A FAIRLY HONOURABLE DEFEAT

These past two weeks I've read:
Elizabeth Kostova - The historian
Tobias Wolff - Old school
Ben Elton - Chart throb
Iris Murdoch - A fairly honourable defeat
Ariel Levy - Female chauvinist pigs: women and the rise of raunch culture

I'm currently reading American wife by Curtis Sittenfeld.

I've bought these books:
John Steinbeck - The grapes of wrath, The winter of our discontent
Philip Hensher - The northern clemency
Louise Boije af Gennäs - Ingen mänska en ö

I've also been writing a bit more. Might post that later on. Will go and read some more of American wife now. See ya, wouldn't wanna be ya!

I have been thinking about posting some of my own writing here (obviously not the Franklin story though, as that is my ongoing project). But something else. Might do that tomorrow, need to get back to The historian by Elizabeth Kostova now.

Bought some new books:

Jeanette Winterson - Oranges are not the only fruit
George Hagen - Tom Bedlam
Chuck Palahniuk - Snuff
Ben Elton - Chart throb
Jackie Collins - Hollywood divorces

I bought the Jackie Collins book for my sister as a thank-you gift for taking care of me about a week ago (I got absolutely, 100 percent beyond OK drunk and she helped me out) but I'm thinking about reading it myself first. Could be funny, that book. Tawdry as hell. As for Palahniuk's book, I have no idea why I keep buying them because I never read them, I just put them on the shelf next to the others thinking I might read them someday. Which I probably will, but they're so fucking...pretentious maybe? Or not really or maybe they are. Anyway, I always get bored when I try to read something by Chuck Palahniuk and Snuff is so seedy! Sorta makes you want to take a shower (which is the exact same feeling I had when I read Trainspotting). Tom Bedlam seemed nice and my friend Karl-Oskar lost my copy of Chart throb (which I think is a hilarious book) when moving years ago and I finally bought another one. Funny thing though; if you google "Ben Elton is a cunt" you get 9,770 hits. How come I googled "Ben Elton is a cunt?" Oh, I don't have to explain myself, do I?

"And hang about - what grandchildren? I was already 26, and there wasn't even a hint of a grandchild in the pipeline! Who was I going to tell all my stories to when I was old? Who was I going to impress with my tales of short uneventful walks to PC World and me worrying that there wasn't going to be the right kind of printer cartridge in stock, but it being all right because in the end there actually was?"

- Yes Man, Danny Wallace

"As I walk along, I almost desire some kind of violence: to live, to die, just for the experience of it. I'm so hyped up suddenly that I want to fuck to world, or be fucked by it. Yes, I want to be penetrated by the shrapnel of a million explosions. I want to see my own blood. I want to die with everyone: the ultimate bonding experience; the flash at the end of the world. Me becoming you; you becoming we; we becoming forever. A collapsing wavefunction of violence. On days like this I think about being cursed and all I can think is Now, now, now. I want that missing page."

- The End of Mr. Y, Scarlett Thomas

"C'EST LA VIE" SAY THE OLD FOLKS, IT GOES TO SHOW YOU NEVER CAN TELL

"I suppose everyone has his/her Open Sesame, his/her Abracadabra or Presto Chango, the arbitrary word, event or unforeseen signal that knocks a person down, causes him/her to behave, either permanently or for the short term, out of the blue, contrary to expectation, from nowhere."

"The most poetic of endings to love affairs isn't apology, excuse, extensive investigation into What Went Wrong - the St. Bernard of options, droopy-eyed and slobbery - but stately silence."

"She gave one of those housewife commercial sighs (kid, carpet stain) and waved away an invisible fly."