In reading Ayn Rand’s introduction to The Fountainhead I found this interesting quote, and great advice:
“I write – and read – for the sake of the story….My basic test for any story is: ‘Would i want to meet these characters and observe these events in real life? Is this story an experience worth living through for its own sake? Is the pleasure of contemplating these characters an end in itself?’”
image: Reading Glasses by Murray Mullet
So I finished this book over the weekend with all the rain keeping me tucked in, and after decorating the Christmas tree, which is really bringing the spirit home.
And thankfully it is not the spirit that haunts this book. I didn’t read The Time Traveler’s Wife, and from what I’ve read in reviews of Her Fearful Symmetry, if you’ve read Time Traveler you’ll surely be disappointed with this one. Since I am new to Niffenegger’s novels, this one was a fine read for me, though strange at times.
We find some unique character building in the chapters, and I sometimes did wonder what was connecting them all, aside from where they lived, but that aside, a guy with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who incessantly cleans with bleach and won’t leave his apartment, and mirror twins who dress alike and are 21-years-old was enough to keep me going. Though I do find the twins’ lives implausible, except perhaps in a fantasy world unlike our own, I bought into it for the story’s sake and went on. The ghost who ends up haunting them is at first a delight to get to know, and the author’s take on the afterlife is quite thought provoking, but the spirit in question turns a bit weird and egoistic, and without giving away the story, well, she becomes sort of creepy, which would be right up my alley, if I thought the story was supposed to be really scary, but it wasn’t. In any case, one would have to read this one to get their own final take on the ending, which I think was appropriate for all involved. I am left remembering these characters; they are visions in my mind, and somehow I know they will never leave. This is a compliment to Audrey Niffenegger, which I hope she’d appreciate.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel. I don’t know why exactly…it just fascinates me that this boy is alone (well, except for the tiger on the raft with him) on the ocean…and he survives. I’m reading Martel’s latest, Beatrice and Virgil. We shall see…Any other fans of Life of Pi out there???
“The more you read, the more mentally fit you feel,” says Twyla Tharp, award-winning choreographer and author of The Creative Habit, a book I read some years ago and pains-takingly took notes from. She goes on to say: “If I stopped reading, I’d stop thinking. It’s that simple.” I can relate to this. If I don’t have a book going, a feel some sense of incompletion to my day, a loss for words sometimes. I guess my thoughts do get affected. So now I have a book going, as well as my treasured anthology, for the poetry mostly and I’m feeling utterly inspired. Now, if I could just sit down for a couple hours a day and write, write, write, we’d be in business.
Twyla goes on with her ecclectic reading advice. She says to read for growth. I do feel that each thing we read, good or bad, horrific or sad, changes us in some way…forever. I have not been the same since I, years ago, read a scene of Stephen King’s in which a boy steals a puppy from a kid he wants to harrass and locks it in an abandoned refrigerator at a local dump. The puppy’s tail wagging weakly every time the scum-bag character returns makes my heart lurch…I wish I hadn’t read that scene…and sometimes wonder why I love that damn writer, but I do. And it changed me. And I learned how a horrible character develops that’s for sure.
Mark Twain once said: “The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
Twyla says: “Who you will be five years from now depends on two things: the people you meet and the books you read.”
It is so true.
Painting: Girl Reading by Oliver Ray
Source: my 4 subject notebook that is filled with writing notes and inspiration that I’ve kept for many, many years.
“…we are the custodians of the world’s best-kept secret:
Merely the private lives of one-half of humanity.”
-Carolyn Kiser
{Thought I’d post my favorite pic of Kate Moss. If you can’t make it out, the title of the book she’s reading is Help Your Husband Get Ahead. }
