My Favourite Writer // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 13

Today is the thirteenth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "your favourite writer".

As some of you may or may not have noticed, I've fallen a little behind in my blog posting during this challenge. I would like to say that this is due to me going out every night and living it up in the city, but in reality it's due to a combination of laziness and forgetfulness. 

Today's post is meant to focus on "your favourite writer", and as said writer is a historical figure I worship as something akin to a deity, I would hate to dishonour her legacy by writing a post about her that was even more mediocre than my usual content simply because I was rushing. However, I still want to get this post up on time. So as a compromise, I have decided that this post will be a collection of quotes by said writer, which I hope will let their brilliance speak for themselves.

With all that out of the way, I would like to present to you my favourite writer of all time: Virginia Woolf.

13 Quotes by Virginia Woolf 

1. “Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

2.  “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.” 

3. “Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.”

4. “Why does Samuel Butler say, 'Wise men never say what they think of women'? Wise men never say anything else apparently.” 

5. “When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.” 

6. “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.”

 7. “I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me.” 

8. “She had the perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very, dangerous to live even one day.” 

9. “But nothing is so strange when one is in love (and what was this except being in love?) as the complete indifference of other people.” 

10. "Then I may tell you that the very next words I read were these – ‘Chloe liked Olivia …’ Do not start. Do not blush. Let us admit in the privacy of our own society that these things sometimes happen. Sometimes women do like women."

11. “Nothing thicker than a knife's blade separates happiness from melancholy.” 

 12. “I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” 

 13. “When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?”

A Book I Love But Hate at the Same Time // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 12

Today is the twelfth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book you love but hate at the same time".

What a beautiful day to publish a blog post. A completely on-time blog post, going up exactly when it was supposed to. Not late in the slightest...

Anyway, let's move swiftly on.

The prompt for today's post is "a book you love but hate at the same time". I've known for a few days what book I was going to choose for this challenge, and my feelings are complex and ambivalent enough that I didn't want to rush a post about it just for the sake of meeting a self-imposed deadline - which is why this post is going up late (yes, I admit it). Hopefully, once you read this post, you will understand my hesitation.

So! The book I have selected for this emotionally-complex prompt is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

WARNING: this post will contain spoilers for A Little Life, including the ending.

My feelings about A Little Life have several layers, naturally, so let's start with the positive. It's been a couple of years since I read it, but when I first read A Little Life, I thought it was a brilliant book. It was well-written, I felt invested in the characters, and it was absolutely emotionally devastating.

This last point is arguably the most important. When the hype surrounding A Little Life was at its peak, discussing the book with other readers felt like commiserating over some shared tragedy that we'd all experienced. Apart from the few people who just didn't like the book, everyone I spoke to who'd read it had been deeply affected by the story, mostly in that it made them cry. I was no exception to this - I finished the book feeling like I'd been punched in the chest, and the "book hangover" it gave me lasted longer than most other novels I'd read that year.

For the most part, I'd say that a book having the power to impact people emotionally in such a strong way is a good thing. In fact, it's one of the biggest reasons I love A Little Life. It's also one of the main reasons I hate it.

In order to explain what I hate about A Little Life, I'm going to need to spoil it, in vague terms at least. So if that is something you'd rather avoid, I suggest you don't read any further.

But first, a Goodreads summary of the plot:

When four classmates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their center of gravity. Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome—but that will define his life forever.

If you think this doesn't sound like an especially happy read, you'd be right. While there are moments of success, love, and hope for a positive future, it all comes crashing down before the book finishes its final page. Without getting too specific, I will say that the ending is decidedly unhappy.

Things are particularly tragic for Jude, a character who has gone through more trauma than I've ever known a fictional person to experience. Physical injury, childhood abuse of every type, intimate partner violence, mental illness, and eventually even the loss of the people he loves most in the world. If you thought J. K. Rowling or George R. R. Martin had it in for your favourite characters, you clearly haven't seen the things Hanya Yanagihara put Jude through.

Although seeing this sequence of events take place over the course of the novel, half happening chronologically and the other appearing in flashbacks, can be distressing at times, it's also a testament to the quality of the book that they come across as effective rather than melodramatic. So fundamentally, I wouldn't have much of a problem with this aspect of the book if it weren't for one crucial detail: Jude is gay.

