- A Clockwork Orange
And in that moment I think I understand Blake through Anthony Burgess. To some extent I'm glad I never swapped my physical books for electronic ones. Rach and Luwhale came over and while we talked about depressing relationships to depressing politics, surviving on one potato for four days to our favourite literature, all my favourite quotes came to mind and I could just pick my books off the shelf and read them out loud. I always dog-ear my favourite quotes in books. I'm looking forward to these three months of holiday, so many things to accomplish. I really want to be able to read all the books in my collection so I can buy new ones with no guilt, expand my collection of authors and genres, soak up all the wisdom from these brilliant people. Luwhale asked the standard bookworm question of our generation, 1984 or Brave New World? Both. But more importantly, WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin. I absolutely adore WE. I think it trumps the other two. I do love BNW but it made me gao wei. The sign of an impactful book. 1984 is like comfort food. Familiar, but you don't eat it unless you have no appetite for other foods and you know it will always make you feel better. WE, on the other hand, is a book I can read over and over again and never get bored or sick of it. Yevegeny Zamyatin always blows me away. It wasn't easy looking for WE on the shelves of local bookstores, but I managed to find it anyway. After that I had to hunt on Amazon for his other works. Only managed to find a second hand copy of The Dragon: Fifteen Stories and it was hella expensive. But the night it arrived in the little brown parcel I felt like I was handed a precious baby that was to be protected at all cost. I'm usually rather generous when it comes to lending my books to my friends, even if they do go missing after a while (both my 1984s are gone, one of my The Great Gatsby too ): ), but when it comes to Zamyatin I'm very protective. Even warned Luwhale to take care of WE because it's my precious. If you're not convinced to go look up Zamyatin, here's a quote from A Story About The Most Important Thing from The Dragon, and another from WE.
"The moon, our own, earthly moon is bitterly lonely, because it is alone in the sky, always alone, and there is no one to turn to, no one to turn to it. All it can do is ache across the weightless airy ice, across thousands of versts, toward those who are equally lonely on earth, and listen to the endless howling of dogs."
"I am aware of myself. And, of course, the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn't it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?"
I ache to learn more about Russian authors in the Silver Age. And this is just one drop of literature in the ocean of undiscovered and unread. Sometimes I get upset knowing I will never gain enough knowledge, read enough, discover enough. Especially when professors in class name drop titles and authors, I immediately look for them on bookdepo, sometimes I purchase them, but I just know my mental bank will never be filled enough. I can only read enough in my own lifetime. Whatever I can fill my little library with, I will. I claim to love Zamyatin so much but I don't even know much about Russia, her history, her authors. I wish I took history instead of English, then again English was pre-assigned to me so. I also started looking up Russian composers. But I know absolutely nothing about them or their music. These are the things I want to learn. Not how grammar works. The way English is taught here makes it mathematical, like how playing the piano can be mathematical if you calculate the keys and their tunes. But the way maths and science is taught through literature is so beautiful, so fluid, so graceful. That's why I love Zamyatin. I need more books like that. I don't know where to start looking but I'll start by asking the bookworms on goodreads and tumblr.
I also feel compelled to finish reading John Green's young adult novels. If I want to bash books like The Fault In Our Stars for romanticising cancer, I should probably read the book before I go round blabbering. I do love John Green though. He, as a human being, is hella funny and intelligent. But TFIOS really rubbed me the wrong way. But of course I don't want to buy his books, I'm not interested in collecting young adult novels (but I do love children's books and fairytales, those I would gladly collect), so I'm going round looking for his YA novels to borrow (from friends, not the library because icky and also because I always end up owing the library money for late fees).
Currently binging on Kazuo Ishiguro. I started with While We Were Orphans, then moved on to Never Let Me Go, then An Artist of the Floating World, and I just borrowed Nocturnes from baby cousin. Started with WWWO because at that time I thought NLMG was overrated. Then I read NLMG only to have my heart ripped out. I got AAOTFW because Pat Wong said she thought it was his best work. And now I'm quite hooked onto Nocturnes. Can't wait for Letti and my vanillabean to return to SG so they can tell me more about Ishiguro. Letti handed in a paper on NLMG and my sweet vanillabean is studying what she's studying because of the man. So these are like Ishiguro ambassadors in my eyes.
Hopefully I actually stick to my reading plan this holiday and update this space with good words.