Hallowe'en?

Am I right in thinking October is over in less than four hours? And it's November in ever so slightly more than less than four hours? And what's this about NaNoWriMo? 3 hours, 31 minutes and 32 seconds, their countdown clock tells me?!

I'm excited, don't get me wrong! But my word for November is "discipline", and I need it in so many fields of my life. I think I can be disciplined, insofar as I can be when I want to be, which, in actual fact, means no, I'm not disciplined. But I need to be this month because I want to achieve so much.

I need reading to not figure so highly. This is hard, because it's my favourite thing in the world, and, also, I'm pretty ambitiuous. I completed my October Challenges within two and a half weeks, even though when I first came up with my list I thought I was overstretching myself. And, as I write this, I'm thinking, Ten Shakespeare plays! Finish Clarissa! Finish Faust! Read Moby Dick! Read It! Three from the Greatest Books list! Five from my Virginia Woolf list! Read all of James Joyce even though you hate him! Read everything ever written then learn Italian and read it in Italian!

Yes, I need discipline. I need to not fly about. November is about completing NaNoWriMo. It's about writing 50 000 words in 30 days, ideally not eating a great deal while doing so, and reading selectly. This means, memo to self, not reading Northanger Abbey because a bunch of other people are, or reading Finnegans Wake because Julian Barnes mentioned it in an interview a week ago, or It because I enjoyed Pet Sematary last week, or Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close because the film is coming out and everyone's talking about it on Tumblr. I own these books, they will be there in December. Hopefully I will be, too.

So, here's the deal, here are the challenges:

• Complete NaNoWriMo.
• Keep on with Clarissa (I'm now a few pages less than half way through).
• Squeeze some Shakespeare plays in somewhere.
• Read Leviticus and Number

I'm not saying this is all I intend to read, or that reading more is a failure. I'm saying this is it as far as reading challenges go. No pressure. No obligation. If I come out of November having only read one book but with a compled first draft of a novel (my novel), then November is a success. If I decide to participate in a group read somewhere along the way, or a book takes my fancy and I read it, so long as NaNoWriMo is going well, then that's ok as well.

And there you have it, my plans for November. If you're taking part in NaNoWriMo, by the way, please let me know so I can follow your progress - I would quite like some NaNo buddies!

Why you should love Anne Brontë.

At six o' clock last Saturday I finished Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey. At a few minutes to nine last night I finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. And that, my friends, is that. Save the poetry, it is over. I have read Anne Brontë. One week, it took.

It saddens me, maybe more than it should. Had she have lived a grand old age and not died at the age of twenty nine (not twenty eight, as the gravestone mistakenly claims), had she produced ten, twenty, fifty books, I would have bought them all. My Anne Brontë collection would have challenged my Virginia Woolf collection. I would have bought them, read them, and loved them. But instead, her two books sit on my largest book shelf near the top between R. D. Blackmore's Lorna Doone and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. I can buy some biographies, I expect, and read those, but I still sit here now at ten to seven in the autumn of 2011 over a hundred and sixty years later, when it is absolutely black outside now, as it no doubt was then, thinking, "Is that it? Is that really it?"

It's awful to find this talent that time was unable to nurture. Her prose should have shattered the world. Now, at the end of 2011, she is fantastic, her prose is strong and defiant. Back then, one hundred and sixty three years ago (one hundred and sixty four in December), it was surely intimidating, defiant, formidable, and so, so very awful. Everything art should be. She questioned and challenged the mores of her time. She is, and was, magnificent and daring.

In an era where you married for life, where you vowed "'Til death do us part" and it meant just that, not just God's law, but society's. The legal system, the convention, tradition even, had it so if a woman was to run away from her husband, he was entitled to find her, capture her and imprison her as though she were a slave. But Helen Huntingdon, of Tenant, did just that. She said, "No," to a man who cheated on her, mocked her, left her for London at long intervals; a man who simply wasn't right for her, who didn't share or respect her religious beliefs. She left.

