BLUEBEARD - ANGELA CARTER

I picked this book up in Prologue while I was there to use my voucher - finally - given to me by my JC form teacher for my 18th birthday. (Yes he's a really nice teacher, he used to give us all chocolates on our 17th birthday, and prologue/ popular vouchers on our 18th birthday. It isn't much, but it's the thought that counts, right!)

And why I say "finally" is because popular/ prologue isn't where I usually go to find and buy books. More often than not, I'm unable to find what I'm looking for! So in the end I decided on this book, along with The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan, which I am currently reading and loving every part of it.

Basically this book is short collection of fairy tales; Bluebeard, Little Red Riding Hood, Puss in Boots, The Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, Cinderella, Ricky with the Tuft, and The Foolish Wishes, rewritten by Angela Carter. And at the end of every fairy tale comes a moral or two. Mostly 2 in most stories.

An extract from one of the morals, printed beautifully on the first page.

A very light-hearted book, easy to read as it is written in the most simplistic manner. If you are familiar with these fairy tales since young, these stories, in it's skeletal form, will not come across as any surprise at all.

What I liked best was the writing of the morals. Fairy tales date back to the 1600s, but these morals apply very much to the modern era as well.

MY MISTRESS'S SPARROW IS DEAD - JEFFREY EUGENIDES

This is what I've been reading during my spare time.

Last year (a couple of months back) I talked - briefly - about this book on my tumblr, way before I started this blog. This is the post. Now that I have an actual blog owing to what seems like an endless passage of time till I start school + the escape from schoolwork albatross for the next 8 months, tumblr will remain my photoblog of... mostly reblogs. And of quotes, of course. 

I shall share some of my favourites quotes and paragraphs from this book. (So far, because it is reading-in-progress) Like what I wrote in my tumblr post, anthologies are for me. As much as I enjoy novels, I don't think every subject matter written in lengthy novel form is appealing at all. I haven't come across a novel written purely about love and love only that engages me. 

This book really does not consist of those sappy, ardent love stories with predictable endings, which is why I like this book and it is possibly on my "favourites" list. Eugenides takes a unique, perspicacious perception on love. 

In "First Love and Other Sorrows" by Harold Brodkey, setting is in St Louis, narrated by a 16-year-old high school boy, revolving around his school experience, his sister, and his mother. Favourite paragraph is the one right the end: 

"There's some soup," my mother said. "Why don't I heat it up." And suddenly her eyes filled with tears, and all at once we fell to kissing one another - to embracing and smiling and making cheerful predictions about one another - there in the white, brightly lighted kitchen. We had known each other for so long, and there were so many things that we all three remembered. . . Our smiles, our approving glances, wandered from face to face. There was a feeling of politeness in the air. We were behaving the way we would in railway stations, at my sister's wedding, at the birth of her first child, at my graduation from college. This was the first of our reunions. 

I found this story average. It was alright, and that's about it. I liked how the Brodkey included the element of high school jealousy, which makes it completely realistic.

Among my other problems was that I was reduced nearly to a state of tears over my own looks whenever I looked at a boy named Joel Bush. Joel was so incredibly good-looking that none of the boys could quite bear the fact of his existence; his looks weren’t particuarly masculine or clean-cut, and he wasn’t a fine figure of a boy - he was merely beautiful.

However, personally, I found it a little too draggy overall. Superfluous details on the sister and the mother and their conversations on the sister's good looks and men chasing her. The mother's incessant talk on the sister settling down. It was a tad too much for me. I felt annoyed at how naggy she was.


And in "The Lady with the Little Dog":

She laughed. Then they went on eating in silence, like strangers; but after dinner they walked off together - and a light, bantering conversation began, of free, contented people, who do not care where they go or what they talk about. They strolled and talked of how strange the light was on the sea; the water was of a lilac colour, so soft and warm, and over it the moon cast a golden strip. They talked of how sultry it was after the hot day. 

Since I still have a long way more to go before I complete this book, I think I will be posting more on this in the near future. I am really tempted to start on David Levithan's "The Lover's Dictionary" and Angela Carter's "Bluebeard". Actually, I think I am going to, over CNY.

