I'm in so much pain today that I wouldn't even get up if I didn't have to get my boarding pass printed. I'm leaving England on the 13th and heading home, though I know there is no such place. Home is just something I never really had. I had houses or flats; spaces and walls, but never a home. It doesn't bother me anymore, since me and Julian are ( Read more... )

Expensive source on my favourite genre and another one made me think about my attitude towards owning books. I never felt I had to have a certain book, as long as I could get it from the local library. The few books I have are the ones that cannot be found in the libraries near me. And yet I always loved reading. But I never had the need to own ( Read more... )

Someone wrote that Jorge Luis Borges read everything, especially the things nobody else is reading anymore. Reading through Labirynths, I was pondering on my conformity as a reader. I've been reading the great French and Russian writers, the glamourised Americans, the modern rubbish. The mainstream. Very rarely I came across books that could not be ( Read more... )

I want to stretch my writer's muscles. I want to be Joan's Didion European equivalent. I reread The White Album, finished Play It As It Lays and am half way through The Year of Magical Thinking. And I am slowly discovering that I don't have much to say which is the reason why it is hard for me to write. I have lived lives, not many, but a couple, ( Read more... )

I read and write and work for the translating company and in the cafe. I'll try to get up at 5 a.m. to go to sleep early. I'm so inspired by some of the people around me, recently, which is new to me, but is it really them or is it just whatever I imagine they are? Either way, I feel less lonely, so it serves its purpose.
I'm finishing Chatwin's ( Read more... )

Days are reserved for the strolls in the park in the glorious sun but evenings are for books. I've just finished Coming from behind by Howard Jacobson which isn't half as dirty as the title promises but nevertheless sparkling with irony and humour. The interesting bit is the author - he used to be a teacher at my uni and although the book was ( Read more... )

Horrible food, unbearable weather and horny lecturers over fifty. Purgatory, version 2.0. In other words - back in England.
I'm reading obsessively and to the point - I borrowed books from the reading lists for the next semester. Travel writing, mostly. It's so strange to read a Polish book translated to English and not the other way round. ( Read more... )

Failing one assignment, missing days when I was a top student without doing anything. One way or the other - spending my days nicely. Raul thinks I should find a job; I think a job should find me. Because that's how it is with the best things in my life - they just came, without me struggling or making any effort at all. Have you ever experienced a ( Read more... )