The Day’s Read

I’m rekindling me love for poetry with William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience …
Takes me back to A-Level English Literature.

My favourites of this collection are:
1. The Tyger (obviously);
2. The Chimney Sweep;
3. A Divine Image;
4. A Poison Tree.
Romantic-style poetry from the 1700s which asks the question which is superior, Innocence or Experience? Are they opposites? Can they not go hand in hand?
Really beautiful.

So I’m reading on my Kindle …

And this bloke comes up to me - right in my face - and says “you’re the devil, you know that? You’re going to be the death of books, and you’ll go straight to hell and BURN with your electronic gadgets ruining all that is good and proper and of sense” and walks away. 

Now, is it everyone with a Kindle that gets this, or are people of my darling hometown just all general nutters? Because this dude didn’t look like a nutjob, he was wearing a smart, clean suit, clean shaven and had a briefcase. The whole sane shabang. 

I very nearly pulled out my paperback ‘Choke’ by Chuck Palanuick and whacked him round his pretentious head with it whilst screaming “erm, we still have to BUY the book, you technophobe dick!!” 

Honestly. Kindle gets a serious bad rep with the oldies eh? If you’re wondering what my stance on this argument is (if you hadn’t guessed it through this post), you can check it out here: Friend or Foe?

Cheers duckies. Rant done. Over and Out.
Toodles xx 

books, books and more books…

Now since I started this tumblr I am very aware I haven’t produced anything of major substance. Yeah sure, I’ve talked about romance (Modern Day Romance: A Novel Classic?)  and given my stance on the Kindle v Books argument (Friend or Foe?) but I haven’t actually blogged about the books I love nor give you a sense of what I like. 
So, I’m going to start. I really really am. And this will be a work in progress to do forgive the essay this will turn into, and feel free to get in touch and tell me if you think what I love is rubbish (one man’s treasure is another man’s rubbish and all that) and tell me what you like - after all, the whole point of me joining this blogging business is to be inspired, right? Right. 

• Philip Pullman - Northern Lights
• Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Oscar Wilde - The Importance of Being Earnest
• Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
• Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
• Alice Sebold - The Lovely Bones
• Angela Carter - Wise Children
• William Shakespeare - A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Angela Carter - Nights at the Circus
• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Hound of the Baskervilles 
• Marie Le Prince de Beaumont - Beauty and the Beast

Even now, I’m looking at my bookshelf and I’m searching through the archive on my Kindle and there’s just so much to talk about, and so many books that I love. I want to say that the list above, it is in no order. It’s hard to highlight just one of them as my favourite, because they’re all so different and I read them at different times of my life and had different impacts on me. The Lovely Bones was so touching, it brought out feelings and empathy in me I didn’t know existed (harsh, but quite true - I think that book made me a lovelier person), Wuthering Heights taught me, if anything, to never settle. The depiction of romance between Cathy and Heathcliffe broke my heart and the chilling ending glued it back together with the idea that their souls reunited and found a place together, in the moors. Angela Carter, in all her glory, taught me to laugh. Really laugh. It’s possible to be smart, and to be funny. Intellectually funny. She combined my love of comedy, tragedy, Shakespeare and theatricals and plonked it into a very real and very funny novel. Northern Lights inspired me - it ignited my imagination, and that book, wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, whenever I’m reading it (I think I must’ve read that book more than fifty times in the 10+ years I’ve had it) takes me right there, to that place. Where your soul is seperate and takes a physical form, your own little animal daemon and into a world where experimental science is regarded as the norm. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - my love for all things Victorian, classic and mystery! Oscar Wilde - A man nobody should have a bookshelf (or Kindle/E-reader) without! So witty, funny and intelligent. 

These are just a few of my favourite novels, books, classics - whatever you wish to call them. I could write a novel on each book on how much I love them. And this is just a short list. There are hundreds of books I love, and I am in no doubt whatsoever, that my “LOVELOVELOVE” list is only going to growgrowgrow!