Listening to:

1) Hamlet - this was my half-assed attempt to study this week, though really, I just wanted to read Hamlet again. One of my TAs last year told us that he read King Lear every New Year's Day, and that completely disgusted me. Though, really, that might be because Lear is a boy play (what with all the focus on castration/blindness and the distrust of women), and not because he reads it every year. I find that I could very easily make a habit of reading Hamlet that often, though I have no idea what attracts me to it. The questionable madness? The sassy one-liners? The incest and adultery? Plus, every reading helps me understand it more. This time I developed a theory about Gertrude, which I then wrote out in excessive detail in a letter to Cait (for which I am sorry, my darling, I don't know why I subject you to things like that). Hopefully, it will play a big role in my exam next month.

2) Hunger by Knut Hamsun - as much as I adored this book, I think the best part about this edition is the translator's Introduction and Appendix, in which he completely dismisses all other English language translations as inacurate. He then proceeds to list all the mistranslated passages and his corrections. The novel itself was thoroughly enjoyable dark humour. The narrator's delusions make him both loveable and despicable, but for the most part he's just a sad, silly little man into whom you wish you could talk some sense. The ending did leave much to be desired, but I suppose it did signal that he knew his life wasn't going to work out the way he thought it might. Which is a start.

3) The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson - one of the ladies I worked with over the summer gave this to me as a gift, so I wasn't terribly desperate to get to it. But after essays were done with I wanted something passive to read, and this was all I could find (it was either this or the Collected Borges, and yes, thank you, that wouldn't be helpful). I enjoyed the short history passages at the beginning, and I liked reading about the different foreign influences, but the jokes about English being inclusive/indiscriminant got old after a while. Basicaly, Bryson is best enjoyed as I first found him: as a book on tape you can ignore when it gets dull, and jump back into when you want an easy laugh. Still, big ups for the subject matter. Far better than a travel book, my friend.

4) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon - oh, baby. Shorter than V but just as complicated and wonderfully bizarre, Pynchon seems to have narrowed in on the conspiracy and paranoia so nicely illustrated in the first novel. Obviously, I will have to read this again in a few weeks, because I'm sure I missed some big things. For instance, I still don't get why she's called Oedipa. Or, for that matter, why any of the characters have such ridiculous names. Mucho Maas is funny, Pierce Inverarity is nice and eventually makes sense, but why, Tom, why do you have to use characters named Manny DiPresso and Emory Bortz? You are so strange. Perhaps that is why I love you so.

5) New Essays on The Crying of Lot 49 - I can't help myself, alright? Currently somewhere in the middle of the second essay, and seriously considering purchasing it, it's so good. But buying it would mean that my academic flirtings are more serious, and I'm not sure I want to do that just yet. Should I take the plunge and just admit it, or think on it for another year?

6) Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca - my flatmate S. has been watching my Felicity dvds with me, starting with first year, and I found this in a second hand shop after watching an episode in which a minor characters mentions the play. And wow, it is completely amazing. I'm usually wary of poetry or plays in translation, but it isn't really an issue here because the drama is mostly about the stageing and colours rather than what, exactly, each character has to say. I particularly enjoyed the killing scene, and how the beggarwoman is not supposed to be put on the cast list. That's too creepy. Bravo, Lorca (speaking of which, if he's Spanish, shouldn't we be calling him Garcia Lorca, since he has both his father and mother's last names, and since the Garcia would be the more important half of the two? Am I wrong? Spanish people, speak up and tell me I'm wrong).

7) Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard - inspired by the Hamlet, and in need of something entertaining to battle the grey, I went looking for this in the stacks, which, according to the library database, holds two copies of the play. I could find neither one, so I bought it cheap from my local second hand man. Thank goodness, too, because this play is wickedly delightful. Still a little puzzled over whether the title is supposed to be an explanation or a prediction, though. Is this about how one can only exist if people notice them, and how characters cannot have lives outside their script, or is it some sick view of hell, of how R&G should be punished for their betrayal of Hamlet, or of how madness isn't just about what you know (ie Hamlet's parent issues) but also what you don't know (Rosencrantz's inability to remember his name, or anything else)? Uh, anyway, I enjoyed it. It made me laugh out loud, which caused some concern amongst the flatmates. At least I wasn't in the library.

So that's a lot of books, huh? Oh yes. Fear me and my speed-reading skills!

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