I like: books and boyz
This blog: will inevitably be about both of these things
Rabbit Hole
Becca: Does it ever go away?
Nat: No, I don’t think it does. Not for me, it hasn’t - has gone on for eleven years. But it changes though.
Becca: How?
Nat: I don’t know… the weight of it, I guess. At some point, it becomes bearable. It turns into something that you can crawl out from under and… carry around like a brick in your pocket. And you… you even forget it, for a while. But then you reach in for whatever reason and - there it is. Oh right, that. Which could be awful - not all the time. It’s kinda…
[deep breath]
Nat: not that you’d like it exactly, but it’s what you’ve got instead of your son. So, you carry it around. And uh… it doesn’t go away. Which is…
Becca: Which is what?
Nat: Fine, actually.
Today I reached in and held the brick I carry around in my pocket. Miss you, Kim. xx
Never Let Me Go
I started reading Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale today. The other worldly-ness of it’s universe reminds me of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I can’t remember when I read Never Let Me Go, it was in either 2007 or 2008, but ever since this passage has stayed with me. Time and space do not govern our memories. No, Ishiguro, no they do not.
Favourite Books of 2010
With this year coming to what feels like an abrupt end I’m getting all self-reflexive. 2010 – or as I optimistically named it, 2000 and men (what a bust!) – has been a year marked by the sheer volume of books I read compared to any other year in my life.
Predominately this has been due to the horrendous 6 months I spent working in North Ryde and the 3 hours (sometimes longer) I spent on public transport each day. Reading during these epic commutes, which involved a bus and a train and a whole lot of waiting around, provided an escape from the awful reality that was my working life.
Thankfully in late June I started a job closer to home, closer to what my degree qualified me for, and alongside people closer to my own personality. Since starting this job I have been reading less – the necessity to escape my own reality no longer being so pressing. I don’t know whether it’s the calibre of writing or the shift in reading for emotional survival back to reading for pleasure, but the last few novels I have read have had characters so greatly affecting that even now, having finished reading about them, they are still at the forefront of my mind.
It’ll come as little surprise then that 3 of my top 5 books for 2010 were read in the second half of the year. So, of all the books I read this year, my favourites are as follows:
1. Jasper Jones – Craig Silvey
2. We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
3. Freedom – Jonathan Franzen
4. One Day – Dave Nichols
5. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
They’re a combination of recent releases and bestsellers from a few years ago I only just got round to reading. Each of them is thought provoking, moving and achingly well written. If you haven’t read any of them I strongly recommend you do.
upfront
My earliest memory is… being uninhibited.
At school I… didn’t excel until it counted.
My school report usually said… that I had potential.
My most treasured possession is… the silver band I wear on my right hand ring finger. It was my sister’s and my heart misses a beat at the thought of loosing it.
My mother and father always told me… life is not supposed to be fair. Little did they know how unfair it was going to get.
In the movie of my life, I’d be played by… Zac Efron. Obviously.
I wish I had… musical ability.
I am happiest when… I am mid laugh.
My guiltiest pleasure is… watching live action Disney musicals.
My last meal would be… with friends and family and wine flowing like water.
When I was a child I wanted to… be everything.
If I could change one moment of my life, it would be… leaving the house minutes before my sister passed away.
The book that changed my life is… Catcher in the Rye. I read it when I was 16 and haven’t been able to stop reading literature since.
It’s not fashionable, but I love… Darren Hayes.
If I could live anywhere, I’d choose…. to be where all my friends are.
My worst trait is… using my outside voice, inside.
I relax by… reading.
What I don’t find amusing is… cancer.
I’m always being asked… “is your laugh for real?”
If I wasn’t me I’d like to be… a gay Zac Efron.
My worst job was… packing shelves at Woolworths. I lasted all of 3 months.
I often wonder… how different my life would be if my sister was still here.
My brother and his girlfriend of nine and an half years recently married. It was a winter wedding, outside in a gorgeous garden with a white gazebo. Fat grey clouds hung low in the sky and in the distance steely-blue mountains framed their promises to love each other forever. It was perfect.
I have always been ambivalent towards marriage. After the ceremony though, as Sigur Ros filled the cool dusk air with an ethereal melody, something within me shifted. The crescendo of music matched the congratulatory hugs and kisses and the unalloyed joy of the moment revealed itself as palpable.
How anyone can deny two people who love each other this moment is beyond me.
I started reading The Passage by Justin Cronin today. It’s almost a good as Zac, almost.
(via ohmyguys)
I always had a crush on Joseph, even before I really knew what it meant to crush on boys.
He was so damn cute in 3rd Rock From The Sun!
Now, he is so damn hot in Inception.
Heartbreaking, Staggering, Genius
It seems fitting that my first foray into blogging about books is a quote from Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
It’s fitting because reading Eggers’ memoir was one of those experiences that years later I can still recall with perfect clarity.
It took me two attempts to finish the book.
The first attempt was in July 2005. My sister had lent it to me with a “you must read this” recommendation. She was sick at the time. Really sick. Cancer had grown from one of her adrenal glands and commandeered her body. Acutely aware she didn’t have much time left, my sister’s reading philosophy was simple, she only read books that had been universally lauded by critics.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was one such book. I don’t know how she was able to read it. Within the first 50 pages Eggers retells the death of his parents (both die within a month of each other from cancer) with such realism that I couldn’t bare it.
I still remember the moment I stopped reading. I was sitting at Newtown train station waiting for a train to work. Not 70 pages in and I had been confronted with a reality I wasn’t ready to face. This was how my big sister was going to die. Messy, urgent and surrounded by chaotic confusion. I closed the book, focussed on breathing through the knot in my chest, and put it back in my bag.
Thankfully my sister’s death was nothing like those of Eggers’ parents. Its profound affect on me though made A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius no go territory for quite a while.
Three years later I picked up Eggers’ book again and was able to finish it. The second time round I made sure that I read the first few chapters in the privacy of my own bedroom. I knew that I would cry through Eggers’ loss and I wanted to feel that sense of catharsis you get from letting grief flow through you.
I’m happy I gave A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius a second shot because damn it was worth it. As it’s name suggests it is heartbreaking, it is staggering and it is a work of genius. For literary reasons alone it is worth reading. But more than this, Eggers’ memoir enabled me to locate a memory of my sister not only within it’s pages, but also in the experience of reading them.
This is one of the many reasons I love reading. When a book is good, it is not only the words on the page that are immortalised, so to are the thoughts, the feelings and the visceral experiences that accompany reading them.
