Top Ten Tuesday – Characters I’d Want on a Deserted Island With Me

Summer holidays have begun, which means I can get a bit of blogging done! And what better way to start the season than with fantasising about which characters I’d like to be stuck on a desert island with. Here goes:

1. Hobbits – Don’t laugh… they are excellent hunter-gatherers! I won’t ever starve and they are also pretty laid back so no arguments there. Unless it’s about who does the cooking perhaps…

2. Rhett Butler – Tall, dark, handsome and extremely resourceful. Did I mention he’s tenacious too? That there man has got some mad survival skills. And he’s gorgeous to boot!

3. Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights – If I can’t have Rhett, then Heathcliff will do. They are basically cut from the same cloth!

4. Ewoks – They are cute, can live in forests and I kinda have a secret dream off being like Snow White taking care of these little guys…

5. Four from Divergent – again I’m thinking of the deadly combo of survival skills and insanely hunky body. Yep, I intend to make good use of my time on that there island!

6. The Count of Monte Cristo – You can probably see a theme here. No need to justify it apart from the fact that Edmund has a desert island for himself and knows his way around one. Plus I’m a sucker from intelligent gentlemen. It will get boring on that island with just a hot body to look at.

7. Batman – I just think it would be great to get this guy on his own and try to figure him out. The Dark Knight is a bit of a sphinx, and he he can do with some sun to be honest!

8. Solid Snake – I’m breaking into video game characters here because to be honest, one of my biggest dreams is to learn how to shoot and survive commando style. Who better to train me than Snake himself!

9. Miss Havisham – I want to save this character, like truly save her from death. Having her on the island would allow me to do that. Plus, it would lift her out of her depression!

10. Gruffalo – Let the wild rumpus begin!!

That’s my weird list. What is your’s going to be?

2013 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 70,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Gollum Vs. Smeagol Rap Battle

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books, Gollum, humour, Lord of the Rings, music, Smeagol

A new spin on Smeagol’s split-personality syndrome – and he wins hands down because he ‘drops the bass’. LMAO!

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 79,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Book Review | ‘Kitchen’ by Banana Yoshimoto

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banana yoshimoto, book review, Cancer, Grief Loss and Bereavement, japanese, kitchen, Soy sauce

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)”

Imagine a book that tasted like a drop of vanilla essence floating in dark soy sauce, smelled like clean linen on an unwashed body and felt like a cat purring on your lap during a violent thunderstorm. That is ‘Kitchen‘. It’s so deceptively simple, yet so full of emotion that it had me reeling. Often I would find myself at the end of a sentence, yet like an arrow loosed from a bow the thrust of it would carry and carry, until it travelled straight into my heart. Yoshimoto’s prose is like a time machine that took me back to some very difficult events in my life, and like her protagonists I was surprised that I too found myself in the kitchen when things looked very bleak indeed.

What is it about food that gives us comfort when facing loss on an earth-shattering scale? Following instructions on how to prepare a dish, making a cup of tea or touching the utensils and knowing their individual functions is an odd yet completely rational way of somehow inserting order into a life invaded by chaos. I think Yoshimoto’s idea of the kitchen as a place of domestic healing and love is something I can definitely identify with.

“Me, when I’m utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody’s home, then I despise my own life – my birth, my upbringing, everything.” 

There were some really memorable passages that were shockingly accurate about the raw, keening pain of bereavement. Those that have been through it will probably relive that sadness and find comfort in Yoshimoto’s writing, as the only road to recovery is to convince yourself that you are not alone, even though you may feel that way. And so the most heartbroken characters in the book find others who truly know what ‘rock-bottom’ means. For instance, my favourite character Eriko happens to be a transvestite who decides to undergo major surgery and become a woman after losing his wife to terminal cancer. Yoshimoto never once refers to the reasons behind Eriko’s life-altering decision, but it’s extraordinary how she lets us read between the lines and come to conclusions that sometimes the mania of trying to bring a person back may even entail ‘becoming’ that person at all costs. In this edition there is another short story which has a similar character, a high school boy who lost his girlfriend and brother in a car accident, and finds the only way to cope with it is by wearing his girlfriend’s school uniform. All in all, one can make parallel’s between how men and women cope with loss and it seems women are the stronger sex in Yoshimoto’s world.

