slip inside the eye of your mind
Dec. 5th, 2007 03:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ink_splotchMy renaissance literature presentation is done! Which means, baring the actual presentation tomorrow, all my work for this term is done! Man, all I want to do is just curl up against Gemma and sleep until, like, Friday, but real life and going to dinner at Ros's tonight, so. Can't. Still. Want.
Remember The Book Thief? I don't know if I made it clear at the time, but reading it was such an experience. Nick Hornby talks about how some books are just *you*, even if they're not about your experiences, or emotions, or anything like that - you just recognize them, somehow, like they were written for you. And that's how I feel about The Book Thief, perhaps more than any other book I've ever read. But if The Book Thief and I connect on a very emotional, very instinctive level, then The Book of Lost Things and I are all about the English Student in me. Ever since I finished it, I can't stop thinking about it - not because it resonated emotionally with me, perhaps, and definitely not because of the prose - it was at times distinctly awkward and clumsy - but because of the use of folk tales and superstitions surrounding books and the physcological angle matching up with that of folk tales and meta-storytelling and its treatment of adolescent sexuality and gender, and the ideas of crossing worlds and the use of symbols and man. I love this book, and it's not even that good, but it is fascinating and it *works* for me on a academic level like nothing I've read for a while has.
The only real problem is that now I want to start doing background reading for it, because if at all possible this is my thesis: folk tales and storytelling in The Book of Lost Things. I just want to hole myself up with Villy Sørensen and my copy of Grimm's Fairytales and just work it all out in my head. GAH!
But, of course, I can't. Because I still haven't memorized all my Old English verb and adjective conjugations and that exams is only two months away (maybe less, HELP!).
Remember The Book Thief? I don't know if I made it clear at the time, but reading it was such an experience. Nick Hornby talks about how some books are just *you*, even if they're not about your experiences, or emotions, or anything like that - you just recognize them, somehow, like they were written for you. And that's how I feel about The Book Thief, perhaps more than any other book I've ever read. But if The Book Thief and I connect on a very emotional, very instinctive level, then The Book of Lost Things and I are all about the English Student in me. Ever since I finished it, I can't stop thinking about it - not because it resonated emotionally with me, perhaps, and definitely not because of the prose - it was at times distinctly awkward and clumsy - but because of the use of folk tales and superstitions surrounding books and the physcological angle matching up with that of folk tales and meta-storytelling and its treatment of adolescent sexuality and gender, and the ideas of crossing worlds and the use of symbols and man. I love this book, and it's not even that good, but it is fascinating and it *works* for me on a academic level like nothing I've read for a while has.
The only real problem is that now I want to start doing background reading for it, because if at all possible this is my thesis: folk tales and storytelling in The Book of Lost Things. I just want to hole myself up with Villy Sørensen and my copy of Grimm's Fairytales and just work it all out in my head. GAH!
But, of course, I can't. Because I still haven't memorized all my Old English verb and adjective conjugations and that exams is only two months away (maybe less, HELP!).
