WHAT

[terabient]

it is currently 32 degrees outside. the weather for the next two days includes a mix of snow and rain showers.

WHAT THE HELL, NEW ENGLAND, WE'RE ONLY HALF-WAY THROUGH OCTOBER. *OCTOBER!*

i cannot deal with this cold THIS EARLY. :( :( :(

anyway! today i opened an account at the local credit union. apparently they were doing some sort of promotion, and now i have a brand new...crock pot.

i have no idea what i am going to do with it.
***
reading The Dark Side of Love by Rafik Schami, a novel that is originally written in German, and set (mostly) in early 20th century Syria, so there are a great deal of references to Arabic poetry and legends, AND since France occupied Syria for um, a while, there's a lot of French literature and history alluded to as well.

i imagine it was a total bitch to translate.

about half-way through. it is QUITE EXCELLENT though often difficult. not language-wise, surprisingly, it's simple without being Hemingway on a bad day juvenile. but subject-wise, this is the sort of book where unbearably awful things happen routinely and instead of rising to the occasion and overcoming adversity in an inspiring but clicheed fashion, people are ruthlessly crushed by the cruelty of the world around them. CRUSHED!

i wish i could be more specific and intelligent in discussing it because it's one of those books that makes you go, 'man, i think i'm reading a serious contender for the Nobel prize here,' but i'm too cold tired to make sense at this hour. besides, every review i've found is about a billion times more literate that i could be. i mean - critics are comparing this novel to Tolstoy. i haven't even read Tolstoy.

also all of this talk in the novel about the great Arabic poets and the great French novels and the reviews comparing the novel itself to the great Russian novelists makes me realize how little famous world literature i've actually read. :(

so uh

i don't know how to wrap this up so imma slink off to bed and hope i don't freeze to death. :D!

Comments

[bri-ecrit.livejournal.com]

Don't feel bad—I'm an English major and even I haven't read Tolstoy.

The weather's supposed to suck here in the mid-Atlantic, too, except instead of snow we get low 40s and rainstorms. Really looking forward to walking to campus in that. -_-

I envy people in SoCal who have never really experienced weather below, say, 60 F and have never even seen so much as a snowflake.

[terabient]

i often suspect that Tolstoy, like James Joyce and Henry James, is one of those authors literary types (like reviewers for major newspapers) like to talk about but only a few have actually read.

i remember one of my professors saying something like 'You only read War and Peace so that you can tell everyone you've read War and Peace.' it's like, a lit-nerd badge of honor.

my freshman year in college, there was a student from southern California who had never seen snow before, and there was an early snowfall that year - she ran outside with great enthusiasm, made a snowball, and returned to tell everyone, "I didn't know it'd be so chilly!"

we lol'd. then went to the mall to get her proper winter gear.

[lustychan.livejournal.com]

I think it's funny that you've had snow and we haven't :p

[terabient]

:(

i don't mind snow so much, but i really don't want to have to wipe snow off my windshield with the leaves and pine needles also covering it.

luckily, nothing stuck. there was just a little flurry on Sunday.

[plaidsheepfic.livejournal.com]

Oh you poor darling, I feel your pain, I can't *stand* the cold at all! Happily in dear, old, mildly dank England we are experiencing the usual mild wet October (still has the central heating on though, despite it being 59 degrees).

Once saw a paperbook copy of War & Peace, I realised then I would never read it, pretty much for the same reason I nearly consigned Bleak House to the shredder. I have a tendency to avoid literature that emphasizes the bleakness of life, I have too much of a negative outlook as it is. :p

[elbarto252.livejournal.com]

I'm near western NY and I was hoping to do some nice nature photography today. But not only was it FREEZING but the really nice leaves got blown off by the winds >_<

As for the people being 'ruthless crushed by the world around them', sad to say, but that happens. YAH. Seen it first hand, my dad never stops reminding me of that. I'm a bit disillusioned by that myself.

...I had to write an analysis on Sophocles and almost cried. Because I spent so much time arguing about how indirect I thought the role of the gods were and had to read all his plays to boot. Also because I had no computer to write it back then and I was camping out in the labs to finish. The professor ended up laughing at me for being the only class that wrote on this topic!

As for reading, I don't think I've read anything that counts as "serious" literature written after the 1800s. Only plays, fiction and research papers. I don't have much time for me to enjoy books anymore, now I have to make "excuses" to...o_o

Well, at least you read without being forced to xD

[terabient]

aw. i think it was last week when the leaves here hit their um, color peak, to use the phrase in tourist brochures. now they're starting to become brown and unspectacular.

lit-crit makes me unreasonably upset. it seems so...futile. i had to analyze the meaning of an English sonnet once and it just struck me as an exercise in complete uselessness. D: i like reading 'important' literature but analyzing in the way lit-crit demands makes me so ANGRY. Dx

[terabient]

60 degrees is beach weather around here!~

i tried to read Dostoyevsky once. i made it through one novella and had to stop because it was the most difficult, depressing thing i've ever read.

i was pleasantly surprised to find The Dark Side of Love had a lot of moments of pure, untainted joy in it! it's certainly a dark book but there is a lot of warmth to it as well - which is good because the dark moments are very dark.