tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7970550564948410242024-03-14T16:45:50.965+00:00Stranger WorldsEmilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.comBlogger206125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-84860369718119219112018-07-10T13:55:00.000+01:002018-07-10T13:55:02.546+01:00Swoop<div style="text-align: center;">
Hi.</div>
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It's been a while, eh?</div>
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I'm <b>swoop</b>ing in to say hello and -- maybe -- goodbye.</div>
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How strange to reread my most recent post, from the 16th of October 2017. I had just started uni: English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. I'd not quite been there a fortnight. Now I've done my whole first year, read more books than I could have dreamed, found more wonderful friends than I dared hope, learned more about the Lord Jesus than I could have imagined. Written nearly two drafts of a novel (<i>Stay in the City.</i> Corrie's story continues, one familiar presence in my changing life). Co-led a Christian Union. Laughed a lot, cried a bit, fallen in love with a city.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Oxford skyline" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/59/dd/93/59dd93a96566231d6b28890637ab1396.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bazrichardson/15906275861/">[source]</a> // My Oxford.</td></tr>
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Drank a lot of tea.</div>
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Not blogged.</div>
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I have never before been busy the way I am busy in Oxford, and it feels like blogging never stood a chance. Finding time to write my novel is hard enough -- finding time to write <i>about </i>writing about my novel, or about the books I've been reading, seems impossible. And there's the ephemera of blogging, the photographs, the memes, the tags, the commenting back, which I found quite draining towards the end. Gosh, I'm talking like someone's died. But I suppose that, since October, I've vaguely viewed this blog as something I'll come back to one day, and now I'm coming to accept that perhaps I will <i>not</i> be back.</div>
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And that's really sad, and maybe, no, I don't want to make that decision!</div>
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So let's not call it a goodbye, but an au revoir. I'm swooping in now, and may well swoop in again. Because I miss you guys, and want to know: how are you doing?! What has 2018 served up for you? <strike>Do you think football might be coming home?</strike></div>
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I am rereading Harry Potter.</div>
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I have also started on my uni work for October and am getting well into Renaissance poetic philosophy. You heard it here first ...</div>
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Soon, I am going to write the first draft of <i>Some of the Trees </i>(<i>The City and the Trees </i>#3).<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Liana Jegers." src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/0f/7c/4f/0f7c4f2205554f6fac850606e2b38443.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/privacy/consent?redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fljegers.tumblr.com%2F">[source]</a></td></tr>
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And look how easily I slip back into the ways of talking about myself in serif font, interspersed with pretty things from Pinterest! I miss blogging! Take me back??<br />
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Like many of my essays, I'm not sure this post is going to have much of a conclusion. Can you let a very irresponsible and inconsistent blogger back into your hearts? <strike>Should I start posting again?</strike> Anyway, update me, talk to me, I miss you. Here is a poem I've been loving recently, by the Scots Makar Jackie Kay.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjemPrfxdLU_HxpSw2-hcOxoODtBXrXMI-8EWWL4vlGI9CBNCb9t-B2rJefp3yO0oza7SL1hR3nMq805hinU4SWfNsamFp48qPt7hyP6mBj2dNq3xwU_UlSo-Yh-FKOtTEsLA-Bx_T_0Xc/s1600/IMG_20180710_131845.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1061" data-original-width="1600" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjemPrfxdLU_HxpSw2-hcOxoODtBXrXMI-8EWWL4vlGI9CBNCb9t-B2rJefp3yO0oza7SL1hR3nMq805hinU4SWfNsamFp48qPt7hyP6mBj2dNq3xwU_UlSo-Yh-FKOtTEsLA-Bx_T_0Xc/s640/IMG_20180710_131845.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">from <i>Bantam </i>(Picador 2017), p. 6.</td></tr>
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~***~<br />
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And with that, I <b>swoop </b>away.</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-60046951459344558102017-10-16T22:45:00.003+01:002017-10-16T22:49:14.152+01:00Oxford Adventure // Footnotes<div style="text-align: center;">
I could start by apologising for being over two weeks late to post the prompt for my own link-up, but in my defence: I have started university! I have moved country! I have turned nineteen! <b>My life has changed quite immeasurably!</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Matriculation, when we have to put on our "sub-fusc" (the gown and unpleasantly school-uniform-like clothing) and parade the streets, tourists snapping pictures of us, to the Sheldonian theatre. Someone spoke in Latin, and then we were officially enrolled. This is beneath the Bridge of Sighs.</td></tr>
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<b>So I am now a student in this city. </b>These are the opening lines from a poem called 'Dun Scotus's Oxford' by Gerard Manley Hopkins:</div>
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<i>Towery city and branchy between towers;</i></div>
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<i>Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded.</i></div>
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I'll be studying this poem in a couple of weeks. It's from 1879 (and the subject, Dun Scotus, was in Oxford in 1301), but Oxford, I can confirm, is still a towery city, branchy between towers, still bell-swarmèd. From my room, I hear the bells of Magdalen ringing the quarter hours.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Related image" src="http://cdn.cnsnews.com/oxford-oxford.jpg" height="220" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.cnsnews.com/blog/penny-starr/christianity-pared-down-theology-studies-oxford">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b>It still feels like a dream, the fact that I'm in this glorious city.</b> That I live and study here. Coming to Oxford really has been my lifelong dream, so it's crazy that it's now my reality. I will never get over the exquisite beauty of this place.</div>
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I live in my college, on a corridor (it feels a tiny little bit like an Enid Blighton boarding school novel). The <i>age </i>of this place is quite overwhelming. Glasgow, my home, is a very old city, but most of our buildings are Victorian (because they ripped all the medieval buildings down). Whereas Oxford is properly, breathtakingly, in-your-face medieval. My college, as in the place where I live and study, was founded in 1278. Like ... what?!</div>
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Oxford is also a paradise of libraries. Seee that big circular dome in the above picture? It's called the Radcliffe Camera. I was working in there this afternoon, reading essays about Dickens.</div>
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And my college library is a converted 13th century chapel.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for st edmund hall college oxford library" height="426" src="https://www.seh.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/styles/popup/public/Keith_Barnes_MG_7604_0.jpg?itok=j5vW7TTI" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
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Not kidding. That's where I work.</div>
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I really don't want this all to come across as boastful! I'm just, like, walking around in a state of constant amazement that I actually get to <i>be </i>here. It's really, properly mental.</div>
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<b>I ALSO LOVE THE WORK.</b></div>
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Which is no surprise, because I love books so what would we expect? But, wow, my lectures are so good. Like, <i>so </i>good. The professors here are properly amazing and I'm so, so privileged to learn from them! And I just love books, guys. I wish I could say more coherent things about the incredible vast landscape of literature in which I'm a pilgrim, but I'll just stick with: <i>I love it.</i></div>
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It was my birthday on Friday. I was worried before I came, because I knew my birthday was so soon after the start of time and I thought it could be a lonely one. But actually I have met a lot of really great people -- on my course, in my college and at church -- and had a lovely birthday. Not only did my home friends pull through by sending me post, my new friends surprised me with cake and presents! We went for drinks in the oldest pub in Oxford (from the 14th century -- isn't this place weird??).</div>
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This post is sickeningly positive, I'm so sorry to bleat on about my life! But I wanna share the love!</div>
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(I also want to clarify that I've had some ropy moments, because moving and settling in <i>is </i>hard, and of course this place, my home of not quite two weeks, is nothing like my old home, and I really miss my friends and my family. It's easy to make Oxford sound like a charmed life, and maybe it is in some ways, but it's not perfect. Even charmed life is still life, and life is hard.)</div>
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But it is rather idyllic, "river-rounded" as Hopkins put it, and after the matriculation ceremony, we went punting! <span style="font-size: x-small;">(A punt is kind of like a canoe, four people sit and one person punts you using a long pole along the riverbed. It's the classic thing to do in both Oxford and Cambridge.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkr6hTEkBsztRYqRMZaIag42GndSp08FonvlbzQPJW_VZ9b26RtQ3B0RmN06Q9TFqI5bAVSZmcBjWfHLeAyoHhtwnWHnFaFdFEdQUysRQaef2u_h1BEX3w4T9iW9Mc_lJDhR4EFzVdN-8/s1600/22500871_1959307934395918_1179513614_n+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="692" data-original-width="404" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkr6hTEkBsztRYqRMZaIag42GndSp08FonvlbzQPJW_VZ9b26RtQ3B0RmN06Q9TFqI5bAVSZmcBjWfHLeAyoHhtwnWHnFaFdFEdQUysRQaef2u_h1BEX3w4T9iW9Mc_lJDhR4EFzVdN-8/s640/22500871_1959307934395918_1179513614_n+%25282%2529.jpg" width="372" /></a></div>
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I love autumn! The leaves are falling golden here, and the streets are so clean and pale, and the sun so bright, and it really is a magical city. Another line from the Hopkins poem with which I began:</div>
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<i>"[Oxford is] of reality the rarest-veined unraveller"</i></div>
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It reminds me of those words from Baedeker I shared a few weeks ago: <i>"Oxford, where doors open into other worlds". </i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(I almost changed the blog name to Other Worlds, by the way. I hope you're enjoying the rebrand.)</span></div>
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This is enough rambling on from me! The reason I'm actually here is to post the prompt for Footnotes (only sixteen days late ... *ahem*).</div>
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1v29_RuuCJYj4V3g1oBtOowR8ixP9l3uww-za1lKs1RGOgdShbKek0xWSJ_Qzv3qUkm-sBtcFXNFlElkyhQF2AATl6zKUhVAITq-deWl2-26Pgz_Kb-Ya0uIN-rdVF3posirGEtgyFKg/s400/footnotes.jpg" /></div>
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Fortunately, <a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">Ashley</a> is on the ball, so if you follow her (if not, why not, sort yourself out), you'll know the prompt!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A quotation from a poem.</span></b></div>
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~***~</div>
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(Oh, and if you don't know what Footnotes is ... I probably should have explained. Awfully sorry. My past self will oblige -- click <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/introducing-footnotes-new-link-up-get.html">here</a>.)</div>
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There's plenty more I could say about all sorts of things, but for now the most pertinent is probably <i>goodnight</i>. I really miss all your blogs, by the way. I'm going to visit, I promise!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://angeladalinger.tumblr.com/post/21574971831">[source]</a> // Angela Dalinger</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.theyallhateus.com/ballbreakers/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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Until soon.</div>
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~***~</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-67384891194631940062017-09-28T22:42:00.001+01:002017-09-28T22:45:44.953+01:00I'm leaving home // Georgia Nicolson: In Homage<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>I'm in a weird and nostalgic mood. </b>Here is a small fact:</div>
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<b>I am leaving this country on Monday and starting university on Tuesday.</b></div>
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Not starting a new series of books and wondering if I'll like it. Not buying a new pair of shoes. Not trying a new restaurant. No, <b>I am going to England to start a completely new chapter of my life.</b></div>
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<b>So, what do you do when you have a really long reading list pressing down on you, unread pages flurrying like vengeful Furies?</b></div>
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<b>Obviously, read Georgia Nicolson!</b></div>
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If you're not familiar with this series a) what are you doing with your life and b) here is what you need to know. Georgia lives somewhere in England. She does not ride dragons, start wars or turn out to be the heir to the throne, but she <i>does </i>get through the ages of fourteen and fifteen, and for that I pay her tribute. </div>
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<b>This is one of the most important series in my life and when I finished the tenth and final book last night I felt like I was burying part of my heart.</b></div>
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But before we reach the eyes-brimming-with-tears-type-love, I can also tell you that <b>they're the funniest books I've ever read, </b>which is why I'm linking up with <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/footnotes-september.html">Footnotes</a>, for September's prompt: <b>a quotation that makes you laugh.</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's quotation link up that <a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">Ashley</a> and I host, and you should get involved! There's still *ahem* two days of this month left?? Those pointing out how ridiculously disorganised I am ... don't be rude.</td></tr>
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Of course, I couldn't just pick a quotation that makes me laugh. My middle name is Go Big Or Go Home*, so I had to go for<b> a ten-book series that makes me laugh!</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Actually it's Just Go Home And Read A Book but never mind</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Ten Reasons You Should (Definitely) Read the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson</i></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. Frankly a beautiful coming-of-age story.</span></b></div>
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You know I am a sucker for reading (and writing) about first love! The rush of it. The opening your heart <i>for the first time</i> to an emotion far bigger than yourself. It knocks your little fourteen-year-old socks off. And I <i>loved </i>reading about Georgia's navigation of the World of Boys (what a confusing place. I need an all-female rescue party to come get me). <b>I was fourteen when I started reading these books. And they have really been with me through thick and thin. I grew up between the pages of these ten novels.</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>2. They are definitely the funniest books ever.</b> </span></div>
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I do not say that lightly. But they make me laugh so much I have genuine fear I'll swallow my tongue.</div>
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<b>I mean, in the first book, Georgia goes to a party dressed as a stuffed olive.</b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: x-small;">The film is not the most accurate and the book is a million times better but it's still great fun to watch with pals.</span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. PALS PALS PALS</span></b></div>
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So Georgia and her friends are called the Ace Gang and they really are an ace gang. Her best friend is Jas. I freaking love Jas. She has an annoying fringe and she loves owls and Georgia is actually <i>really </i>mean to her but they are still great great mates and always phone each other on the landline (this was the noughties, folks, no mobiles!) and survive school together. Generally the Ace Gang is amazing. This is them at breaktime:</div>
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<i>Brr! Blimey O'Reilly's trousers, it's nippy noodles.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>We've buttoned our coats together like in the old days. We are quite literally a tent with six heads and sleeves. </i> </blockquote>
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<i>[Three minutes later]</i> </blockquote>
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<i>Snuggly buggly. We have to sort of thread the snacks up to our mouths through the collar bits.</i></blockquote>
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They never stop eating Midget Gems and Cheesy Wotsits (two triumphs in the world of UK snacks). It's quite inspiring really.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><i><img alt="You really are. Last night you told me you weren't as strong as I thought you were. You are right. You are stronger than I will probably ever know- j.a" height="320" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/3a/ec/e7/3aece7fa0b04d82b42e52986c676bda1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></i></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/ec/e7/3aece7fa0b04d82b42e52986c676bda1.jpg">[source]</a></td></tr>
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On another note, the last scene between Jas and Georgia in the last book nearly made me weep last night. I--</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4. Rosie and Sven</span></b></div>
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Rosie is Georgia's other best friend and she is quite sensationally mad. She always carries a false beard around.</div>
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<i>[in class] Rosie was making a little beard for her pencil case so she was a bit "busy" but she took the trouble to look up.</i></blockquote>
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And her boyfriend is called Sven. His nationality is never exactly revealed as he is normally referred to as "from Viking-land". He is over six foot tall and often dresses all in silver. Rosie and Sven are planning their Viking Hornpipe Wedding.</div>
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You can't understand until you read them.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/A-AbxgAQwFkAhwJ5w0FHT4o/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[source]</span></a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">5. Stalag 14</span></b></div>
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... AKA Georgia's school. Their Physics and German teacher is called Herr Kamyer and his trousers are always too short. And then there is Miss Wilson, the English and RE teacher, who directs them in productions of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth (remember it's an all-girls' school ... part of the uniform is a beret) and Elvis Attwood the caretaker, and sadistic Miss Stamp (Maths and PE), and really, it could not be better.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Latest - Liekeland" height="400" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/ef/94/d9/ef94d95afb7a1d6f8272879c3d0e2661.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="396" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://liekeland.nl/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">6. The Nicolson Family</span></b></div>
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Mutti and Vati and Libby and Granddad and Uncle Eddie. Libby is three years old and very violent. She has a pet potato. A real potato. It is starting to go mouldy. Georgia's dad drives a three wheeled car called a Robin Reliant, which Georgia calls The Clownmobile.</div>
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<i>At least I have the house to myself for a mope-a-thon. The Swiss Family Mad have roared off down the drive at three miles an hour. They'll be at the end of our street by tomorrow if they're lucky and have a following wind.</i></blockquote>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">7. The Scales and Slang</span></b></div>
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Not fish scales, obviously, keep up. Notably the infamous Snogging Scale, the Losing It Scale and the Having the Hump Scale. All the books have a glossary to explain the slang. It is really pretty great.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">8. These books actually probably birthed a lot of modern YA.</span></b></div>
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The first one was published in 1999! I was one year old! <i>Twilight </i>often gets heralded as the Dawn Of YA, but it wasn't published until 2005. So you and I owe a <i>great </i>debt to Ms Louise Rennison.</div>
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(It's cool, actually, I theorise that part of her point in the books is to encourage teenage girls to read. There is a beautiful bit in one where Georgia has to study <i>Wuthering Heights</i>, which she and her friends call Blithering Tights and do not want to read, but actually she gets v into it. And when I read <i>Wuthering Heights</i>, my edition had a foreword by Louise Rennison, talking about how she had just that experience when she was at school. Isn't that fun?)</div>
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<b><b><span style="font-size: large;">9. They feature what is potentially my top OTP of life.</span></b></b></div>
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I have a fair few OTPs, folks, but I'm just saying!!!</div>
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(And I love how realistic the boys are. They are boys! They act like boys! They're not a female author's imagined ideal of a boy, which can happen in YA.)</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">10. This series is an affirming, warm, hilarious rallying cry for all teenage girls.</span></b></div>
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Some may argue these books are not very feminist, because they (seem to) revolve around boyfriends and make-up and boyfriends and boys and boyfriends.</div>
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<i>Gor blimey, Mum and her mates talk RUBBISH. I am glad that me and my mates are not so superficial. They are just talking about men and clothes and men.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>I can just dollydaydream about my boyfriend and what I will wear when I next see him.</i></blockquote>
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<b>And yet they're amazingly empowering. </b>They don't take themselves too seriously, at all, and so really they don't need to be categorised. They're just a lovely look at being a teenage girl -- the trials and the wonderful things. <b>Having best friends and learning about love and laughing, a lot.</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Pinterest •♛T O R I ♛•" src="https://i.pinimg.com/564x/fd/7f/7a/fd7f7a51e2caee72ed480c795e053889.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/25262447888481596/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://gabriellerizzo.tumblr.com/">[source]</a> // adolosence, right?</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/eb/01/7a/eb017aeabd76b77ddfdfff0023ba9571.jpg">[source]</a> // shout-out to my bezzie pal Rose who introduced me to these books, and my other bezzie pals Cat and Natasha, who are the Ace Gang.</td></tr>
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<b>Gosh, I'm feeling quite emotional! </b>That last picture could refer to a lot of people and places. It could certainly refer to these books, which I plan to revisit many, many times. It could refer to Glasgow, and to the countryside south of the city where I live, with its fields and the lake where I swim. It could just refer to Scotland, which it breaks my heart to leave. And of course it's to all the friends I'm leaving behind. <b>But I am excited about Oxford. I'm very excited to go! I'm just very sorry to leave.</b></div>
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<b>But that's the thing, isn't it? Home is still home, and I'll be back. If I wasn't sad to be leaving, what would my home mean?</b></div>
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<b>I would love to know which books you've grown up with; which books have shaped your young years the way Georgia Nicolson has shaped mine? </b>I am feeling quite giddy on what EM Forster calls "the glorious bewilderment of youth". We shall not always be young, friends, but we are now. I am tonight. And I'll be young among the dreaming spires, the Oxford of which I'm dreamt. It will rise real around me, real stones, real dreams, in just a few days.</div>
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Until we meet again.</div>
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~***~</div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-73516478053937360152017-09-20T14:42:00.003+01:002017-09-25T19:58:56.035+01:00Vikings, Kenya and Why I Love Jane Austen<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>I forgot how to blog.</b> My blog broke, or I broke, or something. Life is weird. Priorities are hard to manage. Life whirls on, and deciding how to spend time is tough. Do you ever go around wishing you could blog/read blogs/paint/other random hobbies that aren't quite your Main Thing (my Main Things being writing, reading and academic work), and then when a sliver of time to do those things presents itself, you freeze, unable to decide how to fill it?</div>
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But I feel like blogging should be a stress-free environment, and I should be able to drop in whenever I can and post whatever I want and not need to fear a loss of relationships. I may not be a “successful" blog in terms of a steadily growing readership, regular posts, etc. But that's OK. I can keep going as I'm going and keep the friends I have, rather than worrying about accruing followers / blogging in the “right" way.</div>
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This is all getting a bit deep, sorry, folks!</div>
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<b>I mean, I'm literally just here to post mini-reviews for Back to the Classics.</b> Not meaning to get emotional ... we're British after all.</div>
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SO ANYWAY.</div>
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzURTxqt8apnFDijWBmdqavN08i4pkIxUOp0XNfQucv-X9QyWG7M3s_g3JhyL8bf9FoC_DElPOAYACReM3cGm-yWdEBL930_OcDoo1geMsMktuRFXxUbx-JmsakdU3PFdVppPnn11ZUJ-q/s320/3Button2017.jpg" /></div>
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This is a challenge hosted by Karen @ <a href="https://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.co.uk/">Books and Chocolate</a>. To participate, you have to read twelve (or six or nine) classics from different categories. To read the rules and categories, click <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/back-to-classics-2017.html">here</a>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A pre-1800 classic // The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mX9ORggH16gsE3S4dGfubiksxgtmhfgSff-UGuyCHnCXfCiv9vCkgmWiA44Esw4S3x5Wxf4c6nNeaFc840YMQtZk7tJpK43JqhznTNdJUzrz67KAsoexAoWsMtaPhbyTe1RYrj0IH20/s1600/gunnlaugh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="462" data-original-width="318" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7mX9ORggH16gsE3S4dGfubiksxgtmhfgSff-UGuyCHnCXfCiv9vCkgmWiA44Esw4S3x5Wxf4c6nNeaFc840YMQtZk7tJpK43JqhznTNdJUzrz67KAsoexAoWsMtaPhbyTe1RYrj0IH20/s320/gunnlaugh.jpg" width="220" /></a><br />
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A far pre-1800 classic: this Viking epic was written down around 1270-1300. It was a look at an old, brutal world with which I'm not familiar: the Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland of the 13th century. Strange to think that my ancestors dwelt there. (And maybe yours, too, US/Aussie followers! Weird, right?) This saga features kings, goddesses and warrior-poets, as men vie for the hand of Helga the Fair.</div>
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<i>“The woman was born to bring war</i></div>
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<i>between men -- the tree of the valkyrie</i></div>
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<i>started it all; I wanted her</i></div>
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<i>sorely, that log of rare silver." (p42)</i></div>
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Mostly the story is told in blunt, plain English -- I love this brand of #VikingSass -- but poems like the one I quoted intersperse it. In that society, poetry was the top form of prowess, along with fighting. I enjoyed peeking into this other world (I'm looking forward, albeit with trepidation, to studying Old and Middle English at uni, <i>Beowulf </i>and the like). And it's only fifty pages long. What's not to like?</div>
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<i>“The slander-wary god </i></div>
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<i>of the storm-sword's spark</i></div>
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<i>mustn't court the cape of the earth</i></div>
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<i>with her cover of linen like snow." (p33)</i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A classic set in a place you want to visit // The Flame-Trees of Thika</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuS0EO0EfQWa8ryo6rLzUi0lEpA1tPDjpOLUoLDGky4lfjvAjdGQWeYplTwacJMIP8_HcAZTJtjb-TX2Gff59268F6jXJsnJr_RSWZir0NwhGT1kf8CSJFCOO8VNrcrrQHoFAPYdFmFQ/s1600/flame+trees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="309" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPuS0EO0EfQWa8ryo6rLzUi0lEpA1tPDjpOLUoLDGky4lfjvAjdGQWeYplTwacJMIP8_HcAZTJtjb-TX2Gff59268F6jXJsnJr_RSWZir0NwhGT1kf8CSJFCOO8VNrcrrQHoFAPYdFmFQ/s320/flame+trees.jpg" width="208" /></a>Elspeth Huxley was 1913 when her entrepreneurial, dreamer parents moved the family to Kenya to farm. I read this book in Kenya, but I'm popping it in this category because it is set in Thika, a region I never visited. <b>This is an amazing memoir. </b>I loved seeing in its pages the Kenya I came to know, but also the vanished Kenya of a century ago.<br />
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I love this story because it shows British people plunged into Kenyan life, having to adapt.<br />
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<i>“I had never before seen heat, as you can see smoke or rain. But there it was, jigging and quavering above brown grasses and spiky thorn-trees and flaring erythrinas. if I could have stretched my hand out far enough I could surely have grasped it, a kind of colourless jelly." (p14)</i><br />
<b><br /></b>And they adapt so well! Elspeth is only a child, fascinated by the world around her, and Robin and Tilly, her parents, are quite wonderful in the new life they make for themselves. I loved reading about the way they preserve some British customs and leave others behind. The ventures Tilly throws herself into. They become part of a community of British ex-pats, and these interactions between the adults, seen through a child's eyes, form the compelling “plot" of the book.<b><br /></b>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMnyRWaV3M-ApVOCrYvNetxkKgz8D_9WR81EwQOVnNIAhwvzUiFXIA7Q1BoNk6d7zQYcmJxGubmVwZSlTViOyUM5713aenXwzDtezdHYnD8u8rnwuFt-8dY5TQIRHkJ_TZMUGTJKO30U/s1600/DSCN2604.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMnyRWaV3M-ApVOCrYvNetxkKgz8D_9WR81EwQOVnNIAhwvzUiFXIA7Q1BoNk6d7zQYcmJxGubmVwZSlTViOyUM5713aenXwzDtezdHYnD8u8rnwuFt-8dY5TQIRHkJ_TZMUGTJKO30U/s640/DSCN2604.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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It's a beautifully written, evocative book. Gosh, this review is making me a bit sad! Kenya, take me back ...</div>
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<i>“the crimson sky, the golden light streaming down the valley, and then its obliteration by the dusk, as if some great lamp had been turned down in the heavens, filled me with the terrible melancholy that sometimes wrings the hearts of children and can never be communicated or explained. It was as if the day, which was unique, and could never come again, had been struck down like the duiker [a type of deer] and lay there bleeding, and then had died with it, and could never be recalled. I felt it desperately important that the moment should be halted, the life of the day preserved, its death indefinitely postponed, and that the memory of every instant, of every fleck of colour in that tremendous sky, should be branded on my mind so as to become as much a part of my existence as an eye or hand." (p122)</i></div>
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But the moment cannot be halted. 1913 could not be halted, moving inexorably into the First World War; Huxley's childhood could not be halted. Nor could my time in Kenya, my advent to Oxford, the days and weeks that flash by us like the sun setting again and again.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2lj0yjsrlEhpKFF9WplSq2gzya1GY9naepwRVQlfJL90AbOEN43WPnyHLIimN5ul2AYT-1aDaJMb5NW8WYDCK0VsEakBi5RPS-RnENulV2AZBzu0yCvYRTm9f7MTz3yR86Pp6lcPFJYE/s1600/IMG_7636.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2lj0yjsrlEhpKFF9WplSq2gzya1GY9naepwRVQlfJL90AbOEN43WPnyHLIimN5ul2AYT-1aDaJMb5NW8WYDCK0VsEakBi5RPS-RnENulV2AZBzu0yCvYRTm9f7MTz3yR86Pp6lcPFJYE/s640/IMG_7636.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A classic by a woman author // Mansfield Park</span></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-W1uBJGqMJqV-voFBKmkgy_L75qEQFAGhIM9Qo6F5pXHBWiTMDok7WwbgQXJVIgGtiZtWzCjlad01isQdqNBfBqp1RdxcYznmfqmhX2OTRYX9ZSoPVFmyke1Ti9le12jgJrlQYxvJtds/s1600/mansfield+park.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1412" data-original-width="913" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-W1uBJGqMJqV-voFBKmkgy_L75qEQFAGhIM9Qo6F5pXHBWiTMDok7WwbgQXJVIgGtiZtWzCjlad01isQdqNBfBqp1RdxcYznmfqmhX2OTRYX9ZSoPVFmyke1Ti9le12jgJrlQYxvJtds/s320/mansfield+park.jpg" width="206" /></a><b>Austen is like a cup of tea and a biscuit and also a comet crashing into earth but without disturbing the cup-of-tea-biscuit-ness and I think that's <i>pretty darned amazing</i>.</b><br />