To be more accurate, we are led to believe Jude is gay. If I remember correctly, his sexuality is treated with a certain amount of ambiguity in the novel, which is made all the more complex by the fact that he was sexually abused by men as a child. Throughout the book, he only has relationships with men. In that respect, he seems like a typical gay man. He is also a typical gay character in the sense that he serves as the author's pitiable punching bag for the majority of the story.

This is my main issue with the book, the LGBT+ representation in it. As I said before, the various qualities of A Little Life are hard to separate from one another. Similarly, the fact that A Little Life has been critically and commercially acclaimed cannot be separated from the gayness at the centre of it. In one review, the book was even dubbed "The Great Gay Novel" - despite the fact that its author is straight. Likewise, the same reviewer argued that even the very genre-mixing of the book is queer, writing that Yanagihara, "engages with aesthetic modes long coded as queer: melodrama, sentimental fiction, grand opera."

I wouldn't argue with the points of the above writer, but I would add that A Little Life also plays into the classic queer trope of making its gay characters suffer. Although perhaps to say that this trope is "queer" is a bit inaccurate, since it's usually straight people who like to employ it. They are even encouraged to do so, as critics love nothing more than praising the depiction of a gay person by a straight one, especially if that gay suffers tragically. If you don't believe that this is a thing, just take a look at the Bury Your Gays article on TV Tropes. I'm sure you'll find more than enough examples there.

Now, bear in mind that I was well-aware - one might say painfully so - of this kind of issue within LGBT+ representation when I got to the end of A Little Life. So when I read the absolutely, irrevocably sad conclusion to the story, I had the following thoughts, in this order: "that's so sad", "why?", and "of course".

The sadness speaks for itself. The "why?" was because I wanted to know what message the author was trying to put across. That we live tragic lives and then we die? That we can never overcome the pain we experience early in life? Then, the "of course" emerged. Because of course, the main queer character, having endured suffering from a young age, would have his life end the same way it had begun. Of course, a straight author would only choose to put a gay man at the centre of her story if it fit into a larger narrative of pain and trauma. Of course, this same straight author would be supremely successful and nominated for numerous awards for publishing what could most ungenerously be referred to as torture porn.

In discussing this book with a friend, I was asked if Jude suffers in the book because he is gay, or if his suffering is separate from his gayness. The answer is neither one nor the other. His suffering is not explicitly connected to his being gay - he is not subject to homophobic violence nor does he contract an illness typically associated with being gay, like AIDS) - but nor is it separate. It can't be separate. Even if Yanagihara truly believes she was writing Jude just as she would write a straight character, her depiction of him was always going to be informed (consciously or otherwise) by our media and our society's perception of gay people. I want to know, what came first: her decision to make Jude gay, or her decision to make him suffer? And what made her think those two things would go so well together?

Now, despite what some people may think, my intent in writing this is not to say that straight people cannot write queer characters. Nor is it to denigrate Yanagihara, who ultimately did write a book that touched many people. Yet if it is reasonable to criticise a book as being unoriginal, it is reasonable for me to label Yanagihara's depiction of her queer characters as such. I am also within my rights to question why it was yet another depiction of gay suffering that was so acclaimed by straight audiences, particularly if it is so cliched.

As I said, my sentiment when finishing the book was in large part one of resignation, because as a queer person I have learned never to expect a happy ending for people like me. The conclusion of A Little Life did not surprise me, but it did disappoint me. I do know better than to hope that straight people will give me a happy ending; yet I still can't help but wonder why they so enjoy taking it away.

***

Note: I didn't have the chance to mention it in the body of this post, but Brandon Taylor at Lithub and Michelle Hart at Bookriot wrote far better essays on this subject than I could hope to produce. If you care at all about the issue of queer representation and how it applies to A Little Life, I highly recommend you read those as well as or even instead of this post.

A Book I Hated // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 11

Today is the eleventh day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book you hated".

This post might be considered cheating.

I'm not saying that I have consciously decided to cheat in writing it, but I feel that it could be seen in that light. The reason for this is that I have actually already written about the book I have chosen for today's prompt, in a rather passionate review I uploaded a little after I read it for the first time back in July 2019.

However, the fact that this book was the first to come to mind when I saw today's challenge, despite the fact that I read it over half a year ago, shows how deeply-embedded my hatred for this book has become, and thus how much it deserves its spot in today's blog post.

