Fiction
fiction
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Above: The gorgeous Mr Darcy with Elizabeth Bennett in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Still counts as studying! Honest!
Well I did something today that I really thought I wouldn’t. I decided to deliberately NOT to do an assignment for my current OU course. It’s all the assessment calculator’s fault (a doodah on my course website which allows me to work out my overall likely grade). Having had a play around with it yesterday I worked out that as long as I get a pass 2 mark in my exam, i.e. 70% or higher I will get a Pass 2 grade for the entire course whereas if my exam grade falls below 70% I’ll end up with a grade 3 mark for the overall course regardless of how well I do in my final two TMAS.
Read on!
Music: Right now I’m a little obsessed with this song.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
I have chosen Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss as my next novel and starting it today I was arrested by this wonderful passage quoted at the start. It is from one of my very favourite writers, Jorge Luis Borges.
Boast of Quietness
Writings of light assault in the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and my death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like someone who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.
* * * *
Previously on Bad Faery: you might also find this entry of interest You Learn
Friday, July 04, 2008
Posted in: •
Books•
Fiction•
Rocketing right up my favourite books chart is Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go which I just finished reading yesterday. I’m glad that I had avoided reviews for it in advance as part of the pleasure in reading it was in the gradual discovery of the exact nature of the lives of the characters.
So I’m not going to explain any of the plot and only say that it is haunting and poignant and utterly heart breaking. And it is one of those stories that stays with you after, so much so that today I had to tell myself off several times for grieving for what were after all only imaginary characters.
I hadn’t read Ishiguro before but I’ll certainly be adding him to my future reading list.
Music: ‘Broken Heart’, Spirtualized
Sunday, April 13, 2008
“But that huge shadow is more than my only moon, more even than my destruction: it has the innocent slipping advent of the next generation, which enters in one night of joy, and leaves a meadowful of lamenting milkmaids when its purpose is grown to fruit.”
from By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart
I did not have a good night, racked with fits of coughing that left me breathless so that by 3am I gave up on any notion of getting to sleep. I reread the first part of By Grand Central Station, it is a long term favourite of mine and sometimes when I am ill I would rather turn to a much treasured book that I know and love than a fresh read, it is somehow more soothing, like the company of a trusted friend.
Then I spent a little while painting in the hope that it would help take my mind off how terrible I was feeling.
This began as something completely different, I’ve been experimenting with different backgrounds and textures and this was originally part of those efforts. But being the dead of night, the moon emerged from a random splash of paint.
Since I have given up on the idea of sleep for tonight too I’m sticking with the galactic theme and am going to veg out with some Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica:)
I am drinking hot lemon with honey as it’s supposed to sooth sore throats. It tastes blee!!! I’m sorry Mary Poppins, but sometimes a spoonful of sugar doesn’t help at all!
Music: ‘My Moon, My Man’, Feist
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Congratulations to fellow Snow Leopard enthusiast Jackie Morris! Her book The Snow Leopard has been shortlisted for the Highland Schools Book Awards!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Posted in: •
Books•
Fiction•
“There was a boy called Odd, and there was nothing strange or unusual about that, not in that time or place. Odd meant the tip of a blade, and it was lucky name.”
Continuing on with yesterday’s Neil Gaiman theme, today when I was in town I picked up a copy of Odd and the Frost Giants. Yes, as a work of fiction, this breaks my no-new-books embargo but as it was a) only €1.50, b) in aid of a good cause namely World Book Day, and c) by one of my favourite writers I felt that it was worth the breaking. And as CJ Cherryh says “no rule should be followed off a cliff”.
I’ve read it already, over coffee and a pastry in a little cafe. It proved a short and enjoyable read, all 97 pages of it. Set in Viking times, it is a comic caper about a boy called Odd who forms an unlikely friendship with a fox, a bear and an eagle who turn out to be more than they seem. Suitable for younger readers (and those childish at heart like me) I shall definitely be choosing this one to read to my nephew, who is seven, the next time I’m staying at my sister’s place.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
This is my new desktop graphic. What do you think? It’s a little gruesome, I’ll grant you, but I love it!
It’s for Neil Gaiman’s new novel, The Graveyard Book, due out this October.
This is how the author describes it:
Lots of scary. Some funny (some of the funniest stuff is also the scariest, though). A fair amount of action. Some drama. No kissing. Late nights. Fish and chips. A werewolf, a vampire, an Assyrian mummy and a small pig. A knife in the dark.
And here’s where Neil blogs about Dave McKean’s great bookslip design
Sunday, February 03, 2008
“The snow falls, and yes, the hand stretched into the
flakes’ path is a hand asking back a season now lost.”
Nadeem Aslam, Maps for Lost Lovers
This week:
This photo by persistingstars made me inexplicably happy.
I saw a fantastic production of The Taming of the Shrew
I watched a lovely documentary about Arctic Wolves. I had been following the film makers’ diary on the BBC website last year so it was great to finally see the playful Lucy in action.
Above: an Arctic wolf, image © Mark Smith
Am reading The Historian, a novel about some scholars researching the legend of Dracula and discovering it’s more than mere legend. It has helped provoked all sorts of odd dreams that I’ve been having almost on a nightly basis involving schorlarly research, vampires, the cast of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and of course wolves.
Watched some art journalling vids by the lovely and informative Kira
I had to miss the first tutorial for my new course due to the snow, heavy frost and gales we had over the weekend. Bit bummed out about that. But I’ve made a good start on the course work and am spending today compiling definitions for the glossary words I need to learn for this Unit.
The glossary is a big part of the course. When October rolls around and I have to do my exam the first question (worth 20% of the marks) will present me with a choice of six terms, four of which I must be able to define, hence if I know my glossary words off by heart it should guarantee a good start in my exam. There’s only (!) about 250 terms that I need to familiarise myself with over the course of the next nine months. So no worries there then!
Music: ‘Cross Bones Style’, Cat Power
Thursday, January 24, 2008
I was going to give IF a miss this week as I’ve been up to my eyes in work and studies all week. But tonight curled up in front of the fire I found myself doodling this little buffalo:
The purple buffalo roam the great plains where Atreyu’s tribe, the Greenskins, live. During his quest to save the Childlike Empress he is haunted by dreams about a purple buffalo he must kill in order to become a hunter…
“Each of the following nights he dreamed something of the sort. He got closer and closer to the same buffalo - he recognised him by a white spot on his forehead - but for some reason he was never able to shoot the deadly arrow.” Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
I drew it pencil first and wish now I’d left it and not bothered with the colour wash. For future reference I really should scan my line drawings before adding colour. I think he would have turned out quite nice as a simple line drawing. Ah well, we live and learn;)
Monday, December 31, 2007
Further to my previous post I thought I would post this, one of my favourite ever quotes about the joy of reading from a book that is all about the power of story and the imagination:
Bastion looked at the book.
‘I wonder,’ he said to himself, ‘what’s in a book while it’s closed. Oh, I know it’s full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there’s a whole story with people I don’t know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it’s already there, that’s the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.’
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read…
Michael Ende, The Neverending Story
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