I've been thinking alot about writing lately. And relatedly, what people want to read. (An extension being, what types of people read certain books.)

Extremely self-conscious about my position wrt text and preoccupied with thoughts about writing I have realized that all this thinking is my attempt to reconcile how to first represent my own style.

As an aside: I have forced myself to begin a book. It's called "to the friend who did not save my life" and was written by a French author and journalist, Herve Guibert (forgive the lack of accents, I haven't learned the strokes for it yet). You can find a blurb about it on most glbt websites.

Anyways, tired of staring at my books and not interested in testing this mood out on a less experimental book, I started it a couple of days ago and have managed 3 pages and 4 chapters.

Returning to style: Kara's posts and past conversations with Kim and Eileen - the few friends I have who continue to read outside of school - as well as my mental state of late and reading guibert's book has led me ask the question that has always preoccupied me: WHY DOES ONE READ?

I get the sense that kara is most comfortable reading work that she can relate to whether it be 'real' or via fantasy. I think she posted as much. Others read to gain new knowledge (a problem...). Some read for entertainment, some read for sexual thrill. And so on, to various degrees.

For me, there are no limits. I have themes that I'm interested in, genres, periods etc. yes but the element that does more than attracts, and draws me in, is style. Particularly poetic style. There is something about this demystifying language that has come to define the best literary work for me.

Guibert's style is disconcerning and I hate it. So far there is no poetry. But this I'll leave for another entry.

The point that started all these tangents, is my question to you. WHY DO YOU READ? Please write.

Michael Ondaatje is a great writer. I know this because everyone says so. I also know this because when I read The English Patient in school the essays I wrote were the easiest to write ever - easy to find complexities.

That said, I think there is always a sense of otherworldliness to his writing. I have this sense that the characters are very water color - complex, colorful but intangible. This became very clear to me when I was reading In The Skin of a Lion. There was something so unreal about it. The language is so beautiful, it's just not representative of the way I experience the world.

So, after 54 pages, I found I stopped reading it.


Now I'm reading Volkswagen Blues. Simple, clear, fun. The events are unlikely but real. I'm really enjoying it.

Who votes to go public?
(That means that others on the internet will be able to 'search' for this site.)

And who votes to stay private?
(Meaning this site does not show up on our profiles.)

I'd forgotten that I was supposed to post my opinion of my book club books on here. Luckily I remembered, just in time to avoid studying....Our last pick was The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon, and I did not enjoy it. I read it because several people had recommended it. While I understand that the writing style is because the narrator is an autistic kid, I just didn't enjoy a book written that way - though it certainly made it a quick read. I also found that I was totally indifferent to the story until about 3/4 of the way through with all the drama about his mother. But then...just as I was starting to like it, it ended. Very abruptly in my opinion.The rest of the book club liked it for various reasons. One girl really liked it because a friend of her family has a kid that was just diagnosed with autism and she thought the book was revealing. But to be honest, the book is so simple that we really didn't have much discussion about it. (yeah, yeah Maxie...I know you told me so)Our next book is Middle sex (can't remember the author right now) recommended to me by my future sister-in-law, about a hermaphrodite....I'll let you knwo how that one is.

Ok, so has anyone read Don Quixote? I'm totally sick of these "Windmill" references. I get that in the novel Quixote attacked windmills, but since this is the most ridiculous notion I've ever heard of I figure there has to be a point, right? Or is there no point? Or am I over complicating things?

All I know is, there is no reason in this day and age for anyone anywhere to talk about windmills except in reference to this novel. Everyone stop it already! Was it on your reading list in high school? Was it some kind of right-of-passage? Why must everyone keep talking about Windmills?

Damn this wordiness that I've been cursed with.

I am completely demoralized. Stupid essays, stupid deadlines.

Although, overall, they aren't 'really' important, you can see I had to qualify 'important.' Because really (no quotation marks) they are.

2 days and counting.

Here's a link to a recording of Alessandro Moreschi - the "last castrato" - who was singing (I believe) right up until the early 20th century.

While listening to it, I was enthralled and I have to say a bit creeped out. Although once revered for its purity, power and range - described as the angel's voice - the castato's voice did not incite in me the same feelings described in so many of the texts I had read. It was foreign to me and I couldn't read it as beautiful. It was strange and I was ill at ease with being unable to decide whether it was 'masculine' or 'feminine' or even childlike. There are voices out there today that I enjoy (although the names don't come instantly to my mind) that fall into the androgynous range; there are popular male singers that are famous for their falsetto... women who sing in the deeper range... Does the trauma involved in the making of the castrato matter? And what did the English, French, German, Italian of the C13th-20th think?

Vernon Lee, a writer that I've recently become very interested in, wrote a story called "A Wicked Voice" which recounts a composer obsessed with trying to resolve his love for the crystalline beauty of the castrato's voice and his knowledge that it is a voice made of pain. Lee, like the composer of the story, was obsessed with the castrato's voice and tried to reconcil herself to the same problem: reconciling the voice of ultimate purity and perfection (heavenly perfection) with manmade construction and an unavoidable defination as unnatural. (The third sex is also being examined here.)

I've written the above from reading several of Lee's stories (and I'm planning on hunting for more in Toronto soon) but I haven't started an indepth study as of yet. Still for those interested in reading I've posted a link. Let me know what you think