You know that moment when you’re reading a book and you just have to stop and bite your lip and squeal or sigh or close your eyes and wrinkle your nose and forehead and press the book against your heart and just like sit there and try to soak up the gorgeous literature via osmosis?
That’s my favorite part of reading.
(Source: tommyshawsboots, via bertsbooks)
You do, you do.
What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
I seem to be really getting into my Victorian fiction of late.
In three days I started and finished The Somnambulist by Essie Fox, and The Pleasures of Men by Kate Williams. Both were fantastic.
Victorian England has always been of great interest to me, with its horse-pulled carriages, velvet gowns and the three Ds: Debt, Disease, and Death. If what I have been reading is anything to go by, then I am surprised that there is anybody alive today. Worrying about being raped, murdered, and mutilated on your way back from the dress-maker’s at 2pm on a Saturday because you owed some theatre owner two guineas for sneaking into his latest production without paying seemed like commonplace back in the 1800s. But, if you were a young lady, you shouldn’t worry about it too much. It would only give you nightmares and you would consequently be thrown in to an asylum for daring to have such improper dreams. Instead, you should pass your time thinking about tea-parties and ribbons and, if someone interrupted your reverie, you were not to notice, as a young lady’s thoughts are of no consequence.
Seriously.
Victorian ladies were forever mocked, patronised, ignored, and over-looked. They were not to have opinions on ANYTHING, should all ways be looking for a husband (but not too obviously, because only prostitutes are obvious) and the only thing they should have been seen fretting over was the length of their new dress. (Heaven forbid that you show your ankles.)
As a pretty strong, self-proclaimed feminist (but lover of men, before you start) it’s strange that I find myself sighing over this bygone era. I wish I could jump in a time-machine and travel back to the days of Queen Victoria’s reign and walk the streets that I see everyday. Even if my petticoats drag in the mud and get covered in horse urine. Nice. (WHY did they put up with that?) But I long to put on a fancy gown and go to a REAL dance where men in coats and tails will look at me and my perfectly curled hair and think me some sort of Goddess surely sent from above. I’d tie my corset so tight I’d have a waist like Dita Von Teese (who cares about breathing?) and I would coyly shield my face with my fan if a handsome young gentleman catches my eye and makes me blush. (God, I hope my boyfriend never reads this. I kind of need him to stick around and pay the mortgage.) Honestly, I know Victorian England was dirty, smelly, scary, and dangerous (has much changed?), but I would LOVE to check it out just once.
The people back then didn’t really have a clue about anything (seriously, they had some messed up ideas about EVERYTHING) but, bless ‘em, they tried. And they did bring us railways and introduce us to the Great British Sea Side Holiday so, you know, they weren’t all bad.
I hope more writers compose literature like this, I’m crossing my fingers that it becomes trendy and authors start jumping on the bandwagon. It’s nice to read fiction set hundreds of years ago that has been written NOW, so that it’s easy to understand. Writers in the 1800s didn’t ‘alf speak weird. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the Classics but I’m a modern-day woman who really likes to sink her teeth into a nitty-gritty story without all the funny, fussy language.
Anyway, that’s it from me. I’m off on a hunt now to find more books like the two I mentioned above. I bet they won’t be anywhere near as good but here’s hoping! And, if I don’t see you before, enjoy the rest of your Sunday and have a jolly lovely week.
Good day to you.
HOW TO SPOT A READER:
1.) They know more than you do… about everything.
2.) They often use words that you secretly have to look up later.
3.) They have magical cards that get them books for free.
4.) They speak the names of people whom you’ve never met; who live in different countries, who lived in other centuries.
5.) Their purse/bag/briefcase is always a bit heavier than yours (which you later find out is equivalent to the weight of a book).
6.) They know the endings to many of the newest movies before they’ve even seen them.
7.) They give you a sympathetic smile when you mention that the last book you read was two summers ago… and it had a half naked man (or woman) on the front.
8.) Their bookshelves are covered in books instead of pictures of them.
9.) They have bookshelves.
10.) They do things that you wouldn’t do, such as reading lists about how to spot a reader.
(via bertsbooks)
I realise that an extraordinary amount of time has passed since I last posted anything to Tumblr. “What have you been doing, O Fabulous One?”, I hear you all ask, practically agog with anticipation. Well, truthfully, not an awful lot.
Life has been rather dull. I’m trying not to complain about that though as, usually, when my life isn’t dull it’s because something terrible is happening. And nothing horrendous has happened to me since before Christmas. Unless you count the fact that I am still unemployed.
Since October 2011 I have applied for 109 jobs. No, your eyesight isn’t getting any worse, I really have applied for 109 jobs in 7 months. I have no idea how I am still jobless. It’s not like I’ve been fussy in my application process, for I have applied for a myriad of things inc. Shop work, secretarial work, receptionist jobs, call centres, sales and marketing, tutoring, nannying and, of course, writing, copywriting, and proofreading.