“At that moment I had a thrilling sharp intuition. I knew it as if I held it in my hands: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case, we would forever remain just friends.” 

‘Kitchen’ therefore is a strange juxtaposition of happiness, grief, laughter and tears that looks at the different ways people cope with carrying on with life despite all the odds. There are those who keep their feelings hidden and smile in the face of adversity while some change gender just to liberate themselves from the pain they feel. From transvestites to high school kids, Yoshimoto’s cast is colourful and varied as we realise that everyone sooner or later, will be touched by death and through it learn to appreciate every day as a blessing.

View all my reviews

Related articles

• Best Books of 2012 Round-Up (mywordlyobsessions.wordpress.com)
• ‘Asleep’ by Banana Yoshimoto (kimbofo.typepad.com)
• The beauty hidden in between every second (ellenlike.wordpress.com)
• Worst books I read this year (abbyfp.wordpress.com)

Ahh Penguin Modern Classics, How I Love Thee! | Celebrating 50 Years of Good Reads, With Good Reads…

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literary fiction, Penguin Books, Penguin Modern Classics, short story, virginia woolf

Authors we love, and some we don’t: 50 of the best writers of modern fiction are showcased in this collection of 50 little books as Penguin Modern Classics celebrates it’s fiftieth birthday. Which one will you choose?

There it is folks, an entire library of modern literary fiction in one compact little box. How convenient! Having read ‘Hell Screen’ by Akutagawa and ‘The Lady in the Looking Glass’ by Virginia Woolf, I have fallen in love with Penguin’s concept of bringing us tidbits of the best of contemporary fiction. I’m a sucker for short stories.

I am currently taking up the challenge to read ALL of the books in the series which won’t take long provided I can find them all. The great thing about this collection is that they contain stories that not only showcase an authors differing styles (as was the case with Virginia Woolf) but they also bring to light some of the lesser-known, but equally as good works too.

If you want to take up the challenge too then you can find more information abotu the books at the Penguin Modern Classics website or you can purchase the entire set at Amazon or Waterstone’s.

For those interested, here’s a list of all the book’s in the series:

RYUNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA Hell Screen

KINGSLEY AMIS Dear Illusion

DONALD BARTHELME Some of Us Had Been Threatening Our Friend Colby

SAMUEL BECKETT The Expelled

SAUL BELLOW Him With His Foot in His Mouth

JORGE LUIS BORGES The Widow Ching – Pirate

PAUL BOWLES The Delicate Prey

ITALO CALVINO The Queen’s Necklace

ALBERT CAMUS The Adulterous Woman

TRUMAN CAPOTE Children on Their Birthdays

ANGELA CARTER Bluebeard

RAYMOND CHANDLER Killer in the Rain

EILEEN CHANG Red Rose, White Rose

G. K. CHESTERTON The Strange Crime of John Boulnois

JOSEPH CONRAD Youth

ROBERT COOVER Romance of the Thin Man and the Fat Lady

ISAK DINESEN [KAREN BLIXEN] Babette’s Feast

MARGARET DRABBLE The Gifts of War

HANS FALLADA Short Treatise on the Joys of Morphinism

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD Babylon Revisited

IAN FLEMING The Living Daylights

E. M. FORSTER The Machine Stops

SHIRLEY JACKSON The Tooth

HENRY JAMES The Beast in the Jungle

M. R. JAMES Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book

JAMES JOYCE Two Gallants

FRANZ KAFKA In the Penal Colony

RUDYARD KIPLING ‘They’