She had it better than Clarissa, it must be said. The very title of Clarissa: "Clarissa, or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending The Most Important Concerns of Private Life, and particularly showing the distresses that may attend the misconduct of both parents and children, in relation to marriage", clearly indicates that Anne was not the first (of course she was not the first) to write on this subject. But, how much more eloquent she is: 

Alas! poor Milicent, what encouragement can I give you? - or what advice - except that it is better to make a bold stand now, though at the expense of disappointing and angering both mother and brother, and lover, than to devote your whole life, hereafter, to misery and vain regret? (Tenant of Wildfell Hall)

Is she a feminist? I don't know, does it matter? I still am firm in my belief that because you share views and ideals with the Feminist movement, you do not nor should you feel obliged to refer to yourself as a feminist. These days, the feminist movement is dogmatic and excludes women who do not look like them, therefore I chose not to label Anne Brontë as a feminist for the same reasons as I won't label myself as one: you will lose the whole picture if you interpret her along set guidelines. She is what she is, asking what she is and what she is not from this perspective loses her essence and isn't even vaguely helpful. On one hand, I'm surprised the Feminist movement haven't claimed her more as their own, but on the other hand I'm relieved. 

But still, I ask: why is she not as popular as she ought to be? Why is she "the other one", the "other" Brontë sister. It's tempting to take them as a set, a triad of 19th Century women writers, one group, and it is tempting to compare the three in terms of talent and popularity. Of course their upbringing was the same, and they were close, and undoubtedly shared their thoughts of their situation (whether it be political or not). But they are three individuals, and so, again, I don't think evaluating her with reference to her sisters is essential, though I do think it could potentially be illuminating.

You should love Anne Brontë. There's no reason for anyone not to have, at least, read Agnes Grey. It's short, accessible, and like Tenant, defiant. A governess herself, she challenges the role that, she felt, made her invisible. In short, like Helen Huntingdon, Agnes put up with so much it defies belief. The child, the boy, of her first family is morally repugnant, but is praised for his hobby of torturing animals, for example. And she refuses, she revolts: she kills the birds quickly rather than have the boy slowly torture them. "I shall do what I think is right in a case of this sort without consulting any one. If your papa and mamma don't happen to approve of it, I shall be sorry to offend them; but your uncle Robson's opinions, of course, are nothing to me." Her prose is so powerful and so moving, and, I keep saying it, defiant. She does not accept her situation, no, and nor will she put up with it for a minute longer. She's inspiring, so deeply inspiring.

Please read her.

An autumn night.

I have a bad habit of romanticising autumn, but I really do love it. I like nesting, and I like preparing. Autumn is about both - extra quilts and blankets, building up coal supplies, chopping logs, thinking about making Christmas cake (not yet, though, but within the next two weeks)... Autumn is reading in an overstuffed armchair by the fire (or a heater, in my case - have only just discovered the back door's been left open all day, and consequently the cold has trapped me in the study for most of the day). One forgets autumn is, too, about being too cold to get out of bed, starting the car a few minutes before a journey to warm it up, avoiding getting the train in case it's late ("leaves on the line", heard that too many times). But the colours and the clarity of light that comes with cold weather, gone is the summer haze, it makes up for the bad stuff. Running through the street and still getting soaked is replaced by looking forward to Gingerbread lattes in Starbucks, almost completely forgetting how lovely it was to sip Frappuccinos in the park, enjoying the summer sun. It's taking shelter in bookshops, and, let's be honest, more flattering fashions.

Autumn is about the pleasure of warming up: how much more you appreciate being warm when you've been colder than Keats's owl, sitting in front of the log burner in the kitchen drinking coffee or cuddling up in front of the coal fire and watching Law & Order or Coronation Street, these simple things are so much more of an event when you've sat in a freezing cold dressing room waiting to pack away music equipment followed by a fifty mile journey home through thick fog, torrential rain or high winds. It's curling up, recovering from the cruelty of it, getting lost in a book, or just watching it all from outside.

Tonight is mostly about Pet Sematary (it is nearly Halloween, after all) and looking forward to Big C coming in from the cold. I think, perhaps, I'll go for a long walk tomorrow whilst this year, in natural terms at least, continues to be a thing of beauty and not one long, hard, cold slog. I'll take some pictures, chop the rest of the logs, get the house tidy, then spend the evening reading. The nights are closing in (soon to be forced in by the clocks going back on Saturday). For the rest of the week I'll be out in it, mostly, having to battle the elements just to get from A to B. Unless of course the weather is mild. Autumn's awkward like that, too.

I feel like it's Sunday, but I'm told it's Monday...

What a weekend! You all know about Saturday, but even I don't know about my Sunday... More or less straight after one o' clock I fell asleep, was woken up around two o' clock with a jacket potato, fell asleep til about five o' clock, got up briefly to have a cup of coffee and to put up my summary post, fell straight back asleep til 3am, had another coffee with Big C, then asleep again til about eleven o' clock this morning. That's pretty much it!

