A Room of Her Own

Past Due

2010-11-15T16:54:00.000-05:00

Photo by me.

Oh Zola how I love thee, but you're bringing me down

2010-09-18T14:10:00.002-04:00

It took me a little more than a month to finish reading L'Assommoir by Emile Zola. Life in general got in the way of my reading time, plus starting the semester while moving is not conducive to leisurely reading.

L'Assommoir was fantastic. If you want to read about the seamier side of Parisian life in the 19th century then this book is for you. This novel was extremely controversial when it came out, accusations of pornography were rampant from the critics at the time. Zola is a writer that tells it like it is, there is no sugar coating in a Zola novel. The effects of alcoholism on the working class was of great interest to Zola. As the drinking of the characters becomes heavier, the quicker the downfall of each character. I found myself feeling this downward spiral physically while reading the novel. The filth, squalor, and hunger of the characters were almost too much to bear at the end. I felt horribly for Gervaise, the main character. I can't wait to read Nana, about Gervaise's daughter, but I think I need something slightly less depressing for now.

Currently Reading: L'Assommoir by Emile Zola

2010-08-15T14:53:00.001-04:00

New Books!

2010-08-10T13:31:00.003-04:00

These are the last batch of books I recently purchased. I had promised myself that I wouldn't buy books for a while seeing as I had recently purchased books on Amazon, but Barnes and Noble was having a fantastic sale on their bargain books. I couldn't pass up the chance to buy these! The total cost for all twelve books was $42...who can say no to that?

New Additions

2010-07-06T19:21:00.002-04:00

Tissues Please!

2010-06-24T22:54:00.002-04:00

Truman Capote made me cry. Please read "A Christmas Memory" and you'll see why. A tissue is definitely needed.

We now interrupt our scheduled summer reading for

2010-06-12T14:43:00.002-04:00

Summer Reading

2010-05-30T14:31:00.006-04:00

This is my tentative summer reading list:

Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby
Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
The Masterpiece by Emile Zola
L'Assomoir by Emile Zola
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Milan Kundera (already started this one)
Lighthousekeeping by Jeannette Winterson
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Of course this list may change as the summer goes on. I started reading the Kundera novel on Wednesday. I'm enjoying this one immensely so far. I love Kundera's style of writing. This is the third Kundera novel I've read and I have to say he is becoming a favorite.

Late to Teen Angst or Why I have Decided to Read Catcher in the Rye

2010-05-15T15:08:00.002-04:00

Amazingly, I have never read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I am thirty-something years old, one would think this is a book I would have already read by now. I compare it to someone of my generation who was never watched E.T.. I am guilty of this as well. I am well past the age of teen angst, but I thought it would be interesting to read Catcher in the Rye at this point in my life. I don't expect it to be life changing, as it would have been had I read it as a teenager, but I hope it somehow brings my younger self back to me.

Just Read

2010-03-20T15:33:00.002-04:00

I finished reading this last night. I started reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" last week and it was slow going. I kept wondering what all of the fuss was about. Boy was I proven wrong. This novel exploded into something more by part three. I had to force myself to go to sleep at one o'clock in the morning Thursday night as I had to wake up at 5:30 to go to work. It's been some time since I have found myself wanting to forgo sleep in order to finish reading a novel.

Today I...

2010-03-07T19:03:00.004-05:00

watched five episodes of Mad Men in a row from season 1
came to the realization that I desperately want a telephone bench
finished reading Lynn Barber's memoir An Education
watched a lovely video from Regina Spektor "Somedays"
decided to get bangs
also decided to purchase a Nikon DSLR, perhaps a D5000
pondering what to read next...perhaps I will read Gogol for the first time
have spent entirely too much time on the interwebs

From Lynn Barber's An Education

2010-03-07T16:14:00.002-05:00

My knowledge of the world was based on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and the Brontes and none of them had a word to say about living on a kibbutz or making Molotov cocktails.