In case you haven't guessed by now, the book to which I am referring is none other than American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis.

I'm not going to give you the usual Goodreads summary for this one, because I think American Psycho's plot can be summed up in fewer words than that. In short, the book is about an insufferable New York yuppie who moonlights as an increasingly-unhinged serial killer (and torturer, and rapist, and animal abuser, and necrophile...).

Given that I already wrote about American Psycho in detail in the aforementioned book review, I'm going to keep this post a bit simpler. If you want to read more of my thoughts on the book after this, I recommend having a look at that review. In the meantime, I would like to present to you:

10 Things I Hate About American Psycho

1. It's gross (TW: description of an especially graphic scene)

Did I ask for a scene that describes, in horrific detail, a woman being eaten from the inside out by a starving, live rat, which was forced inside her by the main character? No. Have I gained anything from this experience? No. No, I have not.

2. It's boring

You would think such a sensational book, even if it were otherwise terrible, would at least keep you reading through a sort of morbid fascination, right? Well, you would be wrong. Ellis's knack for producing boredom significantly outpaces his talent for shock, it would seem.

3. It's repetitive

Possibly the main culprit of its boringness, the book repeats the same events again and again ad nauseum: yuppy business, murder, rape, general violence, random interlude about music or physical objects, repeat. On and on and on.

4. It's too long

Almost 400 pages. There's no reason on this earth why this book had to be that long.

5. It's creepy

So this is something I just learnt about today, but apparently one of the characters in the book was originally created by Ellis's author friend, who in turn based this character on his ex-girlfriend. That wouldn't be so bad, perhaps, if it weren't for the fact that this character more or less solely exists in the novel to be physically abused and slut-shamed by Bateman and his social circle, respectively. Creepy.

6. It's got too much hate crime in it

Yes, yes, I am very familiar with the argument that Ellis wasn't actually advocating for hate crime or whatever and it was all just satire etc., etc., but really. How much violence do we need to see directed towards marginalised communities before it stops making a statement and starts becoming trauma porn? 

7. It's misogynistic

Even putting aside the supposedly satirical, repeated violence against women in this novel, am I really meant to defend a novel in which every woman is nothing more than a flat character there to be insulted or abused by the men in the book?

8. It's overrated

Perhaps this one means I'm cheating again, having already written about an overrated book only a few days ago, but I stand by this. I don't think that I would hate American Psycho nearly as much if it wasn't so acclaimed, after all. God knows what everyone sees in it.

9. It's nothing new

Book by a privileged white man, about privileged white men? Check. Gratuitous violence against marginalised people? Check. Surface-level critique of American consumerism (e.g. "money can't make you happy")? Check. Stick all of the above in a hardback and label it "satire" in an attempt to stop anyone from being able to criticise you? Check check. It's nothing that hasn't been done before, or better.

10. It hasn't got enough redeeming qualities to make up for any of the above

Perhaps I could forgive numbers 1-9 if the novel had something - anything - to offer as recompense for enduring these 400 pages of mind-numbingly boring and disturbing violence. Sadly, it does not.

***

I think hate is a rather strong word and not one I'd often use to describe my feelings about a piece of media. I'd even hesitate to use it for American Psycho, but then I clearly feel strongly enough about it that perhaps that term would most accurately describe my sentiments.

Also, I have the comments turned on for this post, so I would like to say that while I welcome people giving me their opinions on this book, even if they are in contrast to my own, please do not do as one man on twitter did and pop up just to tell me that "it's satire". I am well aware it was intended as such, so please find something more useful to say if you feel the need to say anything at all.

My Top 5 Albums of 2019

Just as I did last week, I'm taking this weekend off from the 30-day book challenge, as I feel I need the time to rest and get a head start on the posts for next week. However, I still wanted to write a little something less demanding for this blog today.

So as a break from the more serious, book-related posts, today we're going to do something completely different: a list of my favourite musical albums released in 2019. Although I've posted plenty of lists on blogs before, I don't normally write much about music, as I feel it's not a topic I know much about - unless of course I'm feeling angry about Taylor Swift, which prompted me to write my last music-based list post. So this post will just be my favourite albums of the last decade, not necessarily the ones I think are objectively the best (if there even is such a thing). It's also a bit late in the month to be doing an annual roundup, but ignore that. As someone once famously said, it's my blog and I'll post what I want to.

