a contemplation on books

This January I read a total of five books, pretty good considering my goal for 2019 is twenty-five books. Most books where just ok reads, I don't think any book I read this month will make the cut for my favorites of the year, but we'll see. Links to Goodreads clicking on the title of the book.

READ

Fallen by Lauren Kate (★★★): I had read this book in the past but at the time I didn't know it was a series and didn't read the rest of it. I wanted to continue the series but I didn't remember literally anything from this book. So I had to re-read it. I think the first time I gave it four stars, but this time it didn't convince me that much, so I gave it only three. It is ok and a fun read, but nothing outstanding.

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson (★★★): You can read my full review of this book here. As I said, Truly Devious is very introductory and I didn't enjoy it for the most part, because I found it more slow-paced than what I expected. Anyway, the ending is great and it did surprise me. I'll probably be reading the second book soon.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (★★★★): You can read my favorite quotes of this book here. I really liked this book, it has some great insights into what was to be a female writer in the time of Woolf. I didn't give it five stars because I thought there was too much rambling in some parts like she was not making a point, she was just talking. Overall a great non-fiction book.

To make monsters out of girls by Amanda Lovelace (★★★★): You can read my review of this book here. This is the third book of Lovelace that I read and is one of my favorites. I highlighted about a third of the poems, and that just shows how much I liked this book.

Blind Prophet by Joseph Cillo Jr. (★★★): This is a comic book that is pretty short. I read it because it was free and I wanted to test how comics worked on my new Kindle Oasis. It was ok, a fun read, but I don't think I will be reading the next issues.

CURRENTLY READING

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman (24%): This is the most famous poetry book by Whitman. I got excited about poetry with Lovelace, and now I'm reading this to read a classic of poetry. So far I'm liking it, although there are lots of words that I don't know. Luckily Kindles have dictionaries!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K.Rowling (38%): This is a re-read of the book, and my first time reading it in English. It is always fun to come back to Hogwarts.

Death Note Vol. 1 (10%): I'm reading this because I loved the anime. The art is beautiful, but so far is almost exactly the same as the anime, so that is not so fun.

To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han (19%): I wanted to read this book since I was the Netflix movie. I'm currently listening to it on Audible, and the narration is great. I'm finding the book a bit boring though, mostly because I expected something else.

FEBRUARY TBR

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: I wanted to read this book since I was in high school, but I never came around to it. Now that I bought this beautiful copy, I definitely have to read it.

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas: I read and loved the first to books and I can't wait to read ACOFAS, but I haven't been able to go past the first few chapters. I know that when I get the hang of it I won't be able to put it down.

You by Caroline Kepnes: I bought this mainly because I wanted to watch the Netflix series, but of course, I have to read the book first. So here we are.

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Today I am going to show you what I have been reading these last few days. I can't read one book only, so I read several at the same time. These are the ones I've been reading.

TRULY DEVIOUS by MAUREEN JOHNSON

This book is supposed to be a YA thriller, or so I thought. There was some suspense at the beginning, but now it has almost none. It's about a group of kids going to some fancy private school, and it is describing thoroughly how they were welcomed, the classmates they had, how they are going to arrange their rooms, and so forth. I have read about 30% of the book and so far I'm finding it rather meh. I thought it would be a page-turner from the beginning but it really is not. I really hope it gets better.

SYNOPSIS

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. "A place" he said, "where learning is a game."

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym, Truly Devious. It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.

DEATH NOTE V.1 by TSUGUMI OHBA

This is a lend from my brother, who has (I think?) all volumes of the black edition. I watched the anime a while ago, and I loved it. I think I watched it from start to end in about two weeks or so. Considering I was in college at this time, I think that was pretty fast. That just shows how much I liked it. And now that my brother bought the mangas, I saw my chance to read them. I am just beginning to read it, but I am already liking it a lot. The art by Takeshi Obata is amazing, and it is really similar to the one seen in the anime. It easy and quick to read and the vocabulary isn't really complex. A must read for any fan of the anime!

SYNOPSIS

Light Yagami is an ace student with great prospects--and he’s bored out of his mind. But all that changes when he finds the Death Note, a notebook dropped by a rogue Shinigami death god. Any human whose name is written in the notebook dies, and now Light has vowed to use the power of the Death Note to rid the world of evil. Will Light's noble goal succeed, or will the Death Note turn him into the very thing he fights against?

