Pink Blue Whale

I’m still in the middle of exam preparations! I have my first exam on the 9th of January and my last on the 28th. Updates will continue to be scarce until then!

I finished Wuthering Heights, it was so powerful! I loved it. Absolutely insane novel, but great! I won’t write a review, as there are plenty to go around anyway, and I don’t have too much time on my hands.

Currently I’m reading Knock Three Times! by Marion St. John Webb, a children’s fantasy story I picked up at the book festival. I can’t really find much information about it, not even when it was originally published. But it was apparently made into a TV series in the sixties, so it’s definitely somewhat old.

It’s a story about a twin brother and sister who follow a mysterious pumpkin pincushion into a different world. The “Possible World”, because it is possible for everyone to be happy. The pumpkin however, turns out to be a dark wizard that was trapped into that form. Now that he’s back the people of the Possible World need to find the Black Leaf so they can destroy him once and for all, and Molly and Jack (the twins) decide to help out.

I’m not that far in yet but it’s quite wonderful. It manages to be both a really cute children’s story, as the protagonists enter into a magical world where the people are happy and everything is colourful and lovely. But at the same time, the pumpkin (and his helpers) are genuinely frightening. Not so much to me now, but I’m sure I would be scared out of my wits if I’d read at an earlier age. It’s rather odd because it’s basically just a giant Grey Pumpkin that rolls, very slowly I might add, and it can’t do anything until it touches you.  But it’s written in such a menacing, dark way! It’s very compelling and I can’t wait to read more in it.

I’m not allowing myself to read too much though, it’s very sad! Now it’s 10am, time to start studying! Oh, and before I forget: I hope everyone had a great Christmas and will have a lovely New Year’s Eve!

First of all, my exam preparation has fully started, and while I usually love procrastination, I would actually like to pass this time! So, I will not be reading much until the end of January, and will therefore probably not update much either.
One thing I would like to ask though: what books do you read when you should be concentrating on something else? I am currently leaning mostly towards fantasy. I have some Diana Wynne Jones and Neil Gaiman novels lying around. They are probably light and entertaining without being too distracting? But if anyone has any tips, please do share!

Currently I am reading Wuthering Heights, and desperately trying to finish it in between studying. I do love it though. I think I might enjoy the writing style more than that of Jane Eyre, but as story and characters go, I found Jane Eyre more beautiful and touching. I am almost finished with it, but I have so little time to read currently, it’s very frustrating.

Thursday I went to the local Book Festival. It is basically a yearly event, consisting only of a huge hall full of cheap books (mostly ones that are slightly damaged). They have so many terrible, terrible books! But also a pretty good selection of classics and some other gems!
Here’s a list of what I bought this year, sorted (somewhat):

CLASSICS
Herman Melville – Moby Dick
Charles Dickens – Little Dorrit
Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden
Virginia Woolf – Melymbrosia (very strange, apparently an early version of The Voyage Out!)
Jules Verne – Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

MODERN
Margaret Atwood – The Penelopiad
Junot Diaz – The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Jonathan Safran Foer – Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

FANTASY
Diana Wynne Jones – The Pinhoe Egg
Diana Wynne Jones – The Homeward Bounders
Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Marion St. John Webb – Knock Three Times

SHORT STORIES
Classic Victorian & Edwardian Ghost Stories
English Fairy Tales
Louisa Baldwin & Lettice Galbraith – The Shadow on the Blind and Other Stories
Gothic Short Stories
Yann Martel – The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios

BIOGRAPHY
James Austen-Leigh – A Memoir of Jane Austen
Frank Harris – Oscar Wilde (the scandalous one!)

We also bought seven chicklit novels and an Italian cookbook, but my mom has already confiscated those. Overall I paid less than 65 euros for these 19 books, which is very cheap, especially when you consider that The Hitchhiker’s Guide is actually five books. I am probably most thrilled with my Diana Wynne Jones acquisitions, she is my favourite fantasy writer and her books are impossible to find in my town!

One of my favourite books is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and not just because I adore the classic nonsensical children’s story (I do love it though!). Throughout the years it has been illustrated by a large number of different artists, and I am fascinated by all these pretty drawings in such different styles. So this weekend I decided to scan some pictures from the books I have on the subject (mainly the French Visages d’Alice).

I didn’t count the ones by Sir John Tenniel, because those are pretty much viewed as the ‘official ones’, and most people already know them anyway. Among my favourites are the illustrations by Charles Folkard (such as the walrus on the left) and the art nouveau ones by Charles Robinson. I also scanned in a prepatory sketch by Lewis Carroll, for the first version of the book, that he illustrated himself. I saw the original manuscript at an exhibition last year and I nearly cried. His drawings are very flawed, but I love all the strange faces in that particular sketch.

But as much as I enjoy all of these different versions, my all-time favourite are the Arthur Rackham ones. They are so beautiful! The colours are bleak, but I think that suits the story just fine, as it has a lot of dark elements. Luckily, my mom bought me his version about a year ago. I scanned in a few from it, obviously because I love it so much. In this post I also added another picture, by Nicole Claveloux. Maybe for contrast, as it’s so bright! I love the composition of that one. Is it crazy of me that I want to buy all these versions?

