happy birthday, thamiris

Very happy birthday, thamiris!!

May the smut flow freely, the petit bourgeois (aka small villeans) frolic galore and the fic juices never dry up. And all that for the entire next 365 days!

:-)

hm

I never seem to write in my LJ these days.

Well, 'never' is possibly a slight exaggeration.

I think I'm disappointed with the void my narratological analysis fell into. Alas, 'twas the same with my Bollywood mania so perhaps I must now hoof it around LJ-land and find me a new community. Except I fear I'm a member of one. Waah.

Fic ideas swirl in head but I never seem to write them down in my notebook anymore or type them up. Wrote 7 pages of Christopher Lee the other day but then got bored and just left it sitting round in a file.

I am, however, completely and totally in love with David Mitchell whose babies I will surely have one of these days. He wrote Ghostwritten (*falls over with love*) and Number 9 Dream and his most recent one Cloud Atlas which is just mindblowingly, mesmerisingly good. At one point I was so immersed I forgot that I had ever read another novel ever. I am just stunned by his breadth, daringness, madness, brilliant plot intricacy, compassion, ability to crawl into characters' heads and create them so that I loved them within paragraphs, create whole worlds along with them and most astoundingly and impressively, create such believably, compelling voices for them. It's making me rethink the whole 'voice' thing. And it's a twist on Italo Calvino's When on a winter's night a traveller, too (and that latter is one of my top five novels 'of all time'). *worships at David Mitchell's feet*

T'h asked me what was so great about Cloud Atlas. I said, 'It's because he writes about the soul.' And that is what I ultimately believe it all boils down to. For me, that's the difference between a fantastic and a very good book and a truly great book: the very good have style and plot and character and voice but the truly great speak to and about the soul, about life, death and love. Because what else matters, in the end? And only literature can deliver that, and that's why I love reading.

Well, no, *backpedals*, because I also love reading a whole lot of other books that aren't about the soul necessarily but I love the potential of literature to be about the soul.

*takes deep breath*

badger

monkey?

where is you?

frivolous question

So, for your own personal uses, which do you prefer?

( Cut or uncut? )