annanotbob's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More books, less moaning Second entry of the evening, but frankly, the other one is a load of whinging pommerie and not worth a look. I am currently smoking a spliff in long-distance, somewhat belated celebration of Mel's birthday and hope you will all join me in wishing her a happy day after her birthday and a year of joy and giggles and peace. And at least one fit of laughter that makes her spit her drink all over her lap. Well, I've had a big sulk and cried into the washing up and have arrived at fuck it, I'm bored with all this. I want to just have a bit of fun while I'm still here and bollocks to it all. At least I haven't got a hideous, rotten, nasty thing festering in my mouth. Yoga breathing, a teensy bit more codeine, then onwards and upwards. I would like to state, before I change the subject once and for all, that comming straight off a yoga retreat into stress-induced pain of that intensity doesn't seem right. But then, what is? No one ever said it was going to be fair, which is just as well, cos it fucking isn't. I've read some fabulous books recently: I don't know why I made those links - they're to Amazon and some of the comments people make are astonishing - they'd have probably put me off reading any of them. My drug-addled brain is finding it hard to pin-point precise reasons for enjoyment of these novels, other than they all took me to literary places I hadn't been before. When it comes to good fiction, I'm a reader first time round, rather than a teacher/critic - I fall right in to the world on offer, without trying to anaylse as I go. Then it all gets lost in the pea-soup that passes for memory round here. Ah well, this is what stuck: Gale's account of a family is brutally honest, generous and recognises the complexity of family life, the essential impossibility and futility of trying to assign blame. The Gathering looked at life in a way that had never occurred to me before - another tale of a chaotic family, but whre Gale uses mulitple narrators, Enright offers the one, not entirely reliable voice. Both of these have moments of great humour, which cannot be said of Losing You. It unfolds in 'real time' (like the TV series 24) covering six hours in the life of a woman whose daughter vanishes. Bloody hell - awful/fabulous. I just loved Then We Came to the End and I can even remember why. It uses the first person plural (we) viewpoint to stunningly savage effect. Set in an office (much like The Office), it's very funny and somehow manages to show that NONE OF US WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. I thought I wouldn't be able to read much, that the 'we' would get on my nerves, but Ferris controls it beautifully.
Sweet dreams, chickpeas xxx |10:55 p.m. - 21/04/2008 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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