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia

2010-02-14T22:06:00.005-05:00

Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia is a novel about the after effects of the Cuban revolution on three generations of women in the Del Pino family. The story revolves mainly around Celia del Pino, her two daughters Lourdes and Felicia, and her granddaughter Pilar. The story takes place over several years, beginning in 1972 and ending in 1980. Each woman is affected by the revolution in different ways. Celia's belief in the revolution and Communism causes further estrangement from her and her daughter Lourdes, who voluntarily goes into exile with her husband and daughter Pilar. Lourdes despises the ideals of the revolution and feels that her mother has abandoned her once again. Felicia remains in Cuba with her mother, but suffers moments of mental instability throughout the novel. Felicia is indifferent to the ideals of Castro's revolution. Memory, nostalgia, and identity are the major themes explored in Dreaming in Cuban. The differences between mother and daughter and the political events that separate families, both geographically and emotionally, are the foundation for this novel. The language in this novel is so sensual. I loved the descriptions of the island, I could almost feel the heat of the Cuban sun on my face.

As a child of Cuban parents, I found myself enthralled by the history of Cuba. I'm ashamed to say this, but I don't know very much about the country of my heritage. I only know very basic historical facts about Cuba. I definitely need to read up on my Cuban history.

Currently reading

2010-02-13T14:07:00.000-05:00

First Post of 2010

2010-01-10T19:17:00.002-05:00

It's a new year and time for resolutions. I have resolved to write here more often. I need to practice writing. Sometimes I feel that the words are stuck with nowhere to go. I know what I want to say but the words just don't want to come out. I'm too used to writing in technical terms, direct and specific. I know I can write the same way about literature, but that's not how I want to write. I want to be more descriptive, but it's difficult when the words get lost.

Favorite Passages: The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson

2009-12-06T23:36:00.008-05:00

"Love is death’s twin, born in the same moment, each fighting for mastery, and if death takes all, love would do the same. Yet it is easier to die than to love."

"This life, the one we know, stands in the sun. It is our daytime and the stars and planets that surround it cannot be seen. The sense of other lives, still our own, is clearer to us in the darkness of night or in our dreams. Sometimes a total eclipse shows us in the day what we cannot usually see for ourselves. As our sun darkens, other brilliancies appear. And there is the strange illusion of looking over our shoulder and seeing the sun racing towards us at two thousand miles an hour."

"I keep telling this story-different people, different places, different times-but always you, always me, always this story, because a story is a tightrope between two worlds."

"The past is magnetic. It draws us in. We cannot help ourselves and, as with other things that we cannot help in ourselves, we make up elaborate explanations, reasonable rational explanations, to chant away the powerful things that don't belong to us."

Currently Reading

2009-12-06T13:31:00.000-05:00

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster: Favorite Passages

2009-10-27T22:30:00.002-04:00

"By an odd chance-unless we believe in a presiding genius of place-the statues that relieve its severity suggest, not the innocence of childhood nor the glorious bewilderment of youth, but the conscious achievements of maturity. Perseus and Judith, Hercules and Thusnelda, they have done or suffered something, and, though they are immortal, immortality has come to them after experience, not before. Here, not only in the solitude of Nature, might a hero meet a goddess, or a heroine a god."

"George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her."

"She reminded him of a Leonardo more than ever; her sunburnt features were shadowed by fantastic rocks; at his words she had turned and stood between him and the light with immeasurable plains behind her."

"I only wish poets would say this too: that love is of the body; not the body, but of the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah for a little directness to liberate the soul!"

Currently Reading

2009-10-25T21:17:00.004-04:00

Can't wait to get these...

2009-10-04T16:39:00.002-04:00

The Sandman Cometh!

2009-06-08T20:15:00.002-04:00

I am on a mission to read the entire Sandman series by Neil Gaiman by the end of the year. So far so good, but I have to say it was painful waiting three months for volume 3 as a greedy library patron seemed to have kept a magical hold on it for that long. I've requested volumes 4 and 5 that way I can read them back to back.