The entire gallery of my scans can be found here. Enjoy!

When I decided it was time for a Woolf novel, my decision for Orlando was pretty much random. I didn’t want to start with one heavy with stream-of-consciousness so close to my exams, as school stress can do quite a bit to my concentration. I thought I’d better save Mrs Dalloway for a holiday.

But I had such fun with Orlando! It was the perfect choice. As I started in it I knew the basic storyline and that it was considered one of her ‘lighter’ novels, but I had no idea about the parody aspect of it, which was such a pleasant surprise! It was actually hilarious at times. I absolutely love the way Virginia Woolf toys with the different themes in the novel: time, gender and biographies in general (that is the parodied aspect). The scenes where a new century started were amazing, and I also adored those where the narrator stepped out of the story to talk about ‘what a biographer should write’.

And now it is clear that there are only two ways of coming to a conclusion upon Victorian literature - one is to write it out in sixty volumes octavo, the other is to squeeze it into six lines of the length of this one. Of the two courses, economy, since time runs short, leads us to choose the second; and so we proceed. Orlando then came to the conlusion (opening half-a-dozen books) that it was very odd that there was not a single dedication to a nobleman among them; next (turning over a vast pile of memoirs) that several of these writers had family trees half as high as her own; next, that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea; next [... I decided to omit the other realisations, it's turning rather long ...] and so at last she reached her final conclusion, which was of the highest importance but which, as we have already much overpassed our limit of six lines, we must omit.

I removed a few lines but you can see the idea: Woolf is teasing us, readers! You also see Christina Rossetti being mentioned: quite a few famous poets make an appearance or are at least mentioned throughout the story, which is a lot of fun if you’re a literary geek. As a short note I would also like to mention the character of Nick Greene, a poet and critic, but also a fascinating display of those dreadful people who can only ever appreciate the past.

As you will probably be aware of if you’re already familiar with Orlando, it is in part a mock biography of her friend Vita Sackville-West. Woolf was fascinated by Sackville-West and her family, who came of a great house with over 400 years of nobility. This is also an interesting aspect of the novel, so I decided to share an excerpt from the first letter Woolf wrote to Sackville-West where she mentioned Orlando.

But listen: suppose Orlando turns out to be Vita, and its all about you and the lure of your mind - heart you have none - suppose there’s the kind of shimmer of reality which sometimes attaches to my people as the lustre on an oyster shell - suppose, I say, that next October someone says ‘There’s Virginia gone and written a book about Vita’, shall you mind? Say yes or no. Your excellence as a subject arises largely from your noble birth - but what’s 400 years of nobility, all the same? - and the opportunity thus given for florid descriptive passages in great abundance. Though, I admit, I should like to untwine and twist again some very odd incongruous strands in you; and also, as I told you, it sprung upon me how I could revolutionize biography in a night; and so, if agreeable to you, I would like to toss this up in the air and see what happens. Yet, of course, I may not write another line.

In the end I would like to say I enjoyed myself immensely. I would recommend Orlando to most people, but next time I pick a Woolf novel I’ll be sure to go with a stream-of-consciousness one. It’s what she’s famous for, after all.

the mockingbird had been following the cat
all summer
mocking mocking mocking
teasing and cocksure;
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
tail flashing
and said something angry to the mockingbird
which I didn’t understand.

yesterday the cat walked calmly up the driveway
with the mockingbird alive in its mouth,
wings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,
feathers parted like a woman’s legs,
and the bird was no longer mocking,
it was asking, it was praying
but the cat
striding down through centuries
would not listen.

I saw it crawl under a yellow car
with the bird
to bargain it to another place.

summer was over.

I’ve been rather glued to my copy of Bukowski’s Mockingbird Wish Me Luck these past few days. I got it from my grandmother some months ago, but had forgotten about it until a friend told me he was reading Hollywood. I took it off the shelf that night and am now in love!

First of all, I have to mention all of these books, aside from my currently reading, are Dutch. I have a mandatory reading list for my Dutch Literature class, and decided to finish them all in one go.

