Lounging In Faversham

This morning i did the reports from yesterday. Then i tried to contact Stagecoach, and to see if said camera has turned up. Alas, nothing as yet. Think it may be gone forever. I had five great pics from New Romney and Hythe as well!

Still, it is another really fine sunny day in which i just took a shrt bus ride over to Faversham to sell a few books, not many, and enjoy the sunshine shirtless at my sweet spot near the library. Tan is looking good now!

Tomorrow a long-ish day down Tunbridge Wells, and Tonbridge, including a food and drink visit in a pub.

Book 36 - Michael Cunningham "The Hours"

Michael Cunningham "The Hours"  (Picador)




The Hours is a loving homage to Virginia Woolf's [Mrs. Dalloway]. The novel tells the stories of three women — Clarissa, a 52-year-old woman planning a party for her friend and former lover dying of AIDS; Laura, a young pregnant housewife in 1949 feeling trapped by the order of her life, and Virginia Woolf herself attempting to begin the writing of Mrs. Dalloway in 1925. Each story relates the women's complex inner journeys over the course of a single day.

One of the many profound ways these women's lives and hearts overlap is the way each woman seeks to create her own form of perfection in the world, making such a small thing into so much more than what it is. For Clarissa, it's putting together a party that will properly honor her friend. For Laura, it's assembling a cake that reflects all her feelings of love. For Virginia, it's taking words and shaping them into a story that reveals and transports. And yet, each in her own way feels herself incapable of achieving this perfection. This is just one part of this novel, just one piece, but it's a piece that resonated with me and is something I found to be a part of what makes this novel so heartbreakingly beautiful.

Not only do are each of these women affected personally by the novel, Mrs. Dalloway, but also the writing style of The Hours imitates Woolf's style, the way she layered image and meaning together in complex network of poetic prose. Like Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours is a novel that requires a certain amount of presence and focus in order to follow, but the result of each novel is uniquely beautiful and each are worth a read.

A delightful little footnote: I love that Clarissa mentions seeing a movie star (maybe Meryl Streep) and that Meryl Streep plays Clarissa in the movie version of The Hours. ( )
1 vote | flagandreablythe | Jun 3, 2015 |
There is a unique sensation of both immense loss and joy when you read the final page of a book that you immediately recognise as one of your life's favourites.

Having seen the film first (and loved it), I feared that it would spoil my enjoyment of the book, knowing exactly what was going to happen. At first I had a sense of rushing the book for that reason, but then the story hooked me all over again, and I was rushing simply from an urgency to devour more and more of it's clever deliciousness.

To intertwine a modern retelling of a classic story with parallel stories of Virginia Woolf's demons when writing Mrs. Dalloway, and the fragile state of mind of someone reading Mrs. Dalloway is sheer brilliance - complex yet so simple.

I have not yet read Mrs. Dalloway, but feel I will have to, just to gain another perspective of the immense depth of this novel. Certainly, in reading the novel things became clear to me that I did not pick up on when I watched the film, and I'm sure that having an understanding of Mrs. Dalloway would enhance the book still further.

Book 37 - Christine Woodward "Rogue Touch"

Christine Woodward "Rogue Touch" (Marvel Books)




I actually thought Rogue Touch was a really great book. The problem is that I don’t know why it’s a book about Rogue. The story picks up with a young, eighteen year old Anna Marie on the run after her fateful encounter with Cody Robbins. Unfortunately that’s about all of the original back story that is kept intact. The Rogue we know is there, I suppose. But we’re going to get there in a much different way than we have before.

We pick up with her working nights in a bakery until a strange young man crosses her path. Before she knows it the two of them are on the run together as she has to evade the cops and he needs to evade someone and something else entirely. They have a slightly ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ sort of relationship as they steal from random ATMs and road trip across the United States. The title of the book comes from their nicknames for one another. He calls her Rogue because of her personality and she calls him Touch. It’s a romance story at it’s core but not in the way that screams Harlequin/chick lit. It’a calmer, slower paced romance.

I guess that’s natural when you can’t exactly have any physical contact with one another.

Watching a young Rogue , of the X-Men franchise, deal with her powers and their consequences was nice but it was a very solid departure from the origins we’re used to in the comics. I liked Touch as a character though the original assumed origins were much more reasonable than the truth that was ultimately revealed, I thought. But for the most part it’s a very solid story. I read it on and off again between my visits in the Kent countyrside and I was always wondering what would come next and what the future really had in store for Rogue and Touch.

Mostly, though, the best part was watching Rogue grow. She was just a scared teenager putting of the tough act when we first met her. But as she goes along with Touch she grows and rises to the challenges put before her. It was nice, too, watching her and Touch open up to one another. Rogue had never known anyone with the sort of secrets she has kept about herself before him and it was good to watch her find that kindred soul.

All that doesn’t sound too bad, right? It’s a great coming-of-age story for a young adult, as much as BtVS, or new adult audience. I’m just not sure if it’s meant to appeal to comic fans or X-Men movie franchise fans. Either set of fans is likely to be disappointed to find that the Rogue they know is very different and dealing with very different situations than they likely expected.

It really wasn’t a bad book at all. I liked it. All i need now is to tackle that Buffy novel i have in the "to be read" pile.