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<i>Mansfield Park</i> was my last unread Austen novel and, based on the other five, I had high expectations. They were met! Austen herself described this book as “not half so entertaining as <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>", but in my opinion that's pretty unfair. It has a slower pace than some of the other novels, and Fanny is certainly a different heroine to Lizzie Bennett or Emma Wodehouse. They remain my two favourites of Austen's heroines -- I just love their spunk! -- but Fanny Price is also pretty great. She is sweet and shy and quiet, but not annoying. She is admirable.<br />
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I found this book so compelling. That's why Austen is amazing. She writes novels set in the stifling world of eighteenth-century England, where so many people seem so preoccupied with husband-hunting and the purchase of new hats. <b>And yet her novels are fresh, original and exciting. </b>This one kept me hooked! And of course the writing was exquisite; on almost every page I would sit back thinking, “wow, that was a great sentence." <b>I'm pretty certain that Austen is one of the all-time greats, and I can't wait to reread all her books.</b><br />
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Also, it contained this golden bit where one of the characters is talking about being ordained, and another is saying “oh, not the clergy, so boring, go into the law instead!" And he says, pointing at the countryside in which they're walking:<br />
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“Go into the law! You might as well tell me to go into this wilderness!"<br />
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I now say this to anyone who asks me if I've considered being a lawyer. (It happens pretty often.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvhbKA1HCsVLKR6DmiuM_SuRGGUFeazb_AuFjj0zeW16okUtMUzCy3Y5wcRsuTef8s631OMNBHr1i9t5UeMb_Pj55LAUrTu2bWc96OgpJ4ICcAdR3vKbnw-ZbxdtahSI0rXQXS_B0-wA/s1600/SAVE+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPvhbKA1HCsVLKR6DmiuM_SuRGGUFeazb_AuFjj0zeW16okUtMUzCy3Y5wcRsuTef8s631OMNBHr1i9t5UeMb_Pj55LAUrTu2bWc96OgpJ4ICcAdR3vKbnw-ZbxdtahSI0rXQXS_B0-wA/s640/SAVE+%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://lghttp.46505.nexcesscdn.net/801C770/images/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/650x/040ec09b1e35df139433887a97daa66f/l/a/large_2727_p1045_-_4x1.75_-_im_my_own_woman_4_1.jpg" style="font-size: 12.8px;">[source]</a><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> // RIDING ON A WAVE OF AUSTEN FEMINISM // SHE WAS A WOMAN WRITER IN A TIME WHEN THAT REALLY WASN'T A THING // WHAT A COOL LADY??!</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="http://therewillbeeffects.tumblr.com/post/139130210299/looking-for-similar-posts-follow-me">[source]</a></td></tr>
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~***~</div>
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<b>What are you reading at the moment? What's been the best book of the summer? Have you read any Old English lit? What's your favourite Austen novel? And which book has given you wanderlust?</b></div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-47590287039444940102017-09-01T16:53:00.000+01:002017-09-01T16:53:06.911+01:00Footnotes: September<div style="text-align: center;">
This post comes to you from the past. I am currently living my dream: I'm on an uninhabited island with no electricity or WiFi. Literally only sheep. It's pretty much my favourite place in the world.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnvmz2mlX7ZDjmY4imN6X-cpd99wuFibSaTbvRAVqIy15GXgS6bziDzfNKORymY9ttngsXwX1YA6ktECOdlM-Jnf5LxA8JqkzbfwkBg1bdGc6GZhmCpa2hBxWBDseb6VNXah5RoVDnUVY/s1600/bog+witch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="689" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnvmz2mlX7ZDjmY4imN6X-cpd99wuFibSaTbvRAVqIy15GXgS6bziDzfNKORymY9ttngsXwX1YA6ktECOdlM-Jnf5LxA8JqkzbfwkBg1bdGc6GZhmCpa2hBxWBDseb6VNXah5RoVDnUVY/s400/bog+witch.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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No but seriously, remember that lighthouse thing I shared in my most recent post? (If you don't, a) how dare you not internalise every pixel of my blog, I'm offended, and b) scroll down.) It was about wanting to live in a lighthouse. But where I really want to live is a reservoir tower.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh04Kkm73JSkuouAuT-uIwVSBh35lop7B-jalFFKJ-PQMnT3RACv56-2BWfADWyUWlYdZfXnS55JNYakjMIlA5HH2Uxhbb9OgQ0gF8fQffRHHEj8IJtMorVHNrd7pwwV3bNID5razQ5zNg/s1600/reservoir.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh04Kkm73JSkuouAuT-uIwVSBh35lop7B-jalFFKJ-PQMnT3RACv56-2BWfADWyUWlYdZfXnS55JNYakjMIlA5HH2Uxhbb9OgQ0gF8fQffRHHEj8IJtMorVHNrd7pwwV3bNID5razQ5zNg/s640/reservoir.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1998264">[source]</a></td></tr>
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There's a train I often get that goes up from the countryside through the south side of Glasgow, and going through the green country the line passes a couple of beautiful reservoirs. I love that railway -- the trains are old and creaky, bodies painted dull red and yellow, cheerful somehow -- and I love those lakes. And I always look at the reservoir towers as I pass and have a surge of longing.</div>
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Anyway, I'm getting away from the point.</div>
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<b>It's the first of September, which means it's time for Footnotes!</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1v29_RuuCJYj4V3g1oBtOowR8ixP9l3uww-za1lKs1RGOgdShbKek0xWSJ_Qzv3qUkm-sBtcFXNFlElkyhQF2AATl6zKUhVAITq-deWl2-26Pgz_Kb-Ya0uIN-rdVF3posirGEtgyFKg/s1600/footnotes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="800" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1v29_RuuCJYj4V3g1oBtOowR8ixP9l3uww-za1lKs1RGOgdShbKek0xWSJ_Qzv3qUkm-sBtcFXNFlElkyhQF2AATl6zKUhVAITq-deWl2-26Pgz_Kb-Ya0uIN-rdVF3posirGEtgyFKg/s400/footnotes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">Ashley</a> and I <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/introducing-footnotes-new-link-up-get.html">began this link-up last month</a>. It's quotation based -- each month we post a prompt asking you to choose a quotation on a particular theme, and you respond pretty much however you like! Thanks to those who got involved in August! This month's prompt:</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A quotation that makes you laugh.</b></span></div>
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~***~</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Ana Rosa" height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/aa/e4/76/aae476a0678b2903b3a5eaacf79d1fc1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="440" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ana-rosa.tumblr.com/post/92083391453">[source]</a></td></tr>
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~***~</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-31576994618770549162017-08-15T22:21:00.001+01:002017-09-25T20:34:16.118+01:00A lot of life updates // a book haul<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's been so long since I did a life post, recap, or book haul that I've forgotten how. I do have these blogging crises sometimes, when I'm like, <i>what am I doing, why do I spend so much time writing about myself and taking photos of books, nobody cares.</i> And then I remind myself that I love reading other people's writing about themselves, and looking at their photos of books, so why shouldn't I do it, too?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I could dwell on my angst further, but instead<b> let's plunge into THE BOOKS</b> (that's why we're here!).</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">So, this is what happens when you don't do a book haul post from December until August. OOPS.</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">These four -- <i>Shadow and Bone, Finnikin of the Rock, A Darker Shade of Magic</i> and <i>Neverwhere</i> -- were all Christmas presents from my great brother. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(My family has finally figured out that I want books for presents. It's taken nearly nineteen years but it's happened and it's wonderful.)</span> There are all super pretty and, more to the point, the entire blogosphere is OBSESSED and throws them all at my head. (Maybe not so much <i>Finnikin </i><span style="font-size: x-small;">(which is in the picture with <i>Shadow and Bone,</i> hiding)</span>, but the other three? Pftt. I can't leave the house without the bloodthirsty chant of “Schwab, Schwab, read some Schwab!" rolling into my ears.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Have I actually read them yet? Considering I've owned them for eight months? Hahaha. As if. I need a healthy four years to make it through my TBR ... <span style="font-size: x-small;">(I hate myself.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"> Despite being Scottish, do I ever read Scottish literature, ever? Nope. I could count on one hand the number of Scottish books I've read IN MY LIFE! (I mean, I would need about twelve fingers. But let's not bore ourselves with the details.) So here's two Scottish books.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Trainspotting</i> was a Christmas present from my lovely friend Cat (along with <i>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings</i>). It's an iconic book about the Edinburgh drug scene. According to a friend who has read it, <i>The Goldfinch</i> alludes to it. So I'm there! (Metaphorically there. Literally, who <i>knows</i> when I'll read this book. I'm a travesty of a sham, asphyxiating under a TBR pile.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Nil Nil </i>is a poetry collection by Aberdonian poet Don Paterson. I got this book last December from an incredible place in Oxford called The £3 Bookshop. They sell NEW BOOKS for £3 EACH?!! How does that business make money? I HAVE NO IDEA. When I go to Oxford, will I fritter away my life's savings in increments of £3 and buy everything from the entire shop? Yeah, probably!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Also bought in The £3 Bookshop! What a place. This is one of my FAVOURITE BOOKS EVER and I can't wait to reread!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">A Further Stack // the university edition</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yup, these books are all new (to me) for the purposes of my degree! Ahahahaha. Who needs education, right? I think I'll pack it in, move to Paraguay and herd alpacas. I do love South America ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>I got my reading list for Oxford a month ago. </b>It is ... what's that word? <i>Long. </i>As you can tell from those books! I'm meant to read all those by October?! As well as <i>Great Expectations </i>and <i>Moby Dick,</i> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(not pictured because I already owned them)</span>?! The alpacas look more and more inviting ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>I did have a small crisis when I got the list. </b>Suddenly the next three years of my life lay stark before me: read through the list. Go to uni. Study, write essays, die a little. Get reading list for next term. Go home for Christmas holidays. Read through list. Return to uni. Study, write essays, fall further into Tartarus. And repeat for three years??</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">You hear people say it, don't you, that studying books ruins the love of books. Allow me to be a massive narcissist for a minute and quote myself. This is what I said on this blog on 1st October, 2016 <span style="font-size: x-small;">(which is actually not far off a year ago. WHAT IS THIS THING WE CALL TIME)</span>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>I'm currently going through the uni application process again. I have unexpectedly had to navigate people telling me a) not to apply to the uni I want to go to and b) even more bafflingly, not to apply for English Lit ...</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="text-align: justify;">"<span style="background-color: transparent;">But, Emily, studying English means studying books and thinking about books and writing about books and criticising books and you've not been taught it in school the way it will be at uni! AND YOU'LL STOP LOVING BOOKS!"</span></span><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 14.3px;" /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzLW943aPK-2wuRLVLGJMBUzVSVSCvLW8uaKZMZUUbalF4OhS3BWXZNFeCmITA8xBr-Ui1wmgjJKS0e4I1Gi8knPhA8DX0G2iFdaiHBdplzBwnAvdf4l3wRpVR1kRKzdMVYA6snRYW7U/s1600/ummm+no.gif" imageanchor="1" style="color: #4c1130; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-decoration-line: none;"><img border="0" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEzLW943aPK-2wuRLVLGJMBUzVSVSCvLW8uaKZMZUUbalF4OhS3BWXZNFeCmITA8xBr-Ui1wmgjJKS0e4I1Gi8knPhA8DX0G2iFdaiHBdplzBwnAvdf4l3wRpVR1kRKzdMVYA6snRYW7U/s320/ummm+no.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.1) 1px 1px 5px; padding: 5px; position: relative;" width="320" /></a></i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>I'm not trying to be an annoying 17y/o who disregards adults' advice and generally yells <span style="text-align: justify;">"YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE, MOM*" ... but equally, don't patronise me and tell me that what I think I want is not actually what I want?! In fact, I know what I want. And I'm not expecting uni to be the same as school, obviously, and even if I do get there and hate studying English I can always drop out and still like reading, it's not as if I'll be like "</span><span style="text-align: justify;">SHAKESPEARE IS A LIE AND GATSBY NEVER HAPPENED!"</span></i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></span></blockquote>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="text-align: justify;">*To clarify, it's not my actual </span><span style="text-align: justify;">“</span><span style="text-align: justify;">mom" who has said these things. She's a great lady. </span></span></i></blockquote>
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So you can see, my past self was mighty convinced that this Stopping Loving Books thing would DEFINITELY NEVER HAPPEN. "Don't patronise me and tell me what I think I want is not actually what I want?!" I said in a rather angsty way. I STILL STICK BY MY ANGSTY PAST SELF. But I did have that moment of horror where I wondered, what if I could find my degree a grind?</div>
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I don't think so, though. Because I've had such a great time with the books so far. I've read <i>Moby Dick</i>, which was blimming great, and <i>Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction</i> -- fascinating -- and some great poetry by Browning, and I'm now really enjoying <i>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn</i>, so I can confirm that I do not hate books. And anyway, since getting the list I read <i>The Mark of Athena</i>. I'm not going to stop reading YA and fantasy. That just isn't going to happen. I WILL ALWAYS MAKE TIME FOR PERCY. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Gosh, though, my Percy emotions are running high at the moment. SOMEBODY HOLD ME.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'll leave the angsty rant there for today, but send me good vibes for getting through the reading list!</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="Peter Liversidge’s-everythingisconnected: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/6c/77/c9/6c77c9bb5fc30d18a2703682f38249ca.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small; text-align: start;"><a href="http://www.mysticmamma.com/readthesigns/" style="text-align: start;">[source]</a></span></td></tr>
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<b style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In Life</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">SO IN JUNE I MET <a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">ASHLEY</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Ashley! As in the blogger behind <a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">[oddly novel title]</a>, the co-hoster of Footnotes, the beta reader of my first novel, and my great friend of several years! </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">SHE CAME TO SCOTLAND AND WE HAD LUNCH.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">My mother was very concerned. She kept saying things like "<span style="text-align: justify;">but are you SURE she's a real person?" and </span><span style="text-align: justify;">"don't get in a car with her!" There is quite a lot of stigma surrounding internet friendships -- firstly, the assumption that the people we talk to online are definitely secretly 50y/o men, and the idea that </span><span style="text-align: justify;">"internet friendships aren't real friendships". <b>It was absolutely <i>wonderful </i>to meet an internet friend face to face! </b>We had such a nice afternoon. Unfortunately we spent it in a rather down-at-heel small town north of Glasgow -- I wished Ashley could have seen better parts of Scotland than that! -- but in spite of the less than inspiring setting, it was pretty delightful. <b>Have you ever met an internet friend? </b>Don't forget to hit me up if you're ever in Scotland!</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">AND SHE GAVE ME A BOOK?!</span></div>
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<i style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglfJDNHi1F6PSp8dqcoSPZoQe_A6db-YU24MWkX1KPbgszyWcKXycI7TZtBiI0WFwkSUI67GjBB2Ve0PcqKyLXwxYmYPZqi6VxCdB7nUacYvrA7Wnb-3yM131dOSHIY8lOX_LARFjM6oI/s1600/DSCN2708.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1364" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglfJDNHi1F6PSp8dqcoSPZoQe_A6db-YU24MWkX1KPbgszyWcKXycI7TZtBiI0WFwkSUI67GjBB2Ve0PcqKyLXwxYmYPZqi6VxCdB7nUacYvrA7Wnb-3yM131dOSHIY8lOX_LARFjM6oI/s640/DSCN2708.JPG" width="544" /></span></a></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Basically, 90% of our friendship is based on Sherlock gifs. Ashley is a better person than me and has actually read some of the books, instead of just watching the BBC series <span style="font-size: x-small;">(side note, I still haven't finished series 4?! It came out while I was in Kenya!)</span>, and is encouraging me to do the same!</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Such a good day, folks!</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcKdy5K0My-prEoeC3Xxw08PeeR40FSVsbGdhtcyu_Jmo7L9bC3-H_k_-8YkT-mr1Cq1kAeWhTH032uUsVEgA6jmm5CXHLhva1e4MtjuSPiz-8ApxO0nq9FxgbUP-BYUGnVEbJSJ083M/s1600/IMG_1986.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1081" data-original-width="1600" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcKdy5K0My-prEoeC3Xxw08PeeR40FSVsbGdhtcyu_Jmo7L9bC3-H_k_-8YkT-mr1Cq1kAeWhTH032uUsVEgA6jmm5CXHLhva1e4MtjuSPiz-8ApxO0nq9FxgbUP-BYUGnVEbJSJ083M/s640/IMG_1986.JPG" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">In July I went to Dublin!</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I went on holiday with my Kenya team and it was really lovely. <b>I have always been very attracted by the celtic magic of Ireland, the myth and the music. </b>Dublin is a great city, both exciting and traditional. We got lost around the cobbled streets; walking out in the long July evenings live music would float from the beautiful pubs and bars. Once I did a bit of impromptu ceilidh dancing in the street, to the tune of a busking fiddler. There was so much character in each lovely Georgian building, and the River Liffey, winding through the city's heart, was gorgeous.</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1004" data-original-width="1600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2E3L0tvIAiw5p_fhpid75OKmgjS_co1vzNX4hnYonEUFNVQhlCjjKdm5MipzLkcxXD2_RUh1jSeZLF1Y7sZ-DSQFkbZAg6ldtlPQ8FO4U1zoko2DlMPysZHMgCbgDPSzrGqB4KFXWOzg/s640/19875942_1695325724105774_861542831_o.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I always think there is something so atmospheric about straight beams of sunlight, something divine. The glory of the Lord descending through clouds.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was a hilarious holiday of art galleries and museums, of cooking pasta in a youth hostel, of walking until our feet blistered because we refused to pay for public transport. Sitting drinking wine by the Liffey, reminiscing about Kenya, wondering about the future, laughing about the present.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2E3L0tvIAiw5p_fhpid75OKmgjS_co1vzNX4hnYonEUFNVQhlCjjKdm5MipzLkcxXD2_RUh1jSeZLF1Y7sZ-DSQFkbZAg6ldtlPQ8FO4U1zoko2DlMPysZHMgCbgDPSzrGqB4KFXWOzg/s1600/19875942_1695325724105774_861542831_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One glorious day we walked to the beach. <b>I <i>love </i>cities by the sea.</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1x4XayeeTpQbo4upcIR-UxEAp96P4m-XELN8oo_5jertDY-_TnLVuxTNDsQk5NwfQNgxKicMB2ibNd2CbTo7I-c_WZqa5qsE8HPbq4b9y9U-ZtKtkRf_sbjtcomYGfMM7OpMtpXhchKI/s1600/19866784_1695330937438586_243300370_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1072" data-original-width="1600" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1x4XayeeTpQbo4upcIR-UxEAp96P4m-XELN8oo_5jertDY-_TnLVuxTNDsQk5NwfQNgxKicMB2ibNd2CbTo7I-c_WZqa5qsE8HPbq4b9y9U-ZtKtkRf_sbjtcomYGfMM7OpMtpXhchKI/s640/19866784_1695330937438586_243300370_o.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img alt="Image may contain: 6 people, people smiling, people standing, sky, ocean, cloud and outdoor" height="480" src="https://scontent.flhr2-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/19943021_1594563167252240_5880115886944650336_o.jpg?oh=550373df1fca9299481a6c0fd62a324b&oe=5A2AB8CF" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It was <i>so </i>nice to spend time with these girls. Ft. the fun skirt I got made in Kenya.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of course, no holiday would be complete without some secondhand book-buying! Because I really have nothing to read .... *ahem*</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAJTSWEZ9ggYvs37qmfxKMxsyyzHiXJTz0HNxEG0FwUWskACVn4_20II_vSC7uGUSOcxEskcmmOFsR1M5ZK5QhFJTVtOPefMBbDhUjdtBTOKXdiFUU6NV61Dai9bXv7LJTPZaGm2UTqSs/s1600/DSCN2699.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1251" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAJTSWEZ9ggYvs37qmfxKMxsyyzHiXJTz0HNxEG0FwUWskACVn4_20II_vSC7uGUSOcxEskcmmOFsR1M5ZK5QhFJTVtOPefMBbDhUjdtBTOKXdiFUU6NV61Dai9bXv7LJTPZaGm2UTqSs/s640/DSCN2699.JPG" width="500" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Chosen because <i>The Road</i> by McCarthy is one of my faves.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2CnK-f9J1M6aKpXtZHaHZXdOoMNZUkKK8mvs4rercxl5hhEIa8KNkeG4KfehR4cFbIsfmQzmDUU_wzLne7EeBTIAdTgo-eXCENnklGIzmhB6fkkMXgytuT-PUP32NkkLqCK0Fxwq7xpQ/s1600/DSCN2658.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1343" data-original-width="1293" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2CnK-f9J1M6aKpXtZHaHZXdOoMNZUkKK8mvs4rercxl5hhEIa8KNkeG4KfehR4cFbIsfmQzmDUU_wzLne7EeBTIAdTgo-eXCENnklGIzmhB6fkkMXgytuT-PUP32NkkLqCK0Fxwq7xpQ/s640/DSCN2658.JPG" width="616" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>It was a great holiday! </b>(I spent a lot of time looking out for Derek Landy, who lives in Ireland, but somehow didn't manage to spot him. It's so fun, though, seeing the place where your fave books (in this case, Skulduggery) are set!)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://livingshitpost.tumblr.com/post/162442941214/some-aesthetiqu%C3%A9-shots-of-salt-to-the-sea-by-ruta"><span style="font-family: inherit;">[source]</span></a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;"><b>In Writing</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am redrafting <i>Stay In the City</i>!</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSCichFJTU74kHcJlGbYv36lNPA5VP-XKt4R_dBxGJrGhfCarUNs6A4jsxnSGBlARnJCBR1ZhWUFIZzFxHO8O1D9GhEMwPKPcHkeC4LVxldTbLEUJ52jn2CwVYAgeg4Sm0vx83Ti6HMs/s1600/i%2527m+so+excited+i+may+vomit.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="500" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSCichFJTU74kHcJlGbYv36lNPA5VP-XKt4R_dBxGJrGhfCarUNs6A4jsxnSGBlARnJCBR1ZhWUFIZzFxHO8O1D9GhEMwPKPcHkeC4LVxldTbLEUJ52jn2CwVYAgeg4Sm0vx83Ti6HMs/s320/i%2527m+so+excited+i+may+vomit.gif" width="320" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">No but seriously! It was <i>November </i>when I finished the first draft of this book! That's like half a year ago! Heck, that's like nearly a <i>whole </i>year ago! It's just SO NICE to be jumping back into the story with my beloved team of characters. I loved working on the first book in May/June/July, but I always had this knowledge that their story had continued past that book, and they needed me in the future! Now it is the future. If that makes sense.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you want to know more about the book <span style="font-size: x-small;">(bless you)</span> you can click <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/i-wrote-book-what-comes-next-big-ole.html">here</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This morning I finished reading it and made a Redraft Action Plan. I'm very professional, me.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicH2Pby1X2HWwY6_M9T2vwgKDTEFVULDbI8NJjW6lCfN-7MMyMKgLWysDGCvEG_tVfALfu6X77oHyHWPsSlIQPRlMRGY36_6CECsa8lCoBhvGB-BZGYC0ZBk4mhvHCNX4Ci57FJU30bJM/s1600/100%2525+certain+I%2527m+0%2525+sure.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="160" data-original-width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicH2Pby1X2HWwY6_M9T2vwgKDTEFVULDbI8NJjW6lCfN-7MMyMKgLWysDGCvEG_tVfALfu6X77oHyHWPsSlIQPRlMRGY36_6CECsa8lCoBhvGB-BZGYC0ZBk4mhvHCNX4Ci57FJU30bJM/s1600/100%2525+certain+I%2527m+0%2525+sure.gif" /></span></b></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is only the second book I'll ever have redrafted! It's a learning curve, right? Right. Ahahahaha.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Seriously, though, I'm excited.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So, I was going to talk about stuff I've been reading recently, but I think I may die if this post gets any longer, and goodness knows how you're feeling! If you actually read this, you're a hero. Anyway, <b>TELL ME ALL THE THINGS: what are you writing? What are you reading? Have you been to Dublin? Do you ever have blogging crises? Are you an internet friendship success story like I am? Have you ever been to the setting of your favourite book and got stupidly excited? Any recent book haul excitements? Share it all!</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'll leave you with this, my most recent favourite thing.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I want this life a painful amount</span></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Until very soon!</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">~***~</span></div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-62650640991418264432017-08-04T18:55:00.000+01:002017-08-04T18:55:07.559+01:00Other Worlds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Footnotes </b>is a new link-up hosted by <a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">Ashley</a> and me. For quotation obsessees (and isn't that all of us?). This month's prompt is: <b><span style="font-size: large;">a quotation from an author.</span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Adams Carvalho" height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/cc/5e/a8/cc5ea887d7c09fb8e878353ac457ac73.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="452" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/25262447888086679/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b>“Characters pre-exist. They are found. They reveal themselves slowly – as might fellow-travellers seated opposite one another in a very dimly-lit railway carriage.” ~ Eudora Welty</b></div>
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I had to Google this quotation to find its source, Eudora Welty. A Goodreads search told me she’s a twentieth-century writer from Mississippi. I did not know this before. These words were simply written on a scrap of lined paper, stuck to my wall: a jotting from an English lesson some year or two ago, copied down without reference. Nonetheless, I have long loved this quotation and often thought about it.</div>
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Characters are not names and eye colours and favourite foods, bullet pointed in a notebook. They are not stick figures. They are at first the whisper of an idea, a shadow, and slowly they move out of darkness and the writer sees them, fully human, having waited there all along.</div>
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Often the characters I write surprise me; they do, say or think things completely unexpected, and I look down at my hands, my pen, and think, <i>I am a vessel for someone else.</i></div>
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Is a writer therefore a creator or a conduit? I am a prophetess, looking through the veil from this world to another. Think of fantasy lands; do they not spread, real and vast, far beyond the brains of their writers? Does George RR Martin know every complexity, every inhabitant, of Westeros? Did Tolkien look upon Middle Earth with the benevolent smile of a god; or did he gaze up at its hills and wonder? I think it was the latter. I think there is a third space, between our physical world and the writer’s abstract brain, where all the multitudes of voices from fiction dwell. A parallel universe? A series of parallel universes, bobbing against each other like a conglomeration of stars? Perhaps.</div>
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Because it’s true, isn’t it, that readers find things in books which the author did not knowingly place there. Think of those times when you find in a book something so exquisitely specific, so pertinent, it makes you sit back, blinking with recognition. Haven’t you found yourself in the books you read? You have known the book, as the author themselves did not know it. But the truth you have found is real, valid, not merely a cheap insertion of your circumstances or emotions. It is there, shining from the page. Must it not, then, exist somewhere, somewhere neither the author’s brain nor yours?</div>
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It amazes and excites me, this shadowland of people, places and ideas, just waiting for someone to discover then. All the books I’ve not yet written, all the characters I haven’t met, seem to float around me, like fish lying deep out of sight in a still dark pool.</div>
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To return to Welty’s image of the train: I am a passenger on a journey, heading I don’t know where, and all the possible destinations fill me with wonder. What a privilege, to pull back the curtain and look upon another world, here in the dimly-lit railway carriage.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Agata Wierzbicka_Hidden" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/cb/f1/0f/cbf10f236b4931b5839dc8ebd3c39c60.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://wierzbickaillustration.com/">[source]</a> // Agata Wierzbicka</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxgtI7yLPd0wD265qFLq4tcmK-KeOHErqieM-_vSOTlcHzV-Dcoar0XTyjkSx7qiRXQy7u3Ey0rWsOh7wd7hZPjl1ncFT3Bb5pBFubbdTNPgtHv0t_Kt61p2ipaQwhgzh9gFWvReWdgT4/s1600/welty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="327" data-original-width="1600" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxgtI7yLPd0wD265qFLq4tcmK-KeOHErqieM-_vSOTlcHzV-Dcoar0XTyjkSx7qiRXQy7u3Ey0rWsOh7wd7hZPjl1ncFT3Bb5pBFubbdTNPgtHv0t_Kt61p2ipaQwhgzh9gFWvReWdgT4/s640/welty.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ft. my wall</td></tr>
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~***~</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-32943261145597936112017-08-01T18:00:00.000+01:002017-08-01T18:00:00.286+01:00Introducing Footnotes (new link-up, get excited!)<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">If there's one thing readers, writers, bloggers and even normal humans love doing, it's quoting each other.</span></b></div>
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AA Milne wrote, “[A] quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business." I enjoy the irony of this -- when he wrote these words, did he picture future generations wanting to quote it, yet not wanting to quote it for fear of hypocrisy, and laugh to himself? Maybe there's truth in it, too; maybe sometimes we hide behind the words of others. But I'm sure that our yen for quotations is more than a cheap recycling of others' thoughts. To explain what I mean -- and, in the explanation, give an example -- I'm going to quote F. Scott Fitzgerald.<br />
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It's all getting a bit meta, isn't it?</div>
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<img alt="F. Scott Fitzgerald" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c8/23/5b/c8235b96a98d61643ad80cff9b4d1520.jpg" /></div>
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We quote others because, when their words match our feelings, we find ourselves part of some great and unstoppable tide of literature. Others have stood where you stand now. Others have felt what you are feeling, and translated that heart into language, and spoken it out. “You belong."</div>
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Now, do you remember way back in the dark and misty past of October 2015?</div>
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Hahaha, me neither, but reliable sources tell me that was the month when <a href="http://oddlynoveltitle.blogspot.com/">Ashley</a> and I started a link-up called Starting Sparks. </div>
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Starting Sparks has since reached its conclusion -- to quote <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(see, there's a theme going on here, folks)</span> a wise Kenyan baker, “Everything that has a beginning has an end." But your favourite dynamic link-up hosting duo is <i>back</i>, and, to quote someone somewhere, “it's going to be fun!"</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFh471JYisgCCIu49yCDnuCUcsS0KitSHo9ooRQgvCw6y4iFS4NW98YEThGLA_RP2V0pECLbHAJc6hBr9jRGqp16udefXu6PYcpUBCm8ja64h6wx1XJhMlOz7cnhtarZWcP9dHWCLnaXo/s1600/footnotes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="673" data-original-width="800" height="336" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFh471JYisgCCIu49yCDnuCUcsS0KitSHo9ooRQgvCw6y4iFS4NW98YEThGLA_RP2V0pECLbHAJc6hBr9jRGqp16udefXu6PYcpUBCm8ja64h6wx1XJhMlOz7cnhtarZWcP9dHWCLnaXo/s400/footnotes.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It's an easy concept, really. On the first of each month, Ashley and I will post a quotation-related prompt. You will choose a quotation and tell us why. That simple. This month we're starting easy:</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A quotation from an author.</span></b></div>
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Hope to see you around!</div>
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~***~</div>
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(And, to start us off on a good note, comment one or more of your favourite quotations!)</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-41565574659779642612017-07-25T18:57:00.000+01:002017-07-25T18:57:00.481+01:00What I Learned On My Gap Year<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. The world is bigger than you realise</span></b></div>
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Now obviously I'm going to talk about Kenya here, but first, let's slip back to those far-off autumn days when I worked in a lowly shop. Last September and October, I was a shop assistant in a cheap little shop in Glasgow selling tacky jewellery, sparkly shoes and other low-grade paraphernalia.<b> It showed me a side of the city I'd never seen before. If you have the opportunity to work in a shop, take it! </b>Because meeting the general public each day, with their needs and their desires, is a wonderful way to learn about people.</div>
