Reading list

I can’t seem to get myself to write these days. Either I’m mulling it over or… I’ve been too busy doing Other Stuff (tsktsk).

I’ve been drawing, sleeping lots, and reading though- all of which make me loads happy.

A list:

• The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry
• Thirst – Mary Oliver
• One Secret Thing – Sharon Olds
• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
• Blankets and Habibi – Craig Thompson
• A Game of Thrones – George RR Martin

Also started watching Doctor Who (on the 3rd episode of the first season).

Excerpts from some things I am reading:

Thus your embraces almost promise you / eternity. And yet, after you survive the terror / of the first look, and the long yearning at the window, / and the first walk – the one walk – together through the garden: / lovers, are you still the same?

- Rilke [trans by Edward Snow], The Second Elegy

***

 

February sat on a cottage floor with a girl who smelled of smoke and honey. The girl was telling him that she was tired of being around someone who carried so much sadness in his body. February drew his kneecaps to his eye sockets.

February apologized. He rocked back and forth. When he stretched his legs back out the girl was smiling and running in place. February asked what she was doing. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke said it was to cheer him up. I don’t think that’s going to work, said February. I’m sorry, but it just won’t.

Just try it, said the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. Please.

*

Short list found in February’s Back Pocket

1. I’ve done everything I can.
2. I need to know you won’t leave.
3. I wrote a story to show love, and it turned to war. How awful.
4. I twisted myself around stars and poked the moon where the moon couldn’t reach.
5. I’m the kind of person who kidnaps children and takes flight.

- from p.51 and 55 of Shane Jones’ Light Boxes

32 Questions Book Meme

I’ve been really having problems falling asleep the past few nights (conking out only at 3AM) so, here’s a redo of an old meme that sort of went viral back a million years ago. Because it’s fun!

1) What author do you own the most books by?

After having relinquished my Goosebumps and Archie comics collection to my younger sisters, I think it’ll either be Neil Gaiman (growing up on the Sandman series, I pretty much bought all his other books) or Bill Willingham (because I eventually moved on to Fables), graphic novels-wise. I’m just missing one book from my Jonathan Safran Foer collection now. I also have a lot of Murakami, Palahniuk, and Atwood (give or take, equal amounts). For the art books it’s James Jean’s (I’m only missing Process Recess 1). Poetry-wise… it’ll have to be Chingbee Cruz’s.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. I have THREE different editions of it. First print (got it back in 2005 or 2006), second (the yellow one, with a different ending), and the new red one (where it’s in a single book along with Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close). One of my favorite books. Go figure.

Feeling bookish (+ a short story by JSF)

I am supposed to be revising poems, but let me take a moment to talk about two books I want to get (and I don’t think they’re available in my country – although if they might be, please do give me a heads up! I recently stumbled across a pile of money in my bed and intend to make good use of it by saving it, buying some books, or purchasing a pet hedgehog!)

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

A few of you might know her from this really nice movie, but this uber-creative lady also has a couple of stuff she wrote down, this one in particular.

Essays in Love by Alain de Botton

Here, an excerpt:

1. It is one of the ironies of love that it is easiest confidently to seduce those who we are least attracted to. My feelings for Chloe meant I lost any belief in my own worthiness. Who could I be next to her? Was it not the greatest honour for her to have agreed to this dinner, to have dressed so elegantly (‘Is this alright?’ she’d asked in the car on the way to the restaurant, ‘it had better be, because I’m not changing a sixth time’), let alone that she might be willing to respond kindly to some of the things that might fall (if ever I recovered my tongue) from my unworthy lips?

I follow this guy on Twitter. Haha, dork.

I really don’t have much to say. I have a lot of books to read as of now, but I still want these books and I would feel immensely happy if they just magically appeared on my (nonexistent) door step.

EDIT: I recently stumbled on this awesome short story by one of my favorite authors, Jonathan Safran Foer (the guy who wrote Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close). Check it out: About the Typefaces Not Used in This Edition.