I can't believe it's the last week of October already. Completing Dewey's Read-a-Thon has meant that I completed all my reading challenges for the month. My writing challenge for this week has been an absolute joke, but I'm hoping entering NaNoWriMo will help get my ass into gear for November. It had better! As for this week, I need to have a think about what on earth I'm going to write throughout November. As for reading...

Fin.

Probably many people will be saying this, but how I got through Dewey's Read-a-Thon I will never know! On the whole, an absolute pleasure to participate, but there were a few moments where sheer, bloody determination got me through! Here's my post updated through the night in full.

Number of books I read: 11.5

Number of pages I read: 1612

Dewey's Read-a-Thon!

It's today! Here's how it's going to go: you already know what books are on my pile (and that I'm not promising to stick to them!), and as for blogging: I'm going to update this post with the most recent update at the top for ease (so if you are reading in Google Reader and want to check in, maybe come directly to my blog a couple of times so you see the updates). I'll also send updated to my Twitter and Tumblr.

******

 13:00 - And with that, we are done! Finished The Last Day of a Condemned Man by the skin of my teeth... Final page count: 1612.

That was.... A pleasure, a learning experience, a test, a battle, and then a pleasure again. And, after the fuss I've made during the last 6 hours about being so tired, you won't be surprised to learn that I'm wide awake now! More in a separate post!

Not long now!

My little Effy knows what she's reading for Dewey's Read-a-Thon tomorrow - The Poetry of Robert Frost! As for me... now, what am I going to read...? I'm in for a late night tonight, so I had better get sorted now. I do want to give the full 24 hours a go, but I am making no promises!

I've picked up eight very short books I'd like to read, however I don't want to necessarily stick with them if I don't enjoy them, tomorrow is supposed to be fun, after all! I will, unless I read it tonight which is unlikely, read one Shakespeare for my challenge, but other than that I just want to enjoy myself. I know I really should read the second book of Faust, and still I might, depending on my mood. The books I have picked are short, so I might be finished them long before the read-a-thon is over. I might not, however! We shall see how it goes. Here is what I intend to read:

Should I...?

You know sometimes when there's a word you've never heard before in your life and all of a sudden, it's all over: your friend uses it, it's on the radio, and later you read it in the paper? I keep having those moments with Finnegans Wake. Every so often, every couple of years, I see it referenced a million times within the space of a week. I kept pulling it off the shelf then putting it back, thinking "No, that can be a New Year challenge", then pulling it off again and thinking, "Why wait?" then putting it back thinking, "No, wait." Then this morning, my mother got a letter (from who, I cannot remember) that annoyed her and she said, "It's like Finnegans Wake, this!" Later on, Big C came upstairs and said Julian Barnes had won the Booker Prize, and was being interviewed on Sky News, and did I want to watch? And what did he have to say?

Goethe's Faust

I didn't read Faust in the best circumstances: I have (had, hopefully, I think the worst is over!) the worst cold in the world. Big C has also been stricken, we even had a standoff before: unspoken, it was - we ran out of mugs and the only clean one in the house now was my Piglet mug, which is lovely, but too big to be practical so no one uses it. Both of us were choking for a coffee but neither of us said because whoever cracked first would have to wash at least two mugs. But, as I say, the worst is over,for me at least, Big C's just starting his.

And, through all of this, the sneezing, the coughing, and the sniffing, the tissues, dirty coffee mugs, and overflowing ashtrays, Little G the Parrot's stray feathers, clothes on the bedroom floor, and crumbs all over the kitchen bench: all these things, the disease, the mess, and the "I'm too tired, I'll do it later": through all of this, I managed to read the first part of Goethe's Faust.

The week ahead

I found this meme via Must Read Faster at Book Journey, and it looks like an excellent way to be a little more organised (a little more? I'm pretty military as it is with reading!). I have a lot I want to read (as always), so it's always good to get things straight. So, the meme: you plan out what you're going to read this week and visit other bloggers who are participating.

Here's how my week is looking:

Don't read Dante's Hell, you probably wouldn't understand it.