KEEPING BUSY

So I haven't been updating this space as regularly as I had intended to, but I've had a lot of things going on the past week; and there's more to come. I'm determined to put this freedom to good use. Now that it's post-A-Levels, we have the key to breaking free from mundanity and routine. I've been doing things that I usually wouldn't be doing at this time of the year because it would have been the school term.

Been baking a lot of peanut butter cookies (for everyone for CNY) till I'm sick of peanut butter.

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My baby sister was painting for her art lesson homework last night which inspired me to relive my primary school experience and start painting again. This is what I painted:

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M has been relief teaching for PE and his daily anecdotes regarding his students (lower sec kiddos) is my daily dosage of laughter.

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions. 

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. 

I am not cruel, only truthful -- 

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall. 

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long. 

I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers. 

Faces and darkness seperate us over and over. 

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, 

Searching my reaches for what she really is. 

Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. 

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. 

I am important to her. She comes and goes. 

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. 

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. 

This is one of my favourite poems. I think one of the most outstanding emphasis we see here is the flow of time - especially how the woman ages and the physical changes. "and in me an old woman rises toward her day after day". I also perceive this "young girl" to be herself; her youth. Again, the passing of time. "In me she has drowned a young girl". 


It intrigues me how the mirror persona claims to have "no preconceptions", yet it judges the candles and the moon to be liars, maybe because the candles and the moon lie to the woman about her aging (which is something she dreads and refuses to face) But it is still truthful, reflecting reality.

Very very interesting, but I detect depression underneath this. There are many ways to intepret this anyway.

HOT CHOCOLATE

How do you drink your hot chocolate? 

Mine looks like this:

So maybe the picture doesn't do it justice, but I always feel that tiny marshmallows and dark chocolate flakes are ze best with hot chocolate. And that's how I always make mine! 

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Life has been pretty dull for me these few days partly because I'm sick and also because I feel guilty whenever I'm out and not studying for LNAT, which is tomorrow, by the way. I didn't really "study" much, skills are basically what we learnt in GP. Only I might have a problem with writing an essay for once, mainly because of the 750 word limit. That's insane, really. When I write and I argue for my case/point of view, I have a lot to say. I'm one of those students who always need extra foolscap paper for writing during examinations. And there's no wriggling out for this one; it's typewritten (the entire paper is done on a computer they provide) and the box in which your words go into have a default 750 word limit so I can't even sneak my way out by a few words. 

Well even if, if, I don't do well for LNAT, at least it's only Birmingham lost, I guess. 

Till then, xxx

LIFE IN INSTAGRAM PICTURES

1: Haji Lane
2: Postbox at Haji
3: Myself, in front of a blue vintage-looking old door
4: Melv
5: Shisha spot in front of a closed shop
6: One of my favourite sets of bracelets; beach-themed!

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Will be baking cookies for the upcoming Chinese New Year, currently browsing through bakerella's recipies - oh how I love her.

THE HAPPINESS PROJECT

I've recently stumbled upon The Happiness Project. It's a book written by this lady Gretchen Rubin, who wrote it as a memoir of the 365 days she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. And of course, she has her own website dedicated to it. Funny how I never knew about this. Really tempted to get the book now. Anyway, she made this list of 12 commandments.

(1) Be Gretchen (meaning herself - meaning to be ourselves)
(2) Let it go
(3) Act the way I want to feel
(4) Do it now
(5) Be polite and be fair
(6) Enjoy the process
(7) Spend out
(8) Identify the problem
(9) Lighten up
(10) Do what ought to be done
(11) No calculation
(12) There is only love

She talks about the paradox of happiness, the paradox of (1) by which she wants to be herself but yet wants to change herself for the better. She elaborates on all of them and I really think these 12 commandments make plenty of sense. It's something I think I'm going try aiming for in life. Much inspired!

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Speaking of books, I am also highly tempted to get 10 books from book depository. Very. Tempted. It's killing me! David Levithan, Angela Carter, Jonathan Safran Foer - all my favourite authors.

"The Labyrinth" from Under A Glass Bell by Anais Nin. Short stories/anthologies complete my life.