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Also I went to Kenya.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNUgPsYPnRkGpA4q8Q4ovsfQdhz0TdHyvCVVYK-Eu_-cYUoblEBQvyjgeTRoP8EbE9cWXeRjQMdwWYUTRWKy0RuG305pYMkyaizES3BtYhkPgEzBDnS1o6jtoR0V3pppiFOHGfLDdNgL8/s1600/IMG_7397.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNUgPsYPnRkGpA4q8Q4ovsfQdhz0TdHyvCVVYK-Eu_-cYUoblEBQvyjgeTRoP8EbE9cWXeRjQMdwWYUTRWKy0RuG305pYMkyaizES3BtYhkPgEzBDnS1o6jtoR0V3pppiFOHGfLDdNgL8/s640/IMG_7397.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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The clouds are different there. More tousled. The skies are huge, because so much of the land is so flat. Once <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/kenya-diaries-what-i-got-up-to-in-tuum.html">in Tuum, Samburu (Kenya's the rural north)</a>, I stood upon a mountain and thought about the size of the view. Here in Britain, the horizon is always so much closer; my eye is brought to a stop by a mountain range, or mist, or the sea. But looking out over Samburu, the land rolled on for hundreds of miles. <b>I have never seen the world like this before. It is vast and beautiful, and it made me realise how great and mighty God is, because He made it all.</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>2. A woman does not need money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction // you are capable of a lot</b></span></div>
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It was Virginia Woolf, in <i>A Room of One's Own</i>, who said that's what a writer needs. But in Kenya, sharing a tiny room of four, I wrote a novel. That's one of the things Kenya taught me: <b>to make the best of any situation. Sometimes, what once seemed impossible becomes normal. You are capable of far more than you realise.</b></div>
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Really. I lived without electricity and running water for a month. At one point near the end of my trip, I slept in a goathouse for four nights. That is the weirdest place I have ever slept! When I got there, the man who owned it said, <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“you will sleep here. Sweep it, but don't sweep the yellow powder in the corner, it's toxic. Oh, and walk around to kill the goatworms." <i>Yellow toxic powder? Goatworms?? </i>But by that point, I was up for anything! And, by the light of a dodgy solar-powered lamp, I swept happily away. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Avoiding the toxic powder, of course.)</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-tq9lvCw9fNK2gHdhu8BvpR-RYUdaBaky9HV4-E2AW4GXTI_hdIJFk3r9wdIc_aBEx-N5F3HKJTklXSi9fGaxMTnz6L6lFe1TFct1LTrsGdu9TpN3OVHUlWvhHTzSN7rZb3-NNI9LzOE/s1600/DSCN2604.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-tq9lvCw9fNK2gHdhu8BvpR-RYUdaBaky9HV4-E2AW4GXTI_hdIJFk3r9wdIc_aBEx-N5F3HKJTklXSi9fGaxMTnz6L6lFe1TFct1LTrsGdu9TpN3OVHUlWvhHTzSN7rZb3-NNI9LzOE/s640/DSCN2604.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>3. Books really are friends everywhere</b></span></span></div>
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When I slept in that goathouse, I was working on a farm in a village called Waso Rongai. I'd get up at 6:30am and hoe fields, and during the hot part of the day, I'd return to my raw mattressed goathouse bunk bed and read <i>Uprooted </i>by Naomi Novik. I remember, back in my long-ago no-thought-of-Kenya life, looking at <i>Uprooted</i> in Waterstones and thinking how I'd like to read it. Little did I know then that I'd plunge into Novik's fairytale world of trees and magic in between watering and planting kale in the wild north of Kenya! I loved that book. Similarly, I sat in the shimmering, solitary heat of <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/what-i-got-up-to-in-keleswa.html">the village of Keleswa</a>, where I met tribespeople and had saw a life I had never imagined, and read <i>The Son of Neptune</i> by Rick Riordan. Percy Jackson won't desert you, friends. <b>Books are timeless.</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEB-83ceOQrDbLPOJ38T5hcXiK8NDmvshHERDFTeqiMas5zhVNFI6URkBHQje-88OYw3TOQFAiVNjZ-Au0fAhb0ki0FiWpO3arrmVsqL91odVWxyrjqfOD8YIIIVRkK2FfsV5ZHgdyAw/s1600/P4050521.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJEB-83ceOQrDbLPOJ38T5hcXiK8NDmvshHERDFTeqiMas5zhVNFI6URkBHQje-88OYw3TOQFAiVNjZ-Au0fAhb0ki0FiWpO3arrmVsqL91odVWxyrjqfOD8YIIIVRkK2FfsV5ZHgdyAw/s640/P4050521.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Peter, me and Gerald in Keleswa. Not sure what I'm writing, but I can see my copy of <i>The Idiot</i> against the wall! (Cream/dun cover with a red border and a black circle in the middle. See it?) That was the book I finished before diving into<i> The Son of Neptune</i>.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4. Don't get dreads in Africa if you're white // your appearance is not the be-all and end-all</span></b></div>
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So a sad thing has happened to me. I no longer have dreadlocks.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinlcnjQkraqdX5C6CyAzIGGfnqLXLuX7Fbvw5qlun43QI0L6DDZEllP1Fd4Mrpp5Si6bC_IqFk_NjNXEh-wKgxlW7FOuMp4ORUgTJBFzme-b4dHHtZJ00q7FNfobZ0OfNfdnvqg6Vj7NI/s1600/dp+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="800" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinlcnjQkraqdX5C6CyAzIGGfnqLXLuX7Fbvw5qlun43QI0L6DDZEllP1Fd4Mrpp5Si6bC_IqFk_NjNXEh-wKgxlW7FOuMp4ORUgTJBFzme-b4dHHtZJ00q7FNfobZ0OfNfdnvqg6Vj7NI/s640/dp+%25282%2529.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I MEAN YOU LITERALLY CAN'T TELL I HAVE DREADS BUT I DID AND THEY WERE GREAT. ONCE.</td></tr>
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Basically, Caucasian hair needs to be crocheted into dreadlocks, whereas African hair can just be backcombed, waxed and twisted. Because I got mine done in a salon in Nairobi, they did it the African way. But as the weeks and months went by, it became more and more apparent that the dreads were just unravelling. Also they were gross (full of sand from a recent beach trip, for example) and I was too scared to wash them.</div>
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So yesterday I washed/combed them all out!<br />
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<strike>MY HEART IS BROKEN</strike> I'm trying to take the philosophical view.</div>
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Which is that it's fun to do fun things with your hair when you're a teenager! It's good to experiment, and I'm still glad I got dreads in Kenya, for the story. Now I just have to live the short hair life for a bit until it thickens out again (I lost a lot of my hair yesterday in the combing process. I mean, a lot. My bathroom bin looks like it has a puppy in it), and then I shall merrily dread again! Properly, this time.</div>
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<b>OK but you know the really important thing to learn? Your hair is not that important. It doesn't define who you are. Take risks with your appearance and have fun, because ultimately, it's what's inside that counts.</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xUOC89dOzAGyi8bzP9nJnZYsCraD2Xc_HsB-Azedd0u4mVJjeq2uBi31WEnG_rGFdn2zyJlkkcUZ9TSQ-QF2jtQTBDWOxtnJq0LnDLbONkKrnDAKvRP4sHGU47-atkEx2B9bI7ujp84/s1600/IMG_7636.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_xUOC89dOzAGyi8bzP9nJnZYsCraD2Xc_HsB-Azedd0u4mVJjeq2uBi31WEnG_rGFdn2zyJlkkcUZ9TSQ-QF2jtQTBDWOxtnJq0LnDLbONkKrnDAKvRP4sHGU47-atkEx2B9bI7ujp84/s640/IMG_7636.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>5. God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good</b></span></div>
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That's a saying in Kenya. One person says, <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“God is good!" and the crowd replies, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“all the time!" </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“All the time!" cries the leader, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“God is good!" choruses the crowd.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">Really. I have learned so much about God's sovereignty. <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/kenya-diaries-what-i-got-up-to-in-tuum.html">The two weeks we spent running kids' camps in Samburu</a> were some of the hardest two weeks of my life, and I remember looking at the clock during sessions and literally just praying, </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“Lord, please get me from now until lunchtime." And He did! Every time! The more I live my life, the more I can praise God for being with me every step of the way.</span></div>
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<i>Your eyes saw my unformed substance;</i></div>
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<i>in your book were written, every one of them,</i></div>
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<i>the days that were formed for me,</i></div>
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<i>when as yet there was none of them.</i></div>
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<i>(Psalm 139:16)</i></div>
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Isn't that verse amazing? <b>God has planned it all. Yesterday, today and forever.</b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">6. It's OK not to swim in the mainstream</span></b></div>
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I used to think that taking a gap year was a horrific perversion of the True Course of Life. <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“But I want to go to uni!" I said. </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“Not put my life on hold for a year!" Here's what I've learnt: <b>you do not have to sit on a conveyor belt like a bit of sheep intestine being turned into a sausage.</b> You do not have to do what everyone else is doing. <b>Sometimes the unexpected path is the most fruitful.</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRfBiil8jX5pz_YkeMlEsw3F6_RDTQKwBu8WXt3fUn1AVdG791qeImaukcWpRk6Hjpq4MrRKPc85fM03U_7G9swdTDsXvEF40BYczQqGv4pQGL-SgvXH8LvdEvFCIaEYAivNesyaOET6I/s1600/P3310500.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRfBiil8jX5pz_YkeMlEsw3F6_RDTQKwBu8WXt3fUn1AVdG791qeImaukcWpRk6Hjpq4MrRKPc85fM03U_7G9swdTDsXvEF40BYczQqGv4pQGL-SgvXH8LvdEvFCIaEYAivNesyaOET6I/s640/P3310500.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>7. Don't take education for granted</b></span></div>
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Having a Proper Adult Job like a Proper Adult is exciting. Getting paid is exciting. But sometimes I used to stack shelves in my shop jobs, or wash plates in my Kenya school job, and think, <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; text-align: justify;">“remember when I used to go and paint and learn about books <i>every day</i>?" When I was at school, I think I took my education for granted. And I cannot wait to start uni, to be back in the world of academia! <b>I want books.</b></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrFb1b-yF2QWLk0HhiO6PzyMBu1EKkYj06v5mGYHcIL4RwdkQE94U4tws-CbcKeLXFCk23QXxglkg8bdF2iNSWTkCPbrONFtWdjD_fEiiZe9HQA91UfYh75N-Lr-bKe_Y-F0Pt8qNgHBQ/s1600/P4060601.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrFb1b-yF2QWLk0HhiO6PzyMBu1EKkYj06v5mGYHcIL4RwdkQE94U4tws-CbcKeLXFCk23QXxglkg8bdF2iNSWTkCPbrONFtWdjD_fEiiZe9HQA91UfYh75N-Lr-bKe_Y-F0Pt8qNgHBQ/s640/P4060601.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sunset in Keleswa</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">8. Don't settle</span></b></div>
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Why did I take a gap year?</div>
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In 2015, when I was still at school, I applied to read English at Oxford. I got rejected.</div>
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Before the rejection, I was quite philosophical. Here's what I said on this very blog, December 23rd, 2015:</div>
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<i> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica";">I'll find out next month if I have a place or not. A lot of people have sa</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">id things to me like <span style="line-height: 20.02px;">“It must have ruined you for anywhere else", or, </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica"; line-height: 20.02px;">“you'll be so disappointed if you don't get in." I loved it so much that it must be easy to imagine crushing disappointment. But the truth is I won't be heartbroken, not in the slightest. Before I'd even sent my application I knew very, very well that the chances of my being accepted are extremely small. This doesn't upset me, because I think it's very foolish to stake all your hope on something you might not get. If I don't get in I'll still have my family, a country at peace, my novel, books, Jesus. It's called perspective.</span></i></blockquote>
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At that time, I really did think I'd go to uni in 2016 regardless! But when the rejection came ... I mean, in one way, my past self was right. I wasn't heartbroken. But I did have a strong feeling: <b>this isn't over.</b> So I took a year out, I reapplied, I worked, I went to Kenya. And guess what?</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I'm going to study in Oxford in October.</span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Oxford - Bridge of Sighs Less than an hour and a half, makes a great day out" height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/9b/0b/d9/9b0bd94ac0492e80c47a39a6bfc8a9af.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="480" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/311522499207025392/">[source]</a> // The Bridge of Sighs</td></tr>
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The other day I was in Waterstones in St Andrews and, on the table beside which I sat, there were some lovely red hardback editions of a book called <i>Lyra's Oxford</i> by Philip Pullman. I've never read any Pullman, but I picked it up and read the epigram, which quoted from Baedeker (a historic travel guide):</div>
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<i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 20.02px;">“Oxford, where windows open into other worlds ..."</span></span></i></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">It was a moment of serendipity, a breath of the future with its beautiful cobbled streets.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>So don't settle, because if you pursue what you want, you might just get it. </b>(A side note: if I hadn't got into Oxford, I'd still be mightily glad to have done this gap year. It was not a means to an end. Getting into Oxford is just an <i>extra </i>gift God has given me. Isn't He amazing?)</span></div>
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~***~</div>
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<b>What have you learned in the past year?</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIdSFROZSPe9Fy8wfhOye5l_S5Z5WV3-qBq_tLAPxO_26DbRJ_uyEPU0rgRw8SAfQfR2_IORLbBNyv28A9Z8me6aD9OoQ-jU3rEkCwBfVhMth5HAMJaIiNCtzNIvvR43a1tn4ggOD570w/s1600/P4070619.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIdSFROZSPe9Fy8wfhOye5l_S5Z5WV3-qBq_tLAPxO_26DbRJ_uyEPU0rgRw8SAfQfR2_IORLbBNyv28A9Z8me6aD9OoQ-jU3rEkCwBfVhMth5HAMJaIiNCtzNIvvR43a1tn4ggOD570w/s640/P4070619.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cow/unicorn, I love it.</td></tr>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-46080352147797621352017-07-18T18:30:00.000+01:002017-07-18T18:30:02.234+01:00Kenya Diaries: What I Got Up To In Tuum<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCUgbEmbNsF46pjhGYEARCd3FKUr8vXAWH7RFBK07YGgkz_GI4NoEWQut9DGbR12ZFh2d2pxzX0z3i2R_L4OQj4bfT-G5G2LFVWnL8dShjIOmr_kZNdBk9ic3GgE-MYcd1ilcG7IO4dWM/s1600/IMG_7395.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCUgbEmbNsF46pjhGYEARCd3FKUr8vXAWH7RFBK07YGgkz_GI4NoEWQut9DGbR12ZFh2d2pxzX0z3i2R_L4OQj4bfT-G5G2LFVWnL8dShjIOmr_kZNdBk9ic3GgE-MYcd1ilcG7IO4dWM/s640/IMG_7395.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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During the month of April, I lived in Samburu in rural northern Kenya. I posted the first part of that time <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/what-i-got-up-to-in-keleswa.html">here</a>: going to live in villages with the Samburu people. After those four days we returned to the town of Tuum, to the compound of some Northern Irish missionaries, to run two children's camps.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim2D1l0S0TnTZyy7HAPM-LJYp5c4uZOX8GOIk6vKjMTwvw4-quoml9FBPznxuXrmTCWI23jGa2WRAEOcGki5nK_gv_EHMh0k_0pgE0-QzCOv023IToLZMt-cOGl1oH-vAGyo-ckKllH_A/s1600/IMG_7493.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim2D1l0S0TnTZyy7HAPM-LJYp5c4uZOX8GOIk6vKjMTwvw4-quoml9FBPznxuXrmTCWI23jGa2WRAEOcGki5nK_gv_EHMh0k_0pgE0-QzCOv023IToLZMt-cOGl1oH-vAGyo-ckKllH_A/s640/IMG_7493.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<i>[Thursday April 20th]</i></div>
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I’m sitting under a tree in a blue plastic chair. A camel is browsing not many metres away.</div>
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Camels are fantastical creatures, like something from a myth or a dream: their series of curves like an undulating sea; the long, swinging, wrinkled necks that don’t look like they should hold the head; the way they sway when they walk. Their skinny legs, ending in huge, bell-shaped hooves; their pronounced knees. Their round noses and smiling mouths. Isn’t it amazing to think that the God who made stags and goldfinches and porpoises and all the other animals of Scotland also made the animals of Africa? That He created such distinctly beautiful landscapes: the mountains of home, and the bleached vistas here with their regular, flat-topped trees? And elsewhere there are icebergs and rainforests and prairies and turquoise-lipped beaches, and all in the same world. It is a vast and wonderful place, and He made it all and dwells in it all. And still our planet is only a blue speck in His universe, wreathed in clouds.</div>
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There are two bulls who live in this compound. I think every camp should have a couple: walking to a teaching session, it lifted my heart to see one strutting across the volleyball court. One is horned and black and entirely amiable. The other is brindled, red-eyed and not to be trusted. Ten minutes ago I sat here, about to start writing, when I looked up and saw him bearing down on me like a warship. I scarpered, and he began to sniff, worry and eventually knock over the chair on which I’d been sitting. Talk about near death experiences.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxzEwuqrADFNuaqUhjzeeB5W3Nn4NdgWwOrlzMEK5h18dGZGfHYkO01XZb3b0unFy_WZJUjjkjmxhhfML6ixqn5xB3bHp6V81wpEj8TQpmm-siJK3T2uozBDMaTgXxeDtBbl_c74Px68/s1600/IMG_7822.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilxzEwuqrADFNuaqUhjzeeB5W3Nn4NdgWwOrlzMEK5h18dGZGfHYkO01XZb3b0unFy_WZJUjjkjmxhhfML6ixqn5xB3bHp6V81wpEj8TQpmm-siJK3T2uozBDMaTgXxeDtBbl_c74Px68/s640/IMG_7822.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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It is mid-afternoon, and after two back-to-back camps, the final busloads of children have gone. I feel like a deflated balloon, or maybe a long-term prisoner who has been released and emerges, blinking, into a forgotten sunlit world. The time before camp is a far-off memory.</div>
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The camel is eating shoots, its black feathery tail flicking.</div>
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Last week was the junior camp; our theme was Who Is Jesus? My group was all girls (apart from two little boys added the next morning). I was glad when I saw all the skirts filing past. Girls are much easier to understand. They were sweet and they loved me; by day two, one of them announced, “you are my mother”. I wonder if she had a real mother. There were sad moments like these, for example when we played a game involving choosing a character (lady, lion or warrior). “Who do you want to be?” I asked my girls. “I want to be a mzungu [white person],” one replied. I didn’t have time to talk to her about it. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5lzyvSYdw6R5eegp3GcnGPWaZkasmXBjZxmzwwj91wozk2doNnncu5-qiciE2p29Oa7fHT0KegHQU9993spdeUoR8V-VsAc17cllb9pj6W_7JrrjRwW8h-e0YJH8aKJZgiB9RRT_sVoU/s1600/IMG_7471.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5lzyvSYdw6R5eegp3GcnGPWaZkasmXBjZxmzwwj91wozk2doNnncu5-qiciE2p29Oa7fHT0KegHQU9993spdeUoR8V-VsAc17cllb9pj6W_7JrrjRwW8h-e0YJH8aKJZgiB9RRT_sVoU/s640/IMG_7471.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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I pray they learned about Jesus. Sometimes they seemed receptive; other times they appeared to have listened and responded to nothing at all. But there were nearly four hundred of them; surely one child must have come to know the Lord in a new way, and if they did, our work was not in vain.</div>
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It was a strange dynamic; I felt like less of a leader than a teacher, sleeping up in my separate house, eating away from them. As with every aspect, it was nothing like camp at home. But I hope they felt loved, and enjoyed themselves.</div>
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One particularly brutal feature was the 6am devotions and exercises. We only had to do this one morning each, but for the children it was the daily routine. We started before it was light, the children huddling in the church like little ghosts wrapped in shukas, wan and sleep-hazed. After singing and preaching we ran and played games, and saw the sun rise over the mountain. The land is still and hushed then, in reverence of the light breaking out of darkness in hues of pink and grey. In such light worlds are made.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvOmAts2nya-815DnQN5sFQ1QCJFXujKUCLa69Lv5y0n5HvNLGI5BkVCsivYh5sIyvWicFbZ8Ba8P3C20HqYzldHtWWZkbsK1NOHSc0Izi4tIKIqRZ1c8jHfl0km-C4LL3bbeXTgzl8c/s1600/IMG_7836.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghvOmAts2nya-815DnQN5sFQ1QCJFXujKUCLa69Lv5y0n5HvNLGI5BkVCsivYh5sIyvWicFbZ8Ba8P3C20HqYzldHtWWZkbsK1NOHSc0Izi4tIKIqRZ1c8jHfl0km-C4LL3bbeXTgzl8c/s640/IMG_7836.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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When the children departed we wanted to fizzle out like spent toys, but we had to wind ourselves up again in preparation for youth camp. These ones were older, wilier, harder to impress. Some of them were older than me.</div>
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One thing that made me laugh on the first night – something that has struck me throughout this time in Kenya – was how the English Premier League has infiltrated. A boy, one of the campers, came up to me. I said, “Supa?”, which means “Hi, how are you?” in Kisamburu. He said, “Manchester United?”</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivYtzzMwvwtMxweDGl_2IQZ8teoGI4G2KiQSCUR7bp1hHke0HF-09WX0HLIga25F89HJOtjgsDWf7R0ZON30XRyFRF5OcmSRIgFPzen0sHK5xhXLc9_NV_U2qtWxh_TkZZKp1TUSLlX3s/s1600/IMG_7862.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="860" data-original-width="1600" height="342" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivYtzzMwvwtMxweDGl_2IQZ8teoGI4G2KiQSCUR7bp1hHke0HF-09WX0HLIga25F89HJOtjgsDWf7R0ZON30XRyFRF5OcmSRIgFPzen0sHK5xhXLc9_NV_U2qtWxh_TkZZKp1TUSLlX3s/s640/IMG_7862.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Over the camp we studied 1 Thessalonians. Did they learn? Were they changed? It’s so hard to say. Kenya is a confusing country. Churches are everywhere; buses blare synthetic worship music, their windows plastered with stickers saying IN GOD WE TRUST and THIS VEHICLE IS PROTECTED BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS. Christian Religious Education continues all the way through school, and pretty much anyone you asked on the street would tell you they loved Jesus. For high schoolers, owning a Bible is a legal requirement. But when the whole education system is based on learning by rote, it’s quite possible – even common? – to slide through school without really learning who Jesus is, CRE lessons notwithstanding. On camp, when we tried to do Bible studies with the youth, it was plain they’d never done anything like it. We were trying, almost desperately, to show them that truth and joy and life can be found in the Bible’s own pages, that God is not a thing we have to learn from others, but can learn through His Living Word. We studied a passage from Mark 1, trying to help them see that in the text itself – not through a pastor’s words, not through a school lesson, but in the text – it says Jesus is the Son of God. “What does this mean?” I asked, wanting them to find a response in the passage.</div>
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“It means He died on the Cross for our sins,” a girl replied.</div>
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Yes, of course, that is what the Son of God did, but she hadn’t got it from those few verses; it was answer she had learnt. Her concept of Christianity was a collection of empty creeds and confusion. I can only pray that these teenagers will open their Bibles and be amazed by the living and active Word they find, shining there with a light they have never yet seen.</div>
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A combination of poor English, shyness and disinterest made the teenagers hard to befriend. Interacting with the children was easy – they stroked my hair, and if we didn’t speak the same language we made faces at each other until we both laughed. Not so the youth. All my early efforts at conversation were met with silence or laughter. But I learnt that you should always keep trying, because on the Tuesday afternoon my efforts paid off and at last I made friends with a group of fourteen-year-olds.</div>
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Felister, Alice, Rafaela, Gladys, Lydia, Pauline, Christine and Lucy. They taught me words in Kiturkana, and when I told them I’d done Spanish at school they asked for each word “in Spain”. Every time someone drifted past where we sat on the ground, the girls beckoned them over and, pointing at my knee, say, “say in four languages!” “Acong, goti, knee, rodillo”: Kiturkana, Kiswahili, English, Spanish. It amused us all no end. They wanted to know everything – my parents’ names, how many brothers, how many sisters, nephews and nieces, what grades did I get in school, had I been to uni, how old was I, what was my surname, how much did it cost to get to Kenya from the UK, even what were my dogs called? Then they could rattle the details off in quick succession.</div>
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The next day I saw them again and they tested me on Kiturkana words – mountain, tree, sky, child. I taught them to say “¡Hasta luego!” They were some of the best girls I’ve ever met. Being with them was the best time on that camp.</div>
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<i>[Saturday April 22nd]</i></div>
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On the last afternoon it rained. I was chopping carrots when it began. At first it was light, dancing in the sun and the wind in frenetic diamonds. Then it grew heavier, and there were real puddles, great drops splashing in them and rippling out in circles. It was the first time I’d seen rain in puddles since leaving home. It was almost British. And yet, standing in the open kitchen door, I could feel the heat of the sun, yellow through the water.</div>
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We ran outside, laughing and shouting, and found a tiny, perfect rainbow stretched over the valley, so close we could have run to the end. It was a flawless curve, the colours jewel bright against the dark bruise of the sky, and I thought of Noah emerging from the ark. For him it was the first sunshine after the horror of the rain; for us it was rain after relentless sunshine. For all that, I don’t think our feelings were very different.</div>
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Now the teenagers have gone, and here we are, and it seems ever stranger, this mini Gap Team life. Real life would never be like this, the lack of autonomy most of all. But I have love this micro-climate existence, all the same, the community of it, the love, my team, the unending cycle of laughter. I am used to being a team member. It will be so odd to go back to being only myself.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi99yRr62Y6RCZPifZIoJshWmfw53d8ZKThQGrwXtZPtruR5JRBCb2BoPOD7ysOaJ9-5vvhWmwN6ywa5fyxnvxId0-MfzIQE53mV8AnhkgIiOeywTOnwsnVNnl7NREoli9SW9TVTPfUZhc/s1600/IMG_7495.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="899" data-original-width="1600" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi99yRr62Y6RCZPifZIoJshWmfw53d8ZKThQGrwXtZPtruR5JRBCb2BoPOD7ysOaJ9-5vvhWmwN6ywa5fyxnvxId0-MfzIQE53mV8AnhkgIiOeywTOnwsnVNnl7NREoli9SW9TVTPfUZhc/s640/IMG_7495.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I just frigging love camels, man.</td></tr>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-6436235481271363392017-07-12T17:29:00.001+01:002017-07-12T17:29:19.208+01:00Why You Should Be Reading Skulduggery Pleasant (Really)<div class="tr_bq" style="text-align: center;">
None of us have enough books to read, right? Our TBRs vanish before our eyes. We sit around asking, with desperation in our voices, <span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“what shall I read next?!"</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><img alt="Image result for yeah right gif" src="http://viralviralvideos.com/wp-content/uploads/GIF/2014/08/GIF-Jennifer-Lawrence-skeptical-Thats-Funny-yeah-right-GIF.gif" /></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">OK, yes, I know that in reality your TBR is so tall it overtops Kilimanjaro and when you climb to the top you need to take an oxygen pack for the thin air up there.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">But that's no reason not to start a new series!</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">And that series should really be Skulduggery Pleasant.</span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;">“But why?" you ask. Here it is, folks: nine books, nine reasons.</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">1. Skulduggery and Valkyrie (Or </span>“My Best Friends" As I Prefer to Call Them)</span></b></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;"><i>“</i></span><i>Stairs," Valkyrie said, disappointed.</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>Not just ordinary stairs," Skulduggery told her as he led the way down. "Magic stairs."</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>Really?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>Oh, yes."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>She followed him into the darkness. </i><i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>How are they magic?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>They just are."</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>In what way?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>In a magicky way."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>She glared at the back of his head. </i><i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>They aren't magic at all, are they?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i style="text-align: center;">“</i><i>Not really.”</i></blockquote>
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Skulduggery and Valkyrie's friendship is one of the best friendships I have ever read. And it's unique. How many other 400y/o skeleton / teenage girl dynamics have you read, hmm? He's not her mentor, but he kind of is. He sees her through her teenage years and is with her every step of the way. <b>They teach each other about themselves.</b> And the banter is off the charts.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Funny Pictures Of The Day – 50 Pics" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/41/16/ce/4116ce367bd8dbde3929ce544e082f01.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">2. The Humour // That Flavour of Satire</span></b></div>
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You know what's amazing? Landy's masterful blend of fall-over-laughing comedy and sweeping epic. These books have<b> deep, dark, fascinating themes </b>-- they really wrestle with the darkness within us all -- and yet ... the title character is a <i>skeleton</i>? Called <i>Skulduggery Pleasant</i>? There's a scarred tailor called <i>Ghastly Bespoke</i>? Doesn't that seem almost farcical? Yes. Yes it does. And that's why the books can be so serious, yet so funny. Landy's own weird brand of hilarity allows him to go deep into the human heart, without being pretentious or heavy-handed. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(I love all the names, by the way. Vex. Rue. Sanguine. Wrong. Sorrows. Frightening. All people you'll meet and love.)</span> </div>
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<i>“That's beautiful," Valkyrie said, looking at it. </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Isn't it?" China said. “This necklace has cost two very fine men their lives. At times, I wear it in tribute to their sacrifice. Other times, I wear it because it goes with this skirt.” </i></blockquote>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. All the Characters </span></b></div>
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Every. Single. One of them. Mostly the books are told from Valkyrie's POV, but we have a heap of other POV charries and they're all precious. Personal favourites include Ghastly, Scapegrace, Fletcher Finbar, Saracen, and the Monster Hunters.</div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; text-align: left;">“You're not used to early mornings, are you?"</span></i></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; text-align: left;"></span></i><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; text-align: left;">Finbar shook his head. </span></i><i style="text-align: start;">“</i><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; text-align: left;">Early mornings were invented by the system to keep the people occupied. But not me. I'm on to them. They're not gonna catch me napping. Metaphorically, like. Obviously, they can catch me physically napping like, four or five times a day, but, metaphorically, I am so far beyond their reach.”</span></i></span></blockquote>
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(I love Finbar.)</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Imagine the many stories this simple cafe board could prompt! If you have a novel idea and need some Writing advice, feel free to browse our services online.. http://www.rowanvalebooks.com/writing-advisor-service" height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/31/1a/cd/311acd85ded284eae3d09fe1c657669b.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="480" /></td></tr>
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(Seriously, the Monster Hunters, though. They're these two nerds who wear fandom T-shirts and hunt monsters and write books about them. Their books are called <i>Monster Hunting for Beginners, Monster Hunting for Beginners is Probably Inadvisable </i>and <i>Seriously, Dude, Stop Monster Hunting. </i><span style="text-align: center;">I'm in love.)</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4. The Parents</span></b></div>
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Yeah, maybe they should go under Characters with all the other characters, but DESMOND AND MELISSA ARE SO FAB THEY DESERVE THEIR OWN BIT. Because where are the loving, supportive, <i>great </i>parents in YA? Dead, that's usually where.</div>
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<i>[Valkyrie going on a date]<br /><br />Her dad frowned at what she was wearing. </i></blockquote>
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<i>“It's a little black dress," she told him. </i></blockquote>
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<i>“It's a little </i>too <i>little," he frowned back. “And where's the rest of it? I can see your knees." </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Don't be a prude," his wife said ... “You look lovely. Tell her she looks lovely, Des." </i></blockquote>