I am thoroughly enjoying this series. Dream Country, volume three of the series, was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed "Dream of a Thousand Cats." Now I love me some Shakespeare, but it was not my favorite of the four stories. My favorite line out of the four stories though is from "A Midsummer Night's Dream": "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." Spoken by the man of the hour, Dream or Sandman, whatever you'd like to call him, they're all the same. He's a minor character in these stories considering the series is named after him. I think Neil Gaiman is really hitting his stride here in incorporating mythology and folklore into the Sandman stories. I hope this trend continues through the rest of the series.

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

2009-04-27T22:26:00.002-04:00

I started reading The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford last Friday and am fascinated by it at the moment. I haven't finished the novel yet, but I'm about half way through. It's pretty brilliant although it took me a bit to get used to the author's style. I've had this on my TBR shelf forever it seems, but it called out to me now to be read. It's funny how that happens.

Quirky Romantic Comedies are my Favorite

2009-04-22T17:39:00.003-04:00

I cannot wait to see both of these films. The nerdy romantic in me can't believe her luck.

I need a drink...

2009-04-01T22:39:00.002-04:00

This week has been one of the most stressful weeks I've had in some time. I can't wait for it to be over.

Hilarious!

2009-03-11T23:34:00.001-04:00

I love Flight of the Conchords!

The Loot!

2009-01-18T21:47:00.002-05:00

I had an urge to visit the used bookstore yesterday so F and I went by after a late lunch. Sometimes my local used bookstore does not have a great selection, but this time there was so much to choose from I had to leave several books I really wanted behind. All F. could do was shake his head each time he came by the aisle I was browsing in. The pile in my arms was bigger each time he saw me. He knows once I have my heart set on my stack that there is no going back or trying to convince me that I don't need to buy so many since I have stacks of unread books at home. Alas, I always win (particularly when I point out how expensive his hobby can be, hehe). Without further ado, here is what I took home:

The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander
Been Down so Long It Looks Like Up to Me by Richard Farina
Slam by Nick Hornby
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan
Revolutionary Road by Ricard Yates
The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

It was hard to put some of the other books I had selected back on their shelves, but I decided not to be greedy.

Arrivederci 2008...Buongiorno 2009!

2009-01-04T15:26:00.003-05:00

It's already 4 days into the new year and I've already fallen behind on plans I have for the year. I have a list of things I want to accomplish this year. I hate the word resolutions so let's just call them dreams and wishes. I'll post them tomorrow to remind myself that I can accomplish what I feel would help me to grow as a person in the year to come.

A look back at my favorites of 2008...

Favorite books of the year:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Persuasion by Jane Austen

Favorite albums:

M83: Saturdays=Youth
Santogold: Santogold
Kings of Leon: Only by the Night
Coldplay: Viva la Vida
Death Cab for Cutie: Narrow Stairs
The Gaslight Anthem: The '59 Sound
Of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping
She & Him: Volume 1
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
Ladyhawke: Ladyhawke
Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles
Cut Copy: In Ghost Colours
Adele: 19
Beck: Modern Guilt
Jamie Lidell: Jim
The Darjeeling Limited Soundtrack

Favorite movies:

Pineapple Express
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Manhattan
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Control
La Vie en Rose
August Rush
2 Days in Paris
Once
Bonjour Tristesse
Paris Je T'aime
L'Avventura

Tomorrow I'll post my 2009 list of dreams and wishes.

5 books...it shall be done

2008-12-02T16:38:00.002-05:00

So I'm home recovering from surgery which means I have ample amounts of time to reach my five book goal this week. One book down, four to go.

I finished Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laura Viera Rigler earlier today. The basic plot is as follows: Modern day woman obsessed with Jane Austen wakes up in the early 19th century in another woman's body and proceeds to reconcile her original modern self with the self she is inhabiting. I'm not quite sure why I kept reading it, since I found some it it to be implausible. Wouldn't modern speech be somewhat of a problem in Jane Austen's time? Here is one that bugged me: "I love to party." Would this have been something a person of that time period would have uttered? I'm not sure. Maybe I'm being too picky. The concept of switching identities is a great concept for a novel, but when it falls flat, it's not so great.

