(no subject)
Perhaps this is but the after-effect of Narnia (and only here I realise I will read them again one day - it's a peculiar thought), but I'm reading Inkheart, and it's a terribly lovely thing, one of those very dangerous books that make you want to move into a little village in North, keep a garden and read books.
'If you take a book with you on a journey,' Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, 'an odd thing hapens: the book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice-cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypapers. Memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.'
I'm afraid I'll be reading The Book Thief after this, and I fail utterly and completely and can't read Everything is Illuminated in Finnish after all. Not because the translation sucks, I actually felt like I'd enjoy it, but because the first sentence was enough to tell me it's a gorgeous book. A little too gorgeous for reading it in a language it wasn't meant to be in.
(I believe I've told this a hundred times already, but I love it so much;
an elderly professor with dementia told that the disease has given him unexpected joy: all the classics he reads have such surprising plots and interesting characters, and there is such a lot of new, good books to read right there in his bookshelf.)
Not good for the brain, reading.
I met a girl from junior high today, and she told me she was reading for a pharmaceutics admission exam. She was dreaming of becoming a doctor when I was with her, and she's always been too strange and not bright enough for that. I don't believe she'll clear the pharmaceutics exam either, but I imagine she'll one day work in that field anyway. (And then, of course, ghosts of books she awoke; Atonement first, and then Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.)
So this is my sweet of this spring.
My little brother has taken to trade pokémon cards with a girlfriend from school, and the spring air and scent brings back such lovely memories of those. I was too young to understand why the trading was forbidden, and thus all I remember is the school yard like a marketplace, buzzing with excitement.
'If you take a book with you on a journey,' Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, 'an odd thing hapens: the book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice-cream you ate while you were reading it... yes, books are like flypapers. Memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.'
I'm afraid I'll be reading The Book Thief after this, and I fail utterly and completely and can't read Everything is Illuminated in Finnish after all. Not because the translation sucks, I actually felt like I'd enjoy it, but because the first sentence was enough to tell me it's a gorgeous book. A little too gorgeous for reading it in a language it wasn't meant to be in.
(I believe I've told this a hundred times already, but I love it so much;
an elderly professor with dementia told that the disease has given him unexpected joy: all the classics he reads have such surprising plots and interesting characters, and there is such a lot of new, good books to read right there in his bookshelf.)
Not good for the brain, reading.
I met a girl from junior high today, and she told me she was reading for a pharmaceutics admission exam. She was dreaming of becoming a doctor when I was with her, and she's always been too strange and not bright enough for that. I don't believe she'll clear the pharmaceutics exam either, but I imagine she'll one day work in that field anyway. (And then, of course, ghosts of books she awoke; Atonement first, and then Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.)
So this is my sweet of this spring.
My little brother has taken to trade pokémon cards with a girlfriend from school, and the spring air and scent brings back such lovely memories of those. I was too young to understand why the trading was forbidden, and thus all I remember is the school yard like a marketplace, buzzing with excitement.