December 2010
51 posts
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Best Book of 2010
Best Book published this year:
Room - Emma Donoghue. [read more/buy]
Best Book I read this year but was published earlier:
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides [read more/buy]
thechocolatebrigade-deactivated asked: 1. How shallow would you say you are? How important is physical attractiveness to you when it comes to being attracted to someone? What do you think of people who aren't shallow? Do you believe that they actually exist?
2. Have you ever questioned your sexuality?
3. Have you ever dated a friends ex? How did that go?
2. Have you ever questioned your sexuality?
3. Have you ever dated a friends ex? How did that go?
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Gregorian bandwagons.
I love the New Year. I entirely sign on to planning a great next 365 days, better than anything we could ever hope to live up to.
I’ll be glad to see the end of 2010. Despite the brilliant things that have happened (graduating, going to New York, the birth of my niece) it has been a hazy, lazy mess and I’m looking forward to making the most of a specious “new start”.
Like...
I’ve not been around for a while and came back this afternoon to find that I had lost as many followers as I had gained.
My hiatus was accidental. Or rather, incidental. I am never very good at existing outside of the family sphere over Christmas.
But soon it will be a new year and I will succumb to making promises about how much of a better person I will be, this time around, and how much...
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recommended this week →
If you’re not yet following the excellent and emotionally exquisite Tré, please rectify that immediately.
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“You look like there’s always something going at the speed of light behind your eyes.”
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Night Owl: Burning bridges. →
thismagnificentlove:
I like it when bridges burn. I like to see every single plank, every inch of rope, every nail that was so carefully, so painstakingly pushed into every board. I like to see it all in flames; a passionate red orange yellow, a screaming heat, a clenched rage. I like to watch each piece fall into itself collapsing and dead, utterly void of the life that held it up, held it...
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“You were dead before I met you.”
And so begins the odyssey of my copy of...
Al came over tonight, gifted me with the new Tank Girl and spent a good hour poring over my bookshelves. She left with Middlesex and a new knitting pattern and a smile on her exhausted face.
This is what I do: I take them in, I make them tea and pour them thick measures of spirits over ice. I feed them full bellied and sit them in front of a pile of books and we talk. I bring them back down to...
thechocolatebrigade-deactivated asked: 1. If you could change one major thing about your life, whether a relationship, your job, your living situation, your school, etc., what would it be? Are you currently working toward a serious life transition?
2. What is your all-time favorite, romantic movie scene? What about it speaks to you?
3. If your romantic partner told you that, given the chance, he or she would sleep with a...
2. What is your all-time favorite, romantic movie scene? What about it speaks to you?
3. If your romantic partner told you that, given the chance, he or she would sleep with a...
Give it all up.
It gives me a perverse pleasure to paste over things, and to get there first, as it were, or leave a deeper mark — or rather, a blanker slate.
In March, I was scared of this. Starved for breath, gasping “will you look back on this as a fling?”
And now, 9 months unanswered, I find myself without much trace of your fingerprints on my wrists. I find myself thinking that, if...
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Some thoughts on beer.
My favourite beers are Peroni and Kronenbourg.
Dad used to make his own beer in a big plastic tub he kept in the shower. It stank of yeast and hops but I grew to like it. I’m nostalgic for it, these days.
Inbetween days, I forget the taste of beer. This means that whenever I open a new bottle, I am flooded with memories on my first sip.
Memories like: sitting in the corner at the Pit all...
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“Like a convert to a new religion, I overdid it at first. Somewhere near Gary,...”
– Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.
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“I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn’t...”
– Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.
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“To cut off your hair after a breakup was a feminine reaction. It was a way to...”
– - Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
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“It’s often said that a traumatic experience early in life marks a person...”
– - Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
I finished the book last night, after spending a couple months with it by my side. After turning the last page, I hugged it to my chest. I don’t understand what kept me from reading it for so long.
Careful, girl. You got dangerously close to feeling something, there.
When I got home tonight, I broke out the glitter glue and brightened up old wrapping paper ready for Christmas. It’s drying on a rack.
