Each day, every day

I try to read daily. Honestly, I try. But more often than not, I find myself reading in bed for 20 minutes before I fall asleep, reading only 10 or 15 pages from a book.

Last night, after a long day spent in the workshop, painting and printing, I grabbed my iPad Mini and started to read in A Quiet Life by Kenzaburō Ōe. Two days ago I was on page 35 but I didn’t really like the book at first. Apparently, I still don’t. I dislike the pace of the writing and the subject itself does not appeal to me.

So I exchanged it for Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, a book about the mathematician, the artist and the composer. I thought it would be a very hard book to read because it’s pretty philosophical, but so far Douglas has explained everything very well and I’m actually looking forward to read the next 700 pages of the 750-page book.

I used to think putting a book aside was disgraceful towards the book and its author but sometimes, you just don’t like a book. I don’t read young adult books because I don’t like the easy pace and the happy outcomes. I don’t read poetry because I find it hard to focus on a (usually small amount of ) text that has four meanings at the same time. I don’t read horror because I dislike being scared.

I’ve put three books aside this year, a Stephen King novel (11/22/63), a book about Zen and now the Kenzaburō Ōe. I don’t feel bad about it because it’s not a bad thing to do. I just prefer some books over others.

I’m magnetized

Back in 2012, I first heard this song which was about an envelope. I talked about it with a friend who kindly reminded me that it was about another love. And that’s how I got to know Tom Odell’s music.

In 2013 I saw him live twice. I also met him. He signed the vinyl record I have of Long Way Down. Now, three years later, he has a new album out.

I already heard Wrong Crowd and Magnetized on the radio. They’re both more pop, more electronic, more drums, but lyrically just as sad as the songs on his first album. Then comes Concrete, a song which sounds sarcastic to me (which I like). Constellations is number four, which is a hard position on an album track list because song number four is usually a slow one. Sparrow, however, is a little bit more fun but still a slow one. Not my kind of thing.

And then, Still Getting Used To Being On My Own. That’s my new classic. It’s got the orchestra and the rough, depressing lyrics about a broken heart. I love it. Silhouette, it’s up-tempo follow-up, is a summer song and probably someone’s summer anthem (disclaimer: this might not be the case for the lyrics). Then another slow song, Jealousy, a song that matches his first album.

I didn’t like Daddy, which has a different vibe than the other songs on the album. But the last few songs on the album make up for it: Here I Am, Somehow, She Don’t Belong To Me (one of the top songs on the (deluxe) album) and Mystery. Then there’s Entertainment and I Thought I Knew What Love Was, which are both kind of extras and don’t really match the quality of the album lyrically.

Overall, I’m positive. I’ve listened to the album thrice today and it’s still on repeat. A second album is hard to make, especially after having a well-received debut album. Tom has evolved musically and lyrically. The album is a good follow-up of Long Way Down. It makes me excited to buy music again*.

*Artists that have also made me excited to spend money on music the past twelve months: Chris Stapleton , Ryan Adams, The 1975, HAIM & Death Cab For Cutie.

A tale for the time being

I read three books this week. I’m currently reading number four. While I’m about to graduate. If I can do this, you can do this.

I finished the popular book Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn on June 3. It’s the second mystery/thriller book I’ve read this year, I read The Girl On The Train by Paula Hawkins a month or two ago. I liked the tension in both books and because of that they read very quickly, but I think that because I’ve read so many books this year, I can sense the ending. They were not really surprising to me, but definitely good enough for a reading session in the afternoon sun.

Then there was Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall. It’s a long title (probably because it’s a non-fiction) and it was good. As in, good. I like to run, last year I did my first 10k, but this year was quite different because I got a runner’s knee, which pretty much means that the runner (in this case, me) is running wrong. I read the book, tried running differently, and now it’s gone. Books can save lives (knees) after all.

Born To Run is about the Tarahumara tribe in Mexico and they’re serious about running. They can run 20, 40, 80 miles without a problem and it’s Christopher’s goal to find their secret about running. Spoiler: he got it at the end.

Christopher has this really fine reading pace, in which he combines fun with research. It’s a joyful read and I just found out he has another book, Natural Born Heroes: Mastering the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance, which is now on my to-read list.

Then there was A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, another book I liked. A Tale For The Time Being was definitely an interesting read, because the book is split up between the diary entries of a 16-year-old Japanese girl who gets bullied in school and wants to live with her 104-year-old greatgrandmother, who is a nun at a Buddhist temple.  The other half of the book contains Ruth’s own, (semi-)autobiographic text about how she finds the diary on a beach in Canada and reads the thing. I liked the going-back-and-forth between Naoki and Ruth, which was something I didn’t expect.

After A Tale For The Time Being I read a non-fiction book called An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Mamison, a psychiatrist who works and lives bipolar disorder. The thing is, she is coping with it herself. It’s an interesting read about the mental illness and how it affects life.

And now I’m back at fiction, reading A Quiet Life by Kenzaburō Ōe, a Japanese author I do not know. I’m still unsure what to think about it: it’s intruiging, private and awkward read so far. I’ll let you know.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn: ****
Born To Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall: ***** (definitely a favorite)
A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki: ****
An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness by Kay Redfield Mamison: ****

 

Apparently I did something..

The last time I tried blogging was in 2006. I was young and also very unsure about myself. I used to have a subdomain blog named after a Green Day song title. It was that bad. Writing about school and life in general (which wasn’t very exiting), I found my way in the blogosphere where blogging was yet to become popular. It, at least, wasn’t filled with marketing stuff, but with interesting posts from girls’ school lives.

Until I found a blog by a girl from my town. She commented on my blog once, but I believe she didn’t know who I was. I wanted to remain anonymous, while publishing my first name, so I cold turkey stopped blogging.

That was the last time I tried blogging.

Back to now.

I’ve, since then, added 10 years to my life, which means 10 years of experience as 1. a person, 2. an identity, 3. a consciousness. I’ve read quite a lot of books since then and my writing has definitely improved. I also don’t use 🙂 and 😛 and XD anymore (which I’m very, very, very happy about).

A Comfortable Corner should be my place to write my heart out about the books I read. Let me just say, I read a lot of books. A lot. I’ve read 50 books this year so far and we’re not even halfway. My friends think I’m crazy and that I have a lot of time left on my hands, but I’m in the middle of graduating and finding a job so I kind of read where I’ve got time left, which, to me, is the whole point of reading. My comfortable corner is in the little nooks and crannies of society. Where’s yours?