I was eleven years old when I walked into the labyrinth of my diary. I carried it in a little basket and climbed the moldy steps of a Spanish garden and came upon boxed streets in neat order in a backyard of a house in New York. I walked protected by dark green shadows and followed a design I was sure to remember. I wanted to remember in order to be able to return. As I walked, I walked with the desire to see all things twice so as to find my way back into them again. The bushes were soft hairy elbows touching mine, the branches swords over my head. They led me. I did not count the turns, the chess moves, the meditated displacements, the obsessional repetitions. The repetitions prevented me from counting the hours and the steps. The obsessions became the infinite. I was lost. I only stopped because of the clock pointing to anguish. An anguish about returning, and about seeing these things but once. There was a definite feeling that their meaning could only be revealed a second time. If I were forced to go on, unknowing, blind, everything would be lost. I was infinitely far from my first steps. I did not know exactly why I must return. I did not know that at the end I would not find myself where I started. The beginning and the end were different, and why should the coming to an end annihilate the beginning? And why should the beginning be retained? I did not know, but for the anguish in my being, an anguish over something lost. The darkness before me was darker than the darkness behind me.

Everything was so much the same and equal before and around me that I was not certain I had turned sufficiently in the path to be actually walking towards the place from which I started. The clouds were the same, the croaking of the frogs, the soft rain sound of fountains, and the immobile green flame of evergreens in boxes. I was walking on a carpet of pages without number. Why had I not numbered the pages? Because I was aware of what I had left out; so much was left out that I had intended to insert, and numbering was impossible, for numbering would mean I had said everything. I was walking up a stairway of words. The words repeated themselves. I was walking on the word pity pity pity pity pity pity. My step covered the whole world each time, but then I saw I was not walking. When the word was the same, it did not move, nor did my feet. The word died. And the anguish came, about the death of this word, about the death of the feeling inside of this word. The landscape did not change, the walk was without corners; the paths so mysteriously enchained I never knew when I had to turn to the right or the left. I was walking on the word obsession with naked feet: the trees seemed to press closer together, and breathing was difficult. I was seeking the month, the year, the hour, which might have helped me to return. 

"SADNESS OF LOVE WITHOUT RELEASE" - JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

“Why are you leaving me? 
He wrote, I do not know how to live. 
I do not know either but I am trying. 
I do not know how to try. 
There were some things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him. So I buried them and let them hurt me” 

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With every tick of the clock hand, people change. Even if they say no but they change anyway. Slowly, gradually; change is overwhelming. Time flows without bridle and the passage of time fills my head with memories of our fleeting youth. And in my head I place two memories of the same person at different points in time and I think to myself, change. That's all life will ever be about, and one day I will accept that it's beyond my reach but maybe that's why people come and go. Some people move on, some people wait for you, and some - you just don't get along with. 

I think that prima facie everyone is nice. I was talking to Jonsam over soup and salad on new year's eve and I eventually agreed with him that no one's ever "not nice". Unless you know them well.  First impressions, first encounters - who isn't nice? And even on the tenth encounter it doesn't hurt to fake a wide grin or throw back your head laughing, give out some secrets and anecdotes and all of a sudden it makes the other party feel like they know you inside out and all they can ever say about you to everyone is, oh yeah he/she's nice. I think it's pretty easy. I don't think we really know anyone at all unless you spend every day of your life growing up with them. 

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M came over today and we watched Shutter Island and 90210 on tv. I'm in a mood of lazing around at home and sleeping - feverish cough, a sore throat, throbbing head.  

  

HELLO 2012

So I am a little late on the whole happy new year thing on this space, but all the same, happy new year! Some last bits of 2011 in pictures:

1, 2, 3: Paris, France.
4, 5, 6, 7: Florence, Italy.

Lucerne, Switzerland

Rome, Italy

Germany

Venice

I WILL UPLOAD LONDON PICTURES ANOTHER DAY. I'm really annoyed at how the alignment is all off. I can't stand looking at non-perfect alignment and I've been at it for the longest time but nothing is happening!

And like everyone else, I have a panoply of new year resolutions too, for 2012.

(1) Read more more more
(2) Keep my dearest friends close
(3) Spend more time with my family
(4) Increase in photographs and writing
(5) Travel more
(6) Keep track of life - make the best out of what I have, live for a purpose, know what I want, and never go off the rails
(7) Be more decisive
(8) Improve on punctuality
(9) Guard my heart

But for now, I'm really attempting to focus on my LNAT and cutting down 449 characters for my personal statement. After which I will choose my BTT date - my BBDC account money has been frozen in there for a month, but well what are you to do when uni and your future supersedes driving.