One of A Literal Odyssey's Group Reads for October was Dante's Hell, the first cantica of The Divine Comedy. My copy was published by the good people of Penguin in 1972 and was translated by Dorothy L. Sayers, who considered this translation to be her best work. Being as I have only read this translation, I am in no position to comment (though I was mildly disappointed to find the much-quoted "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" was, in her translation, "Lay down all hope, you who go in by me", but one can't have everything). As for her notes at the beginning and end of each Canto, well, I found them to be essential. They were truly excellent, and I think gave me a better understanding than I would have had, had I gone it alone. The introduction, however, was disappointing to say the least.

Now, the Canon: I think a lot about the Canon, and I think a lot of it (although am well-aware of the dead white male problem). No one would (surely?) dispute the place of Dante's Divine Comedy in the Canon, probably more so The Inferno, quite simply because, in my mind, it's more interesting to read the bad stuff; the dark, evil deeds of dark, evil people and their dark, evil punishments. Will it be as interesting to read about the good folk who made it up to Paradiso? I don't know, I'll tell you when I read it.

Villette Syndrome, or How to Ruin a Good Book

I might have ruined A Tale of Two Cities. I very nearly ruined Inferno and I fear I have ruined Villette beyond repair! How? Taking too long with them.

As you can see from my October Challenges page, my book challenges have gone exceptionally well: I just need to finish one book from my 100 Greatest Books Challenge (and take part in Dewey's Read-a-Thon, of course) and I can say, "Yes, October was a reading success" (October is not a writing success, which is a small part of the reason why I will be participating in NaNoWriMo next month, and let us not even speak about my weight). I don't often have a problem with reading challenges: I will read the book, even if I hate it (though I'll be thoroughly miserable until I've finished). And if I love a book, there is no stopping me. Usually.

Some More Thoughts on Reading

I'm a bit stupid about Jeanette Winterson. I feel like if she liked me or liked my writing then I'd done something right. I want her approval. If I could have six authors from the past and present round for dinner I'd have Jeanette Winterson, Jeanette Winterson, Jeanette Winterson, Jeanette Winterson, Jeanette Winterson, and Jeanette Winterson. And then I would try and persuade Jeanette Winterson that I was a decent human being (what a fun evening she would have...).

That said, I don't think Jeanette Winterson would be terribly impressed with me, especially in light of reading Art Objects.

Art Objects is nothing short of marvelous. I had the unfortunate experience of reading it along side Iliad, which I finished last night and utterly despised, and it left me feeling an utter failure, more so possibly because of Art Objects. I didn't like the book, I was deeply bored by it, and consequently I couldn't (wouldn't?) keep track on what was going on, so it was still more boring and unlikeable. One of the oldest, greatest books of the Canon and I failed. That's the thing, with the Canon, you feel like you're the failure. I didn't pick some tatty shit up from the 'holiday reads' (or whatever) section from W.H. Smith, I read a book that has survived from the Eighth Century B. Fucking C. I mean, what is wrong with me? That book hasn't failed me, I've failed it. I felt rubbish. I felt rubbish, flicked through last month's Vogue and went to bed. I feel no sense of achievement from having read this book.

So that's Iliad. Art Objects, on the other hand, is a book everyone must read. It's not an easy read in that it challenges the hell out of you. To be told you're an 'average' reader (as I more or less am / was) kind of hurts a little. But it was good, it was just so good, so thought-provoking, so challenging she might as well have held a sword to my throat.

You may have noticed that when I blog about books, rather than give a synopsis and discussion on themes and techniques, I write about what it made me think and remind me of. Often it has barely any connection to the book itself: it "sort of" reminded me of x therefore I blog about x. I like F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote on my sidebar,

That is part of the beauty of literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you're not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

That is, most frequently, my approach. I see myself, or I look for myself. I admitted this in my Virginia Woolf post and recognised it as a flaw because I wasn't reading her or her work, I was reading myself. She put all that effort in, all of them, all writers put so much effort in and I can come away having really only loved or paid attention to the me-bits. Furthermore, looking for yourself in an author, and subsequently looking for the author in the work from which to make your surmising, isn't terribly helpful either:

It seems to me that the intersection between a writer's life and a writer's work is irrelevent to the reader. The readeris not being offered a chunk of the writer or a direct insight into the writer's mind, the reader is being offered a separate reality.

That said, she later says, "I prefer myself as a character in my own fiction."