Now, let's get into the list. I've put these in ascending order, so number one is my ultimate favourite album of the year.

Top 5 Albums of 2019

5. Clarity - Kim Petras

I mentioned Kim Petras briefly in my aforementioned previous music post, and I stand by my cringy-but-true statement that "she makes absolute bops". There are plenty of fun, danceable tracks on this album, as you would expect from such a reliably catchy artist, like "Clarity" and "Got My Number". On the other hand, songs like "Icy" and "Personal Hell" look at the emotional vulnerability that can exist underneath a cool façade. Come for the infectious rhythms, stay for the feelings.

Favourite song: "Personal Hell"

4. Cuz I Love You - Lizzo

This album contains several of Lizzo's recent hits, including "Juice" and "Truth Hurts" - both memorable tracks, beloved for their messages of self-love and positivity. Yet songs like "Crybaby" and "Exactly How I Feel (ft. Gucci Mane)" don't shy away from the fact that even Lizzo has her bad days. Still, she always comes back to her signature theme of acceptance and confidence, making this one of my favourite feel-good albums. 

Favourite song: "Jerome"

3. Love + Fear  - MARINA

Love + Fear marks MARINA's return to music after a three year hiatus that started in 2016, after the release of her last album Froot. She might be performing under a different name now (the artist was previously known as Marina and the Diamonds), and the scope of her music has at times broadened to include the whole of humanity (as in "To Be Human"), but her music is as unique and deeply-felt as ever.

Favourite song: "You"

2. Norman Fucking Rockwell! - Lana Del Rey

This has been one of Lana Del Rey's most critically-acclaimed albums to date, and for good reason. It's got the classic glamour-coated melancholy we know and love, this time presented in a little over an hour's worth of musically-gorgeous songs with some truly brilliant lyrics.

Favourite song: "Fuck it I love you"

1. Dedicated - Carly Rae Jepsen

If the only Carly Rae Jepsen song you know of is still "Call Me Maybe", you need to catch up. Since the release of her album Emotion in 2015, she's been consistently putting out songs that perfectly mix contemporary and retro pop into a combination that I honestly believe marks the zenith of modern music. I thought Emotion couldn't possibly be topped, but Dedicated proved me wrong.

Favourite song: "Want You in My Room"

So, those were my favourite albums of 2019. There are two conclusions to be drawn from this exercise: 1. Even if 2019 was not a good year for the general state of the world, it was great for music; and 2. I love pop music. If you'd like to listen to these albums for yourself, an easy way to do so is to listen to the Spotify playlist I created that contains all five of them in one easy-to-listen-to collection. See the bottom of this post for the link.

Finally, If anyone reading this wants to share their favourite album(s) of 2019 with me, I'd be very interested to hear them. You can let me know either by commenting here or by messaging me directly, as I know most of you who read this have a way of getting in touch with me personally. 

Have a good weekend, everyone!

A Book That Reminds Me of Home // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 10

Today is the tenth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book that reminds you of home".

I feel that I've shot myself in the foot a bit here in terms of blog post topics.

As you can see from the intro above, today's challenge is "a book that reminds you of home". In order to choose a book for this prompt, I decided to reflect a little on what "home" means to me. After a bit of thought, I decided that home for me means where my family is. Unfortunately, I've already talked about my family, in my blog post about My Family and Other Animals. Clearly, I did not think this through.

I say all that to say, if this post seems slightly repetitive or similar to Day 8 of this blog challenge, please forgive me. It's been a long week.

Now, without any more excuses, here is my choice for today's challenge: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The Harry Potter books have been a significant part of my family's life since the first book came out, when it was initially only my mum and my brother who read the books. As the years went by, most of us began to get hooked on the series as well. At the same time, we all kept up with the release of the new films, religiously going to see each one at the cinema when it came out. Several of us even bought copies of The Cursed Child simultaneously when that (awful) script was published. For many years, it was possibly second only to Star Trek in terms of the media which we were most unanimously fans of.

In part because of its association with my family and my childhood, the Harry Potter books and films have long been a source of comfort and nostalgia for me. This isn't solely owed to my family, however. Part of the reason the HP world is so reassuringly familiar is due to the stories itself, which I know so well by now that coming back to these stories is, in some ways, like returning to a family home. I know the place, the people, the history of what has happened here, and I supposedly know what to expect when I revisit it. Supposedly.

