April 2010
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Summer reads.
So if you’re anywhere near as insane as I am, your packing is based around the books you’re doing to take with you. Clothes, essentials, etc just get thrown in about a half hour before I’m heading out of the door. At least a few days before I leave I plan on what books I’m taking along. Considering this time I’m going away for four months, that’s a lot of...
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Book Review: About a Boy
Book #29
Okay, so I was kind of cheeky with this. I bought this book for the giveaway because I was sure someone would want it (and boy, was I right) but I hadn’t read it and didn’t own it, so I sneakily decided to read it before I sent it off. I don’t feel too guilty about this because it was already a secondhand book, so it’s not like it made a difference. Anyway.
I...
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Book Review: Seven Jewish Children
You can download this for free (legally) from here. It’s only 8 pages long, it’s a 10-minute play. There is a performance of it available to watch on the Guardian’s website here.
Book #28
It kind of feels like cheating to include this as a book read because it’s only 8 pages long. But it’s a legitimate play and I had it on my own list of books read, so I thought...
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thebookie asked: What are some book Tumblogs you follow?
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“The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to...”
– Samuel Johnson (via teachingliteracy, booklover)
I love this man so much.
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eecummings:
“you shall above all things be glad and young For if you’re young,whatever life you wear
it will become you; and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become. Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need: i can entirely her only love
whose any mystery makes every man’s flesh put space on;and his mind take off time
that you should ever think,may god forbid and (in his...
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A Day in My Life
Well, really, it’s just a couple of hours but you get the picture.
Now! It was only yesterday that I told you downloading Hipstamatic onto my iPhone would result in me taking it too far with the pseudo-arty shots. I was right! I couldn’t stop taking pictures of absolutely everything today. That in itself wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t feel the need to assault all of you by...
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Trois.
I never do these but Zoe tagged me so I will. I won’t tag though, feel free to reblog as you wish.
Three names I go by:
Laala
Lulu
La’loo’a (if you don’t say this in Arabic it sounds stupid, though)
Three jobs I’ve had:
Writing
Marketing
Marking work at Kumon
Three Places I’ve Lived
Bahrain
London
Scotland
Three favourite drinks:
Coke
Banana and...
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I just bought a ticket for a She & Him concert
that I probably won’t be able to attend, just so I have it in case I can. How stupid is that?
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“I met a wonderful new man. He’s fictional, but you can’t have everything.”
– The Purple Rose of Cairo (via balltillifall)
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What are you currently reading?
I don’t normally feel like I’m taking on too much, reading-wise, no matter how many books I’m juggling. I do kind of feel it this time, though.
So I’ve got my nose in the following books:
For university:
Gagarin Way by Gregory Burke
King Lear by Shakespeare
Waiting for Godot by Beckett
A neuroscience textbook
A lot of articles
For pleasure:
About a Boy by Nick...
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Book Review: On Art and Life
Book #27
“But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.” — John Ruskin, The Nature of Gothic
My copy was split into two long essays — one was “The Nature of Gothic” and the other “The Work of Iron”. I really, really enjoyed the former, which...
I will never read the word "organism" and not see...
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Book Review: Cloud 9
Book #26
I love this play. Maybe I’m the right age for it. Maybe it’s just different enough to be interesting, maybe because I don’t read a lot of plays I think it’s clever, maybe Caryl Churchill is just an amazing writer.
It has two acts, one set in Victorian times in a British colony in Africa. Act Two is in London in 1979 — a hundred years have passed, but for...
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I wonder.
Something crossed my mind last night as I began to read Cloud 9. I’ve inflicted on you all reviews of my university-chosen texts (all the plays I’ve been reading), my own recent fascination with essays, poetry and the occasional novel (in sharp contrast to last year, when I only reviewed novels). I think I’ve been reading quite broadly and I’ve covered several wonderful...
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Last night:
A friend picked me up so we could go have dinner.
When I told him I was hungry, he said he’d take me somewhere nice, and promptly drove an hour to get to Gleneagles.
The drive up there is gorgeous. We passed by two rainbows.
Gleneagles itself is beautiful.