1. Marcellus Emants - Een Nagelaten Bekentenis: Naturalist novel about a man who ends up killing his wife (this is not a spoiler, it’s mentioned on the first page). Well-written character study, but dragged on a bit for me. I disliked the main character, which is the point of the novel, but I just didn’t enjoy it that much.
2. Louis Couperus - Noodlot: I’d read only one Couperus novel before and didn’t like it that much. But I probably read it at a wrong time in life (it’s weird how much affect that can have!) because I loved this one! Also typical naturalism, but I found it a lot more likeable. It had a more active storyline and interesting characters.
3. Ferdinand Bordewijk - Bint: I would like to profess my eternal love to this novel, once again. Reviewed it here.
4. A.F.Th. Van der Heijden - Het leven uit een dag: A novel with an interesting premise: it takes place in a world where a human life is only a day long. However, I found it a very unlikeable book. Maybe if the ‘love’ aspect had been written in a different way, I could’ve gotten into it. But as it was, I just found it… boring really. Which is strange for a story with such an interesting setting, but I didn’t care for the characters and didn’t believe in their supposed love as much as in their lust. It was also unnecessarily perverted, and had a lot of elements I just don’t care for in novels.
5. Simon Vestdijk - De Koperen Tuin: Aside from Bint this was probably my favourite. A tragic love story, but not too heavily written, with a couple of downright hilarious scenes. I didn’t really know Vestdijk before this class, so it was a very pleasant discovery. I adore his writing style!
6. Willem Elsschot - Dwaallicht: This was barely 40 pages long, so calling it a novel is a bit of a stretch. It’s very short, but beautiful.
7. Virginia Woolf - Orlando: And we’ve reached my currently reading. I’m almost done though (too short!). It’s my first Woolf novel (blasphemy, I know!), but I love it. It’s beautifully written, as expected, but what I didn’t expect was the humour. It has me laughing out loud so often!

That’s all for November! December and January will probably have a much shorter list, as my exams are coming up and I barely read during those. I’m planning on rereading Wuthering Heights during them. I read it in Dutch when I was about 12, but I barely remember anything.

O dear! We quarrelled almost all the morning! & it was a lovely morning,& now gone to Hades for ever, branded with the marks of our ill humour.

by Virginia Woolf from The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 1 1915-19

May 19. We dined alone with Mama and read afterwards in Jane Eyre, in which we are so deeply interested.
May 21. We remained up reading in Jane Eyre till 1/2 past 11 - quite creepy from the awful account of what happened the night before the marriage, which was interrupted in the church.
August 2. We read in Jane Eyre, which proved so interesting that we went on till quite late. It was the part in which comes the moment of her finding Rochester again, blind, and with the loss of a hand!

by Queen Victoria from Jane Eyre and Villette: A selection of critical essays

The idea of Queen Victoria reading Jane Eyre with her mother just tickled me, I love that! I also typed in a short quote from Virginia Woolf’s diary because I am currently enjoying her Orlando. I haven’t been able to read in it properly for a few days due to school stress, but now that’s over I’ll probably finish soon.

Also, I finally looked up Dawn Powell, who was mentioned in Gilmore Girls once and compared to Dorothy Parker. I am now desperate to read something by her! She seems like an awesome writer that hardly anyone knows about.

Gone were but the Winter,
Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
Where the birds sing;

Where in the whitethorn
Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
In the holly-bush.

Full of fresh scents
Are the budding boughs
Arching high over
A cool green house:

Full of sweet scents,
And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
“We spread no snare;

“Here dwell in safety,
Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
And a mossy stone.

“Here the sun shineth
Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
Of the far sea,
Though far off it be.”

My internet is behaving rather wonkily this week so I had no chance to post this yesterday. But here I am wishing it were spring. This was the poem I had to analyse for my English Poetry exam last year. I’m mainly posting this here so that I do not forget about it, as I don’t have it in book form.

Yesterday I found this in Critics on Jane Austen, one of the books I was talking about in my last post. I have always known Charlotte Brontë wasn’t exactly Austen’s biggest fan, but this is the first time I read her specific words on the subject. I thought I might post them.

Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written Pride and Prejudice or Tom Jones, than any of the Waverley novels?

I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I had read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerrotyped portrait of a commonplace face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. These observations will probably irritate you. but I shall run the risk.

from a letter to G.H. Lewis on January 12, 1948

She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy, in the painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him with nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her: she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy sisterhood … What sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study: but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of life and the sentient target of death–this Miss Austen ignores….Jane Austen was a complete and most sensible lady, but a very incomplete and rather insensible (not senseless woman), if this is heresy–I cannot help it.

from a letter to W.S. Williams on April 12, 1850

Personally I have always preferred Austen. I loved Jane Eyre, but the irony and realism of Austen’s novels always manage to pull me back to them.

As I am writing an incredibly boring piece of informative text for my Dutch Linguistics class, I have no time to make a big post today. But I was just thinking how much I love not only to read fiction, but also to read about fiction.

My late grandmother collected articles and essays about authors her whole life, not to mention the amount of books on literary criticism she had. So I have lots of sources to choose from, often going to my grandfather’s house to borrow books when I need to research an author for class. Today alone I acquired three books full of essays about the works of Jane Austen, since I’m considering writing my next English essay on Northanger Abbey (either that or Dorothy Parker).

I always thought it was obvious that I enjoy actually studying literature, since why else would I have chosen to study it at university? But now that I am here, I often hear my fellow students complain about how analysing a book can ruin it, which confuses me. I do understand that it can be boring. Even I, obsessed as I am, don’t find all aspects of literary criticism and theory equally interesting. But the idea, that talking about a book you originally enjoyed reading, can actually ruin your opinion of the book? That always sounds strange to me.

It’s not a feeling I’m familiar with. Then again, I am only in my first year. Who knows how much I might hate William Shakespeare by the end of my studies? It sounds horrible though. I hope it doesn’t happen to me. I want to love books as much as I always have, and just… know more about them.