There is a saying, that you can't go home again. It's like that quote about how no man steps in the same river twice, as by the time he takes another step both he and the river are changed. Home is much the same. As fondly as we might remember it from our childhood, when we return to it older and wiser, it may be difficult to see in the same light. I find that this has very much happened to me with the Harry Potter series, and it is primarily due to one person: J. K. Rowling herself.

To be completely frank, I was initially hesitant about writing this post. There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Rowling lately, to the point that many people (myself included) became wary of giving any more support - financial or otherwise - to the Harry Potter franchise.

If you are unaware of what's been going on with J. K. Rowling, basically it's this: she's a transphobe. If you want more detail than that, Aja Romano and Katlyn Burns have both written excellent articles on the subject, explaining what happened and why people are angry. Romano's article particularly focuses on the timeline of Rowling's self-embarrassment and the response of HP fans to it, while Burns' piece puts Rowling's transphobia in the broader context of rising TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) ideology in the UK. I would recommend reading both if you have the time.

While this recent event was definitely the most egregious of Rowling's gaffes, it was by no means the first. There has been suspicion building over her possibly being transphobic for a while now, as the articles mentioned above explain. On top of that, people have been critical of Rowling for a number of other reasons, from her endless retconning of the source material (in case you haven't kept up, Dumbledore is gay and also wizards and witches used to soil themselves in public) to racism that apparently cropped up in the original books, Pottermore, and the new films. For the HP fandom, Rowling has become increasingly like an out-of-touch old relative who either doesn't know or doesn't care how offensive they keep being. In Rowling's case, I imagine it's a bit of both.

Now, I don't have the time nor the inclination to get into a debate over "separating the art from the artist" and whether or not we can continue to love Harry Potter while avoiding supporting a harmfully transphobic celebrity. I simply felt that I couldn't write this post without addressing the "Rowling issue". Yet in some ways, including this in a post about a book that reminds me of home makes perfect sense. Like I said earlier, returning to media that we loved as children isn't always easy. We see things with new eyes, and what we see isn't always as pure as we remembered. This is something that we all have to deal with in returning to those things we remember fondly, be they books, homes, or even people. Whether or not those things can continue to hold the same place in our heart afterwards is something only we can decide.

***

I would like to end this post by sharing a video on J. K. Rowling by one of my favourite YouTubers. Even if you're not sure how to approach the Harry Potter books in light of this controversy, one thing we can always do is support trans creators, like the incredibly talented Kat Blaque.

A Book I Thought I Wouldn't Like But Ended Up Loving // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 9

Today is the ninth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book you thought you wouldn't like but ended up loving".

When I first went to university to study English literature (and history too, but that's less relevant here), one of my biggest fears was that seriously researching and analysing texts would cause me to eventually lose my long-held enthusiasm for reading. My fear was so great that I ended up rambling about this for a solid minute to a woman I'd never met before during an activity that was part of a personal development seminar. I must have appeared very worked up about it, because said woman took me aside afterwards and sincerely asked me if I was okay, with the same look of concern as if I'd gone on about my uncontrollable urge to eat pencil lead for 60 seconds.

Thankfully, for both myself and that woman, I left university with an even greater passion for literature than the one I initially went in with. This is not to say that my concerns had been completely unfounded, however. One of my worries about studying English at university level was that I'd be forced to read books I didn't enjoy, an experience that I know has put many a blossoming book-lover off reading in school. Although it didn't destroy my love for reading, I did have to study several books at university that I wasn't overly keen on. One of those books was Image, Music, Text by Roland Barthes, and it is relevant to my choice of book for today's prompt.

Image, Music, Text is not the book I chose for the challenge; that would be A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes, the same author. However, Image, Music, Text is the reason I didn't think I'd like A Lover's Discourse - and, since this post is about a book I thought I wouldn't like but ended up loving, I feel the "thought I wouldn't like" part is worth as much attention as the "ended up loving" bit.

So, let me tell you a little bit about Image, Music, Text. It's a collection of essays by Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist. While I was not a fan of Barthes - at least not during my first year of university - myself and other students ended up reading a fair amount of his work for two reasons: because he's an incredibly influential theorist, and because one of our lecturers was borderline obsessed with him.