We had a very lovely three-course dinner.
We got mistaken for husband and wife and we laughed about it for about an hour.
There...
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Stopping in the Middle
From Christy, of A Shelf of One’s Own:
To finish or not to finish? It seems to me that, like finishing all the food on one’s plate, it is rude not to finish a book once it’s begun. How can you adequately judge a book by its contents if you flake out sometime in the middle? Perhaps you use the Page 69 Litmus Test advocated by people I overheard at Café Allegro’s last Friday and turn to the 69th...
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Ways to procrastinate #586
(I haven’t done this yet, but I totally will the second I have any real work to do)
Figure out how many of my 700 books are Penguins.
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Things I Love: Scotland Edition
You know how some people are just several kinds of wonderful? Zoe’s one of them. She’s also just a big a fan of lists as I am and she made this one which just makes me want to squeeze her tight.
bodywithoutorgans:
I was just looking through photographs from my February trip to Scotland to visit my best friend Laala and as I clicked through them I realized how happy everything made...
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“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attach...”
– Charlotte Brontë in a preface to the second edition of Jane Eyre
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“A cold lucid indifference reigned in his soul. At his first violent sin he had...”
– James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (via bodywithoutorgans)
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Book Review: A Streetcar Named Desire
Book #25
“Whoever you are, I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers,” — Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
I had never read Tennessee Williams before, which I clearly now realise was a huge error on my part. I seem to shock people when I tell them that I haven’t seen the 1951 movie, I haven’t even seen a snippet. I know it’s...
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And you get a book! And you! And you!
Edit: The giveaway is now over and the winners have been chosen.
So I just hit a personal milestone of the number of followers. It is unbelievable. I know everyone says as soon as they have any followers this but, really. I’m flabbergasted that this many of you want me on your dashboard. It’s insane. Simply insane.
To celebrate, I will be conducting a GIVEAWAY! I knew immediately I...
Note on my reading habits this year.
I was in the library this afternoon. I finished reading A Streetcar Named Desire, read another case study in Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat and chased that with a little more Ruskin. Those were the three books I had with me. I was suddenly struck by the fact that I didn’t have a novel in my bag. It was a passing thought, but when I got home I looked at the list of books...
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A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
Oh my luve is like a red, red rose, That’s newly sprung in June: Oh my luve is like the melodie, That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall...
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On Plutarch and knowledge
discourseonlife (my writing blog):
I want so badly to read Plutarch, but my own ignorance denies me any pleasure I could derive from it. I have next to no knowledge about the things he would cover and thus would feel like I’m in over my head. I feel like I should become at least marginally versed in the those topics to fully understand his intellect and absorb as much knowledge as possible from...
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Book Review: On Solitude & Other Essays
Book #24
“I get others to say what I cannot put so well myself, sometimes because of the weakness of my language and sometimes because of the weakness of my intellect.” — Michel de Montaigne, On Books
I’ve never read de Montaigne before this. Wow, what a loss! The man is incredibly intelligent, astute and modern. If you hadn’t told me when he had lived, I...
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“In order to the enjoyment of the change in either case, a certain degree of...”
– John Ruskin, “On Art and Life”
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When I say I "love" something,
I mean one of the following:
It amuses me.
I hate it.
It’s something different.
It’s unexpected.
I more than like it but less than love it and couldn’t be fucked to find an appropriate word.
I actually love it.
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Penguin Postcards.
You tell me if you’ve heard two words that sound better together!
With the previous Amazon order where I bought these books, DVDs and CDs I also bought this. I just hadn’t bothered to take a picture till now.
HOW AWESOME, though? The ten pictured are just a random selection. There’s 100 of them! 100 classic Penguin covers.
Inherent problem with buying this: I want them to...
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Fact:
Men look better in suits. I’m sorry to anyone who disagrees but your opinion is wrong. I love guys to be in jeans and t-shirts for the most part, I think a good looking bloke in that kind of simple combo is all I could want.
That said, I have never, ever seen a guy I know put on a suit and not look more attraction. Never! Not even with guys I never would glance twice at usually.
So there...