I went to the library shortly after to find some reading inspiration. There is a pile of books here at home, but I am not in the mood for any of them. I checked out five books from the library instead:

The Art Thief by Noah Charney
The Romanov Bride by Robert Alexander
Versailles by Kathryn Davis
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You: Stories by Amy Bloom
Petite Anglaise: In Paris.In Love. In Trouble: A True Story by Catherine Sanderson

I began Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Live by John Sellers, but this might be one to give up on...for now at least.

Music Monday!

2008-12-01T13:10:00.003-05:00

Recent acquisitions in my music library:

The Killers: Day & Age
Coldplay: Prospekt's March EP
Los Campesinos: We are Beautiful, We are Doomed
Love is All: A Hundred Things Keep Me up at Night
Of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping
Stars: Sad Robots EP
Ladyhawke: Ladyhawke
Army Navy: Army Navy
Asobi Seksu: Citrus
The Avett Brothers: The Second Gleam
Pictures and Sound: Pictures and Sound

So much great music came out this year. I would be hard pressed to pick a favorite album this year.

From The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

2008-08-17T16:35:00.002-04:00

"Helen opened her eyes and gazed into the luminous blue of the sky. Was it crazy, she wondered, to be as grateful as she felt now, for moments like this, in a world that had atomic bombs in it-and concentration camps, and gas chambers? People were still tearing each other into pieces. There was still murder, starvation, unrest, in Poland, Palestine, India-God knew where else. Britain itself was sliding into bankruptcy and decay. Was is a kind of idiocy or selfishness, to want to be able to give yourself over to trifles: to the parp of the Regent's Park Band; to the sun on your face, the prickle of grass beneath your heels, the movement of cloudy beer in your veins, the secret closeness of your lover? Or were those trifles all you had? Oughtn't you, precisely, to preserve them? To make little crystal drops of them, that you could keep, like charms on a bracelet, to tell against danger when next it came?"

Lovesong by Ted Hughes

2008-08-14T22:33:00.001-04:00

Lovesong

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

Ted Hughes

Has it been that long?

2008-07-15T22:35:00.002-04:00

Wow! I can't believe it's been almost two months since I last posted. Time is just flying by so quickly lately. F and I have been pretty busy for the last two months with family engagements and mini weekend trips to Orlando but I think we finally have some room to breathe. Not much reading is getting done. I've only finished two novels since late May which is pretty lame for me. Hopefully I can find some quiet moments to endulge in my favorite hobby.

I love lists, especially book lists. I have the Excel list going around that has the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die titles. I was reading A High and Hidden Place and saw this posted:

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot (started this one last year and still haven't finished it!!)
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (started this one too about the same time as Middlemarch)
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (um okay? why is this on here?)
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read 19 books from the list. I decided not to underline the ones I love and the books I intend to read. I loved all of the books that I have read from this list. No disappointment in any of them...which is probably why they are on this list.

I'm off to read Eat, Pray, Love for a bit.

M83- Graveyard Girl

2008-05-22T13:16:00.001-04:00

I love this song and I love this video even more!

1% Well Read Challenge

2008-05-22T12:58:00.002-04:00

My life has finally calmed down in this neck of the woods. All is now settled and peaceful which leaves me with more time to read. I haven't been reading as much as in previous years but I hope to change that. Joining another challenge is another way to get me in the spirit of reading. Admittedly I have not been doing so well with my other challenges but I have decided to join the 1% Well Read Challenge based on the list 1001 Books to Read Before You Die. I downloaded the Excel sheet and I am ashamed to say I have only read 4.2% of the list. I know I won't be able to read the entire list but I would like to be able to say one day that I've read 20% of the list. To help me with my goal I will embark on this challenge. These are the books I've selected:

1. Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
2. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
3. The Joke by Milan Kundera
4. Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
5. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
6. The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
7. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
8. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
9. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
10. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood

I've recently read two of the books from the 1001 books list but I won't count them as part of the challenge since I read them prior to joining the challenge. I read Persuasion by Jane Austen and Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev. I loved both novels and hope to write about them soon when I've gathered my thoughts together. Happy reading for now!