D. H. LAWRENCE Odour of Chrysanthemums

PRIMO LEVI The Magic Paint

H. P. LOVECRAFT The Colour Out of Space

MALCOLM LOWRY Lunar Caustic

KATHERINE MANSFIELD Bliss

CARSON MCCULLERS Wunderkind

ROBERT MUSIL Flypaper

VLADIMIR NABOKOV Terra Incognita

R. K. NARAYAN A Breath of Lucifer

FRANK O’CONNOR The Cornet-Player Who Betrayed Ireland

D OROTHY PARKER The Sexes

LUDMILLA PETRUSHEVSKAYA Through the Wall

JEAN RHYS La Grosse Fifi

SAKI Filboid Studge, the Story of a Mouse That Helped

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER The Last Demon

WILLIAM TREVOR The Mark-􀀍 Wife

JOHN UPDIKE Rich in Russia

H. G. WELLS The Door in the Wall

EUDORA WELTY Moon Lake

P. G. WODEHOUSE The Crime Wave at Blandings

VIRGINIA WOOLF The Lady in the Looking-Glass

STEFAN ZWEIG Chess

Related articles

• Christmas gift guide: 12 books and boxed sets for bibliophiles, part 2 (kimbofo.typepad.com)
• The beauty of Penguin Books (guardian.co.uk)
• Keith Haring’s Journals (thepenguinblog.typepad.com)

TBR Piles and Library Lootings…

As I went through my groaning bookshelves the other day I noticed a number of titles gathered over the years that I’ve never really managed to get round to reading. These TBR remnants of 2010 have since become another bullet point on my list of new year’s resolutions. I hope to clear them all come 2012.

In the pile is (bottom to top):

Sun Tzu – The Art of Warfare (trans: Roger T. Ames)
Ancient Chinese manual on martial law written circa. 400 BC. This is a rather special deluxe version I treated myself to which contains the first translation and also other parts of the text that have been discovered over the years. I don’t read enough non-fiction, but having read Thomas Cleary’s ‘Code of the Samurai’ has whetted my appetite for more Far-Eastern Military books.

White Oleander – Janet Fitch
This is my current read (already a favourite) which is a mother-daughter tale told through the eyes of Astrid (the daughter), who suddenly finds herself in foster care after her mother poisons her lover and is sentenced to life imprisonment. I don’t like overly feminist texts, but this one has a deliciously dangerous edge to it that takes, well, the ‘edge’ off all that fanaticism.

Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
Heard loads about this one, bought it, went home, peeked at the first page … haven’t touched it since. This is my waterloo. I prefer Ulysses over this. Plus, the Guardian said it was “a novel of such ambition and intensity that most modern fiction looks timid and shallow in comparison.” The Guardian never lies, and I quake in my boots at the thought of an epic that surpasses all epics.

The Rules of Attraction –  Brett Easton Ellis 
And now for something different… no one does 80’s yuppie culture/ college/ prep school angst like Ellis. This was one of those impulse buys that had the guy at the counter saying, ‘But you look like such a nice girl. Why this book?’ I just smiled sweetly and said, ‘I’ve read worse’. I hope this is a little less explicit than his other works and I am banking on it being a ‘hilarious take on the death of romance’.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – DH Lawrence
I got part way through this extraordinary story of one woman’s marriage to a rich paraplegic and her gradual love-affair with the groundsman. It’s a very poignant statement of the sexually unfulfilled 1920’s upper classes and treats the subject of adultery with a ‘no frills’ modernity that had the Guardian saying it was ‘a bomb, not a book’ of its times.

Exit A – Anthony Swofford
This one was a total impulse buy. I just liked the picture on the cover. But its premise is promising (a young American who grows up on a US Airbase in Japan who begins to be lured into the seedy, neon-drenched underbelly of Tokyo) and it’s author even more so (Swofford is famous for is memoir ‘Jarhead’, which was also made into a film by the same name.) Reading about seedy, underbelly Japan is one of my guilty pleasures!

When I Was Puerto Rican – Esmeralda Santiago
I have a thing for the Caribbean these days. Especially Puerto Rico and Cuba. It’s carried on over from last year when I read the ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ and ‘The Rum Diary’. Santiago’s autobiography recounts her early years on the island and bewildering culture shock and adjustment to New York City. I like reading about people who have lived in many places and how they define themselves and their rightful ‘home’.

253 – Geoff Ryman
I distinctly remember the early hours of 2009. It was spent reading ‘Air’, Ryman’s amazing mash-up of East-meets-West-cyber-culture-on-the-Steppes. What an amazing experience that was. Ryman is an original. He can write a story using the most unlikeliest of materials. In 253, he delves into the minds of several passengers on an underground London tube as they hurtle towards their destination.