I’m slowly losing the will to live. It’s easy for you all to tell me to think positive and to keep going but, after the 76th job application rejection, that became increasingly hard to do. I don’t even know how I am still (most of the time) so cheery and optimistic. I do know of something that has helped, though…
BOOKS!!!
All I have been doing since New Year (in between being told I’m not good enough for any kind of job) is reading! And I have been enjoying every second of it. I have had the pleasure of reading some incredible books these past 5 months, and also the displeasure of reading some absolute trash.
Please see below for the list of books I have devoured so far this year:
Love, Always by Harriet Evans
Comfort and Joy by India Knight
A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
Be Careful What You Wish For by Alexandra Potter
Holly’s Inbox by Holly Denham
The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
The Woman He Loved Before by Dorothy Koomson
Are We Nearly There Yet? by Ben Hatch
Jane Austen Ruined My Life by Beth Patillo
A Weekend With Mr. Darcy by Victoria Connelly
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
One Day by David Nicholls
Me Before You by JoJo Moyes
The Radleys by Matt Haig
Ready or Not? by Chris Manby
Twelve Days of Christmas by Trisha Ashley
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Ways To Live Forever by Sally Nicholls
Welcome To My World by Miranda Dickinson
The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
Nine Uses for an Ex-Boyfriend by Sarra Manning
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh
Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson
A Hopeless Romantic by Harriet Evans
The Love of Her Life by Harriet Evans
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman
Chocolate Wishes by Trisha Ashley
From Notting Hill With Love… Actually by Ali McNamara
Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Love, Aubrey by Suzanne LaFleur
Before I Die by Jenny Downham
And I am currently reading The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams.
These have been my saviors. As have red wine and chocolate. And if you have read any of these books, feel free to let me know what you thought of them. Always up for a good book discussion.
As always, happy reading!
‘The Night Circus’ is Erin Morgenstern’s debut novel, and a spectacular one at that. I have never read a book more beautiful and mind-blowing in my life, and I have read an awful lot. Finding something of fault within this glorious novel will be a distinct impossibility for most of its readers and I just couldn’t put it down.
‘The Night Circus’ is a deliciously colourful story of a mystical, magical circus that appears in various places around the world and is only open to the public at night. With its opening sentence: “The circus appears without warning”, readers are pulled into a wonderful world chock-full of delights that you never thought the human imagination had the powers to conjure. Once you allow yourself to enter ‘The Night Circus’ you will never want to leave. Quite simply, you are hooked.
I am just slightly worried that with ‘The Night Circus’ Morgenstern may have reached her literary heights and peaked. Following this up will be a monumental task, even for her, and I am certain that readers of ‘The Night Circus’ are going to be waiting for her next novel with great anticipation. I know I am.
How True.
(Source: youjustinspiredme, via bertsbooks)
And, what’s more, this ‘precious’ body, the very same that is hooted and honked at, demeaned both in daily life as well as in ever existing form of media, harrassed, molested, raped, and, if all that wasn’t enough, is forever poked and prodded and weighed and constantly wrong for eating too much, eating too little, a million details which all point to the solitary girl, to every solitary girl, and say: Destroy yourself.
(Source: arreter, via youcouldalwaysdance)
After promising myself that I’m not going to buy any more books until after my birthday (March 25th), I am afraid that I am going to have to let myself down.
You see, I finally put away all my Christmas presents today. Yes, I’m messy. But there has been this one giant gift bag in my living-room since December 25th filled with goodies that I have just “not got around” to sorting out.
But after weeks of tripping over it and just basically moving it from one corner of the room to the other (“Yes, it definitely looks better here; it blends in with the floor light”), push came to shove and I decided to find a space for my new ‘chain-link wine holder’ and three million bottles of mango body wash (It’s a lovely gift but somebody obviously thinks I have personal hygiene “issues”). So after over-filling the bathroom cupboard with said body wash and tidying all my other lovely presents away, what do I find floating around at the bottom of my gift bag? Why, a book voucher of course! Imagine my glee! I received a few of these babies for Christmas and thought I’d spent them all but, to my utter delight, I have one left! It’s like getting a present all over again. Looks like an extremely pleasurable trip to Waterstones is on the cards for next week! And I am going to take my time with this one as I won’t be getting another one until March and that’s AGES away. Cue; advanced withdrawal symptoms and “come-down” shakes.
Of course, there’s always my cash card but, after the HORROR that opening my last bank statement caused me I have been trying my best to tone down my book shopping sprees. You’d feel the same if every other item on your bank statement was the name of a bookstore and your outgoings overtake your income by a large amount because of these bookstores with their so called “Half-price offers.” It’s not my fault it’s theirs. Luring me in with their huge, massive “All Chart Books Now Half Price” signs plastered everywhere I go. I could be spending my money on things like food and heating but, no, I am being FORCED to purchase dozens of books a month. Talk about having the monopoly…