I've been on a book buying binge...

2008-03-23T19:07:00.002-04:00

these last couple of weeks. I'm slowly getting my reading mojo back! In the last few weeks I've purchased a fair amount of books. I was in New York City last week and had to hit up my favorite bookstore in the entire universe, The Strand. I love that place so much and it just so happens everytime I go I don't have a list with me of books I've been meaning to buy. Always happens but of course I come out of the store with a good amount of books. My last shopping extravaganza yielded these buys:

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy
Scenes of Clerical Life by George Eliot
The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirabeau
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
The Torrents of Spring by Ivan Turgenev

My uncle also gave me an interesting book while I was visiting him in New Jersey. My uncle is a huge bibliophile, every nook and cranny of my grandmother's apartment is filled with books. Each time I visit he tends to give me a book from his collection. This time he gave me a psychology book entitled Ego and Instinct by Daniel Yankelovich and William Barret which deals with both philosophy and psychology, namely psychoanalysis.

Last night F. and I went to Barnes and Noble and I scored three great books in the bargain section:

Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris ($5.98 in hardcover!)
Becoming Jane Austen by Jon Spence ($7.98 in hardcover)
The Night Watch by Sarah Waters ($4.98 in trade paperback)

With so many book purchases in the last few weeks I feel inspired and look forward to reading them all.

Um yea

2008-02-19T00:22:00.002-05:00

So I have no witty words to impart at the moment. Sick again...damn colds! Personal life is in slight turmoil but it's slowly getting back to normal. A regular reading schedule is currently in hiatus for me. I gotta get my reading mojo back but until then music is my solace. My recent acquisitions:

Kate Nash: Made of Bricks
Cat Power: Jukebox
Glen Hansard and Market Irglova: The Swell Season
Headlights: Kill Them with Kindness
Ingrid Michaelson: Girls and Boys
Stars: In Our Bedroom After the War
Vampire Weekend: Vampire Weekend
The Weepies: Say I am You
James Figurine: Mistake Mistake Mistake

I've been listening to The Swell Season everyday. The beauty of the songs brings me close to tears each time I listen. Each song is so romantic, brooding, and melancholy. The passion in the songs is too much to bear sometimes but I can't help listening on...

Missing!

2008-02-02T18:40:00.000-05:00

I am dealing with some personal stuff right now that is not allowing me to have the attention span I need for reading. Hopefully all will be back to semi-normal soon. At least I will have grown from the experience.

The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa

2008-01-15T19:46:00.000-05:00

This is the first novel I have read by Mario Vargas Llosa and I have to say he has found himself a new fan. I enjoyed reading this novel, particularly his descriptions of swinging London in the sixties. This novel questions the effect love has on us and how we sometimes do things in the name of love that may not be healthy. The protagonist, Ricardo, first falls in love with Lily, who claims to be from Chile, when they are teenagers in Peru. Her lie is revealed and she disappears from Ricardo's life. Several years pass and Ricardo is now living in Paris as an interpreter where he is friends with a revolutionary group that has plans to overthrow the government in Peru. Through this group he meets a new recruit, Comrade Arlette. She is the Lily he once knew in Peru. He spends a short amount of time with her before she is sent to Cuba for her revolutionary training and thinks that is the last he will ever see of her. A few years pass and he meets her again in Paris but this time she is married and goes by the name of Mrs. Robert Arnoux. This is repeated over the course of the novel with Lily taking on different identities. She drifts in and out of his life with the only constant being his love for her. In the end he is the man she turns to when she needs help.

