Properly Now, All Together

I am now officially on holiday. No lectures to attend, poems to decipher or allusions to pick out. It feels glorious! Because I postponed everyone 'til after exams, I juggle appointments and do it badly. Colour-coding my filofax doesn't help when the plans are jumbled as well. What's happened since I last updated?

Was dragged to a concert with the Boys of Silver (not my translation! 'Sølvguttene' in Norwegian, literary the silver boys). Met my parents downtown to have dinner, and we ended up in Stiansen's basement restaurant. They're changing the concept a bit: the chairs were better, the lighting less harsh, the food as good as ever. But five courses was a bit much when I'd had lunch not long before. It was only half the choir, Father and I spent half the recital poking each other to stay awake or making bad jokes. But it was a beautiful overdose of holiday cheer.

My chai lattes aren't very good, all the ingredients are there, but they never turn magical.

One of my exams I never got to take at all - failed to turn in the assignment in New York –, the other two didn't go as badly as I feared. For Renaissance literature I wrote about a Herbert poem, with the text, and invented Christian symbols. For Fiction and Film I compared Mrs Dalloway to The Hours, ranted about adaptations, name-dropped theorists, and concluded that bad adaptations are not only bad cinema, but an affront to the original novel. If my lofty ideas do not get me an undeserved C I don't know what will.

I plan to spend the holidays reading, re-acquainting myself with French and trying to piece together a few Russian texts. I'm so far gone I find Russian beautiful. And I'm having gingerbread dough for lunch with Katrine.

Tried reading Roth's The Human Stain, but could not get past page 213. I hate the narration, the shifts in perspective, the endless referring of present events in a ridiculous past-tense mess. There is a handful of actual dialogues in the half I read, the rest is half-repeated by either Zuckerman or Silk. It's almost as bad as Pears' The Portrait, or Theroux's The Blinding Light. I was told on twitter that I should read Roth for the stories, not the writing. But I can't divorce the story from the writing. Should I try anything else by Roth, or will I hate the rest as well?


P.S. This turned out completely random. It's written over the course of today, in-between seeing friends, watching Boardwalk Empire and eating.

Properly Now, All Together

I am now officially on holiday. No lectures to attend, poems to decipher or allusions to pick out. It feels glorious! Because I postponed everyone 'til after exams, I juggle appointments and do it badly. Colour-coding my filofax doesn't help when the plans are jumbled as well. What's happened since I last updated?

Was dragged to a concert with the Boys of Silver (not my translation! 'Sølvguttene' in Norwegian, literary the silver boys). Met my parents downtown to have dinner, and we ended up in Stiansen's basement restaurant. They're changing the concept a bit: the chairs were better, the lighting less harsh, the food as good as ever. But five courses was a bit much when I'd had lunch not long before. It was only half the choir, Father and I spent half the recital poking each other to stay awake or making bad jokes. But it was a beautiful overdose of holiday cheer.

My chai lattes aren't very good, all the ingredients are there, but they never turn magical.

One of my exams I never got to take at all - failed to turn in the assignment in New York –, the other two didn't go as badly as I feared. For Renaissance literature I wrote about a Herbert poem, with the text, and invented Christian symbols. For Fiction and Film I compared Mrs Dalloway to The Hours, ranted about adaptations, name-dropped theorists, and concluded that bad adaptations are not only bad cinema, but an affront to the original novel. If my lofty ideas do not get me an undeserved C I don't know what will.

I plan to spend the holidays reading, re-acquainting myself with French and trying to piece together a few Russian texts. I'm so far gone I find Russian beautiful. And I'm having gingerbread dough for lunch with Katrine.

Tried reading Roth's The Human Stain, but could not get past page 213. I hate the narration, the shifts in perspective, the endless referring of present events in a ridiculous past-tense mess. There is a handful of actual dialogues in the half I read, the rest is half-repeated by either Zuckerman or Silk. It's almost as bad as Pears' The Portrait, or Theroux's The Blinding Light. I was told on twitter that I should read Roth for the stories, not the writing. But I can't divorce the story from the writing. Should I try anything else by Roth, or will I hate the rest as well?


P.S. This turned out completely random. It's written over the course of today, in-between seeing friends, watching Boardwalk Empire and eating.