Read The catcher in the rye by J.D. Salinger and I really liked it. I read it the first time when I was 14, but it just didn't register. I remember a couple years back though, a friend of mine told me that she thought I resembled Holden Caulfield. "I just imagine that you go on about things the same way he does", she said. And I was like "What, do I seem that close to a having a nervous breakdown?" Haha. I don't know though. Perhaps when I was younger I was a bit like him, but not now.
Anyway, I'm re-reading Alex Garland's The beach. Look, I know I go on and on about that book in this blog, but I just can't get over it. I'm so bad at describing why I like books (so glad I'm gonna be studying English literature for 3 years), but I'll try. It's the way it's written, that somewhat staccato-ish flow, the use of war terms, the way you just recognize yourself in Richard, the way Garland depicts his slow descent into madness, and the way he describes how easily your ideas of what is right and what is wrong can change. And the dreams/visions Richard has of meeting Daffy. Oh, I don't know. I really am horrible at describing books, and I just can't do The beach justice; I can't praise it enough. I know a lot of people have seen the movie and thought it sucked (which I didn't but it wasn't very good either) but they changed things around too much (I mean, Richard's American in the movie for Chrissake. I think Leonardo Dicaprio is an amazing actor, but you just don't change things like that. Richard is so typically English. It's like High Fidelity; what the fuck were they thinking?). So do me a favour, just skip the movie and READ THE BOOK WHATEVER YOU DO. I mean, it's just so fucking good.
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