I wasn't sure how to feel about the characters. Ricardo is a sympathetic character but I did not feel sympathy for the bad girl until the very end of the novel. The character of the bad girl was not developed as well as Ricardo's which I think hinders how much the reader invests into the character emotionally. The only time I felt any type of emotion for the bad girl was in the last quarter or so of the book when she is finally shown as having a vulnerable side to her personality. Despite feeling ambivalent about the characters the story was intriguing enough for me to finish the book.

Is there such a thing as too many books?

2008-01-13T21:37:00.000-05:00

I was asking myself this question as I cataloged my books last week on Goodreads and found that I own 955 books! I had an idea I owned that many books but when I look at my bookcases it seems like I have a small collection. I find myself always wanting more books for my collection knowing that I have not read half of the books I own. Working at a bookstore for six years contributed to most of my collection as I have not been buying as much since I stopped working there. With that said I have decided to join the TBR challenge to help make a dent in my unread books. These are the books I've selected to read from my shelves:

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Kafka was the Rage by Anatole Broyard
Everybody was so Young by Amanda Vaill
The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Atonement by Ian McEwan

The alternates:

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch by Dai Sijie
Come to Me by Amy Bloom
The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter

I'm also thinking of joining another challenge but I may just stick to the two I've joined. Happy reading!

This song is catchy as hell!

2008-01-13T00:26:00.000-05:00

I cannot stop listening to this song!

Insomnia...friend or foe?

2008-01-09T12:06:00.000-05:00

I had insomnia last night and was able to finish reading The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. I haven't had insomnia in a long time. I didn't go to bed until 6:30 in the morning and now I feel like crap. I slept a whopping 3 hours...just a short nap really. On the bright side of things I was able to finish the novel so I guess you can say insomnia was my friend in that aspect, but it will be my foe later on today when I fall asleep flat on my face. More about The Bad Girl tomorrow.

It's been a while...

2008-01-08T23:18:00.000-05:00

but I'm still here. A lot has been going on hence my absence from blogland. My friends came to visit us for a week. We had such a great time. We went to Asheville and the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was so beautiful! I'm originally from Miami and let me tell you it was so exciting for me to see mountains. Miami is so flat and blah. It's the same season all year round...personally I like to call summer there hell. The humidity is unbelievable but the beach is fantastic. F. and I moved here in August but have decided to go back to Miami. It was a tough decision but we feel going back home is the best place for us. We miss our Cuban food too much!

We're moving in two weeks so not much reading is going on. I started Great Expectations for the reading challenge My Year of Reading Dangerously. I'm only about 25 pages in because I'm distracted by The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa. I feeling torn about this book. The story begins in Peru when the main character, Ricardo, is a teenager. He meets a girl named Lily and falls hopelessly in love with her. Lily claims she is from Chile but her lie is revealed and he does not see her again...or so we think. It is years later and Ricardo now lives in France as an interpreter for UNESCO. He meets a girl in France who turns out to be Lily but using a different name. This theme is repeated over and over again. They meet each other over a period of years and she always ends up leaving. Her character is interesting because she seems cold and calculating but she always somehow goes back to him. How can a man be in love for 30+ years with the same woman who constantly leaves him for men who are wealthier and more powerful than he is? This is my problem with the book but I am so curious to how it ends. I'm about halfway through.

On the music front I've downloaded (via http://www.emusic.com/) and purchased some great music recently. I finally got my hands on the new Radiohead and it is fantastic! The opening song on the album gave me chills in just the first few notes. I highly recommend this album. Run out and get it! From emusic I downloaded the following albums:

The Sea and Cake: Everybody
Au Revoir Simone: The Bird of Music
The Chromatics: Night Drive
Coconut Records: Nighttiming
Janelle Monae: Metropolis Suite I "The Chase"

F. also gave me Feist's The Reminder for Christmas. I can't get My Moon My Man out of my head. "My moon my man such a changeable lamb such a lovable lamb to me." I love that line!

