappy.

 I'd honestly forgotten how lovely this book is.  Such a delight.  I've asked my dear Mama, who works at one of the local libraries, to check out all of Madeleine L'Engle's other books for me.

 I said the other day that I was going to try to read all the books I own before getting any from the library books?  Well, I lied.

Gosh, what a good book.  This is a positively idiotic blog - I never do anything but say "Ooooh, I love it" or "not my thing" and never talk about any, you know, Deep Thoughts.  Or, better still, Themes or Symbols.  I am an absolute advocate of readerly pleasure. It is my pleasure not to think about Themes. And a very great pleasure this was.

I honestly can't think of much else to say.  This book has a something about it - I don't want to get all highfaluting (wonderful word) and silly, but it almost feels like a spark of eternity or life or something... vital .  All the kids' books I really love have the same sort of feel.  The Wind in the Willows, the Narnia books, The Hobbit.  They seem more real.  I don't know what I mean so don't ask, imaginary reader. 

Oh, let's just meander around for a while...  good, logical flow is so overrated.

I love characters who are just themselves.  The View From Saturday was similar in this regard, if I remember rightly.  People who treat life and others without flippancy.  These characters are not a bit flippant, which I think is what makes Charles Wallace's absorption into IT so terrifying.  Apart from the whole losing himself thing, his new cruel personality contrasts so starkly with the gentle chap he was before.

  

Ah! I could rhapsodize in this eloquent, poetic fashion for hours, but I must go to bed. 

To preserve some semblance of truth, I must admit that the copy I have has this cover:

And not the one above, which is nicer looking in my opinion.  A rant is brewing inside me (involving the appearances of the main characters), but I think I'm going to have to save it for another post on book covers.  I will say, however, that one of the less important reasons I dislike it is because it reminds me of The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Which itself has some very unpleasant associations.  I don't dislike Bosch, but I did have a rotten Art History course with a slightly wacko teacher who looked like a starved sheepdog and was possibly the most boring man on earth.

(Question: Do you put paintings in italics or quotes? I feel like it's italics, but I can't recall. Oh well.)

CONCLUSION: As I said, I am making mum get all L'Engle's other books for me.  I love this book.  It makes me want to be a better, more straightforward person.  So... yeah.

Goodnight, moon.

4/365 The Witches

"It doesn't matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you."

Good golly, I love this book.  LOVE IT.  I could scream, I love it so much.  Yes, it's scary. Yes, terrible things happen to the main characters.  But it is hilarious.  I snort with laughter at every re-read.  And I never snort.  I can't even half-express how much I love Roald Dahl without screaming at you, my imaginary readers, in all caps and bombarding you with exclamation points that don't actually make sense, so I won't try.  Simply be assured that it is a lot of love.

And Quentin Blake's illustrations. AH! What a combo, right?  The books and pictures have become so completely smashed together in my head that I can't help thinking of one in terms of the other.  Quentin Blake puts so much character into his drawings.  I feel like a rat saying this (not a nice brown mouse), but there are some great illustrators I adore who just don't put much character into their characters.  The pictures are beautiful or charming or whatever, but when you look at, I don't know, three different books side by side, the children on the covers all look the same.  Different hair, different eye color - but basically the same pretty types.   Blake gives people giant noses and fat bellies and enormous ears.  Even the nice characters aren't idealized.   And I like that because it feels more true to life.  Or maybe I'm just full of hot air.   Anyways, if I ever end up working as an illustrator (which would be nice as I'm paying quite atrocious amounts of money to a college to learn how to do so), I hope the drawings I make have lots of personality in the same way.   I'd like to have a sort of basic, funny style that will allow me to do scary, black-comedy Lemony Snicket kinds of stories and sweet picture books.  

Well.  Another long tangent.  

Anyways, I love this book.  I love all Roald Dahl's kids books.  I can't decide which is my favorite.  James and the Giant Peach if a definite contender.  Ooh! If you, imaginary reader, are an audio book lover like moi, you must check out Jeremy Irons' reading of James and the Giant Peach.  It's a good contender for best book on tape ever, too.

CONCLUSION:  I am very fond of Roald Dahl's slightly bloodthirsty sense of humor, and think Quentin Blake expresses it perfectly in his drawings.  I want to go find more Roald Dahl booksRIGHTNOW, but I will restrain myself and try to read To The Lighthouse again, even though three pages in I realized I was dribbling drool without knowing it.  Maybe I was in the wrong mood for it or too tired or something.  I kept finishing sentences and feeling very proud, and then realizing, with a slump of the shoulders, that I couldn't remember what the front part of the sentence had been about.  Kid's book are just funner.  Yes, I said funner. 

2/365 The Reader

Whoo.  Didn't I just say yesterday that I wanted either cheap thrills or Deep Thoughts on guilt? Well, wham-o! Deep thoughts on guilt.
I liked this book.  I probably didn't get it, or failed to discern the deep metaphor, but whatever. The reviewers were right - it does force you to wrestle with moral puzzles.  It's very complex, and there wasn't an answer, and I liked that about it.  Lately I've been going for books that acknowledge that nothing can ever be completely answered - love can't completely save you, that sort of thing.  It sounds terribly dismal, but I find absolute fairy tales - they get together and now everything is perfect! - more depressing.  So many people I talk to have come to believe that the fantasies we see on TV and in chick lit can happen in real life.  And then when they don't feel "in love" anymore, they think they've done something wrong or married the wrong person, and that a new person or job or town will finally make them complete.

Ah.  Sorry. Didn't mean to go on a huge tangent/rant there.  I'm rather wary of semi-supposed to be real love stories.  I'd rather have absolute truth or total fantasy right now.  It's a funny mood. 

So, I liked this book.  There were so many bits that I wanted to make copies of our type out and save for myself somewhere.  Really interesting stuff.  Looking back on happy times, how memories work, and, obviously, guilt.  I know it's not quite the same, but I sort of related to the whole guilt of the second generation thing when I thought about the civil war.  Much less immediate and, in a way, less my fault - but when I hear kids bashing the south, saying how terrible all the slave owners were, how they wouldn't have stood for it, I just wonder.  It's very easy to condemn people after the fact, but I feel like you can never know what you would have done.  As I said, not the same thing, but at least I did some semi-serious thinking for a change, what?  
 Granted, I will never be comfortable with s-e-x in books, but this was the first I've read that seemed... I don't know.  The story wouldn't have worked if the main character hadn't gotten involved with Hanna.  I can understand why the author put it all in.   I thought it was interesting, how badly it messed the main character up.  It seemed a much more real reaction - not cheap, like a lot of books I've read.  Do you get what I'm driving at?  I often think writers don't make affairs like this as devastating to characters as they would be in real life, I guess.  This was one of the first (if not the first) book I've read where (and this is going to sound ridiculous!) there was enough pain. There's a lot of very preachy "and it messed him up because..." stuff I could put in here, but I'll spare my imaginary readers. 

CONCLUSION: Very good.  I'd like to read more of his stuff.  I feel a little boost of confidence - I can read things besides Agatha Christie! Also, this book has piqued my interest in similar sorts of books.  I would like to read more Vergangenheitsbewältigung novels.  Mostly for the pleasure of reading that marvelous looking word.  I do hope I used it in my sentence properly.