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<i>“You look lovely. I do the think the knees are a bit much though." </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Dad." </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Des."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>“I'm just expressing an opinion, that's all. Personally, I think knees should be kept for the eight or ninth date, or the wedding day. As a nice surprise, you know? </i><span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">‘</span></span>Oh, my darling, you have knees! I never would have thought!'<i>"</i></blockquote>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">5. The World // I Love Parallel Dimensions</span></b></div>
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OK SO THE WORLD IS UNIQUE AND INCREDIBLE. The magical community exists hidden in our world.</div>
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And as the series continue, dimension shunting gets introduced, and MAN OH MAN is all I'm going to say.</div>
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Also. Sorcerers live a lot longer than mortals, so most of the MCs are centuries old. There was this war centuries ago which most of them fought in. Over the series, we slowly hear more of the war's history and see how it casts its shadow over the present. And I love that sense of history. The world is so rich and well-developed. And the magic. Asdhkglkj. I'm coming onto that.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA5qL7JHtQ7xSOG186KOhfGpVz9xNnMBTIrlGbg745ciGFwmd9LntfPCxmj6zGKlu8vPqnsDcdYOA-aZcXKn9uF8LozLliyBvL54TOFlKxNtleRA5HKbt-A7EYDAhQaMpSGXlliPZkdos/s1600/DSCN2666.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1292" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA5qL7JHtQ7xSOG186KOhfGpVz9xNnMBTIrlGbg745ciGFwmd9LntfPCxmj6zGKlu8vPqnsDcdYOA-aZcXKn9uF8LozLliyBvL54TOFlKxNtleRA5HKbt-A7EYDAhQaMpSGXlliPZkdos/s640/DSCN2666.JPG" width="516" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">6. The Epic-ness // Rotating POV</span></b></div>
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I love the third person rotating POV -- it lets Landy build up this wonderful sense of a sweeping epic. Sometimes we dip into the heads of tiny minor characters, just there for a scene to make a point before vanishing forever <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(normally getting brutally murdered, that is)</span>. In other books it's irksome to get passed around so many people's heads, but Landy treats every voice with his matchless trademark humour. There's never the moment you get when you're reading A Song of Ice and Fire and realise you're stuck with another chapter about Davos Seaworth, making you consider throwing yourself off the Iron Islands because you're so bored. Or when you're reading <i>Heir of Fire</i> or <i>Queen of Shadows</i> and your heart beats faster at every glyph, pleading with the powers that be that you're not about to be dragged into the world of Manon I'm-Turning-To-Lead-With-Boredom-I-Just-Don't-Care Ironteeth. That never happens with Skulduggery! Each and every character is fabulous.</div>
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Also, I find it <i>fascinating </i>that we never get Skulduggery's own POV. He's the title character, but we only see him through other's eyes. I'm so in love, guys. How do you fall this hard for a fictional skeleton?</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/25262447888039024/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">7. This Bit of Life Advice from Ghastly</span></b></div>
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<i>“How do you deal with that [a broken heart]?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i></i><i><span style="text-align: start;">“I drink a lot of tea. I've been around for a long time. I've been in love too many times to count. I'd like to say it gets easier, but it doesn't. The pain you're feeling now is the pain you're going to feel again and again. The advantage of having lived through is that I do know I'll come out the other side. The pain lessons.You manage to distract yourself until the distractions become more important than the thing you're distracting yourself </span><span style="text-align: start;">from</span><span style="text-align: start;">."</span></i></blockquote>
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I love him with my whole heart. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/25262447889242465/">[source]</a> // it's so true though</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>8. The Themes</b></span></div>
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The Skulduggery books take your classic theme of Good vs Evil, pick it up, turn it around, give it a good shake, and leave us quivering in the wake of the rawest, realest characters with the biggest choices to make. It really wrestles with the human condition, with the darkness within.</div>
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<i><span style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;">“</span></span>Mankind is not an animal."</i><br />
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<i></i><i><span style="text-align: start;">“</span>Oh, it is, Greta. It's a scared, dangerous animal. ... He thinks we're going to live in a kingdom of the righteous, of the noble. But we're not like that."</i></blockquote>
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Landy doesn't shy away from<b> the reality that humanity is basically evil, </b>and I commend him for that. There is nothing wishy-washy or sentimental about these books. Skulduggery and Valkyrie are detectives, but it's not all glamour and clever one-liners. <span style="text-align: start;">“We do the jobs no one else wants to do," Skulduggery tells her <span style="font-size: x-small;">(I'm paraphrasing but this does happen)</span>, </span><span style="text-align: start;">“so that they don't have to."</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/25262447884238430/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">9. The Magic</span></b></div>
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Last but not least. The sorcerers of Skulduggery's intoxicating world throw fire and bend air. There are Sensitives, peeking into the terrifying future; some of them can rewrite your mind. Everyone's gifts are different: Anton Shudder, the man whose dark side takes physical form and roars out of his chest to destroy his enemies; Billy-Ray Sanguine, tunnelling through floors and walls at lightning speed; Tanith Low, walking up walls as she brandishes her sword.<br />
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<b>One of my favourite bits is reflection magic.</b> If you're a teenage sorcerer who can't tell her parents that she's out saving the world, what do you do? You cast a spell on your mirror and let out your reflection, a simulation who pretends to be you. Reflections are <i>it</i>s, not human, but they do the job now and then. And when you put them back in the mirror, you absorb their memories, allowing you to continue your double life. But don't let the reflection out for too long -- the more it acts being human, the more human it becomes ...<br />
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<b>Names </b>have a powerful magic in this series. Every sorcerer has a <b>true name.</b> If someone else learns it, they can control you utterly; if you learn it yourself and seal it, you become virtually invincible. <b>Identity is a key theme of the series, which ties in beautifully with the coming-of-age feel of the novels, tracking Valkyrie from the age twelve to eighteen. The magic is unique and stunning, and so is her journey of discovering who she is.</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/Af5fQUmDwF8d36-vMK_C1B6swHZQ_059AlW1zu6aTZoTCywfyCJczNQ/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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~***~<br />
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Well, are you sold? I'm just in love with these books, folks. Piece of advice: read them in a short space of time. Back in the Stone Age when they were coming out and I was reading them as they were published, I forgot the plot every year, so, don't do that, yeah? Just commit! Forget the size! Plough ahead! (Oh, and as with most good series, they start out kinda cute and it's only really Book 3, or maybe even Book 5, that stuff seriously Amps Up, so PERSIST, OK?)<br />
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Right, I'm done. <b>What's the one series you would like to shove down my throat just as much as I would like to shove Skulduggery down yours? And what's the key element of making a good series for you?</b></div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-89663949855882762892017-07-01T22:37:00.000+01:002017-07-15T12:46:51.325+01:00Kenya Diaries: What I Got Up To In Keleswa<div style="text-align: justify;">
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It was the last day of March when we travelled to Samburu, a rural county in northern Kenya. We saw the sunrise as we waited to go, and then it was north to the heat. Strange, that in the southern hemisphere north is hot and south is cold. All our books have winter-locked norths. In Kenya, the land grew browner as we climbed the map.</div>
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Somewhere between Nyahururu and Maralal the tarmac came to an end and we bumped along, dust rising and sifting around us. We drove through a bleached landscape of rocks and stricken, thorny trees. Further south, where it was greener, we’d seen zebras and camels and a giraffe from the window. Here, nothing. But as the evening approached, the sun low and golden, we reached paradise again without warning. Bright green hills, the green of summer, through which the thin road wound like a white ribbon. Looking at those hills I thought I could almost be in Scotland.</div>
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By the time the sun set, pink and purple, the land was flat and brown again. It felt like the sun was the last outpost of beauty. The night fell flat and sudden like black paint. Sometimes I saw men with fires by the roadside, a momentary glow on their hollow faces and the dead trees. Guns on their backs. We reached Tuum after midnight. It was still hot and unloading the bus took an hour. In the light of torches the sandy ground was pale, the whole place ghostly. We were spectral humpbacks with our big rucksacks.</div>
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Tuum is one of the biggest towns in Samburu: one street of shops beneath a huge mountain. A Northern Irish missionary family has lived there for twenty-seven years, and we were on their compound. Fields surrounded us, spiked with thorny trees, Land Rovers scattered about. There was a church and a primary school. That first morning a camel strolled by my window. Without the drought, it would have been an idyll; with it, it was beautiful, but for the parched, dun ground.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;">I know I've shared this picture before, but it's quite beautiful, isn't it? That window was my bedroom window!</td></tr>
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The heat was everywhere. I’ve been to Singapore, where air-conditioning claims each room; to Portugal, where the stone houses keep the cool deep inside. Here there were tin roofs and heat inescapable.</div>
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I slept in a cottage on the edge of the compound. It was beautiful – stone floors, white curtains, a candle on the table in a wonderful green glass holder – and by day could have been an upmarket holiday cottage somewhere in the Highlands. In the daytime, only the lack of running water marked the difference. But at seven each night the sun disappeared, and then it was dinner by head-torch, washing up in the dark in cold water. Dinnertime washing-up in Samburu was one of the hardest things I did in Kenya. Electricity after dark is an enormous blessing. At first the torchlit meals had a flavour of Famous Five adventure, but soon it was just exhausting. The toilet was a long-drop in a hut outside. Unlike the others, ours had no cockroaches, for which I was thankful. There was a bird with a nest in there. I like to think she and I became good friends.</div>
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On Sunday we went to church. It was the type of African church I’d seen before: hours of singing, going to the front to introduce ourselves, a doctrinally questionable sermon in translation. A film of heat over the room. At the front there was a wooden cross, draped in tinsel. Do the Samburu people know Jesus? Some of them, certainly. But for a lot of Kenya, Christianity is like whitewash, painted over the spiritist religions already there. The people of Tuum came to church on Sunday, but at night I could hear them singing to the mountain, praying to it for rain. Jesus is, to that mindset, one god in many, a talisman or an increased chance at good luck and divine favour. We prayed that He would reveal Himself as <i>the </i>way, <i>the </i>truth, <i>the </i>life.</div>
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<img alt="Displaying IMG_3614.JPG" height="426" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=8bfcdc467b&view=fimg&th=15d000cea178a006&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_j4lsjjk90&safe=1&attbid=ANGjdJ-aVVSHtpMUe1IqQj-F8Wp6rU5SwCzArQ0gB0M4M7yA8SK1EbwO8byl6isEPHWiG74atdrionucN_d4iRSb4Q3ImS2WyZvw96YZzPzL7bAtiMz8ai3JDEcmFb0&ats=1498944448078&rm=15d000cea178a006&zw&sz=w1920-h948" width="640" /></div>
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I finished my novel on Monday, on the veranda outside the cottage, moving my chair several times to follow the shade. <i>A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.</i> I now know that isn’t an absolute truth. I also see with new eyes the joy of a room to myself!</div>
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On Tuesday morning we went to the villages.</div>
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We left Tuum in Land Rovers, luggage, food and coal tied to the top beneath dirty foam mattresses. A truck with drums of water, and our boys balanced unsafely on the railings, went ahead. Sometimes we had to push them with our fender. Once they got a puncture and we stopped in the road, and I thought, what now, in the shimmering noon heat of this vast land? But the tyre was fixed and on we went, past the pale skeletons of trees.</div>
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We were in four teams visiting four villages. I was going to Keleswa.</div>
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It was not what I was expecting. I pictured houses and people, but when the trucks pulled up all we saw was one long, low stone building. This, we were told, was the primary school. There were bullet holes in its walls, from old “village wars”; it sounded like a child’s game, until you saw the scars in the wood. The village proper was a short walk away.</div>
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We girls slept in the school. Some villagers swept it for us – the first, but by no means last, instance of their extraordinary kindness. That first night was perhaps the hottest I have ever been, sharing a mattress with my teammate Lucy. There were four girls in our team, two British and two Kenyan, and those evenings, after we sent the two boys to their tent outside, were some of the weirdest, most hilarious I have ever experienced. Four of you sharing two raw mattresses, sleeping under mosquito nets, unshowered for four days and dirtier than you’ve even been, stinking of the insect repellent that mingled with suncream in a film over your skin. I have rarely laughed so much.</div>
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In the morning the children came to school for the last day of term. We sat in. They sang, the African singing where one leads in a high, clear voice and the others respond: a joyful beat, almost like chanting, but music, echoing with a thousand years of earth and blood and the beating of a camel-skin drum. </div>
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The blackboard was scuffed and faded, but I could read: <i>God called Samuel how many times? What is a modern house made of? </i>When the children had sung the teacher called them out in little groups, commending those from each class who had received the most marks in the term. I was happy to see that, though so dirty, their clothes so torn, both boys and girls were smiling to be praised for learning. The school has been there since 2006. But it only goes to Class 3, aged maybe eight. No further. The children left, and we walked to the village.</div>
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On the road – which passed through a dry riverbed – we met an old man with a staff and a checked shuka tied around his waist. He turned and came with us, our guide.</div>
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The first thing that hit me was the smell. The village was paved in goat dung. Children flocked everywhere. The man led us through, past the tiny woven houses like overturned canoes, and we shook hands with all the women. They were beautiful – all had shaved heads, skirts and shukas in three bright patterns, and huge beaded necklaces like big red collars. The children followed us. Beneath a tree children sat, a girl among them with a baby on her knee. I assumed she was one of them until, at the baby’s cry, she put it to her breast. She looked about fourteen.</div>
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There were no men, apart from our guide – out tending the animals, he said, or else searching for water. Dotted about the village were goat enclosures: ovals fenced with bleached thorns. I kept thinking they looked like giant crowns of thorns.</div>
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When we returned that afternoon we sat with them. Only one girl in our team, Junesi, spoke Samburu, though some villagers had basic Swahili. They were ashamed, they said, they had no food or drink to offer us. But the next day they gave us water, the most precious gift of all. It was almost incredible that they would do this, but they did.</div>
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The next morning children came, and we played catch and football. They wanted to hold my Bible, my notebook. Back in March a friend had sent me postcards of Scotland, and the children gazed at them. How hard for them to imagine a green country so far north, where the rain is always falling. One girl, who looked eight or nine, was wearing a red beaded collar and silver anklets. Junesi said this means she has been “bid” by a moran – a young Samburu man – and will be married to him. Probably she has already been circumcised.<br />
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<a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=8bfcdc467b&view=fimg&th=15cffdc837e9aafc&attid=0.2&disp=emb&realattid=ii_j4lqtd9n1_15cffd9b49a250f6&attbid=ANGjdJ8CQZo2ezAP0-YvcPkyp8MZaVQWJd5tmHdXZymddayI_lIi1qLo6ZncJS2c5An8ut9eK-uENa6xVWGk7VGfN9qqHt7BrkZN3YcNXehMTAJQ1VxaSJbf49JBZdo&sz=w1056-h704&ats=1498941378869&rm=15cffdc837e9aafc&zw&atsh=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=8bfcdc467b&view=fimg&th=15cffdc837e9aafc&attid=0.2&disp=emb&realattid=ii_j4lqtd9n1_15cffd9b49a250f6&attbid=ANGjdJ8CQZo2ezAP0-YvcPkyp8MZaVQWJd5tmHdXZymddayI_lIi1qLo6ZncJS2c5An8ut9eK-uENa6xVWGk7VGfN9qqHt7BrkZN3YcNXehMTAJQ1VxaSJbf49JBZdo&sz=w1056-h704&ats=1498941378869&rm=15cffdc837e9aafc&zw&atsh=1" style="text-align: center;" width="640" /></a></div>
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That afternoon we returned to sit with them, again singing and preaching and praying. They told us they know God, though they have no pastor, and no Bible in their language. But they sang of Him.</div>
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They showed us into their houses. I – 5”2 – ducked to enter. The heat was like opening an oven. The house, called a manyatta, had two rooms: one with a dirt floor and a fire, one covered in skins and blankets for sleeping. But there were also little shelves with plates, one ingeniously crafted into a mug tree. Everything was made of woven wood, solid and impenetrable but for the diamonds of sunlight slicing through. There was a hand-sized window in each wall. The women made these manyattas. The women are very strong. The manyattas had roofs tall enough for me to stand at the highest point, long enough for me to lie down. But the two we saw were two of the biggest in the village. Most of the others were tall enough only for a child to stand.</div>
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They told us that seven or eight people live in each house. For them the concept of “indoors" means only cooking and sleeping; other than that, life is an outdoor pursuit. As ever I thought of Woolf: <i>a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. </i>Not strictly true, of course, but how do they make art? Or rather, what is their view of the artist? Because art surrounds them – their necklaces, the houses, their singing and playing the drum – but all of these are made or practised communally. No one sits alone to write verse or play an instrument. Storytelling is purely relational, not the domain of the hermit writer locked in a room of one's own. To them, the idea of penning a novel would be as alien as snow, Shakespeare or the sea. And perhaps it's true that you cannot miss what you've never had. But what if these children have longings they cannot fulfil in their present life, longings they cannot even name – to make art, to see places far away, to travel over the horizon and find the world in all its wonder? In some other world, would they have been actors and scientists and playwrights? Maybe. But then, these paths are not choices. </div>
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This is poverty: not having a choice. For some, their way of life is what they want – to be one with the land, a man and his goats climbing mountains while the birds cry and the red earth sings. But others would choose differently, if they could. Choose to stay in school beyond the age of eight. Choose to see other skies than the sky they have known. What about the girls, who cannot choose not to have their bodies mutilated and sold at primary school age? They are locked in a life they cannot leave: choicelessness.</div>
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As we were leaving, little girls in red necklaces stopped me at the gate and put something round my neck: a string of red, green and white beads, adorned with silver discs and fastened with a button. They were giving me the loveliest thing they had, and I've taken it home with me, here to Britain and my future. By the time I graduate, some of those girls might have children. We walked on, through the white sand of the riverbed, away from them.</div>
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That evening we climbed the mountain overlooking our school to watch the sun set. Stones clattered behind us as we walked, the dry and dusty land falling beneath our feet. From the top, we could see that the flat-topped trees grew almost geometrically. A tiny camel browsed among them. The white sun sank in a pink sky, and on the horizon mountain ranges faded in blue, grey and violet. I thought of the mountains of my home.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t35.0-12/19688536_344209439345741_1754965352_o.jpg?oh=454ef8747bba5f8c8314b6b56e5fccb3&oe=595A9AAC" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://scontent-lht6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t35.0-12/19688536_344209439345741_1754965352_o.jpg?oh=454ef8747bba5f8c8314b6b56e5fccb3&oe=595A9AAC" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Julie, Lucy and me on top of the mountain</td></tr>
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That night it rained. It woke me, pattering on the tin roof, and I thanked the Lord, “who sends rain in season.” When we got up the land smelled different.</div>
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We packed, and villagers came to see us go. The day before only the boys had played, the shy girls staying in the shadows, but now the girls sat with us, flicking a stone back and forth. They told us their names, but other than that we couldn’t speak to them. They were beautiful and wide-eyed, their heads shaved close. One sat beside me, fingering the ridged strap of my flip-flop. When our hair blew into our faces, they pushed it back.</div>
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They gave Lucy a necklace like mine, of brown beads, and a man with a little English asked us what we’d give in return. I took a postcard from my Bible: <a href="https://uk.images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=fairy+pools+skye&fr=mcafee&imgurl=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-nNzTdnMt22g%2FUDZrh-MGUrI%2FAAAAAAAAAEQ%2FkjKu5ITpGPs%2Fs1600%2FFairy-Pools.jpg#id=0&iurl=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-nNzTdnMt22g%2FUDZrh-MGUrI%2FAAAAAAAAAEQ%2FkjKu5ITpGPs%2Fs1600%2FFairy-Pools.jpg&action=click">the Fairy Pools on Skye</a>. “This is my country,” I told them. They were amazed by the water and the colours, emerald and sapphire.</div>
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I didn’t want to leave them, these lovely girls, soon to be robbed of their childhood. FGM is against the law in Kenya, but without it a Samburu girl cannot be married – a Samburu man will be killed if he sleeps with an uncircumcised woman – so they continue to do it to their daughters. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ will break this cycle of pain.</div>
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So we drove away in our Land Rovers, to be reunited with our friends with hugs and shouts, to swap stories of those incredible four days in a world we’d never imagined. Completely new to us, yet the people of Samburu have been there for thousands of years; the people we met in Keleswa lived this life before I ever knew I’d go to Kenya; they are still there now, unchanged, when I have changed so much. If I returned in twenty years, would Keleswa be the same? Maybe. And how should we want that question to be answered? How to reconcile the poverty and brutality with the beauty of their village, the love in a community whose people are everything to each other? I finger my necklace and think of those little girls in red collars, fastening these beads around my neck. There is no easy answer, except to remember that God’s grace is boundless, and reaches everywhere.</div>
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<a href="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=8bfcdc467b&view=fimg&th=15cffdc837e9aafc&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_j4lqtd9v2_15cffd9b49a250f6&attbid=ANGjdJ_Xp_Ft85ro4eHPoTXNX9rUaHHZUJF5_a1AwMJx-uAuFaDEYf3yIl1Dofq0PBYiGFdOpc4Nn4FjZTWK2VFlsSJugYLKXRhxXZkmEsgT-P3jHFTGViww4o7MlBQ&sz=w1056-h704&ats=1498941378870&rm=15cffdc837e9aafc&zw&atsh=1" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=8bfcdc467b&view=fimg&th=15cffdc837e9aafc&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_j4lqtd9v2_15cffd9b49a250f6&attbid=ANGjdJ_Xp_Ft85ro4eHPoTXNX9rUaHHZUJF5_a1AwMJx-uAuFaDEYf3yIl1Dofq0PBYiGFdOpc4Nn4FjZTWK2VFlsSJugYLKXRhxXZkmEsgT-P3jHFTGViww4o7MlBQ&sz=w1056-h704&ats=1498941378870&rm=15cffdc837e9aafc&zw&atsh=1" width="640" /></a><br />
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~***~</div>
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Stay tuned for further adventures in Kenya! To read my first Kenya post, click <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/what-i-got-up-to-in-kenya.html">here</a>.</div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-87496346567945626312017-06-26T22:27:00.001+01:002017-06-26T22:27:28.040+01:00Back to the Classics // Kenya Edition (with a bit of LesMisBook thrown in)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Way back in January, <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/back-to-classics-2017.html">I signed up for the Back to the Classics challenge</a>, hosted by Karen @ <a href="https://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.co.uk/">Books and Chocolate</a>!</div>
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<img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzURTxqt8apnFDijWBmdqavN08i4pkIxUOp0XNfQucv-X9QyWG7M3s_g3JhyL8bf9FoC_DElPOAYACReM3cGm-yWdEBL930_OcDoo1geMsMktuRFXxUbx-JmsakdU3PFdVppPnn11ZUJ-q/s320/3Button2017.jpg" /><br />
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It's a fab challenge in which you read twelve (or six, or nine) classics from different categories and review them, and then you can enter a draw to win $30 for The Book Depository!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyt3TPmnexSlAZoUfTrv-wy4AzDT3kyxm1ZdSSxO8VxMvxESVjSDKwlCD8LtetIEeXaDHNNxS6ke9MuLaCWK-qsjGNMdTsenP05EDNGgVBP33HFHzpxg6b_7jr3Agz_CyV_RpKOfP-rQE/s1600/ooh-this-is-getting-rather-fun-isnt-it-gif.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="500" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyt3TPmnexSlAZoUfTrv-wy4AzDT3kyxm1ZdSSxO8VxMvxESVjSDKwlCD8LtetIEeXaDHNNxS6ke9MuLaCWK-qsjGNMdTsenP05EDNGgVBP33HFHzpxg6b_7jr3Agz_CyV_RpKOfP-rQE/s320/ooh-this-is-getting-rather-fun-isnt-it-gif.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I really missed picking Sherlock gifs for blog posts. It's the little things, guys.</td></tr>
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Fear not: this isn't a post reviewing all the classics I read in Kenya! (There were quite a few.) Just picking a few faves for now.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/source/aural-art.tumblr.com/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Minha tatuagem!" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/fd/97/23/fd9723361ea1506b202df6aeadf5ce77.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">[source]</td></tr>
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<br /><b><span style="font-size: large;">A rom</span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;">ance classic // Romeo and Juliet </span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>“Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>That rumour's eyes may wink, and Romeo</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>(3.2.5-7)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">What else would I pick for a classic romance? I took this to Kenya as </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">“research" for LesMisBook <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(/I just wanted it to be my friend in a strange new place. I read it on our first day and it definitely helped with my uncertainty and worry!)</span>, because in her drama school auditions, Nina gives Juliet's speech from Act 3, Scene 2. I was delighted to spot some thematic similarities between my lil novel and this play -- they are, after all, both about first love and prejudice. A LesMisBook snippet:</span></div>
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<i>“[Juliet's] not actually twittery, is she?” he said. </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Nah, she’s cool! She’s very pragmatic, like, the opposite of Romeo. I think the play’s about her.” </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Is that the feminist reading?” </i></blockquote>
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<i>“Pipe down.” </i></blockquote>
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<i>“It’s interesting, the bit … here, let me see.” </i></blockquote>
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<i>I threw him the book and he caught it in one hand. “This bit.” He found the place. </i>“Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night, / That rumour’s eyes may wink, and Romeo / Leap to these arms untalked of and unseen.” </div>
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<i>“I love those lines.” </i></div>
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<i>“It shows she really loves him, doesn’t it? I’ve never wanted anyone to” – his mouth twitched in a smile – “leap to my arms untalked of unseen. Like, what’s the point?” He smiled at my face. “Is that an awful thing to say?” </i></div>
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<i>“Yes!” </i></div>
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<i>“Why?” </i></div>
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<i>“Because relationships shouldn’t be manufactured for the onlookers!” </i></div>
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<i>Jonathan stretched. “I guess that’s true. I’ve just, you know, never had that kind. The non-manufactured.” He tilted his head. “Or any kind, in fact. Forever alone and all that …” </i></div>
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<i>I rolled my eyes. “Poor you.” </i></div>
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<i>“What about you? </i></div>
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<i>“We are absolutely not having this conversation.” </i></div>
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<i>He grinned – it struck me he rarely stops smiling – and raised his hands. “Have I reached a Do Not Enter sign?” </i></div>
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<i>“A big one.”</i></div>
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~***~</div>
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I have zero time for people who think Romeo and Juliet don't really love each other. That it's just a stupid teenage thing that blows out of proportion and leads to horribly misguided suicide. Their love is absolutely beautiful. Sure, it's doomed, but that's fate. Their deaths are fated. It's in the prologue, fam.</div>
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<i>“</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Take him and cut him out in little stars,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>And he will make the face of heaven so fine</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>That all the world will be in love with night</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>And pay no worship to the garish sun."</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>(3.2.21-5)</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">You see, death is always there, with them. Even here, Juliet knows that Romeo </span>“shall die". In the same way, he describes her as having “beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear". She is already almost a heavenly being to him -- “bright angel", he calls her in 2.2. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/source/themoonofsimplicity.tumblr.com/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>This play perfectly captures the heady, star-spattered rush of first love.</b> The setting of Italy is perfect, too, for that feeling of hot-blooded passion. No wonder the blood feud forms the other key pillar of the play, the antithesis to Romeo and Juliet's love. On this second reading, the great sadness of the feud struck me; the way in which love is in some ways a dream, because though Romeo and Juliet dream of rising above their families' prejudices, they cannot.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></div>
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<i>“</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>I talk of dreams,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Which are the children of an idle brain,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Which is as thin of substance as the air</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>And more inconstant than the wind, who woos</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Even now the frozen bosom of the north,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>And, being angered, puffs away from thence,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Turning his face to the dew-dropping south."</i></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>(1.4.97-104)</i></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>
</i></span>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Stargazer cloud A3 print | via Etsy | Hushil Sander." height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/77/1f/a1/771fa1b60cf228f94bc351826c25271e.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="453" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/source/etsy.com/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: center;">