Well I'm off to start packing! I don't look forward to packing my books again but oh well...

Favorite Songs of 2007

2007-12-21T00:38:00.000-05:00

It's almost the end of the year and all of the best of music lists are coming out. Music was a big part of my life this year, bigger than it has been in past years. A lot of really great music was released this year that was not played on mainstream radio and it's a shame that some of these artists don't get the attention they deserve. The music industry is suffering because major labels don't know how to take risks. Everything has become so homogenized on mainstream radio. It's a sad state of affairs.

I've discovered so many great artists this year and I want to share some of my favorite songs from 2007. Some songs on the list didn't come out this year but they were in heavy rotation on my Ipod. Here's to my favorite songs this year...in no particular order:

Young Folks by Peter, Bjorn and John on Writer's Block
Explosions by The Mary Onettes on The Mary Onettes
No Conclusions by Of Montreal on Icons, Abstract Thee
Stiff Kittens by Blaqk Audio on Cexcells
Tongue Tied by The Hong Kong on Slow Motion Gets Around
Take Me to the Riot by Stars on In Our Bedroom After the War
Mer du Japon by Air on Pocket Symphony
Champion by Professor Murder on Professor Murder Rides the Subway
The Opposite of Hallelujah by Jens Lekmen on Night Falls Over Kortedala
Too Young by Phoenix on United
You!Me!Dancing! by Los Campesinos! on Sticking Fingers into Sockets
Patty Lee by Les Savy Fav on Let's Stay Friends
Keep the Care Running by The Arcade Fire on Neon Bible
Normandie by Shout Out Lounds on Our Ill Wills
Knights by Minus the Bear on Planet of Ice
Careless Whisper as covered by The Gossip
Heartbeats by The Knife on Deep Cuts
Hearts on Fire by Cut Copy
Silver Lining by Rilo Kiley on Under the Blacklight
Your Kisses are Wasted on Me by The Pipettes on We are the Pipettes
Boyz by M.I.A. on Kala
Broken English by Scratch Massive on the Broken English Soundtrack
All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem on Sounds of Silver
Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken by Camera Obscura on Let's Get Out of this Country
1,2,3,4 by Feist on The Reminder
D.A.N.C.E by Justice on Cross
He Can Only Hold Her by Amy Winehouse on Back to Black
It's a Fact-Printed Stained by Matt and Kim on Self titled
Sea of Love by Cat Power on The Covers Record
Hospital Beds by Cold War Kids on Robbers and Cowards
If You Were Here by Cary Brothers on Who You Are

There are a lot of great albums that came out this year that I have not been able to get my hands on yet. The album I'm really excited about getting is Radiohead's In Rainbows, which would explain the omission of this great band from my year end music list. I know I could have purchased it for any price on their website but I prefer having it in my hands. It comes out on cd January 1st. I can't wait!

I went to the library today..

2007-12-10T15:13:00.000-05:00

with the intention of checking out two books but as usual I walked out of there with 6 books! Why does that happen? Is it because I have no money at the moment to buy books so I go bonkers at the library? I love going to the library but it makes me sad when I have to return the books, especially if I really enjoyed reading a particular book. I love seeing the stacks of library books on my nightstand along with my own books. Gives me a sense of joy that I will soon embark on a new adventure. Without further ado these are the books that made their way home with me from the library today:

Veronica by Mary Gaitskill
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
The Last Summer (of You and Me) by Ann Brashares
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

It's quite an eclectic group of books. I had started reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics about a month ago but didn't get very far. I liked what I did read so I hope I get to finish it this time. I've been meaning to read Murakami for a while but wasn't sure where to start. I chose South of the Border, West of the Sun since it seems to be one of his earlier books and the premise of the story sounds interesting. The Madonnas of Leningrad is about a woman's experience during World War II as a museum guide in the Hermitage. Casino Royale is the first James Bond novel and I've decided that I want to read all of them. I love the James Bond films, even the cheesy Timothy Dalton Bond movies. Veronica and The Last Summer have both been on my reading list for some time. I hope I can finish the stack before I have to return them.