A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN by SARAH J. MAAS

After finishing A Court of Mist and Fury, all I wanted was to read this book. I bought it on my Kindle about a week ago, and I have not been able to finish the first chapter. I just think the beginning is really slow-paced, and every time I pick up the book I get distracted by something else (mostly, other books). I really want to love this book, just like I loved ACOMAF and ACOTAR. But I have hope since I have read about 2% of the book.

SYNOPSIS

Feyre has returned to the Spring Court, determined to gather information on Tamlin's maneuverings and the invading king threatening to bring Prythian to its knees. But to do so she must play a deadly game of deceit-and one slip may spell doom not only for Feyre, but for her world as well.

As war bears down upon them all, Feyre must decide who to trust amongst the dazzling and lethal High Lords-and hunt for allies in unexpected places.

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A Room of One's Own is a book by Virginia Woolf, which is based on a series of lectures she gave at Cambridge University. The book mostly deals with was to be a female writer. Here I bring several quotes from the book that I found interesting.

ONE

"[...] a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction [...]"

"Fiction must stick to the facts, and the truer the facts the better the fiction — so we are told."

TWO

"If truth is not to be found on the shelves of the British Museum, where, I asked myself, picking up a notebook and a pencil, is truth?"

"Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possesing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of a man at twice its natural size."

"It was absurd to blame any class or any sex, as a whole. Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do."

THREE

"[...] fiction is like a spider-web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."

FOUR

"For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind a single voice."

FIVE

"But almost without exception they [women] are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen's day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex."

"[...] in our belief that, however clever we may be on top, we are very serious, very profound and very humane underneath."

"[...] she wrote as a woman, but has a woman who has forgotten that she is a woman, so that her pages were full of that curious sexual quality which comes only when sex is unconscious of itself."

SIX

"So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say."

"But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh."

★★★★

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.

This post might contain minor spoilers.

Mrs. Dalloway is a novel published in 1925 by Virginia Woolf. It is the story of a woman who will host a party, and the preparations she makes for such party. Although the topic might seem a bit frivolous at first, especially for a post-war novel, it is absolutely the opposite. Woolf' provides a rich insight into the characters thoughts, which gives us the readers an opportunity to explore the mind of Clarissa and Septimus, the main characters. Thanks to this insight, we can establish what has been called by other people the 'mind time' of the characters, meaning, how the characters perceive time. It is really interesting seeing throughout the novel how this mind times does not always coincide with the time that the clock marks. Here is important to remark that the novel elapses in only one day. It is obviously not a normal day in the life of Clarissa Dalloway, given the ending of such day, but it does start as a normal one. We have a few representations of how time works in the characters' minds, but the clearest example can be found in the character of Septimus Warren Smith.

Septimus is a character that suffers from shell shock, a concept we nowadays call PTSD. He was in the WWI, where he developed his mental illness. Due to this illness, he suffers hallucinations. For example, he sees his friend Evans, who is dead, appear multiple times. This is clearly related to the concept of time in the novel. Septimus is trapped in the past because he can not follow the time of the clock and live according to it, he keeps reviving old memories as if they were taking place in the present. Thus, the 'mind time' of Septimus is no the same as the time marked by the Big Ben.

Another example of how the 'mind time' is not always related to the clock time in the novel is the character of Clarissa Dalloway herself. Clarissa is often remembering and being nostalgic about the past and her younger years. She often finds herself being melancholic about the past and wondering what might have happened if she had done things differently. Melancholia is a key word here because if we analyze Clarissa under the light of Freud's concept of melancholia, we find that Clarissa probably is suffering it. Melancholia is pathological and unlike mourning, it might not always answer to an event that just happened in the life of the person, for example, the death of a close member of their family. Here we see that Clarissa's uncertainty about her marriage does not respond to something specific that makes her unhappy, but it is just this feeling of being unsure about her decision of marrying Mr. Dalloway. If the book took place just after their marriage, this might make sense, but after so much time has passed it just seems like she is suffering from melancholia. Melancholia is clearly related to the concept of time since he or she who suffers it is trapped in the past and can not let it go.

Therefore, we can see that Septimus and Clarissa have their own 'mind times' that are not the same as the time that the Big Ben marks. There are more examples in the novel of this, but I think these are the two most clear and relevant.

Have you read Mrs. Dalloway? What did you think of the concept of time?

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