Tuesday, March 24, 2009

If God Leant His Voice For Me To Speak

After The Keep, I started reading The Name of the Wind, a fantasy thing by Patrick Rothfuss. This took me more than a month to finish, as it is simply not a very good book. The story did manage to get me interested at some point during my flight to Seattle, and from then on it was smooth sailing, but you shouldn't have to force yourself through a hundred pages to get to such a point. He has a Tolkien thing going on (he thinks), and then he mixes in all kinds of D&D weirdness. Worst thing is it's just the first book of a series, so I don't even know how the story ends.

A few days into my stay in Seattle, I was very happy to pick up the next chapter in my growing obsession with Paul Auster. Having read his Travels in the Scriptorium and The Book of Illusions, I had great hopes for Timbuktu. Aaaand, he scores! Mr. Bones is the canine companion of slightly deranged (and homeless) Willy G. Christmas, who has come down with a rather unfortunate case of being about to die from some lung related ugliness.

Now, this is no ordinary mutt we're talking about here, Mr. Bones _knows_ what's going on. He understands human language, he thinks human language, and he remembers all the things you would expect a man's best friend to recollect. Unfortunately, the world doesn't always look upon homeless doggies with the kindest of eyes, and his life turns into a veritable whirlwind of difficult circumstances. If you, like me, believe dogs to have souls and minds of their own, and even better, if you enjoy other pieces of Auster's authorship, there's no need to think twice about picking up this book.

This evening I believe I will be able to finish Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. No, I never read it when I was in school. Yes, it is bleak and depressing. Yes, I still like it.

I had another run-in with my old friend Insomnia last night, one of the worst encounters in years. I undoubtedly added to the severity of it by drinking coffee too late in the evening, after giving up on the drink months ago for this very reason. The result was lying awake until 04:30 in the morning, when I finally drifted off just to wake up three hours later in horrible shape for this morning's meetings.

"If I had one wish fulfilled tonight,
I'd ask for the sun to never rise.
If God leant his voice for me to speak,
I'd say "Go to bed, world."."

The Cardigans - 03.45: No Sleep (Long Gone Before Daylight, 2003)

4 comments:

Daniel said...

Hm, never read anything by Paul Auster, but according to this fancy literature-map thingie I just discovered maybe I should: http://www.literature-map.com/paul+auster.html

A quick search on Haruki Murakami also tells me I should read the works of someone called Banana Yoshimoto, and who am I to disagree? Oh dear, I'm going to play with this thing for hours...

Sorgenfri said...

For et genialt sted å samle lesetips til påskeferien. ;o)
*notere bak et øre eller to*

C said...

Haruki Murakami is not my cup of tea, to say the least!

Ida: Les The Comfort of Strangers av Ian McEwan! :)

Daniel said...

Isj, du har ikke tilfeldigvis kommet i skade for å lese After Dark? I så fall kan jeg kanskje være tilbøyelig til å vise en smule forståelse. Ellers kan jeg ikke fatte og begripe hva som er så galt med japansk surrealistisk postmodernisme spekket med referanser til vestlig popkultur (kudos til meg selv for å konstruere verdens mest pretensiøse setning).

// Norsk is the new black