by Virginia Woolf
I’ve been a little nervous about writing something about this book since I don’t have any special insights into it, or opinions. But I have to talk about it, because I have such a deep, wonderful feeling of delight. I enjoyed this book on so many levels. The writing is incredible, and distinctively different. From the description on the back I was led to believe that the book followed the events in a day of Clarissa Dalloway’s life, which it does. However the other people she encounters, and the way the threads of the story flow from them to still other people, made the short book seem like a huge experience. I was caught up in it in a way I haven’t encountered before. I wanted to read it all in one sitting, but at the same time wanted it to last as long as possible. I thought about it frequently when I wasn’t reading it. I was intrigued by the headlong rush of the storytelling, which was at the same time a leisurely meander through a warm June day in London.
I think that is what fascinated me most about the book – the steady passing of physical time, and the internal, often hectic, passage of time as shown by the variety of characters. The book offered me a visual (oddly enough) of the incredible internal dialogue that accompanies every aspect of our lives, and is often more real than the physical world around us. The events in a day, and the internal events ought to provide a constant balance, but this book also clearly showed what can happen when one or the other starts to dominate. The book was a brilliant study of that, as well as fulfilling on an emotional and even entertaining level.
I finished it almost a week and a half ago, and I’m still thinking about it frequently. I feel an intense desire to read it again, this time with more attention to detail and with less distractions from my real life interupting me. My original feeling that the book wanted to be read in a quiet, sunny room is even stronger now, and that is definitely where I want to read it for the second time – someone please find me the room and the time! 🙂
I would love to hear anyone else’s thoughts about the book – especially your first time reading it. I just don’t want to let it go yet. 🙂
by Luis Alberto Urrea
by Teresa de la Parra
The only book that I am really enjoying reading right now is Andy Crouch’s The Good Beer Guide to New England which a friend of mine gave me last year for my birthday. I hadn’t touched it until last week, when I decided to flip through it and see how many of the breweries/brewpubs he mentioned I had been to. I got sucked into the book itself pretty quickly, although my perusal is still pretty non-linear.
But my reading is suffering. I started The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust on July 10th, to celebrate his birthday and end my month-long break from reading Proust. As of today I’ve only made it 20 pages in… However this works out all right because it means I can join Frances and Claire’s 
I watched The Tin Drum the other day. Directed by Volker Schlondorff (who made Swann in Love which I liked a lot) it won an Academy Award in 1979 for Best Foreign Film. What a weird movie!! It is about a German boy who at the age of 3, disgusted by the unhappy examples of grown up life that surrounds him, decides to never get any bigger. From that moment on he remains in appearance a 3 year old, and he goes through life pounding on a tin drum, and when life gets really unbearable, emitting a literally glass shattering scream. Germany moves toward Nazism and WW2 descends upon little Oskar, who continues to beat his drum. What was interesting to me was the fact that although his body didn’t grow, Oskar couldn’t stop his mental development or fend off all of life’s troubles by simply remaining small.
by John Crowley
by Juan Carlos Onetti
Aside from all the things I’ve already posted about here, I also finally tracked down one of Peter Dickinson’s earlier novels – The Old English Peep Show – a mystery set at an old country estate where poor Inspector Pibble is up against aging Generals/War Heros, lions, and the dark force behind profitable enterprise. My father has always told me to look for Dickinson’s old mysteries, but until unearthing this one in the basement collection at Jesup, I was missing out! A fast, fun read with well drawn characters, and lots of odd quirks.
The other book I found in the treasure trove of the Jesup basement was Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. I wanted to read it so that I could watch the movie that is based on it. I had found out from her web site that this movie was just about the only movie based on one of her books that she liked. The book proved to be fascinating. It is set a bit in the future, and focuses on George Orr, who has a slight problem with dreaming. His dreams change reality, or so he claims and that is why he overdosed on drugs – he was taking them to prevent himself from dreaming. He is sent to a psychiatrist who specializes in dreams, and quickly proves that he is not kidding around, nor is he crazy. Dr. Haber realizes the potential for good that Georges’ dreams provide, and he in turn proves how very wrong things can go when someone tries to change the world and control their own destiny. The book is a whirlwind, as each time George dreams both he and the reader have to come to terms with the newest version of reality. Beautifully written as always with Le Guin’s work, this book blew my mind. 🙂
The movie was really interesting too. It was extremely close to the book, and as such was very satisfying. It was made in 1980 and was PBS’s first direct-to-TV production. The budget was small and the scope of the film large, but for what they had to work with I think the result was excellent. My viewing enjoyment was somewhat hampered, however, by a terrible transfer to DVD. There was large degree of “ghosting” which was distracting. Apparently this is because PBS didn’t save a copy of the production after the rights to rebroadcast expired! It was too expensive to pay for all the rights they needed to continue broadcasting. The home video release was remastered from a video tape of the original broadcast, and I assume that’s where the DVD came from too.
My final fond memory from this past rainy June is waking up late on a Saturday and tumbling out of bed, only to curl up in a blanket and watch My Neighbor Totoro and laugh and cry and in general thoroughly enjoy that dreary, lovely morning.
by Eduardo Galeano
what we have here is a failure to communicate 