Really, I'm not as bad as I'm making out. I read books that have nothing to do with me and I love them all the same. But give me a book about a girl who falls asleep with the curtains open looking at the stars and wakes up with morning sun on her face, who lives in a forest, has a parrot, her own room for a library, an EDNOS and a newly discovered penchant for 18th Century literature, you know, someone not unlike me, then I get excited. Novels, poems, any writing can give you a voice. You can feel lucky and happy, you can have, as I have had, a disastrous life and suddenly, however long for, you feel happy and lucky enough to go from wishing you were dead to be ecstatic to wake up with the sun on your face, but then here comes a writer who puts it into words for you. 

But, books can do so much more than that, and it's time (for me, at least) to stop acting like everything's about me. I'm nearly 30, for Christ's sake. "I would have thought," she writes, "that the rise and rise of TV and film would have satisfied our 'mirror of life' longings."

She writes about challenges, which as I say, reading as I was the Iliad at the same time wasn't exactly happy reading. "Art leaves nobody out, but it cannot condescend, we have to climb up if we want the extraordinary view." A few weeks ago, some bloggers were asking should great literature necessarily be hard, and I would have thought no, but one thing I've learned from my new love of Charles Dickens is you really do have to put the work in. Part of this challenge is looking deeper, looking beyond ourselves and our own experiences and immersing yourself into something 'other'. Like, I suppose, an anthropologist. When I studied several new religious movements in the early 00s, I had to forget myself for a while (as far as I could) and look at what was being said and what was happening, not what I thought was being said and what I thought was happening, or, indeed, what I expected and wanted to be said and happen. Like, you have a small amount of information, and from that you would have expected y to happen next, so you search for it and it doesn't come, and, lo, you've missed z happening under your nose. "True art," Winterson writes, "when it happens challenges the 'I' that we are."

And when you hate it? When it's Iliad? "Trust it. Art is an act of faith; faith first for the artist herself and foremost for the audience. It is necessary to believe that there is something here worth having and to persevere into the other world of the artist which will reveal itself with a little work and patience." Exactly what I said about Charles Dickens, in fact. I hated him, and that was my fault. "Learning to read is a skill," she continues, "that marshals the entire resources of body and mind... To recognise it in its own right, separate, particular, to let it speak in its own voice, not in a ventriloquism if yours."

There is much more in this book I would like to write about, particularly her thoughts on 'the Canon', however time is an issue today and I think it would be better in my next post on Dante's Hell. So, for now: yes, I have been, and probably will be again an 'average reader', but now I know and I have been reminded why I am, and I hope not to be. I do need to be more open and trusting. Odyssey is my second chance to get it right, at least with Homer.

Seasonal Reading

Seasonal reading, weather-appropriate reading, whatever. I mean Dracula and Frankenstein, Poe, Stephen King, M.R. James and the gang in October, Charles Dickens at Christmas (well, the Christmas Stories), Dante during Easter Week, Wuthering Heights in late autumn... You get my drift. And this picture, which I happened upon completely by chance, is William Dyce's Pegwell Bay, Kent: A Recollection of October 5th 1858. You can't get anymore appropriate than that for an accompanying picture to this post!

I've often thought about 'books for the seasons' ever since Mr. F., my A' level English Lit. teacher told us to read the Russians in the summer. "You have more time in the summer," he said, "for the Russians." Doubtless true, unless you're me and you have a lot of hours sitting in cars outside gigs. I always have time for the Russians.

Last night I was looking through my books and I noticed I have the Complete Edgar Allan Poe, which I thought would be good to read this month given that we have Halloween at the end of it. And, seeing as my October Challenges are going so well (on track with Illiad and Clarissa, finished Exodus, finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, nearly finished Hell, however my own writing is going dreadfully), I thought I might try to squeeze a Stephen King into the mix at some point on top of a few Poe (and hell, a few M. R. James because Sandy said so). And all this planning ahead makes me think about 2012 and possible challenges. I have a few in mind, though it's a little early to begin outlining and planning them, and anyway, that's not my point. My point is reading for the seasons.

Some books are made for a season. The obvious ones are the horror stories for autumn, and why would you read Dickens's Christmas Stories in July? But some books, speaking for myself, have a certain kind of feel to them. Like Jane Austin - seems to me to be a spring kind of collection. For some reason, so does a lot of 19th Century French Literature. I can't say why I think this, only that I sort of... feel it. That said, I get a summer-reading vibe from Zola. It's not that these books are particularly appropriate for summer, it's more about how you read each season. 

