on writing, reading and writing

When I started this blog I was going to write as often as I could (could I, really?), then I abandoned it for some time, then I started posting weird-looking "notes to self" in it, then I made myself (or was it an urge?) write something more or less coherent, and since then I have been posting a blog approximately once a month without even noticing, until now, that there is a certain consistency in my rare urges to write something in English that would be longer than a tweet.

This means that I can stop scolding myself for being a flake when it comes to blogging in English and let Eskimo Girl be, which is good news.

Another good news is that I have read about 15 books this year, and though this is not many, the number is rather impressive considering that last year there were only 7 books on my list, and that this year is not over yet.

The thing is I have been a bookworm since I learned to read and until maybe I was 19 or 20. That was the age when I suddenly felt disappointed in contemporary authors and too bored by classical literature to feel any enthusiasm about reading books.

So I read blogs most of the time or reread books that I almost knew by heart because I did not want to be let down by soppy endings, cheap metaphors and trivial ideas, not to mention awkward translations.

There were some exceptions though - some books that fascinated me and made me feel like I was discovering something. Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and - and this is pretty much it.

So I went on reading blogs and occasionally picking up some of the English classics I was supposed to read being an English major. Classics are so much more reliable than contemporary works - they can give you headaches, but they won't make you feel like you are being fed out of a trash bin.

So I went on chewing on classics until I decided to finally start reading Chaucer, mostly because I needed to prove to myself I was not an idiot and that the history of the English language - all those great vowel shifts and all - was not such a mystery to me as I thought it was.

It took me about 20 minutes to read the first page, where footnotes took about as much space as Chaucer's own text. I most surely felt like an idiot, but for the first time in many months I was an idiot who was eager to learn. Medieval English poetry was to me a world of its own on so many levels that I felt like I was learning to read again.

So now I am reading avidly again. I have become more critical and a bit academical, and I can read a single sentence several times to make sure I see how it is structured before I read the next one. I pick my books more carefully, and when attempting to put into words why I liked or hated a book I don't feel myself lost and restricted to associative thinking only. Instead, I start remembering literary devices I took notice of and things like structure, wording and punctuation - this may sound dull, but it's not. I trust my imagination and I know it won't suffer if I make a little dissection to find out what exactly it was that has stirred it.