The first Barthes text I was exposed to was an excerpt from Image, Music, Text in which the author attempted to break down the way sentences in a language function to the point that they were basically as small and as easy to understand as atoms. At least, I think that's what it was about. To be honest with you, I found it so confusing as to be almost unintelligible. I didn't understand what Barthes was getting at and, even worse, I didn't understand why he was trying to get at it. I felt that I was being exposed to the sort of needlessly complex analysis that everyone stereotypes the literature theory world as producing. I decided then that I didn't like Image, Music, Text and I didn't like Roland Barthes, and that (I thought) was the end of it.

Then, a year or so later, I was assigned A Lover's Discourse. This reading was chosen by the same lecturer who gave us Image, Music, Text some semesters before, as he evidently had a Barthes theory for every occasion. Being the devoted student that I was, I begrudgingly got myself a copy despite my lack of enthusiasm and settled down to be bored and confused by this supposed giant of literary analysis. Then the unexpected happened: I loved it.

Let me give you a quick overview of what A Lover's Discourse is about, via Goodreads:

The language we use when we are in love is not a language we speak, for it is addressed to ourselves and to our imaginary beloved. It is a language of solitude, of mythology, of what Barthes calls an 'image repertoire'.

This book revives - beyond the psychological or clinical enterprises which have characterised such researches in our culture - the notion of the amorous subject. It will be enjoyed and understood by two groups of readers: those who have been in love (or think they have, which is the same thing), and those who have never been in love (or think they have not, which is the same thing). This book might be considered, in its restless search for authorities and examples, which range from Nietzsche to Zen, from Ruysbroek to Debussy, an encyclopaedia of that affirmative discourse which is the lover's.

At first this all sounds like philosophical jargon, but this book to me ranks among the very best works of literary theory I have read. Among its other great qualities, one of the things I love most about it is its relatability. Perhaps this is too simplistic of a compliment to give a book by such an acclaimed theorist, but I mean it entirely positively.

I disliked Image, Music, Text because I felt it covered issues I didn't care about in a way I didn't understand. A Lover's Discourse, on the other hand, addresses a topic that I care about deeply both in literature and in real life, and it does so in a way that made sense not only intellectually but also viscerally. In A Lover's Discourse, Barthes puts words to feelings that I hadn't previously known how to articulate - and if that isn't one of the purposes of writing, I don't know what is.

So perhaps the reason I much preferred A Lover's Discourse to Image, Music, Text is simply because of the subject matter. Perhaps it was the time in which I encountered it; you'd be surprised what a year of studying literary theory can do for your understanding of critical texts. It's possible that if I were to read Image, Music, Text now I would enjoy it as much as I did A Lover's Discourse - although I'm not sure that's likely. Lastly, perhaps the moral of this story is simply not to judge an author by only one of their works. If you do, you might be missing out on a book you end up loving, as I nearly did with A Lover's Discourse.

Most Overrated Book // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 8

Today is the eighth day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "most overrated book".

I think you can tell a lot about a person by the books they consider overrated. Knowing what books someone likes and hates is revealing too, of course, but branding a book "overrated" has so many more layers. For one, to think a book is overrated means you have to think it is generally rated highly in the first place. This can give us insight into the sort of literary scene the person engages in. For example, I couldn't tell you what fantasy books are overrated; I simply don't know which ones are considered good or bad, since I am not at all involved with the fantasy book community. Secondly, do they consider a book that's highly-rated to be one that's critically-acclaimed, commercially-popular, or both? Finally, why do they think the book is overrated? This can be the most revealing question, in that it shows what traits they believe are overvalued in books, and thus which traits they themselves deem insufficiently appealing. Asking someone what books they think are overrated reveals how they perceive the views of society; in the process, it reveals how they believe themselves to be separate from them. Their choice of book is always as much a reflection on them as it is on the book itself.

With all that said, my choice for this challenge is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. 

When I say that Fahrenheit 451 is overrated, I mean that it is given too much praise within the realm of dystopian fiction. In order to understand my argument for this, you will need to have some idea of the novel's plot. Here is your usual Goodreads summary, as is becoming the custom here on Extra Libris:

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. 

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.  