Like today - strong winds, slight rain, heavy clouds. I've mostly been doing chores this afternoon, but this evening, when it's dark, I'll be sitting in my armchair with a cup of coffee and the big lamp on, hopefully Big C somewhere near by and I can read all night. No one expects anything from you in this weather, it's not fair to expect any visitors or a few quiet drinks. Autumn is long evenings in an armchair. So, aside from the Halloween reads, there's room for some tough books: the kind of books you wouldn't settle down with in bed. Epics, classics - Iliad and Clarissa of course, and 17th and 18th Century English Lit that makes you work.

And winter's better still. Weather in winter is so atrocious you couldn't call on anyone even if you wanted to (especially as we're promised snow) and, if you live where I do (which you don't, no one lives here), chances are the electricity will be off and the phone masts down. Reading by fire or candle light is the only way forward. Again there's lots of time for reading, more so than any other season. So, like autumn, winter is a good time to tackle the hard stuff. It's perfect, in fact.

But then comes spring. I think I've said on here before I get particularly excited by new seasons and spring is the big one. I am a firm believer in the powers and importance of the Big Spring Clean. Early spring is muddy walks, as well. There may be a few weeks left for some good walks this month, but time is against me (or rather the quagmires and falling trees are). March and April are about exploring and getting thrilled by daffodils. It's a good time for poetry (yes, of course Wordsworth). And, for different reasons, short stories, simply because of the time factor. When I'm cleaning and walking and sitting in cars outside gigs, I don't particularly have time for the big reads. I like poems, plays, short stories and novellas. I'll read in bed, but lighter mornings tends to have me getting up earlier. In winter, I'm more inclined to lie in bed and watch the rain in the morning and try to convince Big C to do the same, though he's not lazy like me. Spring, I'm often up first.

And summer. Ah, summer! Summer is sitting outside (ideally) or on holiday or by the beach with a cold can of pop or icy water and reading the Russians or the French, or perhaps working through Shakespeare. Or, conversely, nothing too tasking because hell, it's summer, and summer is brighter, colourful and smells nice. There's so much going on in summer. Perhaps Mr. F was wrong, maybe winter is for the Russians.

I don't know... It all seems to depend on the weather and where you're reading. I haven't worked out my 2012 challenges by any stretch of the imagination, but the seasons will dictate a great deal. As for now, I'm going to make a (tiny) bowl of pasta and butter beans and return to Frankenstein.

The Iliad and other books that make me feel stupid

This post was conceived last night, when I had read two books from The Iliad. Now, having finished Book IV, things are slightly better - I don't feel quite as horrendously stupid. But those first two books? I am kidding you not - I damn near had a migraine. Now, granted, yesterday was an accidental fast day, so that possibly had more to do with it, but I worked hard, I worked so hard to understand what was being said, getting everything straight, not trying to master it as such but just trying to understand. One of my failings as a reader is when I lose interest I plough through anyway, reading the words, counting down the pages and not getting a great deal out of it. I don't want to do that more (unless completely necessary to save my sanity, and I promise you I admit it when I do do it), and I certainly don't want to do it with great literature. So I'm trying.

But I just feel so stupid.

A few years ago, my cousin died and after the funeral, I was talking to my other cousin Sebastian (not his real name, he just looks like a Sebastian and my mother agrees. His real name is stupid and very unfortunate given his tone of voice) and he was, at the age of seventeen, letting me know how well-read he was. Of course he'd read The Iliad, "essential", he said, lifting one eyebrow and cocking his head to the side in an ironic sort of way. And now I'm reading it, twelve years older than he was when he was telling me he read it, and oh God give me some paracetamol now please.

I know seventeen year old boys know everything, but let's face it, we've all got our books who everyone else "just adored!" and we're sat there with our 2B pencils scribbling desperately, writing "WTF" in the margins, or else just staring out the window wondering if our education really was as up to scratch as it ought to have been. And to be honest, I've given up writing in the margins of Iliad. As I say, having just finished Book IV, it is getting better. I am appreciating it a little more. But I have to wonder, how many other people are suffering with it, or is everyone (as I suspect) merrily reading through and declaring it's awesomeness to anyone who will listen (I say "awesomeness" instead of following the "just adored" track because this book ain't adorable, it's fucking gross as times).