I completely fell in love with this play when I studied it aged fifteen, and I loved it no less this time. It will always be the play that introduced me to Shakespeare; my first love of this man. Fitting, isn't it? Writing about it in LesMisBook was such a joy.</div>
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<i>“Here's much to do with hate, but more with love." (1.1.169)</i></div>
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Could anything be more wonderfully Nina? I think not.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="//" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/c7/5c/f0/c75cf0d1550f8295c160a5289803911d.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/source/flickr.com/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A classic in translation // Letters to a Young Poet</span></b></div>
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I've been wanting to read this for years, and was so glad finally to pick it up. Rainer Maria Rilke was a Czech-born poet (1875-1926). Young poet Franz Kappus wrote to him to ask for advice about his writing, and the correspondence that ensued spanned several years and delved into life, love and art. It was encouraging to me:</div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>“Be patient towards all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love </i>the questions themselves <i>like locked rooms, like books written in a foreign tongue. Do not now strive to uncover answers: they cannot be given you because you have not been able to live them. And what matters is to live everything. </i>Live <i>the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future." (p17)</i></div>
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Rilke's basic philosophy was that art is unstoppable, and will endure, so that in spite of loneliness and heartbreak, we can take comfort in its immortality. I loved these lines:</div>
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<i>“To be an artist means: not to calculate and count; to grow and ripen like a tree which does not hurry the flow of its sap and stands at ease in the spring gales without fearing that no summer may follow. It will come." (p13)</i></div>
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Don't stress. “It will come." Trees grow, and so do novels. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/10/84/ef/1084ef54e00b8a4f44718ee581d21cea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/10/84/ef/1084ef54e00b8a4f44718ee581d21cea.jpg" width="424" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/source/velvetoctopus.tumblr.com/" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[source]</span></a></td></tr>
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His advice, therefore, is to “live the questions":</div>
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<i>“We must accept our existence in as </i>wide <i>a sense as can be; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible within it. ... the courage for the oddest, most unexpected, the most inexplicable things we may encounter." (p43)</i></div>
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I love this. That's what writing is, right? Accepting everything as possible. Taking twenty-six letters and a pen, and making anything at all.</div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt=" " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/17/80/5c/17805c0ddd35deddd7b262b0ad96faf1.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/lostariels/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt=" " height="400" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/19/30/1c/19301ce2874162520d07c6612a2d6645.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="388" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://lustik.tumblr.com/post/134798213192/drawings-by-elliana-esquivel-artists-on-tumblr">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A Russian classic // The Idiot</span></b><br />
<br />
You'd have to be <strike>pretty dim</strike> new around here not to know how much I love<i> The Goldfinch</i> by Donna Tartt, and Boris from that book loves<i> The Idiot</i> by Dostoevsky, so how could I stay away?!<br />
<br />
Prince Leo Myshkin has spent several years being treated for <span style="font-family: inherit;">“idiocy" in a Swiss clinic. When his money runs out, he returns to Russia to start a new life. The society into which he is plunged -- one of social conventions, intrigue and beautiful women -- is bewildering, but Leo soon gains the love of those around him. He gained my love, too, very easily; his naivety and good nature make him an endearing hero. The Idiot was often funny, always compelling: a look at how society works, the people it creates, and what it does with them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<i>“It is not easy to achieve heaven on earth, and you do seem to count on it a little: heaven is a difficult matter, Prince, much more difficult than it seems to your excellent heart." (p376-7)</i><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="." height="400" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/6e/6e/24/6e6e247099aad70a50a99a5f781d5bb8.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447892063374/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="yellow aesthetics" height="327" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/d8/53/25/d85325b2b82052a74cfceb7f70a93276.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/AZnrwzP0MZ1S7wn2zmnhkw6KZGK_h47q16VCj_wOqheUA8bIwzI9RI0/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<br /><div style="text-align: center;">
All in all, this was a wonderful book. It had all the grandeur of the Russian epic, with its diverse cast of characters, and it captured my heart from the beginning. Thoroughly recommend.<br />
<br />
~***~<br />
<br />
What were you reading, while I was reading these in Kenya? What's the best thing you've read this year?<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt=" " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/69/e0/c7/69e0c750ceb2cc9560ab4cb988e4bc53.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/source/babybernic.tumblr.com/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-35809116559097631232017-06-15T20:36:00.002+01:002017-07-25T21:04:23.818+01:00Kenya Diaries: What I Got Up To In Zambezi<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIRv9dJuFIPTMyem42XzzPImMq5lS8N14bGeuxGfXpgQpyQL9TLYINQWmzi14pEnVPrUzIjbadxWTCH5RjjA9_Z5jvj9lZ_QQsZKbRrv-P3HPmWZOQfLC5FHaJ1oN9SneRtCYfD3rYMs/s1600/unnamed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="662" data-original-width="883" height="479" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCIRv9dJuFIPTMyem42XzzPImMq5lS8N14bGeuxGfXpgQpyQL9TLYINQWmzi14pEnVPrUzIjbadxWTCH5RjjA9_Z5jvj9lZ_QQsZKbRrv-P3HPmWZOQfLC5FHaJ1oN9SneRtCYfD3rYMs/s640/unnamed.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Great Rift Valley</td></tr>
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It was dark when I arrived in Kenya. “When you get off the plane,” my father had said to me, “you’ll smell the heat and the dust and you’ll know you’re in Africa.” He was right. The night was hot and the moon was upside-down.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOjCY4tAt6pf8sGQVwds3U6lfghcxi1BDyw61VhbaimsHpKLEft9dTtqZVTkLBa1Wy40m3qa8S1Bb_X8CF4jWx-HiSZJ89NfRm9RzPNlp7OKuHld-ORlo2TUd3aLMbL32nS6L7shAZf-U/s1600/P1240262.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOjCY4tAt6pf8sGQVwds3U6lfghcxi1BDyw61VhbaimsHpKLEft9dTtqZVTkLBa1Wy40m3qa8S1Bb_X8CF4jWx-HiSZJ89NfRm9RzPNlp7OKuHld-ORlo2TUd3aLMbL32nS6L7shAZf-U/s640/P1240262.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The first two weeks were a time of flux. Lots of people do fortnight-long mission trips, two weeks of work before heading home. I can’t imagine. By the end of those two weeks we were only just finding our feet. We were burgled during that time, and had to move out of our flat just when we’d settled in, but in the end this was a blessing: in our new home, we became a lot closer to our Kenyan hosts and to each other. But the first two weeks were bewildering. We were a team of eight girls, and it was strange for me to find myself living so close with seven others. I rather felt like an animal that had been captured and put in a zoo. But from the start we loved each other, and that love would only grow.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0rEynv_EnOoHCBCYybqtBHN3tEkmhbYqO8jTXJvo5IWDisGebp-FH1LaHV0rUKTcUENn12SOUBfcMzN47_IRwIOrNlPuMAf-Qd2nrHNGxjsKsuKvXx9Ro9_VmKotqUZmJIE7f4fIOgsA/s1600/17309771_1653327121638968_7593757687342947453_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="960" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0rEynv_EnOoHCBCYybqtBHN3tEkmhbYqO8jTXJvo5IWDisGebp-FH1LaHV0rUKTcUENn12SOUBfcMzN47_IRwIOrNlPuMAf-Qd2nrHNGxjsKsuKvXx9Ro9_VmKotqUZmJIE7f4fIOgsA/s640/17309771_1653327121638968_7593757687342947453_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If you don't know which one I am, the hint is that my fave colour is orange.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulw6c4terpe5ZaV-ABed9TXS0ZBoK2B1O2AdY0MpCnUrl_i2Y0IDBIq9o2UYeRTxqSD3VbLOOlM7c7sHn0YfoP_JTqoaif-6U00aJr9qB7muWvXgUnZfE20CUSbpijZTn-zUL8q4CZu4/s1600/P2200389.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulw6c4terpe5ZaV-ABed9TXS0ZBoK2B1O2AdY0MpCnUrl_i2Y0IDBIq9o2UYeRTxqSD3VbLOOlM7c7sHn0YfoP_JTqoaif-6U00aJr9qB7muWvXgUnZfE20CUSbpijZTn-zUL8q4CZu4/s640/P2200389.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">Work started, and with it came routine. We worked in a place called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Marafiki.Global/">Rafiki</a> (which means “friend” in Swahili; see also the monkey in </span><i style="text-align: justify;">The Lion King</i><span style="text-align: justify;">), a boarding and day school that helps HIV/AIDs orphans as well as educating children from the community. Sometimes we taught, but mostly it was washing up, laundry, bread-making and kitchen work. These tasks sound menial, but they drew us together: what else can happen, when you’re alone with one person, two huge outdoor sinks, some dubious hessian rags, and 190 plastic plates? </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaOWJtb89KlCoafXU_pCZgEE93ZwbGKc9Tmb6CeGXLGlMeuIcNKS52jKxCs2F36xqmCRWr6YCs6Hz-N09XLWA5A_aJAHrheXCMd5mwlg0WLNwL2AZrDk8JtCpnXRQtUgwd7EjxYHvd_yA/s1600/P1010250.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaOWJtb89KlCoafXU_pCZgEE93ZwbGKc9Tmb6CeGXLGlMeuIcNKS52jKxCs2F36xqmCRWr6YCs6Hz-N09XLWA5A_aJAHrheXCMd5mwlg0WLNwL2AZrDk8JtCpnXRQtUgwd7EjxYHvd_yA/s640/P1010250.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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The conversations sorting lentils in the sun were conversations to be treasured. And the school welcomed us with open arms. We became great friends with the baker, who on the first day he met me asked me, “If a Kenyan man asked you to marry him, what would you say?” <span style="font-size: x-small;">(I don’t think it was real love, though. He kept forgetting my name and calling me Evelyn.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia9fm8HE0PPyRNtmuH7SHYG3R6q2RrZU_OjNXhpcpNKZpxLy1Ih2W-hYUFyKsoHrb9x7bBaa861BRz_jhPFJQCWX2Ki81fBJVXPa8P69XfSmYJRekrHJNqCKszqQM_Mq3UpyC9qigHaWM/s1600/P1010302.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia9fm8HE0PPyRNtmuH7SHYG3R6q2RrZU_OjNXhpcpNKZpxLy1Ih2W-hYUFyKsoHrb9x7bBaa861BRz_jhPFJQCWX2Ki81fBJVXPa8P69XfSmYJRekrHJNqCKszqQM_Mq3UpyC9qigHaWM/s640/P1010302.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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The children were marvellous: exuberant and exhausting. They taught us games and plaited our hair. Teaching them was often a joy, though difficult. Normally we wangled for CRE lessons: Christian Religious Education. In Britain, religious education is pluralistic, covering every belief and lauding none. In Kenyan schools, the Bible is proclaimed as truth. This was wonderful, except that often the curriculum wound away from the Bible, pulled into wrong theology by the tug of culture and tradition. We tried to pull it back: find a way into the gospel and run with it. Who knows how much the children took in? They’ve spent their lives learning by rote: maybe some of them never managed to think for themselves. We prayed for them.</div>
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A couple of times I wasn’t so lucky, and ended up doing Maths and Biology. A fellow English Lit student and I found our grasp of primary school arithmetic to be lacking, and there was the memorable occasion when my friend Sally told the fifteen-year-olds that ducks have talons. I think they enjoyed having us, though: everyone loves a student teacher. But I felt bad. They deserved better than some unqualified, clueless eighteen-year-olds. Thankfully, we were able to stick to CRE nine times out of ten.</div>
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My memories of Rafiki (which we affectionately called Raffers) are suffused with sunshine and laughter. It was always hot. Each morning a ramshackle mini-bus – the children always greeted it with cries of, “the Nissan, the Nissan!”, and we did the same – took us to school. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I've never had so much affection for a vehicle. Ever.</td></tr>
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They were simple days, mostly spent outside, splitting into pairs to do our mundane but somehow lovely tasks. There is something liberating about simple work: standing scrubbing those 190 plates, knowing you’re doing something necessary. At 10:30 each morning we’d break for tea and bread rolls, and the reunion was always joyous, as if we’d been a long time apart. Lunch was the same, debriefing over a plate of rice and beans. They were the best meals ever. Would I love my girls quite so much if it weren’t for Raffers? Definitely not. The two months I worked there were some of the happiest of my life. Best job I’ve ever had, for sure.</div>
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I loved the uncomplicated pleasures of Rafiki: the warm bread rolls, the laughter, the drive to and from school through the green hills. Our route took us over a trainline, and <i>the Nissan, the Nissan!</i> always groaned and faltered crossing the rails. Is this the day, we wondered every day, when <i>the Nissan, the Nissan! </i>breaks down? But it was a valiant bus and it never failed us. Every day, morning and afternoon, I’d look eagerly up and down the railway line in case of a train. I love trains, and missed them desperately. Once, we left school a little late, and we stopped when we came to the railway line. What was that magical sound? What was that glorious shape, growing in the distance? “A train, a train!” the children shouted, and I may have been shouting with them.</div>
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Once I was working in the dark, smoky bakery when music floated to me. I stepped outside. Along the red road beside Rafiki a man drove his goats through the russet puddles of just-fallen rain. Each one wore a bell, and the sound was like some melodious sea. A sound for a life spent working with animals and the land. It moved me, the sight and the music.</div>
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When I got home each day I’d take my tea in a plastic mug and go upstairs to write. Those were happy times, Nina and JBH and me, and I love that I’ll always remember that first draft of LesMisBook, crafted on a lumpy bunk bed, in a small, darkish room. I loved that bed and that room. <i>A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,</i> Virginia Woolf wrote, but I wrote that novel in a room shared by four. It was tiny, and you can imagine the mess, and often the desire for solitude was so great I wanted to bang my head against a wall, but I loved it. The way we would talk as we fell asleep, voices floating in the dark. The way my best friends were always right there next to me.</div>
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I loved Zambezi, too, our town. The high street was lined with makeshift shops, boards nailed together, where dresses hung or mangoes spilled onto the road. It was always noisy, haggling looping back and forth. The clothes they sell are often charity donations from the UK or US, so it was like secondhand shopping at home: I came back with a long green coat and some excellent shirts, feeling pleased with myself. Our favourite things to buy were packs of six round sponge cakes, called Marylands, 30 Kenyan shillings*, far and away the best snacks in the world.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*23p or 29 cents</span></div>
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Along the streets of Zambezi, donkeys pulled carts and chickens wove in and out of the cars and motorbikes. That was a fascinating thing, to see how western and traditional culture fused. It is best epitomised, I think, by the men I saw in the north: a traditional <a href="https://www.google.com/search?site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1366&bih=662&q=shuka+kenya&oq=shuka+kenya&gs_l=img.3..0i8i30k1j0i24k1.12669.14038.0.14354.12.10.0.0.0.0.190.1006.1j6.7.0....0...1.1.64.img..5.7.1002.0..0j0i10k1.OHRR8UuE5OQ#imgrc=p6h9MmbhWGDlGM:">shuka</a> round their waist, a staff in their hand, and an English Premier League football shirt. Amazing, how football permeates everywhere. I once saw a man in a Crieff Juniors shirt. Crieff is a little town in central Scotland: how did the strip of their junior team make it to Kenya? It made me smile. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We got good at handwashing. It's another thing that brings you together; when you meet someone's eye across the soaping bucket and say <span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“I'm currently scrubbing the crotch of your pyjama trousers", how can lifelong bonding be avoided?</span></span></td></tr>
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In a lot of ways, life was stripped back. I had no Facebook, no blog, no make-up, no city, none of it. Life took on a slower pace, a warm rhythm. And this was wonderful, because it let me study the Bible more than ever before. We read through John, and Jesus’ humility struck me. I was trying to learn to love sacrificially, to have a servant heart, and there He was: <i>“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet." </i>(John 13:3-5) Jesus, God of the universe, washed His followers’ feet. In a country where I’d come home each day and remove my socks to find a line of dust around my ankles, I understood why this was a big deal. He was the ultimate servant; He went to the Cross to prove it. I am so thankful for this trip, because it showed me more of the world He’s made, and it allowed me to grow closer to Him.</div>
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~***~</div>
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If you missed it <span style="font-size: x-small;">(seriously, how could you miss it)</span>, I was in Kenya from January until May on a mission trip. I have a lot more stories to tell! The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that this narrative only went up to the end of March. In April, we went north to share Jesus in the rural county of Samburu. That really was going back to basics: no electricity, no running water, et cetera and et cetera. And then May happened, with the dreads and the ostriches. So, if you're interested, there will be more of What I Got Up To In Kenya.</div>
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Also, I'd like to know: when I was working at Raffers in February and March, what were you doing? What were the highlights?</div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-69845385929489895482017-05-30T21:32:00.000+01:002017-05-30T21:32:00.040+01:00I'm Back From Kenya, I Wrote LesMisBook & I Have Dreadlocks<div style="text-align: center;">
Now we can work through that list one at a time.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. OH MY GOSH HI!</span></b></div>
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All the gifs in the world cannot convey the JOY IN MY SOUL at being able to say: hey guys! What's up? </div>
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<b>I went to Kenya for four months.</b></div>
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<b>It was pretty great.</b></div>
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You may have questions, such as “how was it?", “what did you do?", “did you ever ride an ostrich?" The answer to the third one is yes I did.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4THlXp5z4epqK0ZsPB68nP3o3jhuJvHB8M0j9QvWfBvsMIRmeqI7AvDGJ0b0cVWvoxoxhoZzk-u0FVCTLnFwzZtSJ3OJBj9-0KHrksJ2PxH3Doif7dfESENrjjwITUeeRgZydvky9pQ/s1600/18581673_1674543379517342_1642630249858225502_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="508" data-original-width="960" height="338" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin4THlXp5z4epqK0ZsPB68nP3o3jhuJvHB8M0j9QvWfBvsMIRmeqI7AvDGJ0b0cVWvoxoxhoZzk-u0FVCTLnFwzZtSJ3OJBj9-0KHrksJ2PxH3Doif7dfESENrjjwITUeeRgZydvky9pQ/s640/18581673_1674543379517342_1642630249858225502_n.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="640" /></a></div>
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Actual riding pictures will follow.</div>
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The answers to the other two are a bit more complex. I will post about Kenya, if you'd like that, but this post is more like a meerkat popping its head up in the desert to say, “yes! Here I am!"</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">2. I Wrote LesMisBook</span></b></div>
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Yes, indeed! I've never written a contemporary before but I had a whale of a time. I finished it sitting in front of that wooden door, with the mountain behind me.</div>
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In other writing news, I am now fifth-drafting TCATT. Which is hard.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. I Got Dreads</span></b></div>
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So that's fun, eh?<br />
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I have pictures and I will share my pictures just as soon as I can, but currently they're stuck on a friend's iPod, like a person stuck at the train station in the rain when their lift's not showing up.<br />
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Keep checking back, yeah?<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">It's strange to be back, and yet, in another way, it feels like I never left.</span></b><br />
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When I think about Kenya it fills my head -- the heat, the way the clouds looked different in the massive skies -- but equally the familiarity of home has fallen all around me, as if my life has carried smoothly on from the place I left it in January. <b>But I guess I'm a different person, so I can't just consign Kenya to memories.</b><br />
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<b>It's good to be back. </b>Seeing my family and friends. The wonderful greeting my dogs gave me. Swimming in my lake; G&Ts in the garden; enjoying long evenings after spending my spring on the equator, where the days are always twelve hours long. And, oh my, all the food I missed! CHOCOLATE. It's been a good homecoming.<br />
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I've got a lot to say, but for now I just want to hear all your lovely voices (in a virtual sense), and visit all your lovely blogs. It's been too long.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqoP060m3rpo4OXwS-9kdRVh0Zrvm3frLUWjdLsSGvvCowCLVOii9sRN3867gkf5nwKWGoQun5-lU20x9A9L48ZMvf5Mo81LKrQCE3Pd-PdmvQyj1dIJfkx5Pw9JWjfdCjZuwoD1NViIY/s1600/DSCN2453.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1083" data-original-width="1600" height="432" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqoP060m3rpo4OXwS-9kdRVh0Zrvm3frLUWjdLsSGvvCowCLVOii9sRN3867gkf5nwKWGoQun5-lU20x9A9L48ZMvf5Mo81LKrQCE3Pd-PdmvQyj1dIJfkx5Pw9JWjfdCjZuwoD1NViIY/s640/DSCN2453.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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~***~</div>
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<b>Until very soon! </b></div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-47909042264293800882017-01-18T22:25:00.000+00:002017-01-18T22:25:01.455+00:00Back to the Classics 2017<div style="text-align: center;">
Once again I speak to you from the past! Am I writing from a parallel dimension? Can I time travel? Or did I just schedule this post?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for jack sparrow ooh hands gif" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/de/33/de/de33de657684710f3b742a2e5e7f5020.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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So <i>anyway</i>. Gifs aside, my past self would like to announce that she's linking up with the <a href="https://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/back-to-classics-2017.html">Back to the Classics Challenge 2017</a>, hosted by Karen @ <a href="http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.com/">Books and Chocolate</a>!</div>
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To quote from Karen's blog:</div>
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<i>It's back! Once again, I'm hosting the Back to the Classics Challenge. I hope to encourage bloggers to discover and enjoy classic books they might not have tried, or just never got around to reading. And at the end, one lucky winner will receive a $30 (US) prize from Amazon.com or The Book Depository! </i></blockquote>
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<i>Here's how it works:<br />The challenge will be exactly the same as last year, 12 classic books, but with slightly different categories. You do not have to read 12 books to participate: </i></blockquote>
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<i>Complete six categories, and you get one entry in the drawing<br />Complete nine categories, and you get two entries in the drawing<br />Complete all twelve categories, and you get three entries in the drawing</i></blockquote>
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Cool, right? Thanks so much to Karen for hosting! Here are the twelve categories.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. A 19th Century Classic</span></b></div>
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Ah, we could slot anyone in here. Maybe <i>Bleak House</i>? Or maybe I should tackle Walter Scott at long last -- my parents recommend <i>The Heart of Midlothian</i>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">2. A 20th Century Classic - must have been published at least fifty years ago (1967).</span></b></div>
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Perhaps <i>The Beautiful and Damned </i>by F Scott Fitzgerald. He and I have been apart for too long.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. A classic by a woman author</span></b></div>
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I've been meaning to read Mary Wollstonecraft's <i>Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i>. Or I could return to Du Maurier -- it's been far too long -- and finally pick up <i>Jamaica Inn</i>. Or <i>Middlemarch </i>(so that Eliot can be redeemed in my eyes after my disappointment in <i>Romola</i>?). Or I am planning to read <i>The Flame-Trees of Thika </i>by Elspeth Huxley while in Kenya. Lots of options!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4. A classic in translation</span></b></div>
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I intend to read <i>Letters to a Young Poet</i> by Rainer Maria Rilke, originally written in German!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, page 35.: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/26/3c/78/263c788b2aeea7a20d1cbb6fbe4d6167.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Based on a) this picture and b) Rilke's featuring in Maggie Stiefvater's Wolves of Mercy Falls. Read a serendipitous story combining these three things <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/occasionally-i-win-things.html">here</a>.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">5. A pre-1800 classic</span></b></div>
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I'm about to reread <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, as research for <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/its-2017-and-im-writing-book.html">LesMisBook</a> -- Nina is performing a Juliet speech (Act 3 Scene 2, if you're interested) in her drama school audition. At least, that's my excuse for revisiting this beloved play ... I also plan to read <i>A Midsummer Night's Dream</i> and <i>Cymbeline</i>. And I've been meaning to tackle Spenser's <i>Faerie Queene</i> for ages ... if I can work up the moxie! </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">6. A romance classic</span></b></div>
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Austen, anyone? <i>Mansfield Park</i> is the last book of hers I'm yet to read. I can't wait!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">7. A Gothic or horror classic. For a good definition of what makes a book Gothic, and an excellent list of possible reads, please see <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1230.Best_Gothic_Books_Of_All_Time">this list on Goodreads</a>. </span></b></div>
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So, confession time. I have never read<i> Dracula</i>, <i>Frankenstein</i>, or <i>Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde</i> and I don't really want to. I think it's because a) I don't like sci-fi/horror, and b) they all feel so familiar to me -- <i>Dracula </i>and <i>Frankenstein</i>, especially, have been rehashed so many times in popular culture over the years. So please, change my mind! If you've read one of these books and liked it, tell me why, and maybe I'll pick it up!</div>
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I do, however, have some preferred options for this category. Maybe <i>The Hunchback of Notre Dame </i>by Victor Hugo -- because I love <i>Les Mis</i>! So! Much! -- or maybe<i> Titus Groan</i> by Mervyn Peake. I've had this one on my shelf for a while -- it's a cult fantasy book from 1959. The only problem is, I'm trying not to start series with gay abandon, and it's the first in a trilogy. So we shall see.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Titus Groan - Mervyn Peake. After five or six abortive attempts as a teenager, I decided it was about time that I read my mother's favourite book all the way through. I don't think I've ever read a book with such vivid imagery - it's amazing. I may have to wait for the strange dreams to stop until I read the next part of the trilogy though...: " height="400" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/bb/02/e0/bb02e0ad6620d80e356447ed26dc9c37.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="250" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mervynpeake.org/novelist.html">[source]</a> // how great is this cover??</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">8. A classic with a number in the title</span></b></div>
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OK, I don't have an idea for this one! But apparently <i>Fahrenheit 451 </i>is about book-burning? (Maybe everyone else knew this and just didn't want to tell me?) So I might give it a go.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">9. A classic about an animal or which includes the name of an animal in the title</span></b></div>
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I would've been all over this last year, reading <i>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</i> and <i>The Metamorphosis</i>. This time I think I'll read one of my Little Black Classics (because I've been awful at getting through those): a Viking epic called <i>The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-Tongue</i>. Sounds good, right?!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">10. A classic set in a place you'd like to visit</span></b></div>
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I love this category! At the moment I lean towards <i>Across the River and Into the Trees</i> by Hemingway, because my heart dwells always in Venice.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Venice: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/85/e9/59/85e959e5cfc3fcd9f0eb3b5d69316fcb.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bbmaui/537983343/in/set-72157600330733081">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">11. An award-winning classic</span></b></div>
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Don't have a clue for this one. Suggestions?</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">12. A Russian Classic (2017 will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution!)</span></b></div>
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This one's easy: <i>The Idiot</i> by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It's a book they talk about a lot in <i>The Goldfinch, </i>so, yeah, I'm right there.</div>
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<b>And now, the rest of the rules, copied from Karen's post:</b></div>
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<i>All books must be read in 2017. Books started before January 1, 2017 do not qualify. All reviews must be linked to this challenge by December 31, 2017. I'll post links each category the first week of January which will be featured on a sidebar on this blog for the entire year. </i></div>
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<i>You must also post a wrap-up review and link it to the challenge no later than December 31, 2017. Please include links within your final wrap-up to that I can easily confirm all your categories. Also, it is OK to rearrange books to fit different categories in your wrap-up post -- for example, last year I originally planned to use Journey to the Center of the the Earth in the Fantasy/SciFi/Dystopian category, but then I decided to count it as an Adventure Classic. Most books count count toward several categories, so it's fine if you change them, as long as they are identified in your wrap-up post.</i></div>
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<i>All books must have been written at least 50 years ago; therefore, books must have been written by 1967 to qualify for this challenge. The ONLY exceptions are books published posthumously.</i></div>
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<i>E-books and audiobooks are eligible! You may also count books that you read for other challenges.</i></div>
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<i>Books may NOT cross over within this challenge. You must read a different book for EACH category, or it doesn't count.</i></div>
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<i>Children's classics are acceptable, but please, no more than 3 total for the challenge.</i></div>
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<i>If you do not have a blog, you may link to reviews on Goodreads or any other publicly accessible online format. For example, if you have a Goodreads account, you could create a dedicated list to the challenge, and link to that with a tentative list (the list can change throughout the challenge).</i></div>
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<i>The deadline to sign up for the challenge is <b>March 1, 2017</b>. After that, I will close the link and you'll have to wait until the next year! Please include a link to your original sign-up post, not your blog URL. Also, make sure you add your link to the Linky below, NOT IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. If I don't see your name in the original Linky, YOU WILL BE INELIGIBLE. If you've made a mistake with your link, just add a second one. </i></div>
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<i>You do NOT have to list all the books you're going to read for the challenge in your sign-up post, but it's more fun if you do! Of course, you can change your list any time. Books may also be read in any order. </i></div>