The English Patient – Michael Ondjaate
Can’t live without literary fiction, and I think I’m well overdue reading this one. Everybody has probably seen the movie, but loads have been said about the starkness of Ondjaate’s writing. I just hope it’s not a bleak and flavourless as Cormac McCarthy, which brings me on to…

The Road – Cormac McCarthy
… yeah. I think this is one of those one’s that you should read only to say you’ve read it. ‘The Sunset Limited’ was a disappointment and having got through about 1/5 of The Road, I think this will probably be the same. It’s more depressing than the Mordor scenes in Lord of The Rings!

Ya-Ya’s In Bloom – Rebecca Wells
I’ve had this for a year. Even tried reading it about 5 times, but kept being overshadowed by other more interesting books. There’s something about the dear old South that makes me feel at home. Ideally I’d like to read the first novel before this one, but we’ll see how it goes.

But as if that wasn’t enough, I went on a bit of a book binge yesterday. A trip to the library is dangerous for me. I avoid going (except of course when I have cleared my reading list and need more books) because it means I’m bound to pick up more stuff. As the Rushdie comes to an end, I hope to put my reading into a higher gear, and I always find short reads the best way to do this (and they contribute to my 50 Book A Year Challenge).

 

Library Loot List:

‘The Angel’s Game’ – Zafon
Been dying to read this one. Zafon weaves spells, not stories. He is among the rare authors today who implements dark, gothic Borgian elements in his writing.

‘Lost World’ – Melo
A fairly new book by Brazilian author Melo. It follows an ex-contract killer on a mission to exact revenge from those who betrayed him.

‘The Prisoner of Zenda’ – Hope
An old English Classic and adventure novel published in 1894 that takes place in the kingdom of Ruritania. It’s described as a ‘Prince and the Pauper’ swashbuckler.

‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Solzhenitsyn
Political oppression in Stalin-era Soviet Union? Check. Gulags in Siberia? Check. Hunger, depression, brooding galore? All check. Trust me, it’s gonna be a good one!

‘Octopussy and The Living Daylights’ – Fleming
Two James Bond classics in one. How did Fleming fit it all into a little over 100 pages? Did he write it in short-hand or something? My first anorexic book of the year…

I haven’t read anything by these authors yet (bar Zafon) and hope to get acquainted with them pretty soon. I was pretty surprised to see how short the Ian Fleming stories were considering they were made into films. I also want to get more Russian literature, and something tells me Solzhenitsyn is a step in the right direction. Let’s see how many of these I can get through till the end of the month!

Cambridge University Reading Test

A Reading Test from Cambridge University

Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rgh it pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?

Chuck Palahnuik | Sowing the Seed of the Written Word

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chuck palahnuik

“Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, ‘Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up’. That made me a writer.”

How cute is that! This is probably one of Palahnuik’s very early works. Encouraged by his fifth grade teacher Mr. Olsen, this a poem about dragons. I guess he could see the potential even back then! 

Seeing this made me think about my own writing as a child. I still keep my infant school textbooks, but how wonderful that Mr. Olsen kept hold of this for all those years and finally sent it to Chuck himself. I wonder how many teachers preserve the works of their young pupils.

Often we don’t realise how influential our teachers can be, especially those in our younger years. I’ve always been lucky to have great English teachers. In third grade Ms. Lacy was the teacher that gave me the reading bug. I remember there were a row of baskets and each basket was graded with a colour. Yellow was the colour I was on, meaning I had easy books. But one day I spotted a girl in class always reading from the purple books (I had a thing for purple back then). When I asked Ms. Lacy why wasn’t I allowed to read from the purple basket she said I had to read all the books that were coloured with a yellow, orange and red tab before I could get to the purple ones.

That did it. I began taking home 4 books a night and worked my way through those baskets so fast she was amazed. Sad thing is, I moved onto fourth grade before I got to the purple basket; which is probably why I’m stuck with a condition known as ‘bibliophilia’! If I’d read at least one book from the purple pile, I wouldn’t have developed this habit of reading in 3’s and 4’s.

So, I’m curious, how did you get your reading habit? Was it a teacher? A parent? Or maybe even genetic? When was the first time you realised that the world of words was a limitless, beautiful place where only your imagination could hinder you?  I’d love to know you thoughts.

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