I’m tired, and I feel uncomfortable in my skin today.
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“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please,...”
– Sylvia Plath (via multitasker)
Narcissist.
I just stayed up too late, eating brownies and drinking tea and writing a list of things “I am” because somehow I felt that it was important.
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recommended this week →
and most weeks, actually.
There are people we hate. And it’s taken me a while to accept that, to not fall victim to the hyperbole. It’s not such a strong word. It’s as strong as any other, used right.
And all those fine lines are in your mind. I have no love for you.
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Secretly similar.
I wrote an unusually long post about how I’m doing all the same things as this time last year and it doesn’t cause any pain, but I queued it and it was never seen again.
Some things involved were:
Being Human dvds
Many cups of tea
Bowls of crisps
The smells of orange blossom, oat milk, wet hair and warm skin
The mirror angled just so.
And how I am the selfsame woman and how this...
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“We meet people and fall in love and when we part, they leave marks for us to...”
– George Sands, Being Human
But I don't have anything to say anymore.
There are some people I can’t communicate with. We have uncommon histories, or conflicting interests and stumble over each other’s words and expectations.
I feel dizzy trying to follow their logic and frustrated trying to explain my own, so often resort to the telegraphic - paring everything down to the bare minima of noun & active verb.
We will still struggle to understand each...
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“The atmosphere was light, friendly. Luce put his hand on the small of my back....”
– Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
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-bitter:
I Wasn’t Prepared | Eisley
This song...
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“So I started smoking, hoped the signals would keep your wolves away.”
“I smoke your brand of cigarettes and pray that you might give me a call.”
Another view on life as miracle.
Generally, I try pretty hard not to be too morbid or pessimistic, but tonight I can’t help myself.
A year or so before I was born, my mother suffered a miscarriage. She doesn’t talk about it much, but when she does she is strong and accepting of it. She’s told me before that she doesn’t feel so sad about it anymore because she didn’t know that baby, but she knows me....
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“Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which...”
– Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.
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“Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night...”
– Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.
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Your recommended reading for the week. →
Just, by the way.
Yesterday, a cab driver asked for my autograph.
For reasons he didn’t make apparent, he decided I was an “intelligent woman” and asked what I did “for a living”. Laughing, I called myself a writer. He was outwardly impressed and supportive when I answered in the negative to his question about having written books. It was nice to be taken on face value.
He asked, so meekly, if he could “be so rude as”...
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I’m amazed at how savagely something can bother and not bother me at the same time. I don’t really know what to do with this.
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These three things.
Last night, I made Bloody Marys and watched Alex mock Twilight. It was fun and I feel enlightened.
Today, I got an email inviting me to contribute articles, reviews and multimedia blog posts to a pretty seriously high profile website.
Tonight, I was meant to meet & swap gifts with three great friends, but that’s been cancelled so I think I’ll knit and read instead.
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viciousvyxen replied to your post: About Assange.
Also he’s not an American. So I love when I hear these idiots talk about charging him with breaking constitutional laws. They don’t apply to him. Sites like WL need to exist. Didn’t we all vote to want more transparency/openness in gov’t? Hypocrites.
Randomly, British reporters have said similar things. Tonight, one baffled me by talking about...
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About Assange.
I feel like we’re getting nowhere with this, so I just want to try and make a couple of things quite clear:
WikiLeaks is important and valid. There needs to be a relatively safe place for whistle blowers to do what they do best (that’s blowing the whistle, if you’re not following). If you’re not convinced, take a look at THIS and get back to me.
The charges brought to...
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“It occurred to me today that I’m not as far along as I thought. Writing my...”
– Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.
(It’s taking me too long to read this… but I love it)
“I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb.”
— Sylvia Plath
I just want to put this here to back up my claims of Plath’s suicide attempts as attempts to be reborn. I’ve never believed she actually wanted to die.
That said, I’m not even sure I’ve ever argued this on here, so that’s another story for another day.
I notice that although I used to cross myself whenever an emergency vehicle sped by - a habit learnt from a well loved neighbour - I now salute. Two fingers to the forehead and out, like a “good job, buddy, keep it up”.