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<i>The winner will be announced on this blog the first week of January, 2018. All qualifying participants will receive one or more entries, depending on the number of categories completed. One winner will be selected at random for all qualifying entries. The winner will receive a gift certificate in the amount of $30 (US currency) from either Amazon.com OR $30 worth of books from The Book Depository. The winner MUST live in a country that will receive shipments from one or the other. For a list of countries that receive shipments from The Book Depository, click <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/help">here</a>. </i></div>
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<b>I'm really excited about this. It's a nice way to organise the books I'm planning to read, and hopefully to reach out in the classics blog network (because I pretend to be a YA book blogger, but ... am I? No. <strike>I am an enigma and a mystery.</strike>) And the giveaway part is lovely, too!</b></div>
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<b>Please let me know if you're taking part, and link me to your post!</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Pinterest: @isabellereneexo: " height="319" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/f3/16/1d/f3161d1b14c5e1ed77add011d93cac69.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/217019735/?ref=sr_gallery_15&ga_search_query=bookish&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery">[source]</a></td></tr>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-40087588769507164492017-01-14T22:22:00.000+00:002017-01-14T22:22:25.653+00:00TIME'S ARROW // tired of being human<div style="text-align: center;">
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If everything has gone according to plan, I'm currently in Kenya.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="reminds me of Skulduggery: " height="316" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/54/fe/e7/54fee7e99ee539cf7098aa07410badad.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/54/fe/e7/54fee7e99ee539cf7098aa07410badad.jpg">[source]</a> // sorry, that was a bit harsh. Put it down to my current HIGH SKULDUGGERY FEELINGS -- it reminds me of him -- as I reread the books.</td></tr>
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Speaking of Skulduggery <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(as I always am)</span> -- books involving dubious mortality bring us nicely onto <i>Time's Arrow</i> by Martin Amis.</div>
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~***~</div>
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<a href="http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353213337l/23031.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for time's arrow martin amis cover" border="0" src="http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1353213337l/23031.jpg" height="320" width="204" /></a></div>
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<i>I moved forward, out of the blackest sleep, to find myself surrounded by doctors.</i> So begins <i>Time's Arrow</i>, as the narrator wakes from death. This novel is his story, backwards. Time winds back: he grows younger, and the reader pieces together the excitements and horrors of his life as we span back through the twentieth century.</div>
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Describing this book, I run the risk of making it sound childish. How can a narrative run backwards? In fact, the structure is delicious: an exquisite puzzle as Amis turns ordinary events on their heads, making our world strange by showing it in reverse.</div>
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<i>Water moves upwards. It seeks the highest level. What did you expect? Smoke falls. Things are created in the violence of fire. ... Oh, the disgusted look on women's faces as they step backwards through a doorway, out of the rain. Never watching where they are going, the people move through something prearranged, armed with lies. They're always looking foward to going places they've just come back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye. Lords of lies and trash -- all kings of crap and trash. Signs say No Littering -- but who to? We wouldn't dream of it. Government does that, at night, with trucks; or uniformed men come sadly at morning with their trolleys, dispensing our rubbish, and sh*t for the dogs. (p51)</i></div>
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I have never read a book that deals with time in this way, and on every page I marvelled at the dexterity and freshness with which Amis handled his subject.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mercurysvalley.tumblr.com/post/131054299989">[source]</a> // it's not the first time I've posted this and it probably won't be the last. You're welcome.</td></tr>
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<b>So, why? Why is it told backwards?</b> <i>“Time is heading on now towards something. It pours past unpreventably, like the reflections on a windscreen as the car speeds through city or forest."</i> (p67) Where is time heading? Notice the swastika on the cover. <b>The novel leads us, inexorably, to Auschwitz.</b></div>
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The main character was there. By telling his story backwards, Amis defamiliarises World War Two and shows its horrors in a whole new way. In an effort to disconnect himself from what happened to him -- what he did -- the narrator speaks from outside the MC's body, seeing himself as a separate entity.</div>
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<i>He is travelling towards his secret. Parasite or passenger, I am travelling there with him. It will be bad. It will be bad, and not intelligible. (p72)</i></div>
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“Bad, and not intelligible." This is it, this is Auschwitz. <i>Time's Arrow</i> deals with the realities of World War Two and the overwhelming question: after committing atrocities, how can one remain human?</div>
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<i>There's probably a straightforward explanation for the impossible weariness I feel. A perfectly straightforward explanation. It is a mortal weariness. Maybe I'm tired of being human, if human is what I am. I'm tired of being human. (p103)</i></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="your local human: " height="296" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/12/60/f0/1260f0a2e52885ab60c193a3716171f7.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447889242254/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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~***~</div>
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<b><i>Time's Arrow</i> was easily one of my favourite books of 2016: it challenged the way I thought about time, death and reality, and it's in no way your average WW2 novel.</b></div>
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<i style="text-align: justify;">I'm being immature. I've got to get over it. I keep expecting the world to make sense. It doesn't. It won't. Ever. (p91)</i></div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-25976785939503319422017-01-10T19:06:00.003+00:002017-01-10T20:58:53.976+00:0016 Bookish Thoughts from 2016<div style="text-align: center;">
Yet again I'm linking up with Jamie at the <a href="http://www.perpetualpageturner.com/">Perpetual Page Turner</a> for her <a href="http://www.perpetualpageturner.com/2016/12/7th-annual-end-of-year-survey-2016-edition.html">End-of-Year Book Survey</a>! <strike>Because we don't talk about books enough.</strike> I have slightly, *ahem*, modified the survey, so here you are: <b>16 Bookish Thoughts from 2016.</b> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Which is a fancy way of saying I picked 16 of the <i>In Books</i> questions. It's #aesthetic, trust me.)</span></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Number Of Books You Read:</span></b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvfZHMsLNHXZ_LBtwe4U4Od39CSHQBjLl7LiR2mL6SzcazH3uzOZPeBnQdp2MrMY-1xNocuZ2IkxCnLsA8HYbzDCnYprYge7lMSRY_nFSb30bqXCA6BesoGlYKdv2-Nu_kd9aBUvlv-4/s1600/goodreads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzvfZHMsLNHXZ_LBtwe4U4Od39CSHQBjLl7LiR2mL6SzcazH3uzOZPeBnQdp2MrMY-1xNocuZ2IkxCnLsA8HYbzDCnYprYge7lMSRY_nFSb30bqXCA6BesoGlYKdv2-Nu_kd9aBUvlv-4/s400/goodreads.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eight more than I read last year! Well done, me! That includes five rereads.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Most-Read Genre:</span></b><br />
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Classics! There's a surprise, eh?</div>
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<a href="http://www.perpetualpageturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/best-YA-books-2014.jpg"><img height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEgEl2FwEKb8qVOATjy_2ecUb4_23qTf1qIle7F0KQqP6Al3Yz3KS2bE52W0Zw7tVhe9XUHkcEgFX9Z1RJ_91-HTmnNO1Yk9vRkX5gJe1SokAMYmOdqN-yi-gnlqspOulYqb8sDrkHS1mWbvRRDESiXOw_Tbkx_veyB1jOlALWImUjEvdFV8Q0fSQCMZ-dDHxpY-YZc7gj_DeB1bccd0=" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. Best Book</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJ84xbtTaLwzMhOZdSxi-jCiDEBWo9NG2zGvrRrs7fT_DtbCcFmfo4WZJkU-VGnhC2XkPkK7QBduCNGvUhdv7mSdLy6FtZu3QAG6ZE24W4BBuVnZtQrUhSsnHWZlHf4AW5HMYRlM0UZk/s1600/IMG_1766.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="496" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJ84xbtTaLwzMhOZdSxi-jCiDEBWo9NG2zGvrRrs7fT_DtbCcFmfo4WZJkU-VGnhC2XkPkK7QBduCNGvUhdv7mSdLy6FtZu3QAG6ZE24W4BBuVnZtQrUhSsnHWZlHf4AW5HMYRlM0UZk/s640/IMG_1766.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Last year I actually picked a single book, but ... here we are. Oops. To highlight the books I'm not going to talk about again this post:<br />
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<b>Les Mis</b> // exquisite, honestly. More than worth the month I spent on it. I don't know if I'd be <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/its-2017-and-im-writing-book.html">writing LesMisBook</a> if I hadn't read this -- I already loved the musical, but reading it takes that to a whole new level -- so it has literally changed my life!<br />
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<b>River </b>// favourite book by favourite poet. I think about this book a lot.<br />
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<i>Hurry up. Join the love-orgy</i></div>
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<i>Up here among the leaves, in the light rain,</i></div>
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<i>Under a flimsy tent of dusky wings.</i></div>
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~ from <i>Caddis</i></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>2. Book You Were Excited About & Thought You Were Going To Love More Than You Did?</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzQy9rAvF0V2pT0PUotDlba5qUDrdYisa-7TbdaNJZsc32rfHf_ZjrhsM2_j6i_4B6rVZMRAvtjB00Y44cjUxjNx7JN2s5RxkdN3EzhvRzSbP7ZEv-WBwtaTWXJ6ZJoHUzLxl9miLarow/s1600/IMG_1780.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzQy9rAvF0V2pT0PUotDlba5qUDrdYisa-7TbdaNJZsc32rfHf_ZjrhsM2_j6i_4B6rVZMRAvtjB00Y44cjUxjNx7JN2s5RxkdN3EzhvRzSbP7ZEv-WBwtaTWXJ6ZJoHUzLxl9miLarow/s640/IMG_1780.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>The Raven King</b> // OK OK PLEASE DONUT HATE ME. I LOVED <i>THE RAVEN KING</i>. I GAVE IT FIVE STARS. I BOUGHT IT ON RELEASE DAY AND FINISHED IT THE NEXT. But ... it confused me? At points? Basically I expected it to be perfect, and shrieked a lot beforehand about how I expected it be perfect, and when I read it I couldn't exactly work out if it <i>was </i>perfect ... or if I just read it too fast and <i>assumed </i>it was perfect because that was my expectation. I may also have slightly forgotten the plots of the previous books. So the conclusion is I must <i>reread the series,</i> and then I shall know the truth. </div>
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<b>Two Lives</b> // I was <i>so </i>disappointed! <i>A Suitable Boy</i> by Vikram Seth is one of my favourites (heck, Nina Seth is named after him), but this one I ... did not like. It meandered. A lot. It didn't answer any of its own questions. Much sadness did I feel.</div>
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<b>Lanark </b>// was hoping for METAFICTIONAL GLASWEGIAN TRIUMPH and got really long, sexually dubious, <i>bizarre </i>novel. It was really interesting and I really liked it. But I didn't <i>love </i>it the way I was expecting.</div>
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<b>Romola</b> // SO MUCH DISAPPOINTED SADNESS IN MY HEART. I loved (with the blazing passion of a forest fire) <i>Adam Bede</i> and <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, also by George Eliot. And then ... <i>Romola</i>. Really long. Characters ranging between kinda annoying and very annoying. So densely written I thought my eyes would fall out. Lots of politics. Weird religion.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMicBhrGi6OpME2rH96qSCJjHfXpjjAVM8HUn7gM1wMnlfvJNU0yGYtAgAn8_SoAubOQ41ezuChmFG3udVf_KWP0bjffj6d-kXAQfqg19qgOdJe5ullr_UDwSjFJPYyijbZJ2bcs8l704/s1600/can+we+not.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMicBhrGi6OpME2rH96qSCJjHfXpjjAVM8HUn7gM1wMnlfvJNU0yGYtAgAn8_SoAubOQ41ezuChmFG3udVf_KWP0bjffj6d-kXAQfqg19qgOdJe5ullr_UDwSjFJPYyijbZJ2bcs8l704/s320/can+we+not.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It just makes me so so sad when an author you <i>loved</i> who wrote books you <i>adored</i> (Vikram Seth, George Eliot) produces something you do not adore, and you have to say, oh, maybe he/she <i>isn't</i> perfect, after all. And the cruel reality of the world falls heavy upon your young shoulders.</td></tr>
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<b>Heir of Fire</b> // it really wasn't <i>Crown of Midnight</i>, was it?? WHERE WAS CHAOL? (And where was the satisfying worldbuilding, and the great writing, and the male characters who don't instantly fall in love with Celaena? Yet to see any of these in this series, to be honest. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(I did like this book, but not as much as the previous one!)</span>)</div>
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<b>The Aeneid </b>// so ... long ... so many ... names ... so much ... blood ... honour ... swords ... light is ... fading ... </div>
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^Basically me reading <i>The Aeneid</i>.</div>
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*ahem*</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. Best Series Started? Best Sequel? Best Series Ender?</span></b><br />
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<b>Desolation</b> // I started this trilogy in the spring. I didn't think<i> Demon Road </i>was the best thing ever, but <i>Desolation</i> absolutely blew me away! It was! So! Good! <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(And now I'm rereading the Skulduggery books and just, damn, I love Landy <i>a lot</i>.)</span><br />
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<b>Forever and Sinner </b>// HELLO TO THE BEST SERIES ENDER AND TWO OF THE YEAR'S BEST BOOKS. Wolves of Mercy Falls just gets better and better. The writing, the romance, the humour. We don't say All Hail Stiefvater for nothing, do we? More thoughts on this series <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/why-you-should-be-reading-wolves-of.html">here</a>.<br />
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<b>Anne's House of Dreams</b> // after slight disappointment in the fourth book, this #5 was <i>wonderful</i>. Watch out for more Anne chat in this post.<br />
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<b>The Golem's Eye</b> // a good surprise! <i>The Amulet of Sarmakand, </i>the first one in this trilogy, was good but not amazing, but I loved this book!<br />
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<b>The Last Olympian and The Lost Hero</b> // Percy = life. These books are my old friends, I love them.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wkWeNwCvMi6L6H2ql_EUCdzorgyzPTWDK0Nt4hlIUd_h8ujuiR3wdLcSNIK3vvzrO71mNFHCNPDqIxvBCmz12oRVgCJmUe5eRfGQWTS7zlfjVW7IDI7VQ3AktKYeMjQ9UmeCtXnDEW0/s1600/IMG_1779.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="438" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7wkWeNwCvMi6L6H2ql_EUCdzorgyzPTWDK0Nt4hlIUd_h8ujuiR3wdLcSNIK3vvzrO71mNFHCNPDqIxvBCmz12oRVgCJmUe5eRfGQWTS7zlfjVW7IDI7VQ3AktKYeMjQ9UmeCtXnDEW0/s640/IMG_1779.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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AND THESE BOOKS WERE UTTERLY AMAZING. <strike>Because I don't talk about JK Rowling enough.</strike> I loved <i>The Cuckoo's Calling</i>, but these two took it to a whole new level. Characters! Setting! Murders! Plot twists! Pace! Social observations! Come on, look me in the eye and tell me you don't want to read about a detective duo solving fascinating murders in London.<br />
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The fourth book is coming out this spring.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4. Most Memorable Character?</span></b></div>
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I'm going to take this as a Donna Tartt cue. <b>All her characters are complex and utterly believable, and <i>The Secret History</i> was a perfect example of this.</b> (One of) the theme(s) of the book is the nature of evil and how it presents itself, and this centres around the character of Henry, who is the mastermind behind the murder with which the book starts, and also beloved of the characters and the reader. I can't stop thinking about him, about this book. More thoughts <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/the-secret-history-beauty-is-terror.html">here</a>.</div>
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<i>Francis talking, gesticulating wildly in his white robe and Henry with his hands clasped behind his back, Satan listening patiently to the ranting of some desert prophet.</i></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">5. Most Beautifully Written? // Favorite Passage/Quotation?</span></b></div>
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Right back into <i>The Secret History</i>!</div>
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<i><i>Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. </i></i></div>
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// I know I've shared this one at least twice before, but, like, damn. First line. Swooping me in and refusing to let me go until I'd turned the last page.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BCH2XKBBsj5/?taken-by=hawwaetc">[source]</a> // @hawwaetc</td></tr>
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<i>It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don't know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together -- my future, my past, the whole of my life -- and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say </i>oh! oh! oh!</div>
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// This probably is my favourite passage, if I'm going actually to answer the question. Serendipity. The world slipping into place. Have we not all felt this way? The tragedy, of course, is how it falls the other way so fast, dreams shattering, certainties vanishing like mist.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Tracey Emin's Neon Lights - Feminine Collective: " height="400" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e8/7d/1a/e87d1aeeb1ea8e58506774c0caaadb5f.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="379" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447889577377/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt=" : " height="266" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/95/80/67/9580670459b526997d30989b06e3024e.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/95/80/67/9580670459b526997d30989b06e3024e.png">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b>Also <i>Green Hills of Africa </i>by Ernest Hemingway. This really was one of my favourite books, too.</b></div>
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<i>Now, looking out of the tunnel of trees over the ravine at the sky with the white clouds moving across in the wind, I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long, sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you want to hear it move, and it is slow in starting. ... So if you have loved some woman and some country you are very fortunate and, if you die afterwards, it makes no difference. Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly. I have loved country all my life; the country was always better than the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time.</i></div>
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// take me to Kenya! Review <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/reading-africa.html">here</a>.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Pinterest: @pastel5sos Tumblr: @viirtualsouls: " height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b1/b2/ff/b1b2ff14959524abeeddcf3175718308.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="426" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://craftingbyholiday.com/i-need-a-watercolor-notebook-sometimes-you-dont-have-time-to-spend-on-a-big-piece-and-painting-is-like-journaling-for-me/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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And finally <i>Darling </i>by Jackie Kay, specifically this poem, which I posted in my last post but <i>hey </i>let's all read it again!</div>
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<b>In my country</b></div>
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<i>walking by the waters</i></div>
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<i>down where an honest river</i></div>
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<i>shakes hands with the sea,</i></div>
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<i>a woman passed round me</i></div>
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<i>in a slow watchful circle,</i></div>
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<i>as if I were a superstition,</i></div>
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<i>or the worst dregs of her imagination,</i></div>
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<i>so when she finally spoke</i></div>
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<i>her words sliced into bars</i></div>
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<i>of an old wheel. A segment of air.</i></div>
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Where do you come from?</div>
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<i>‘Here,' I said, ‘Here. These parts.'</i></div>
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National identity, innit. For more thoughts on why this is so important to me, click <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/its-2017-and-im-writing-book.html">here</a>.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>6. Most Thought-Provoking Book?</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVPDuOlqmz7OlWLxjd1G-FmS8J2ngq6bTVCkF2IHLAjBo8agQMiDv_ArOosgUxayCXF5xMo-8y2aAQ3ZHFSDF_-5BvfTpCb9Zq-3Csc96nrB7KT7F32ttpWhL1uDOcFavFzzXuxzhZiD8/s1600/IMG_1762.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVPDuOlqmz7OlWLxjd1G-FmS8J2ngq6bTVCkF2IHLAjBo8agQMiDv_ArOosgUxayCXF5xMo-8y2aAQ3ZHFSDF_-5BvfTpCb9Zq-3Csc96nrB7KT7F32ttpWhL1uDOcFavFzzXuxzhZiD8/s640/IMG_1762.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<br />
Completely changed the way I thought about race and racism. And hair. Review <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/reading-africa.html">here</a>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">7. Book That Shocked You The Most</span></b></div>
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Apart from <i>We Were Liars</i>? <i>A Dance With Dragons: After the Feast</i> by George Rampaging Ruinous Martin. I'm not going to <i>say </i>why, but if you read it you <i>know </i>why.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG6ZhYQVfUkBLVjA2P8ZjaGqacYSlF2kycn_5NlR1ExTnvWYo55ou3fqa3WZIhUBCW2-5XsK_FmuTqWgP_848PvzEc7-aPn7f2Qrc348DGtp9aLsrpZLRpoLLGG75i6iBKkyUTzIYQycs/s1600/why+was+i+given+emotions.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG6ZhYQVfUkBLVjA2P8ZjaGqacYSlF2kycn_5NlR1ExTnvWYo55ou3fqa3WZIhUBCW2-5XsK_FmuTqWgP_848PvzEc7-aPn7f2Qrc348DGtp9aLsrpZLRpoLLGG75i6iBKkyUTzIYQycs/s320/why+was+i+given+emotions.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I just thought ... well let's not talk about what I thought because what I thought was <i>wrong</i>. The world is a web of lies.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>8. OTP OF THE YEAR (you will go down with this ship!)</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFBZfdcPSXLXOh92Jj0Xwbc7qHNYYXDKmYDi1CEHjvKqiNpeBgB2UZQ70B_mLBwFKkBKUWOMGgrdqmtus-0UtGOm_YUhasKzJYZTh5sSQqxXVg-bMN7K-TtBhUg8OujivZOwhdDpikNS4/s1600/IMG_1829.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFBZfdcPSXLXOh92Jj0Xwbc7qHNYYXDKmYDi1CEHjvKqiNpeBgB2UZQ70B_mLBwFKkBKUWOMGgrdqmtus-0UtGOm_YUhasKzJYZTh5sSQqxXVg-bMN7K-TtBhUg8OujivZOwhdDpikNS4/s640/IMG_1829.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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BEATRICE AND BENEDICK = LIFE. </div>
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Also ROBIN AND STRIKE, STRIKE AND ROBIN from the Cormoran Strike books!<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwBI-N9w7sJNvO9gc8quc1tUEiP6_WPr7mpJRiTuc-n1hc2DDpE-i1lbXAJhJSSHAOwfFSt-WlMPaEC3Gva7WQnWnibpUd2ynIpopUMI1K0CKA9qgPIdqctVccJz1atLX55DZVpypdaOY/s1600/this+ship+can%2527t+sink%2521.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwBI-N9w7sJNvO9gc8quc1tUEiP6_WPr7mpJRiTuc-n1hc2DDpE-i1lbXAJhJSSHAOwfFSt-WlMPaEC3Gva7WQnWnibpUd2ynIpopUMI1K0CKA9qgPIdqctVccJz1atLX55DZVpypdaOY/s320/this+ship+can%2527t+sink%2521.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Me @ Book 4</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">9. Best Book Read Based On Peer Pressure?</span></b></div>
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<i>We Were Liars</i> by E Lockhart. Everyone and their nan has read this but I only got involved this spring ... and I loved it! Absolutely stunning. If you're like, <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica";">“</span>meh, don't like hyped books" ... make an exception for this one! Review <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/we-were-liars-american-dream-narratives.html">here</a>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">10. 2016 fictional crush?</span></b></div>
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<i>Bizarrely</i>, I don't think I have one! Maybe Henry Cheng? But really, my heart goes on for Jaime. That's all there is ...</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">11. Best Worldbuilding/Most Vivid Setting You Read This Year?</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_fjSIQ5QXBodqkFWha0RlT1G-dAJmJpny_ECsstHGOWqdYG2v9XZj8bWOcokOklkT8bxuEeZ-zT2eb5uvvLnbPsY_1i1fxYdwsPTjDpclNJaSTPlQeGBzhz5yqIAPurm0a90pDR3cmTQ/s1600/IMG_1823.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_fjSIQ5QXBodqkFWha0RlT1G-dAJmJpny_ECsstHGOWqdYG2v9XZj8bWOcokOklkT8bxuEeZ-zT2eb5uvvLnbPsY_1i1fxYdwsPTjDpclNJaSTPlQeGBzhz5yqIAPurm0a90pDR3cmTQ/s640/IMG_1823.JPG" width="470" /></a></div>
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Normally I talk about A Song of Ice and Fire, but as I have already said <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica";">“the worldbuilding is so stunning! The depth! The geography! The religion! The history! The <i>food</i>!"</span> 685950 times, I thought I'd highlight <i>Sunset Song</i>.<br />
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<i>you'd waken with the peewits crying across the hills, deep and deep, crying in the heart of you and the smell of the earth in your face, almost you'd cry for that, the beauty of it and the sweetness of the Scottish land and skies.</i></div>
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There is a scene from <i>Macbeth </i>that sticks in my head. Malcolm and Macduff are talking, and after a long speech in which Malcolm speaks of the horror coming for their land, Macduff, overcome by emotion, cries simply, “O Scotland, Scotland!" One of the reasons I loved <i>Sunset Song</i> was that I've barely read any books set in Scotland. The way Grassic Gibbon described the land was absolutely beautiful,</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">12. Book That Put A Smile On Your Face/Was The Most FUN To Read?</span></b></div>
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Got to be the two Georgia Nicolson books I read,<i> Luuurve is a Many-Trousered Thing</i> and <i>Stop In the Name of Pants! </i>If those titles don't tell you all you need to know ... Seriously, though, you may frown upon teen romance / bright pink books, but the Georgia Nicolson series, I assure you, will send those prejudices skittering aside like dust. They <i>convulse </i>me with laughter. I can't believe I only have one left to read!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">13. Hidden Gem Of The Year?</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgGPCNINJw68jo6zSTh2srpkZ_dw58TWoFJeV9RULw2meTHbzAuERS-mKQXR3fOYmGQyppevQxiDCo22Yva7i3lPGm_V_cNSWznK8p0LvCJcPkVHCxpl1L9LV18hOf8dBMF1FA6XH5K60/s1600/IMG_1828.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgGPCNINJw68jo6zSTh2srpkZ_dw58TWoFJeV9RULw2meTHbzAuERS-mKQXR3fOYmGQyppevQxiDCo22Yva7i3lPGm_V_cNSWznK8p0LvCJcPkVHCxpl1L9LV18hOf8dBMF1FA6XH5K60/s640/IMG_1828.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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I'm putting this one in here because, whilst <i>Anne of Green Gables</i> is well-loved and famous, I feel the later books of the series get a lot less love. <i>Anne's House of Dreams</i> was absolutely <i>delightful</i>! And I don't think many people have read this far. I cannot wait to read the sixth book!<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">14. Book That Crushed Your Soul?</span></b></div>
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<i>The Road </i>by Cormac McCarthy. Apocalyptic picture of a father and son travelling through an ashen America, searching for the sea. Probably in my 2016 top three; it also took my heart and diced it and mashed the pieces and served them on toast. The opening lines:</div>
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<i><i>When he woke in the woods in the dark and cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him. The nights dark beyond darkness and the days each one more gray than what had come before.</i></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>15. Most Unique Book You Read In 2016?</b></span><br />
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<i>Time's Arrow</i> by Martin Amis. It's told backwards! Like, it starts with the narrator waking up in bed, having just died. He gets up, he leaves the hospital, and back we go through his life as he grows younger. This book absolutely blew me away; review is written and scheduled!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">16. Other Books You Want to Shriek About?</span></b></div>
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<b>Love's Labours Lost</b> // properly hilarious Shakespeare play. Loved it.</div>
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<b>Under Milk Wood</b> // <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica";">“a</span> play for voices" by Dylan Thomas. Absolutely wonderful interweaving narrative telling the story of a day in a Welsh village.</div>
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<b>A Grain of Wheat </b>// very similar to <i>Under Milk Wood, </i>in fact: a Kenyan book about a village on the brink of independence from the British. Marvellous. Review <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/reading-africa.html">here</a>.</div>
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<b>Shakespeare's Sonnets</b> // stunning. This book changed the way I think about Shakespeare: it showed him, a man, an individual, writing about his feelings and his day-to-day. Read <a href="http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/27.html">Sonnet 27</a>. Have you ever lain awake thinking about someone? Well, so did Shakespeare. That blew my mind.</div>
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<b>TS Eliot's Selected Poems</b> // <span style="background-color: white; font-family: "im fell double pica";"><i>“Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky like a patient etherised upon a table ..."</i> So begins <i>The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock</i>, one of my favourite poems. This book also contains <i>The Waste Land</i>, the post-WW1 poem that shook the face of twentieth century literature. I <i>love </i>TS Eliot, I can't tell you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest</b> // a remarkable look at mental illness, written after the author Ken Kesey spent time in a mental hospital in the 1960s.</span><br />
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<i> Up on Disturbed there's an everlasting high-pitched machine-room clatter, a prison mill stamping out license plates. And time is measured out by the di-dock, di-dock of a ping-pong table.</i></div>
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I think about this quotation so much! Because that's how <i>I</i> feel about ping-pong! I mean, I get that's not <i>exactly </i>what it's about, but I remember reading this and being like YES, YES, THAT IS WHAT PING-PONG IS LIKE, THAT'S WHAT IT SOUNDS LIKE, EMPTY, SOULLESS. It was a good moment.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/198932508515109438/">[source]</a> // Alan Bennet</td></tr>
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~***~</div>
<img alt="looking-ahead-books-2015" src="http://www.perpetualpageturner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/looking-ahead-books-2015-1024x278.jpg" height="173" width="640" /></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. 2017 Excitements</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpcA8OSz1o8LKntPEnTG6lfg88oJKAe71y_rlx8iFcJ5s3CgLgm8vCXJQ6afY9du8aySEVjixs-TQSgmtegyYnZluq-Q3Fc1sgHvUdrXuRyaYBf5oBId2G1pB900j1yaY0FIymp5fMiY/s1600/winds+of+winter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRpcA8OSz1o8LKntPEnTG6lfg88oJKAe71y_rlx8iFcJ5s3CgLgm8vCXJQ6afY9du8aySEVjixs-TQSgmtegyYnZluq-Q3Fc1sgHvUdrXuRyaYBf5oBId2G1pB900j1yaY0FIymp5fMiY/s200/winds+of+winter.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/skulduggery/images/6/69/Skulduggery_Pleasant_Ten_Teaser.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20160801095552" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Skulduggery Pleasant Ten Teaser" border="0" src="http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/skulduggery/images/6/69/Skulduggery_Pleasant_Ten_Teaser.gif/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/200?cb=20160801095552" /></a></div>
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<b>The Winds of Winter </b>// this was my answer last year, too! WHEN OH WHEN?!!!</div>
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<b>Skulduggery Pleasant X</b> // excuse me whilst I SHRIEK THE CONTENTS OF MY SOUL FOR SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS. I'm currently rereading the Skulduggery series and having a <i>whale </i>of a time. It's like a massive reunion, and more beloved friends keep arriving!</div>
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<b>Cormoran Strike #4 </b>// still no cover or title! I NEED TO KNOW. It'd better be out when I get back from Kenya, I'm <i>just saying</i>.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">2. 2017 Priorities: The Ones I Didn't Manage in 2016</span></b></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2017's colours are blue and red, apparently.</td></tr>
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<b>Daughter of Smoke and Bone</b> // humiliatingly enough, this was my answer to this question not only last year, but <i>also </i>the year before. IT'S SHAMEFUL I KNOW. But I am taking it to Kenya, it is HAPPENING!</div>
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<b>The Scorpio Races</b> // obviously.</div>