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

Say what you like about Fahrenheit 451 - and I fully intend to - but you can't deny it has an alluring concept. The idea of book-burning is a striking image and so loaded with meaning that an author has to exert little to no effort to make it an effective symbol. That said, if the burning of books is a subject that comes with great depth to begin with, my complaint about Fahrenheit 451 is that it fails to go any deeper. This is my main issue with the novel: it is, in short, a shallow book.

This is a novel that reveres literature unconditionally. It presents the burning of books and the symbolic destruction of knowledge as being a great loss, with the recovery of this knowledge presented as perhaps the only possible remedy for the dystopian society it's set in. However, what exactly makes these books so valuable is not really addressed. Books are valuable because they are books, the novel seems to say. Furthermore, the particular books presented as valuable are generally the "greats" of the western canon, predominately those written by white male authors - the only exception to this that I can recall appearing in the novel is the Bible, so make of that what you will. The only clear indication of their value is typically presented in opposition to the vices of Bradbury's dystopia, where people stare at television screens all day and thus are depicted as not engaging in anything intellectually meaningful. The idea of "books good, censorship bad" as a message is communicated effectively enough simply in the image of book burning, so the fact that Bradbury fails to go beyond the basics of this in a full-length novel  (except to say that television is bad too) is quite remarkable.

I feel it is worth mentioning here, for those of you who believe in the importance of the author's opinion on their work, that Bradbury has infamously appeared to change his mind several times over the years with regard to the message of Fahrenheit 451. A few years after it was first published in 1953, Bradbury said in a radio interview that it was written as a response to McCarthyism and censorship. Decades later, Bradbury began to claim that this was not the case and that the book was actually meant to be a commentary on mass media and how television is bad for people intellectually. Before that, in his 1979 coda to the book, Bradbury directed his ire at minorities and their apparently censorial impact on literature, writing:

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse.

Later, in a 1994 interview, Bradbury had the following exchange with Anne Gasior:

Question: How does the story of Fahrenheit 451 stand up in 1994?

R.B.: It works even better because we have political correctness now. Political correctness is the real enemy these days. The black groups want to control our thinking and you can’t say certain things. The homosexual groups don’t want you to criticize them. It’s thought control and freedom of speech control.  

Perhaps this evident dislike of minority groups goes some way towards explaining why Fahrenheit 451 only ever glorifies the work of white, mostly straight, male writers. Perhaps it is also a testament to how prophetic Bradbury can be, as so many of his fans claim he is. After all, he would most likely consider me a member of "the homosexual groups", and here I am predictably attacking his book.

Let us return to the issue of Bradbury's flip-flopping over the true meaning of his novel. One could charitably say that so many meanings can be derived from Fahrenheit 451 because it is a book that addresses many themes and can be applied to many situations. Less kindly, one might say that Fahrenheit 451 is such a thematically and rhetorically weak book that you can slap its generic message on any currently-relevant political issue and claim that this is what it's been about all along. Take your pick.

Another thing that irks me about Fahrenheit 451 is what I see as its lack of compassion. It connects books and reading to a sense of superiority. Books are good and if you read them, you too are good. Television is bad, and if you watch it you are a mindless drone. Classic books are great because they are great, and if you disagree then you're advocating for censorship. It's simplistic and shallow, but it gives people a great sense of validation if they can agree with the author. You, the reader, are not like the rest of society, the people who gawk at televisions and don't think. You are a reader, and that makes you better (why, we do not know).

I can already see that some people may have looked at my quotes from Bradbury on the subject of minorities and felt that dredging these up was unfair. I would like to say that I did not bring these up to slam Bradbury as a homophobe, a racist, or even just a generally insensitive person (though he may have been that as well). Rather, I think these comments go to the heart of Fahrenheit 451's message and why I dislike it so much.

Fahrenheit 451 appeals to people who want to see themselves as radicals despite mentally adhering to the status quo. Just as the heroic characters in the book see themselves as revolutionary for deifying authors who have been widely acclaimed critically and commercially for decades, Bradbury considers himself to be speaking truth to power by damning the exact marginalised groups which have been vilified by wider society for centuries. The fact that those organisations most famous for book burning also hated these exact same minority groups seems not to have occurred to Bradbury.

In order to end on a slightly positive note, I will say this: at the time that it was created in the era of McCarthyism, Fahrenheit 451 may well have provided an interesting, fresh perspective. Yet this does not change the fact that it is lacking in depth, empathy, or any great relevance today besides perhaps giving an idea of the concerns of the 1950s. The fact that it could be considered by anyone to rank among timeless works of great dystopian literature is evidence, to me, that it is truly overrated.