I hoped Iliad was going to be a bit of Charles Dickens syndrome with me - if you remember I read the opening of Oliver Twist many times over many years, decided recently to stop being a baby about it and get on with it and ended up loving it (I even bought Our Mutual Friend and Tale of Two Cities the other day - I'm a Dickens fan now!). I thought I might love it. I'm reading Inferno this month for a group read, thinking it was going to be a bit of a struggle, and I love that now, too (you see, I'm not a stupid girl) and I just thought Iliad would work for me. But no. I will read it, I will get to the end and I will read Odysses at some point after it, perhaps November, perhaps December. But it's tough. It is tough.

But then, thinking about it, why should it be easy? Books aren't there just to entertain. You can't always be given brilliance and skip through it. Sometimes, it's going to be hard. It is awful, though, reading through a classic such as this and feeling very, very small and foolish. Some books will make you feel small in some respects. Homer was writing in around the 8th Century B.C. That has an effect on me. How many people have read this, been influenced by this, how has this survived, what has it inspired? So much, so so very much. It's worth the work for this reason, it's historical and literary value.

Lord though, it makes me feel like an idiot.

Some Thoughts on Reading

Today has been so peaceful, just the way a Sunday ought to be. Woke up half nine and had a few coffees with Big C before he went to his gigs, went back to sleep, got up at an indecently late hour and read for a few hours. The weather is perfect here: grey-white sky, mist that refuses to budge, a slight chill in the air... This is just how autumn should be, and today, the first Sunday in proper autumn, has been idyllic (apart from an hour spent on ironing shirts for next week and clothes washed from our holiday!).

So, reading. I've read a lot of different books today, which is unlike me. In the past, I've been a 'one at a time' girl, which is actually very limiting. Take the Bible. I would never have stuck to the challenge, or even decided to do it if I was still a one-at-a-time girl. It's too much, I think, to read in one go. As I've said before, I read War and Peace in one go and regret it: I got bored and rushed most of it. It was pointless. Some people might be impressed that I've read it, of course, it sounds very good to say "Yes, I've read War and Peace" but a lot less so to follow that with, "but please don't ask me what it was about". Reading a little, reading a chapter, a canto, a book (within the book, obviously) or a letter works. It just works. This approach should see me finish the Bible, and it should also see me through Clarissa.

Ah, Clarissa. This book, Jesus. I said I'd read sixty letters this month, and what I was thinking was two a day, which, on the 2nd day of October is all well and fine because I've just finished the fifth letter. But do you ever think, with these kinds of challenges, the massive ones - not your canto a day Inferno or book a day Iliad, but the likes of the Bible, War and Peace, Clarissa - where will you be when you've finished it? There are 539 letters in Clarissa (I think that's the number, the book is by my bed and I'm in my library). Two a day, that's, for ease, 270 days, 38 weeks or just under ten months. Or what of those who took part in the War and Peace challenge - how much will their lives have changed since they picked that book up in January? And, and this is where my mind blew a little, the Bible - me and my pal are reading that at the deliberately slow pace of a book a month. At this pace (which may well alter with the shorter books, granted) this will take sixty-six months. Sixty six. I mean, damn! Five and a half years. Where am I going to be when I put that thing down?

Really, it's mind-blowing. I said on Tumblr last night, "I was just saying to Sandy how rubbish it would be to die before you got to the end of your book challenges. But I suppose it’s inevitable. Or else I could just stay alive forever." But honestly, imagine dying before you got to the end of your reading list. Because it will happen. And a lot of us who buy more books than we read, we've got stuff on our shelves that may forever be untouched. God, I hope not. I hope not. But what else can I do, as a mortal, but die when my time's up?

1st October

Today looks how autumn should look: the tree outside my window has turned burned gold in colour, dry leaves are beginning to litter the street, smoke from people's chimneys mixing with the mid-morning mist over the forest in front of me, and I'm sitting with a cup of coffee and all the enthusiasm for the beginning of the month as I usually have. I'm happy, and I'm excited with my goals: I think I have good goals, perhaps not all achievable (I'm thinking about the diet goal specifically, it seems a big ask) but just putting the effort in will be reward enough and it's sure to get me to a good place, even if it doesn't quite get me to my lowest weight. I love new beginnings: Mondays, 1sts of the month, the New Year, and recently my goals have become much more structured in a way that I can tick them off and feel like I've really achieved something. I've never felt so thrilled by the 1st of the month.

I think a part of this has due to what  difficult months August and the most of September were. Things have settled, they're not as scary now, though I must admit they are rather trying at times. But it's manageable. Much more manageable. Everyone's safe, and that brings so much more peace and clarity to the situation.

And I love October. It's my favourite month.