Not much to say...

2007-12-02T15:50:00.000-05:00

just sitting here looking out my window at a dreary winter day. Two trees are still radiantly red outside my window but I'm sad the leaves will be falling soon.

Meh...

2007-11-29T22:33:00.000-05:00

I went home to visit my family for Thanksgiving. Drove 12 hours to visit and then another lovely 12 hours driving back home. Needless to say I am still trying to recover from the drive and the whirlwind activity. I feel so tired that I cannot hold a decent and intelligent conversation. I haven't been reading much either. I started reading The Sidewalk Artist by Gina Buonaguro and Janice Kirk. I had to take a break from the 700+ page books I've been reading (still working on Vanity Fair and Middlemarch). I chose the Sidewalk Artist because I love art. The novel has two parallel love stories, one of which is about the painter Raphael. I don't know much about him except that he is a wonderful painter. I should be able to finish the book by the end of the week.

I am so looking forward to sleeping in this weekend!

Some random thoughts

2007-11-18T16:06:00.001-05:00

It's been some time since I last wrote. My sinusitis is finally gone thank goodness. While recuperating I finished two books: The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

The Last of Her Kind is a novel about two women who meet in 1968 at Columbia University. The late sixties were a turbulent time in America and the author captures it beautifully. I'm too young to know what it must have been like since I wasn't born until the late seventies but I've always felt that I had a pretty good idea of what it felt like to be a young person at that time. I became pretty fascinated with the counterculture movement and civil rights movement when I was a teenager. I tried to find out as much about it as I could and am still learning about that time period. I remember watching the riots in Los Angeles after the Rodney King trial happened and I thought to myself that must have been how it was when the riots in Watts happened. I had a similar feeling when reading The Last of Her Kind. I felt like I was there when the author described certain events that did happen in that time in New York. The anti-war protestors shutting down the universities, Woodstock, and the Weather Underground. After I finished reading this novel I watched a documentary about the Weather Underground, a militant anti-war group that was responsible for several bombings in different cities in the United States who felt that peaceful protesting against the war in Vietnam was not doing enough to stop the war. It was a very enlightening documentary about the lengths people will go to in order to try and create change. I don't completely agree with their ideology and actions at that time but can see where they felt frustrated in their efforts to stop a war that was pointless. I believe peaceful protesting is more conducive to creating change although we seem to have become an apathetic society in recent years.

After the heaviness of the late sixties I felt I needed something fun and light to read. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist fit the the need perfectly. I am a music geek and it was fun reading a romantic tale involving two music geeks. This is a young adult novel but like many young adult novels it has some adult issues...or maybe young adults are growing up way too fast nowadays, hence the adult issues. After reading this I felt very nostalgic for that period in every one's life when you are about to step onto the threshold of adulthood but your dreams are still intact and you're young enough to still make stupid mistakes. Ah youth!

At home...sick

2007-11-08T14:32:00.001-05:00

I've been home the last couple of days per doctor's orders. Acute sinusitis is the diagnosis so I'm here resting and trying to read while I have the time but having terrible headaches is not conducive to a good reading session. I started reading The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez yesterday but only made it through the first 50 pages before I passed out. I'm going to try reading for at least an hour straight today.

I'm reading Vanity Fair by Thackeray as well and I have to say I love the clever Miss Becky Sharp. Thackeray certainly knows how to portray conniving, clever, money hungry women...or in this case Miss Sharp. I like her character despite the fact that she is not the most ideal of women. She is spunky, self-assured, and very astute in knowing the true characters of those around her. Just some observations so far. I'm only 300 pages in.

Back to the blog...

2007-11-04T17:46:00.000-05:00

I've decided to try out blogland for a bit again. I didn't do so well last time so I'm challenging myself to keep this up to date.