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<b>Inglorious </b>// because I love <i>Come to the Edge</i> by this author, and I've owned this one for over two years, and, yeah.</div>
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<b>Queen of Shadows </b>// because whilst I wasn't <i>Heir of Fire</i>'s biggest fan, it's important to keep up with one's series!</div>
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<b>Capital</b> // I've owned this for so long ... like, I can hardly remember what it's about or why I bought it. (And it's not the only book on my shelf in that category! Oops ...)</div>
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<b>I Am the Messenger</b> // because I spend 100% of my time saying, <span style="font-family: "im fell double pica";">“I love Markus Zusak! <i>The Book Thief</i> is one of my favourite books!" and 0% of my time a) rereading <i>The Book Thief</i> or b) reading any of his other books. Oops!</span></div>
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<b>All the Bright Places</b> // I'm getting there!</div>
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<b>Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell</b> // I think I've owned this for about four years?? And every fantasy fan and their gran has told me to read it. It's just ... you know, really long ...</div>
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<b>Gone to the Forest</b> // owned since summer 2015, I think. Very cool surrealism! I just need to actually, like, read it.</div>
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<b>A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius</b> // owned for over four years. Oh, Emily, when will you learn?</div>
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<b>Probably never.</b><br />
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~***~</div>
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That was a post and a half! Can you sum up your 2016 reading in a word? What was your favourite book? A big disappointment? What's top of your 2017 TBR? Link me up to your survey!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="http://amandaonwriting.tumblr.com/post/152510846560"><span style="font-size: x-small;">[source]</span></a></td></tr>
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<b>Now, I'm hoping to schedule a couple of posts before I go on Thursday, and I will probably pop up occasionally to reply to comments, but ... I'm not sure. This isn't goodbye goodbye, but it might be a little bit of a goodbye. A farewell, let's say. There's not enough virtual cake in the world for you guys. Regular blogging resumes in May; until then, you're in my prayers. Write those novels! Topple those TBRs (but don't get crushed). Lots of love.</b></div>
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And I guess you don't need to read this post because I said it in the title.<br />
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NO I'M KIDDING COME BACK.<br />
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<b>Happy Christmas and New Year! </b>I hope you've all had / continue to have (because it's Twelfth Night, guys, still Christmas! <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Unfortunately my true love hasn't sent me twelve drummers drumming -- maybe because I don't have one ...</span>) a lovely time. My holiday has been characterised by friends and family -- seeing a lot of old schoolfriends, going to my two-month-old niece's baptism and playing a lot of Duplo with my two-year-old nephew -- and Kenya preparations. Because <b>I'm leaving Scotland on Thursday </b>ahahahahaha.<br />
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I'm totally fine.<br />
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*ahem*<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>On Monday I started LesMisBook.</b></span><br />
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I had a bit of a weird December, because I wasn't writing a novel. I hate not writing a novel. I don't mean to be melodramatic, but when I'm not writing a novel my existence becomes a directionless void of loss and emptiness. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Not melodramatic.)</span></div>
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<b>Now I am, and life has fallen into place once more.</b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="beautiful books" height="320" src="https://i0.wp.com/paperfury.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/bb-redone.png?resize=410%2C410" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This link-up isn't currently open, but I'm nonetheless swiping <a href="http://paperfury.com/">Cait</a> and <a href="http://furtherupandfurtherin.net/">Sky</a>'s questions.</td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Describe what your novel is about!</span></b></div>
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It is about Les Mis, Nutella sandwiches, national identity and fancying annoying boys, which are my four areas of expertise.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/dd/94/07/dd94075f7edacb8086e5f815b71d0024.jpg">[source]</a></td></tr>
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Nina Seth is in her last year of school. She's always wanted to be an actress and her favourite musical is Les Mis, so she should be thrilled to land the role of Éponine in the annual school production ... right? But as the book begins, everything seems to be falling apart around her: her best friend is her best friend no longer, the stress of applying to uni and <i>knowing exactly what you want to do with the rest of your life </i>is mounting, and she cannot shake her infuriating attraction to the extremely annoying Jonathan bloody Holcroft. He is Marius, and to make matters worse, Nina's nemesis Verity Locke is Cosette, completing the onstage love triangle. For Nina, school cannot finish soon enough.</div>
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<b><br /></b><b></b><b><b><span style="font-size: large;">What inspired the idea for your novel, and how long have you had the idea?</span></b></b><br />
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OK <i>so</i>. In the summer of 2015 I was on camp and had a big epiphany about Les Mis, how it's a perfect musical -- perfect songs, perfect hero, perfect villain whose arc perfectly mirrors the hero's, perfect REVOLUTION, perfect romance, perfect brotherhood, perfect comedy, perfect deaths, perfect themes. And the day after this, I remember it clearly, I was standing in the lunch queue with my friend and we were talking about Les Mis/my epiphany, and it came upon me in a rush: “OH MY GOSH I'M GOING TO WRITE A LES MIS RETELLING!"<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.baubauhaus.com/image/36485">[source]</a></td></tr>
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Then I thought about it and realised you can't <i>really </i>“retell" the French Revolution, and the idea got shelved ... until May 2016. You see, there was this great prompt link-up called Starting Sparks, a really cutting edge initiative hosted by two intelligent, witty young writers--<br />
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OK I'm <i>kidding</i>, but yes, the germination for LesMisBook did come from Starting Sparks. The prompt was “No, not you, anyone but you", and I decided to write about a <i>cast performing Les Mis</i>. When I wrote the original story the prompt referred to Verity Locke -- as in, “No, not you playing Cosette, anyone but you" -- because for the first two and a half seconds of the idea it was going to be about Strong Female Friendship, Nina and Verity initially hating each other but Overcoming The Odds etc etc.<br />
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Then Jonathan bloody Holcroft waltzed in and everything changed.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="LMB: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/57/c8/75/57c8755ae9b7dbd0c15045a5beb18169.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.artsy.net/artwork/david-drebin-i-love-you-too">[source]</a> // one of my favourite LesMisBook pictures</td></tr>
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<b><b><span style="font-size: large;">Introduce us to each of your characters!</span></b></b></div>
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<b>Nina Seth.</b> 17. Misanthropic sass queen supreme. Born in Stoke to a Scottish mother and Indian father, though people are surprised to hear she has a white parent <span style="font-size: x-small;">(this got old fairly fast)</span>. True loves include Les Mis and <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>. Never ask her if she's PMS-ing, at least not if you value your life. Doesn't brush hair because who can be bothered? Wants to be an actress; currently applying for <i>alll</i> the drama schools. A-Levels: Drama, History and English. Loves Victorian novels because a) they're great and b) are normally big enough to be a handy weapon. At the start of the book she's a best friend down after an incident of racist bitchiness. A harsh judge of others and herself. She definitely does <i>not </i>fancy Jonathan bloody Holcroft. No sir. Not even a little ...<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://weheartit.com/entry/194227940">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Communication handmade neon sign by sygns on Etsy: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/62/48/18/624818279e684b22fe8c6cc98d18236f.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447889342610/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="what can I say?: august + september || 2016: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/90/2d/68/902d6893cd5a062329be9fc4ac3f052a.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447889156376/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b>Jonathan Holcroft. </b>17. Charmer, golden boy, infinitely aggravating. Loves plants, dogs, and his family. Two older sisters. Would eat sandwiches for every meal if he could. Also broccoli. Wants to study horticulture. A-Levels: Drama, Biology and Music. Plays guitar and piano and knows how attractive this makes him. Flirt; low-key player. Infuriatingly blue eyes. Refuses to read Les Mis. Hides more hurt than he lets on.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="geoff mcfetridge twitter - Google Search: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/51/15/b2/5115b2bd575ded2af065eeb054e13111.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.posterama.co/blogs/news/15428093-the-worlds-best-inspirational-quotes-typography-posters-for-sale">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td><img alt=".: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ba/f4/ac/baf4acee80bb5b60603e0f37c743b1f2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ba/f4/ac/baf4acee80bb5b60603e0f37c743b1f2.jpg">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="LMB: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/a6/35/6d/a6356d5e5d5cd58589c69559d50cc025.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/login?redirect_to=%2Flikes">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b>Verity Locke.</b> 18. Has never been seen with smudged eyeliner, wrinkled clothes or a hair out of place. Wears ridiculously nice shoes. 5"2 but will fight you (don't make short jokes). Blonde. Wants to study Maths <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(I know, gross)</span> at UCL. A-Levels: Drama, Maths and Physics. Soprano. Nice to nobody except her younger brother and sister. Losing her best friend to that best friend's new boyfriend. Skilled in choosing accessories. World expert on passive aggression and veiled rudeness.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/search/snap%20out%20of%20%20it">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="http://aplaceforart.tumblr.com/post/31119870476/you-can-do-it-more-art-here">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<br />
<b>Eileen Seth.</b> 48. Nina's mum. Glaswegian social worker. She met her husband Pravit in India when on a gap year and they decided to study in England together. She and Nina are close but they fight a lot -- she can't understand why Nina won't do a bit more armpit-shaving and eyeliner-winging -- or even hair-brushing -- and go to a few more parties. She's the opposite of the That Dress Is Too Short You Stay Out Too Late mother trope -- it's not so much “When I was your age I studied every night and didn't wear make-up", but rather “When I was your age I was backpacking to India alone and falling in illicit love with a Hindu boy". Nina's like “yes, Mum, OK." I don't want to give a bad impression of Eileen -- I love her. She's great.<br />
<br />
<b>Pravit Seth. </b>47. Nina's dad. Indian optometrist. Mostly quiet, but approximately 85% of the words he <i>does </i>say are laced with sass -- where do you think Nina gets it from?<br />
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<b>Dipankar Seth. </b>20. Studying dentistry in Yorkshire. Does sport and other unintelligible activities. Really great guy. Complains -- ineffectually -- about Nina stealing his hoodies. He and she call each other Louis. <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Their mother remains mystified by this.)</span><br />
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<b>Also featuring:</b> Shy Adam; Camp Kieran; Infuriating Beth; Extremely Nice Tracey; Equally Nice Ibrahim; Just As Nice Jess; Flappy Mrs Moseley; Annoying Chris; Super Annoying Zenaye. What a cast.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">How do you prepare to write? (Outline, research, stocking up on chocolate, howling, etc.?)</span></b><br />
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All of the above, though more of the second two than the first ...<br />
<br />
I am an incurable pantser and not ashamed. I once heard the author Ian Rankin being interviewed on the radio, and he said, “If I knew how a book was going to end before I wrote it, what would be the point in writing it?" Now, I'm not saying I exactly agree with that -- I do know, roughly <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(very roughly)</span>, how LesMisBook is going to end -- but for me, a lot of the fun of writing a book is in the journey, in me and characters figuring things out together, in things revealing themselves to me in the writing. So I do try to outline a bit, but for the previous book I wrote and this one I only outlined the first section and trusted the rest would fall into place. Which it did last time.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3JCWxLvtXwHPLgcQ3FAdfA7zXf7ELyKZk4oTKWQ492s3C4jdO6VdrX8_M6HwW8bkVPwvNlG1OpuZOcuZQ7G-GNOjQccEnGdRzc7yx67_IZz53kNcR6bUgupCBfTuXm5l2-Xg_WZBN-18/s1600/what+percent+plan+I+dunno+12+per+cent.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3JCWxLvtXwHPLgcQ3FAdfA7zXf7ELyKZk4oTKWQ492s3C4jdO6VdrX8_M6HwW8bkVPwvNlG1OpuZOcuZQ7G-GNOjQccEnGdRzc7yx67_IZz53kNcR6bUgupCBfTuXm5l2-Xg_WZBN-18/s400/what+percent+plan+I+dunno+12+per+cent.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Maybe one day I'll write a post about why I pants. I think it is tied up, also, with why I handwrite.</div>
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<b>Research, though. Research is super important.</b></div>
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For the first six months of LesMisBook I forged merrily on writing snippets of sass and banter and <i>completely ignoring </i>all the practical things I'd have to research. During December I did so much research I think my brain is leaking. <b>Mostly about drama school.</b></div>
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If you checked my browser history, you'd 100% think I was applying there myself! So! Many! Drama school! Websites!</div>
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Fortunately I've got some amazing friends who've applied for Acting like Nina -- one friend wrote me a whole spate of massive paragraphs detailing her audition experiences in loads of drama schools, which will prove invaluable. Another friend took me around Glasgow's main drama school, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where he studies. How nice of him?!!? So I have walked around and seen where Nina will have her audition, where she'll eat her lunch and go to the loo, etc, etc.</div>
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Unfortunately I've not been able to visit any of the schools in London.</div>
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But maybe I will before I edit!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What are you most looking forward to about this novel?</span></b><br />
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Gah, so much. I'm loving being inside Nina's head -- because the razor-sharp sass! All! The! Time! I <i>love </i>her relationship with JBH, obviously (what do you think of Ninathan for a ship name?), so writing them together is so much fun. <b>I'm really looking forward to the national identity stuff. </b>Let me share a poem by Jackie Kay:<br />
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<b>In my country</b><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>walking by the waters</i><br />
<i>down where an honest river</i><br />
<i>shakes hands with the sea,</i><br />
<i>a woman passed round me</i><br />
<i>in a slow watchful circle,</i><br />
<i>as if I were a superstition,</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>or the worst dregs of her imagination,</i><br />
<i>so when she finally spoke</i><br />
<i>her words sliced into bars</i><br />
<i>of an old wheel. A segment of air.</i><br />
Where do you come from?<br />
<i>‘Here,' I said, ‘Here. These parts.'</i></div>
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Jackie Kay, the Scots Makar, has lived in Scotland all her life with Scottish adoptive parents. Her father was black Nigerian. Nina has had experiences like the one of this poem -- people asking her where she's from and being surprised when she says England. People asking her if she considers herself British, and then saying, “yes, but you're British <i>Indian</i>, it's different, isn't it?" People's surprise when they discover her mum is white: “but your skin is so dark!"</div>
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I am English but have lived in Scotland since I was six. My English friends -- the other girls on my Kenya team, for example -- consider me Scottish and say they hear Scots in my accent. Last night a Scottish friend told me he considers me “100% English". <b>So I'm both, but also neither. </b>I know my experience isn't the same as Nina's -- I'm white and have never been a victim of racism. But <b>the struggle of belonging to more than one country, and yet being considered by those “wholly" of that country not to really belong there, is one I know all too well. And I can't wait to write about that.</b></div>
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I'm also excited to write about finishing school, applying to uni, maybe not getting into your dream uni, and all the feelings that accompany that. And about Nina and Verity's relationship. Love that hate-to-love!</div>
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<b>Ooh, and also Shakespeare.</b> All drama schools, pretty much, want you to prepare a Shakespeare speech for your audition. Nina and I haven't picked it yet, but we're thinking about <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>(because she's such a romantic at heart, she just pretends she isn't!).<br />
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Ooh and <i>also </i>(I'll stop after this one, I promise!) <b>the chat about books.</b> JBH refuses to read classics, because they are “too long"/“lame"/“who can be bothered". Nina refuses to read fantasy <span style="font-size: x-small;">(except Harry Potter)</span>, because “reading about wizards is dumb"/“it's not highbrow enough".<br />
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<b>So basically they're <i>both </i>really stupid.</b><br />
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But they're going to teach each other! How cute?!</div>
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<strike>I'm also looking forward to writing about JBH's dogs, because there's a sad paucity of dogs in the TCATT books. I'm scoring this out so you won't notice that I broke my promise to stop after the last point.</strike><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">List 3 things about your novel’s setting.</span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for stoke on trent" src="http://www.stoke.gov.uk/ccm-ldn-theme/__ccm__/themes-prod/sol-2011-theme/images/Graphics/Welcome.jpg" height="137" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.stoke.gov.uk/ccm/portal/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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1. So, I'm the worst, because it's set in Stoke-on-Trent, a city I've not visited for years. I was born in Burton-on-Trent, which is near Stoke ... it's on the same river! Let me tell you a story. Last semester I was in a student Bible study group and one of the boys in it is from Stoke-on-Trent. Before meeting him I hadn't really thought about LesMisBook's setting. I met him and asked him where he was from, and he told me Stoke, in a sort of <i>we're-in-Scotland-so-I-guess-you-won't-know-where-that-is</i> voice. And I was like, “OH MY GOSH I'M FROM BURTON", and just hearing his Stoke accent gave me an overwhelming resurgent affection for that part of the world. I picked Stoke over Burton for the setting because it's bigger. That's all.</div>
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2. <b>London.</b> Nina is about to go for an audition at LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), and I can't wait! Though as I say, I wish I'd visited ... (Ugh, this is why fantasy is so much easier!)</div>
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3. <b>Glasgow.</b> As if I would leave it all in England! Nina is applying to the Conservatoire, and I think JBH is actually going to come up to Glasgow with her! I love the thought of them knocking around Glasgow together! <i>And </i>Nina's mum is Glaswegian, so when they come up we'll get to meet her Scottish granny ... !</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What’s your character’s goal and who (or what) stands in the way?</span></b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447888913231/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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To get into drama school; to quash her feelings for JBH; to resist everyone everywhere's attempts at friendship and sail coldly to the end of term with her sassy misanthropic head held high. Jonathan bloody Holcroft is definitely standing in the way of those second two. As for the first, I'm not sure exactly how it will pan out, but ... <span style="font-size: x-small;">(smooth lead into the next question)</span>:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">How does your protagonist change by the end of the novel?</span></b><br />
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... but I'm hoping by the end Nina won't feel the overwhelming pressure to go to uni next year anymore. Perhaps more importantly, the way she judges others will also have changed. She will learn not always to trust first impressions; she'll learn that it's OK to depend on others, that she doesn't have to shut everyone out all the time. She'll learn that she doesn't need to be so very hard on herself, either.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What are your book’s themes?</span></b></div>
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Love is a theme. So are race, racism and national identity, and identity more broadly -- the persona Nina has crafted for herself; her identity has an actress. I'd say the main theme is <b>judgement</b>. This ties into the race thing -- people forming judgements about one another based on colour -- but it's more about Nina's views of others. She judges others and thinks she knows about them (specifically JBH and Verity) when she doesn't. She's too proud to change her opinions <span style="font-size: x-small;">(you could say there are themes of pride and prejudice ... ahahaha!)</span>. But the book is about overcoming this, opening up to others, and letting yourself care and be cared for.</div>
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<img alt=" " height="279" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/f7/7f/85/f77f85a8ee8d11f3106d023dd2eab5ac.jpg" style="cursor: move; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></div>
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<a href="http://habibanasr.co.vu/post/153266047807">[source]</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt=" : " height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b6/31/93/b6319341d16fdc71d23067b274bdc075.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="428" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.designworklife.com/2011/03/28/12-months-of-neon-love/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+designworklife/dwl+(design+work+life)">[source]</a></td></tr>
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~***~</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
If you read that <i>massive </i>post, thanks! <b>So I'm going to Kenya in under a week. </b>I will post again before that, but I'm glad I've got this one up, because ... I'm excited. About LesMisBook. And you guys have been <i>great</i>, reading the stories. I love you lots. Thank you and goodnight.</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-28185836243915789382016-12-13T14:00:00.000+00:002016-12-13T14:00:04.196+00:00Reading Africa<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span style="font-size: large;">A month today, I am moving to Nairobi, Kenya.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Books teach us about other places. Right now I'm in Westeros with Jaime Lannister. Last week I was in Florence with George Eliot in <i>Romola</i>. In November I walked the streets of a lost Glasgow in Alasdair Gray's <i>Lanark</i>. Moscow with Tolstoy; Paris with Hugo; London with Dickens. Books take me there. Since the summer I have been visiting Africa by page -- Tanzania, Nigeria and Kenya -- while my real trip gathers shape and form in my mind. I have organised these books in order of publication, to take you from colonial days to the Africa of the present.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Lake Elementaita South of the lake, Kenya -- new Natural World Heritage Site: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/f7/59/55/f759552076673dcb54223ba3a1c74e18.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/iucnweb/5862402339/in/set-72157627037302144/lightbox/">[source]</a> // Lake Elementaita, Kenya</td></tr>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
~***~</div>
</div>
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<br /><div style="font-weight: bold;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwIky_MuPHO-2AXsj4fy0En-eWsSdVbAPOEBgDdNmF0o3Zbxnw31-HQghmQQJsuqLUO1Qe1L312H_TXhm1s258BLK4oXic47squavMnDGkB4Q6v5gDXz6uto2hBQ4yLeDA2x9vBqI7EBk/s1600/green+hills+of+africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwIky_MuPHO-2AXsj4fy0En-eWsSdVbAPOEBgDdNmF0o3Zbxnw31-HQghmQQJsuqLUO1Qe1L312H_TXhm1s258BLK4oXic47squavMnDGkB4Q6v5gDXz6uto2hBQ4yLeDA2x9vBqI7EBk/s320/green+hills+of+africa.jpg" width="209" /></a><b>Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway (1935)</b></div>
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<i>“An attempt to write an absolutely true book to see whether the shape of a country and the pattern of a month's action can, if truly presented, compete with a work of the imagination." A slice of autobiography, </i>Green Hills of Africa<i> charts a month of big game hunting in Tanzania.</i></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Green Hills of Africa</i> is an idyll, a magnificent landscape where life and death walk hand in hand. Hemingway's intention of writing “an absolutely true book" gave him free rein to explore the life he loved the best.</div>
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<i>Now, looking out of the tunnel of trees over the ravine at the sky with the white clouds moving across in the wind, I loved the country so that I was happy as you are after you have been with a woman you really love, when, empty, you feel it welling up again and there it is and you can never have it all and yet what there is, now, you can have, and you want more and more, to have, and be, and live in, to possess now again for always, for that long, sudden-ended always; making time stand still, sometimes so very still that afterwards you want to hear it move, and it is slow in starting. ... So if you have loved some woman and some country you are very fortunate and, if you die afterwards, it makes no difference. Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly. I have loved country all my life; the country was always better than the people. I could only care about people a very few at a time. </i></blockquote>
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One Hemingway book I have says on the back, <span style="text-align: justify;">“the most important writer since Shakespeare". This is a bold claim and not one I necessarily support, but perhaps there is something in it, because how is it, really, that one person can do that with words? How does it happen? Amidst his love of the land his love of language shines through; he discusses reading and writing what it means to be a writer.</span></div>
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<i>Writers are forged in injustice as a sword is forged.</i></blockquote>
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So <i>Green Hills</i> is not only a book about big game hunting; it is a book about life. Every kind of life that was important to him. I am not, of course, pro-hunting, but reading <i>Green Hills</i> gave me a strange, thrilling sense of Hemingway himself, his presence very close to me. He was a writer living in East Africa and adoring it, and in a month that is what I shall be, and this seems very special to me, as if I can tread in his footprints.</div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">~***~</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgliPtSxu55_zbQiZTEZKOyejq7tBuhJiRWS-7qBxW4b6gBvw9tq4L75VfbgorFEN0mhttb18r2lb_MpYnqUrRsLJ0_LtB9RUycIEzh3Dae83dytzmEnqaqUldc8gZomkVo_lOnmt5qyko/s1600/out+of+africa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgliPtSxu55_zbQiZTEZKOyejq7tBuhJiRWS-7qBxW4b6gBvw9tq4L75VfbgorFEN0mhttb18r2lb_MpYnqUrRsLJ0_LtB9RUycIEzh3Dae83dytzmEnqaqUldc8gZomkVo_lOnmt5qyko/s320/out+of+africa.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
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<b>Out of Africa by Karen Blixen (1937)</b></div>
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1914-1931: Karen Blixen farmed coffee in Kenya. Her love of the country quivers on every page, and this is a wonderful tribute to how a land can adopt a person. <i>Out of Africa</i> is a meandering book and it took me a while to read -- it is not plot-driven, rather a collection of anecdotes -- but it did make me excited about seeing this country for myself.</div>
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<i>On an evening just before sunset, the scenery drew close round you, the hills came near and were vigorous, meaningful, in their clear, deep blue and green colouring. A couple of hours later you went out and saw that the stars had gone, and you felt the night air soft and deep and pregnant with benefaction.</i></blockquote>
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Blixen's anthropological discussion was also very interesting.</div>
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<i>[Native Kenyans] dislike speed, as we dislike noise; it is to them, at the best, hard to bear. They are also on friendly terms with time, and the plan of beguiling or killing it does not come into their heads. In fact the more time you can give them, the happier they are, and if you commission a Kikuyu to hold your horse while you make a visit, you can see by his face that he hopes you will be a long, long time about it. He does not try to pass the time then, but sits down and lives.</i></blockquote>
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Many people have told me that living in Kenya will give me a different idea of time, and I can't wait!</div>
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~***~</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMFQrX2-8RodQ_y6C0e4CQ0ZGpiXlczWNa6Kvs0scmgQY1Ga7uw71mdITxhrN3LJdvfJdIqIgDBfh9Pa37r5rz16TKvnSgIYCrW1VYZ9-MVFABLQx7Sko9YcXeKGCQutYzEizsX5XctQ8/s1600/things+fall+apart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><b><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMFQrX2-8RodQ_y6C0e4CQ0ZGpiXlczWNa6Kvs0scmgQY1Ga7uw71mdITxhrN3LJdvfJdIqIgDBfh9Pa37r5rz16TKvnSgIYCrW1VYZ9-MVFABLQx7Sko9YcXeKGCQutYzEizsX5XctQ8/s320/things+fall+apart.jpg" width="202" /></b></a><br />
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<b>Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958)</b><br />A village in Nigeria suffers as the changes of the twentieth century rip across the land. I was not a massive fan of <i>Things Fall Apart</i>. It was both tribute to and condemnation of lost Nigeria. The main character, Okonkwo, is poisoned by his desire for success, his desire to prove himself:<br />
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<i>Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo's fear was greater than these. It was not external, but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.</i></blockquote>
The patriarchal culture of <i>Things Fall Apart</i> forces men to exert their dominance through war, through ancestor-worship, through the taking of many wives and the fathering of many sons and the marrying off of their daughters at the highest price. Achebe paints bleakly this world of misogyny, murder and child sacrifice, and yet the alternative is seen to be no better: the coming of the white man, to convert the villagers to Christianity. The book's title comes from <i>The Second Coming</i> by William Yeats:</div>
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<i>Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;</i></div>
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<i>Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.</i></div>
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In this poem, the Second Coming is an event of horror, a <span style="text-align: justify;">“beast slumping towards Jerusalem", and likewise the coming of Christians is one of division and destruction. The character of Rev Smith shows very clearly mission gone wrong, and as such I found the book pretty depressing. I enjoyed the way it was written, and the Nigerian fables woven into the narrative, but ultimately it was a very bleak picture of a world of hatred.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">~***~</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZBUI2Dm-Tq2iLisTvk0pfa9diDssVDoyyYGPb7Sfc6nKT9LCBA7CwtlJzJPTwozuLGqhLTOAoQQ1e5JqP6wAQAAhWK6wxSpwYPhXswar2b6PYis99Ft8UAH2Pt6I32fLnikAoIbOtLHo/s1600/a+grain+of+wheat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZBUI2Dm-Tq2iLisTvk0pfa9diDssVDoyyYGPb7Sfc6nKT9LCBA7CwtlJzJPTwozuLGqhLTOAoQQ1e5JqP6wAQAAhWK6wxSpwYPhXswar2b6PYis99Ft8UAH2Pt6I32fLnikAoIbOtLHo/s320/a+grain+of+wheat.jpg" width="208" /></a></div>
<b>A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ</b> <b>wa Thiong'o</b><br />
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<i>Kenya, 1963: on the verge of independence from the British. </i>Uhuru <i>-- independence day -- drums through the consciousness of the village of Thabai consciousness. But within Thabai's community secrets lurk, and the past and the present wind together as that which is hidden emerges in Uhuru's light.</i></div>
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I properly <i>loved</i> <i>A Grain of Wheat. </i>It is an interlocking narrative of the personal and the political. It gave me a fascinating look at Kenya's recent history, while at the same time pulling me along in the lives of the villagers. It is masterfully written: an ensemble cast of POV characters gives its interwoven tales, past and present rippling out of one another. Kenya's legacy of verbal storytelling is kept alive both in the characters' inner monologues and the tales they tell one another, and as the pieces of the story unfold and slot together the novel is hugely satisfying.</div>