A Book That Makes Me Laugh // 30-Day Book Challenge - Day 7

Today is the seventh day of the 30-day book challenge, in which I will be writing about a different book or book series every day for 30 days, with each book chosen according to the daily prompt. Today's prompt is: "a book that makes you laugh".

I haven't always considered myself someone that was particularly close to their family. Not that I felt distant from them, just that I thought my relationship with my family was rather average in that respect. It's only been as I've got older, left home, and spoken to other people about their relationships with their families that I've come to realise I am comparatively rather close to mine.

Perhaps this is why, since going to university and moving away from my family, I've become increasingly fond of media which depicts family relationships. My current obsession in this vein is Bob's Burgers, in which the main family strikes what I believe to be a perfect balance between loving and charmingly eccentric. Another fictional family which manages to be sweet (without being twee) and funny (without being too dysfunctional) is the Durrell family, of My Family and Other Animals fame.

Nothing makes me happier than a well-executed, relatable family comedy (that is, a comedy focusing on a family). If Bob's Burgers marks the pinnacle of this sub-genre in television, then My Family and Other Animals is its potential literary counterpart. This is why I have picked this book as my choice for today's prompt, "a book that makes you laugh".

As far as I'm aware, My Family and Other Animals is quite a famous book. It was, after all, written about a famous family. The author, Gerald Durrell was a well-known naturalist and conservationist. Likewise, his brother Lawrence Durrell was a celebrated writer. As for the rest of the family, they might perhaps be less well-known if it weren't for the existence of Gerald Durrell's memoirs of their time spent in Corfu, of which My Family and Other Animals is the first in a series.

In case I'm wrong and this book is not quite iconic enough for you to have a proper outline of the plot (or perhaps you've just forgotten), here is a summary from Goodreads:

'What we all need,' said Larry, 'is sunshine...a country where we can grow.' ' 

Yes, dear, that would be nice,' agreed Mother, not really listening.  

'I had a letter from George this morning - he says Corfu's wonderful. Why don't we pack up and go to Greece?' 

'Very well, dear, if you like,' said Mother unguardedly.  

Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, reluctantly, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna - among them scorpions, geckos, toads, bats and butterflies.

In short: slightly peculiar British family moves into a house in Corfu, where they encounter a range of animals and insects. Naturally, chaos and hilarity ensue.

The best thing about this book, to me, is the characters. Each member of the Durrell family is unique, with their own quirks that range from endearing to infuriating depending on the chapter. I'm not sure how accurate Gerald Durrell's depiction of his family is in comparison to real life, and to be quite frank I don't really care. He realistically portrays the mixture of love, irritation, and amusement that exists in all the funniest families, so whether it is true-to-life beyond that doesn't particularly concern me.

Whether the depiction of the many non-human creatures in the book is accurate is another question entirely, and unfortunately not one I'm able to answer. I would assume that Durrell himself, being a man who spent his life working with animals, would try to represent them as factually as possible in his writing, but then I don't know enough to say. Either way, I got the sense when reading that this was a book written by someone who truly loves and is fascinated by animals. All creatures, from the family dog Roger to the female mantis living in Gerry's bedroom, are depicted with warmth and humour. For the most part, Durrell's love for the animal world is infectious.

Getting back to the comedic aspect of the book - which this post is meant to focus on - the funniest and most memorable scenes come in the interactions between the two aforementioned main camps of the My Family and Other Animals books: the family and the animals. There are a number of really amusing scenes in the book, which I won't go into in much detail as I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it yet. That said, if you ever do read it, keep an eye out for the scenes with the scorpions and those with the Magenpies (you'll know what that means when they make their appearance).

Finally, I'd like to end this post by mentioning the recent adaptation of the Corfu trilogy on BBC: The Durrells. Out of principle, I don't normally like to mention film adaptations of books when discussing the source material, lest anyone be under the illusion that watching the film is an appropriate substitute for actually reading the book. However, The Durrells is such a good TV series that I'm willing to make an exception for it. It has all the charm and laughter of the book, in addition to some brilliant acting by a great cast. In addition to the original book (which you really should read regardless), I would highly recommend the series. Hopefully, at least one of them will make you laugh as much as I did.