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~***~</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcD7E4zS_MYS5AZuCzHiBNeEW609-KHMfVBEr9yA0mmuWO7uu0jWJTnYlPAxbKbdUPcnYvildO1Yb6XNKgajo-kqdUcHpNHFOIIo4nXL0yvb7BPxb-OFA1C_SV-BFQMKLPrePrEE_kWkQ/s1600/americanah.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcD7E4zS_MYS5AZuCzHiBNeEW609-KHMfVBEr9yA0mmuWO7uu0jWJTnYlPAxbKbdUPcnYvildO1Yb6XNKgajo-kqdUcHpNHFOIIo4nXL0yvb7BPxb-OFA1C_SV-BFQMKLPrePrEE_kWkQ/s320/americanah.jpg" width="207" /></a><br />
<b>Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)</b><br />
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<i>Race. Racism. Growing up and falling in (and out of) love in a changing world. The way you will alter in a watcher's eyes depending on your colour.</i></div>
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<i>Nigerian Ifemelu has been in America for thirteen years. </i>Americanah <i>opens with a description of why she likes living in Princeton ... </i>“But she did not like that she had to go to Trenton to braid her hair." <i>In the midst of her American life, longings for Nigeria return to her, for the land of her coming of age. In that country Obinze, her teenage love, still lives, but they are both more changed than they can realise.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>Americanah</i> was a hugely interesting and insightful book. It exposes the layers of racism within America: the teenage African boy beaten up by black American classmates for his African accent; the way the whites around him look on in amazement, because they assume all blacks are the same. Ifem, a Nigerian student in an American college, being asked to give “the black perspective" and having nothing to say, because she is not a black American. I had never even thought about these differences.</div>
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It is a rich and varied novel, drawing from a wide range of Adichie's interests and passions: racism, feminism, the blogosphere, body image, politics, hair. The sections on hair -- it is fitting that the book opens with Ifem going to get her hair braided -- were among the most interesting to me, as Adichie rails against black women using the burning chemical relaxant to make their natural hair lie flat in order to be styled like a white woman's.</div>
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<i>Relaxing your hair is like being in prison. You're caged in. Your hair rules you. You didn't go running with Curt today because you don't want to sweat out this straightness. You're always battling to make your hair do what it wasn't meant to do.</i></blockquote>
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Overall, I think it's fair to say I enjoyed the themes and ideas more than the plot and characters; Ifem was kind of annoying. But Americanah opened a world of thought for me. I will leave you with an utter gem of a justification for positive discrimination.</div>
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<i>The American Black deal is kind of like you’ve been unjustly imprisoned for many years, then all of a sudden you’re set free, but you get no bus fare. And, by the way, you and the guy who imprisoned you are now automatically equal.</i></blockquote>
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~***~<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Have you read any of these? Which would you pick up? Where did you visit most recently via book? What is the vividest setting you have ever read? And have you ever been to Africa -- by page or in reality?</b></div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-23291160151587207562016-12-09T22:08:00.002+00:002016-12-09T22:10:33.067+00:00Books Upon Books<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Unable to think of further haul puns. Any suggestions would be welcome.</div>
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(Alternate title: Emily Never Posts The Books She's Bought So Here's A Photo Dump From The Past Six Months You're Welcome.)</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yopUFjhYidZDaBMCyrvcwDECH-fD5GoeOuxLxIFg2xIKK_CH0Dlo6Qmt92LSW6WIFfpWvlzl_XWd2v9GHk03HVqRbbXWRvA6lVDweWjUJJWYP41io-LK0t9bTczHR_T3jAoB9033t40/s1600/IMG_1661.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="489" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0yopUFjhYidZDaBMCyrvcwDECH-fD5GoeOuxLxIFg2xIKK_CH0Dlo6Qmt92LSW6WIFfpWvlzl_XWd2v9GHk03HVqRbbXWRvA6lVDweWjUJJWYP41io-LK0t9bTczHR_T3jAoB9033t40/s640/IMG_1661.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The various secondhand:</b></span></div>
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<b>Beads, Boys and Bangles</b> // #2 in the Threads trilogy, a series illustrating how <i>very </i>mistaken one can be when one judges books by their covers and titles. I still haven't read the third one, but I now own them all and when I read them all again it shall be a beautiful and glorious time. (It's a friendship and art story set in London. They hang out in the V&A. Could you actually ask for anything else?) <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Also, Sophia Bennett once commented on this very blog. I may have died. Just a little.)</span></div>
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<b>Career of Evil</b> // can I have an ASGKLAJGSKL for JK Rowling, Queen of my Heart? In case you missed it, I LOVE THE CORMORAN STRIKE NOVELS WITH ALL OF MY SOUL. I LOVE CORMORAN. I LOVE ROBIN. I LOVE LONDON. I LOVE IT ALL.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Career of Evil</i> was soooo good. I mean it was <i>so. good.</i> And the next book is coming out early 2017! WHICH IS REALLY SOON. Except I am going to be in Kenya. So I'll need to wait till I get back. GAAAHHH.</td></tr>
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<b>The Beggar of Volubilis</b> // because I love The Roman Mysteries with every muscle and fibre of my heart.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6WVZoOjEdSMaZNLjZN8XsjfPVvVwSoX_Ns5yK-IxMvOeO3V-i9adn53uYoSengw_aulICQIBB56uRae03mw9caVapW2-PwRjF7dozn3D89mfu732JWFWj8iloFDJnJQQfW6LiR3X2nks/s1600/IMG_1667.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6WVZoOjEdSMaZNLjZN8XsjfPVvVwSoX_Ns5yK-IxMvOeO3V-i9adn53uYoSengw_aulICQIBB56uRae03mw9caVapW2-PwRjF7dozn3D89mfu732JWFWj8iloFDJnJQQfW6LiR3X2nks/s640/IMG_1667.JPG" width="640" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The ones I bought secondhand in St Andrews:</b></span><br />
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<b>A Moveable Feast </b>// I <i>adore </i>Hemingway -- sure, I've only read two of his books, but they were exquisite -- and I never stop seeing quotations from <i>A Moveable Feast</i>.<br />
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<tr><td><img alt=" : " height="400" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/e9/07/32/e90732d3e76d256b811ce46ef5b7b25f.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="300" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/186328235/typewriter-quote-card-underwood">[source]</a> // how is it possible to write such a long sentence with no commas and repeat the word <i>together </i>twice and yet it is still ... perfect? (Hemingway's disregard of commas validates all my choices. I love it. Love him. So much.)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td><img alt=" : " height="640" src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ab/78/c3/ab78c38ed5fa1df7f07d83c63a48d6dc.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="425" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: small;">[<a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/25262447886880470/">source]</a> // then there's this picture. </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">One of my favourite pictures ever, I have no clue who these people are but I just really love it. I have it on my wall. And he's reading </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>A Moveable Feast</i>. Don't I always say it? <i>Everything is connected.</i></span></td></tr>
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<b>The Captain's Verses </b>// fun story, <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/south-american-adventure.html">that time I went to Chile</a> I visited two of Pablo Neruda's (beautiful, incredible) houses, one in Santiago and one in Valparaiso. I read one of his poems while there, because the original copy that he wrote <span style="font-size: x-small;">(with a translation beside it, thankfully)</span> was sitting on the desk in the Valpo house. Since then I've read a couple more poems and they're lovely, so I can't wait to dive into this book! </div>
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<i>La luna hace girar su rodaje de sueño.</i></div>
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<i>Me miran con tus ojos las estrellas más grandes.</i></div>
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<i>Y como yo te amo, los pinos en el viento,</i></div>
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<i>quieren cantar tu nombre con sus hojas de alambre.</i></div>
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//</div>
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<i><i>The moon turns its clockwork dream.</i></i></div>
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<i><i>The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.</i></i></div>
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<i><i>And as I love you, the pines in the wind</i></i></div>
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<i><i>want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.</i></i></div>
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~ from <i>Aquí Te Amo (Here I Love You)</i></div>
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<b>Horace's Complete Odes and Epodes</b> // I freaking love Horace. Last year for Latin I wrote a dissertation comparing themes of time and transience in his poems and the poems of Shakespeare and Marvell. Horace is the originator of the phrase <i>carpe diem</i>. He is a master of irony, or, to put it more bluntly, <i>sass</i>. I'm reading this book at the moment and loving it.</div>
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<i>Don't ask what will happen tomorrow.<br />Whatever day Fortune gives you, enter it<br />as profit, and don't look down on love<br />and dancing while you're still a lad, </i></blockquote>
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<i>while the gloomy grey keeps away from the green.</i></blockquote>
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~from <i>Ode 1.9</i></div>
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<b>Birthday Letters</b> // and if you don't know that Ted Hughes is my favourite poet, you're a) new here (hi! Welcome!) or b) do not listen. <i>Birthday Letters</i> is the last and most famous of Hughes' books. For this reason I'm kind of putting it off? I sort of like to read authors' works in order, sometimes, rather than reading the best regarded one first, because sometimes if you start with “the best" you can find you've peaked at the beginning? Not that that could happen with Hughes, obviously, because I've already read lots of his books. So I don't know. I don't understand myself either. ~shrugs~</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The ones I bought secondhand in Glasgow:</b></span></div>
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<b>Across the River and Into the Trees </b>// because, again, Hemingway. This one is set in Venice! Where my heart lives! <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(No, I've never <i>been</i>, but that's just a detail.)</span> And don't you love the title? Rivers! Trees! My two favourite things! I love books with “trees" in the title. <strike>Bit of subtle self-promotion there.</strike></div>
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<b>Much Ado About Nothing</b> // I love this play<i> a lot.</i> And the shipping is real. Best hate-to-love romance.</div>
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<b>Physik and Flyte</b> // because you know what is great? Hilarious British children's high fantasy with a main character literally called Septimus. I spend 80% of my reading life looking forward to when I can next reread a kids' fantasy series <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(this Christmas it's going to be Skulduggery, SOMEBODY HOLD ME)</span>, and I can't <i>wait </i>for this one.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cutest, tiniest edition of <i>Much Ado</i> ever! And I love that Hemingway cover. Venice!</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The ones I was randomly given:</b></span></div>
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<b>Jane Eyre</b> // my mum gave me this rather battered copy of <i>Jane Eyre.</i> (I think she found it in the house somewhere. Who even knows. Our home is a book labyrinth, you could get lost for years.) It has a beautiful illustration on the cover.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">How lovely is she? I can't wait to reread <i>Jane Eyre</i>. I enjoyed it the first time, aged thirteen, but I think I was a little young.</td></tr>
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<b>From the Mouth of God</b> // my minister gave me this as a sorta “good-luck-on-your-gap-year-congrats-you're-an-adult-now" type thing. How nice?? And I'm told it's a great book. Looking forward.</div>
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<b>All the Light We Cannot See</b> // this is a short vid of my face when my mum casually gave this to me:</div>
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From the off, the title of <i>All the Light</i> attracted me, and despite being an avowed historical fiction avoider, I do bend the rules for WW2. <strike>And the cover is really pretty.</strike> </div>
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Also it is a Pulitzer Prize winner.</div>
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I don't normally base my opinions on prizes, but you know what won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014? <i>The Goldfinch.</i> And in 2007? <i>The Road.</i> After making this connection between these two of my favourite books, I made it my business to devour all the Pulitzer winners. </div>
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So I started visiting <i>All the Light</i> in Waterstones quite some time ago. (That's what I do -- I find books I want but I don't buy them straight off, because it's a big commitment, buying a book firsthand when you really know nothing about it except <i>look the cover is pretty</i> -- and I visit them for a while. Eventually, sometimes, I take the plunge. At the moment, if you're interested, I'm visiting <i>Grief Is the Thing with Feathers</i> by Max Porter; <i>By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept</i> by Elizabeth Smart; and a lovely illustrated edition of <i>Neverwhere</i> by Neil Gaiman.) I almost bought it on numerous occasions. And then my mum's friend came to stay, and gave her the book, and my mum finished it, and gave it to me!</div>
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<b>A Clash of Kings</b> // a friend <span style="font-size: x-small;">(shout-out to you, Cat)</span> was clearing out books and gave me this. Once upon a time I thought I'd never reread A Song of Ice and Fire -- because they're frigging massive and who has time? -- but increasingly I don't know. <strike>Basically I just want to read <i>A Feast for Crows</i> again because Jaime. He doesn't have any POV chapters in <i>A Dance With Dragons Part 1</i> because of the way GRRM splits the books geographically rather than chronologically. So today I was reading <i>A Dance with Dragons Part 2</i> and, on p112, he got his first POV chapter for more than a book -- and eighteen months of my reading life -- and I legit nearly started crying.</strike> Moreover, who knows when <i>The Winds of Winter</i> will come out? NEVER, PROBABLY, SO WE SHOULD READ WHAT WE'VE GOT. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(Though this is the gross TV show edition. But we can't have everything in this life.)</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSUzjzdefMUBg3tdVHSVEKTyCYId74woTqKQfFbohd0R_d23JEuC9J9uUJBxrFw_FbKUqywbgHlP22qfzZ_0sKJ9Lv6alJfK0C_GpEabobMA24VgVZsAQmkHDnsxid5msv7sENfRReBEs/s1600/IMG_1677.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><img border="0" height="464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSUzjzdefMUBg3tdVHSVEKTyCYId74woTqKQfFbohd0R_d23JEuC9J9uUJBxrFw_FbKUqywbgHlP22qfzZ_0sKJ9Lv6alJfK0C_GpEabobMA24VgVZsAQmkHDnsxid5msv7sENfRReBEs/s640/IMG_1677.JPG" width="640" /></b></span></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The ones my brother </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">(a babe)</span><span style="font-size: large;"> gave me for my birthday:</span></b></div>
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<b>Crow</b> // because Ted. My one and only.</div>
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<b>The Flame Trees of Thika</b> // set in Kenya. Will be fun to read in Kenya.</div>
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<b>A Grain of Wheat </b>// also set in Kenya, in the 1950s as they gained their independence from the British. This was a wonderful book. Review on its way.</div>
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<b>No Country for Old Men</b> // because <i>The Road</i> by Cormac McCarthy is one of my favourites of 2016.</div>
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<b>Things Fall Apart</b> // I was disappointed in this one, considering its extreme renown. Review forthcoming.</div>
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<b>Out of Africa</b> // a beautiful tribute to Kenya. Review shortly.</div>
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<b>Darling </b>// I have very nearly finished this poetry collection by Jackie Kay, the Scots Makar (which is like the Poet Laureate, but in Scotland), and I <i>love </i>it.</div>
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<i>Across the world were mirrors to see</i></div>
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<i>faces that looked like me,</i></div>
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<i>people caught between two places,</i></div>
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<i>people crossing over the seas.</i></div>
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~from <i>Yell Sound</i></div>
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Jackie Kay was born to a Nigerian father and Scottish Highlander mother and adopted by a white couple from Glasgow. As someone extremely interested in national identity -- as someone planning a book about national identity -- <i>Darling </i>is fascinating. I'm sure I'll share more from Kay as I talk more about LesMisBook.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>The one I bought firsthand:</b></span></div>
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<b>Lanark</b> // that's right, the only book of this post that I actually got from a firsthand bookshop. I was going to say, “with my own money!" ... but it wasn't. During the summer my school sent me a book token with a note saying, “lol u won this prize nd we forgot 2 give it 2 u here's £10." So I still don't know what the prize was for ... but I got <i>Lanark </i>all the same!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Her abs are #goals. Gray did all the illustrations himself: absolutely stunning!</td></tr>
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~***~</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What books have you bought recently? Do you, like me, avoid firsthand book-buying like the plague? Have you read any of these? Come, let us get excited together.</span></b></div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-652453380429473162016-12-04T22:52:00.001+00:002016-12-04T22:52:38.843+00:00Life in November // All the Updates // A Vlog?<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="courage-MYSTICMAMMA: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/88/d4/99/88d49948fb31c9a9889a97ffda95d828.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mysticmamma.com/readthesigns/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Happy Advent!</span></b></div>
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The year is in its old age. Snow has fallen. Life spirals on towards Christmas in a vacuum of busyness and glitter.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuXaj3ucTmnGGgl6o5ADuPaO27I-vewLXkaufc12TTxzkMDcpNXKm7XTaBb8f2pp-O7kvubueREiOx0ZaoTR-zrPmwbYhSjwwewjNGJEDF7rs3uHOhGCkIkCb_NyOQoVOzuuya91yEQdk/s1600/fIMG_1750.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="472" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuXaj3ucTmnGGgl6o5ADuPaO27I-vewLXkaufc12TTxzkMDcpNXKm7XTaBb8f2pp-O7kvubueREiOx0ZaoTR-zrPmwbYhSjwwewjNGJEDF7rs3uHOhGCkIkCb_NyOQoVOzuuya91yEQdk/s640/fIMG_1750.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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A picture of my garden. We have had the most beautiful frosty November. What an incredible world God has made for us!</div>
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For me, November saw <b>Kenya preparations:</b> designing team T-shirts <span style="font-size: x-small;">(they're gonna be great, I'm just saying)</span>, getting about a million vaccinations <span style="font-size: x-small;">(and I'm not done yet)</span> and having a second weekend with the team. There are eight of us, all girls, and it's a really lovely group.</div>
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While I'm in Kenya, there is going to be a fortnightly(ish) team prayer letter. I will not be blogging during my trip <span style="font-size: x-small;">(which makes me wanna cry, but there it is)</span> because of very limited Internet. <b>But if you would like to pray for me -- which I'd love! -- please leave a comment with your email address, or email me at emmilobb@gmail.com.</b> I would really value it!</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.enormoustinyart.com/collections/becca-stadtlander">[source]</a> // Becca Stadtlander</td></tr>
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<b>November has also seen work getting really busy.</b> Remember how I used to work in the little shop selling the sparkly trainers? Now I work in a massive shop selling very expensive everything. Christmas is upon us -- not just upon us, mauling us with its ravening claws, or so it's felt -- and sometimes I spend my days stacking cards and wrapping paper and £20 faux-glass reindeer. The Christmas section is right by large electricals, so I can watch suburban couples, accountants and lawyers, pay £500 for coffee makers to take home to their clean streets with their two big cars and holidays to Tuscany. In the cheap sparkly trainer shop, the materialism accepted itself for what it was. <i>Cheap and cheerful</i> were the buzzwords. But this big shop takes itself so seriously <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(remember the trouser suits?)</span> it can hardly admit it's a consumerist temple in a consumerist nation selling people very expensive things they don't need. As I stacked cards the other week I reflected on these things, and I thought of lines from Mary Oliver:</div>
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<i>I want to think again of dangerous and noble things / I want to be light and frolicsome / I want to be improbable and beautiful and afraid of nothing as though I had wings.</i></blockquote>
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And I thought of how the suburban coffee machine buyers would look at me and see a rather wan-faced small girl in large black trousers, stacking Christmas cards in a robotic fashion, and never <i>know </i>that I want to be noble and improbable. And it made me think of lines from Jackie Kay's poem Watching People Sing:</div>
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<i>Oh, I think, Oh, who will<br />sleep at my foot, who will sing to me like that<br />eyes brimming with love and change and spark.</i></blockquote>
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And <i>then</i> I remembered that I only work part-time, and I'm very lucky to have a job at all when I think of all the beggars I walk past on my way to work, and that I am a writer and an heir of God's kingdom, and I live in the most beautiful country, which is at peace, with a democratic government, and I have parents and brothers and sisters and food and warmth.</div>
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And I felt foolish for my dark reflections at the Christmas card shelf.</div>
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I have a difficult relationship with the world and myself.</div>
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I feel this -- the lines from Dylan Thomas -- so very strongly, and yet I know that I romanticise everything and break my heart over realities that don't exact, over loves that are not fulfilled. But perhaps it is about finding the balance between on the one hand being improbable and holding fast to your dreams and not giving up, and on the other committing everything to Jesus, the one who will never disappoint.</div>
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That got a bit deeper than I meant.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Let's talk about Starting Sparks.</span></b></div>
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You may have noticed that no December prompt has been posted. This is because <b>we are taking a Starting Sparks hiatus.</b></div>
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After over a year of running the link-up, neither Ashley nor I could exactly pretend it has taken off. We normally get one or two linkers and ourselves -- or not even ourselves, sometimes <span style="font-size: x-small;">(I am working on my November story, honest)</span>. Because we're all busy. And as Ashley pointed out, maybe some of you are reluctant to publish your short fiction online because you are hoping to sell it. As I said, I won't be blogging while I'm in Kenya, and so we've decided to suspend the link-up.</div>
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<b>If you've got any suggestions, they'd be very welcome. </b>Is there any other kind of link-up you'd like to see? A way that would make it easier to participate in Starting Sparks? Let us know!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">In Books</span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-nkxFXhk6YbAurHWUHUAyRYYxZEMBSsQ9e6c2DIYdJXo-AcC3U17p99VO7ox2nMyvPZVr0zgBjnL8aHqBndy74nxW3o7p4BiJCMSgSrxiTQUQFH6zRwaYYrsSRd5b5jOkXwSpc4ny8s/s1600/november+reads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="364" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-nkxFXhk6YbAurHWUHUAyRYYxZEMBSsQ9e6c2DIYdJXo-AcC3U17p99VO7ox2nMyvPZVr0zgBjnL8aHqBndy74nxW3o7p4BiJCMSgSrxiTQUQFH6zRwaYYrsSRd5b5jOkXwSpc4ny8s/s640/november+reads.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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Not a great month in terms of <i>numbers</i> of books, but they were good <span style="font-size: x-small;">(and <i>Lanark</i> was frigging massive, so I can be forgiven)</span>. <i>Out of Africa</i> was a beautiful portrayal of Kenya, shimmering with a love of the land that made me really excited to see it for myself. <i>A Grain of Wheat</i> was also about Kenya at the time of its Independence from the British: a story of village life, interweaving the personal and the political, and a really wonderful book.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Other Life News</span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> (Notice how I skilfully wove all my life news together? Not.)</span> <b>I have a new niece, Alice, who was born three weeks ago in Singapore!</b> I cannot wait to meet her on Boxing Day. Every baby I see makes me more excited.</div>
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Also, <a href="https://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/i-wrote-book-what-comes-next-big-ole.html">I finished writing a book.</a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Any maker will tell you, it's a compulsion. #type #typography #handmade…: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/de/46/6d/de466d9854b65101ac710fd8006d697e.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BEL8diYi-P0/">[source]</a> // I really love this</td></tr>
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<b>I'm currently in Oxford. </b>Remember how this happened this time last year? And I got interviewed and I didn't get in and I ended up taking a gap year? Well, we're back. I think I have actually forgotten to tell y'all <span style="font-size: x-small;">(do you like my use of y'all? I'm basically American what can I say)</span> that <b>I got an offer from Glasgow</b>. Increasingly I feel that <b>leaving Glasgow is a ridiculous idea and why would anyone do that? </b>So basically I am a confused crocodile <span style="font-size: xx-small;">(don't question the metaphor)</span>. But I am not worried. God will send me where I need to go. And Shakespeare will be Shakespeare, and Fitzgerald will be Fitzgerald, and I shall read Hughes and marvel, so what could actually go wrong?</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt=" : " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/d4/5c/e4/d45ce421197ff05bc52e13c9be6ab1c4.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d4/5c/e4/d45ce421197ff05bc52e13c9be6ab1c4.jpg">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">A Vlog Proposal</span></b></div>
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One last thing: I am, I think, going to make a vlog soon, because we all know vlogging is the most fun way to do tags, <strike>and you'll miss me so much when I'm in Kenya you'll want to see my face before I go.</strike> I have a couple of tags for this. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(One of them is, like, a year old, don't judge.)</span> But if you would like to add to the Q&A -- because the more the merrier, right? -- drop me an email to emmilobb@gmail.com (or just a comment would do the trick!). </div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Anne Morin I Wonderwall: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/34/14/ec/3414ec7eab0f7c2af1084c0e74ad729b.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://printpattern.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/top-drawer-francesca-iannaccone.html">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="maria elena alvarez: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/fa/75/b3/fa75b38ed81ce2c7e5a04e55a47dc6cd.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://iloverainandcoffee.tumblr.com/post/14369563270">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="red cats look best in stripes (by Marc Johns): " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/57/73/72/577372deedaeaba6839331cf21c9390a.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.marcjohns.com/">[source]</a> // one of my favourite illustrations</td></tr>
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~***~</div>
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<b>How was your November? Best book you read? Are you excited for Christmas? Remember: email me with vlog questions or if you'd like the Kenya prayer letter!</b></div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-66064000366250370742016-11-30T21:09:00.001+00:002016-11-30T21:09:58.256+00:00I Wrote A Book // What Comes Next? // A Big Ole Writing Update<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>1st August 2016:</b> I started <i>Stay in the City</i>, the sequel to the high fantasy novel I finished in June.</div>
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<b>30th November 2016:</b> I finished it.<br />
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<img alt="Image result for excited sherlock gif" src="https://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/04/04/635953301227934768-1968671404_YES!.gif" /><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>So, what even is this novel?</b></span><br />
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<i>In the land of Ivaria, teenagers are Selected for their special talents and go to complete their education in the court of the Queen. Corrie, our narrator, is an introverted writer who generally prefers books to people. When she is Selected she thinks it's a new sparkly life in the sparkly capital city. As the first book begins, it is summer, and everything is exciting and happy and gleaming. But events, as events will, take a turn for the worse, and soon there is snow and blood and darkness and war and revolution and magic. Trees kill people. Secrets fester. An awkward introverted romance wends its awkward introverted way. We drink enough tea to drown a small country. By this point -- the end of book 2 -- everybody is in love, though mostly with the wrong people. War! Stabbing! Sentient forests! Do you drink tea a lot of tea, read a lot of books, and have a habit for wading straight into danger? You'll fit right into these novels.</i><br />
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I wasn't actually participating in NaNoWriMo (because a) I started the book in August, b) I handwrite and c) NaNo is not my style, I don't think) but it <i>is </i>the 30th of November. <b>So I kinda feel like I won NaNo.</b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">And what else?</span></b><br />
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I've had a rather strange afternoon. <b>I moped about like an untied balloon.</b> I tried to draw and paint and listen to Les Mis -- normally a definite cure for any sort of weird feelings -- but it didn't work. In the few hours after finishing the novel, was I walking on an elated cloud of sunshine? <b>Honestly, no.</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXbdSXbPGTUOfVsfnW3cS0YABaftCnm2oCP6Z6Ig9L8R5glQuVIU-D-FHgc5u9g1klR2ZYArORCCZIgYznmBjBWeUG_V0UPesHNz4mf6Ie-_yMK9fzk1cWEYPBrKcNvNY9BE8zByGNmI/s1600/i+just+feel+blah%2521.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaXbdSXbPGTUOfVsfnW3cS0YABaftCnm2oCP6Z6Ig9L8R5glQuVIU-D-FHgc5u9g1klR2ZYArORCCZIgYznmBjBWeUG_V0UPesHNz4mf6Ie-_yMK9fzk1cWEYPBrKcNvNY9BE8zByGNmI/s1600/i+just+feel+blah%2521.gif" /></a><br />
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<b>But I am happy! And proud! And excited! And very grateful to my Heavenly Father, for helping me to get to this point. </b>It's just ... here's the thing. <b>I really really hate the limbo between drafts of novels. </b>I am not a furious NaNo-er. I'm not a write-a-book-in-a-month-or-maybe-even-a-week-and-then-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief-until-next-tine. I am someone who took four months to write this novel -- that's been a little less than 1k per day, on average -- and that's what I like. I do <i>not </i>like <i>not</i> writing a book. You know <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMQI4Y7nFvo">True Love Waits by Radiohead</a>? <i>I'm not living, I'm just killing time. </i><u>That's how I feel when I'm not writing a book!</u><br />
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<b>Am I creatively exhausted? Weirdly, no. </b>These feelings of limbo I'm talking about. I did experience them in between drafts of TCATT (the first book), but I was also -- at least in the first few days -- like, “yikes, I need a break!" Now? Not so much.<br />
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After a few hours, though, the blues are wearing off <span style="font-size: x-small;">(probably also because I ate an amazing dinner of peppers stuffed with couscous, tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon and cheese. Food really does make everything better and don't listen to anyone who says it doesn't)</span>. I am happy! I am excited! I am full of love for my babies <span style="font-size: x-small;">(despite what I've put them through this book. Sorry guys. <strike>It's only going to get worse</strike>)</span>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggfZrgFZJbQj-yO6kMY1eF379v9CJYgnrqW0ypqO3pqNDI0WMWVD2oEBJ6OxIJEaObqjiFi-TrV9swtwPTiqFvzVoqfvY2kZJR8Uip37TUbC2C4rXPT86UVGO5ppqo0EXhrZ1ocR-t3k0/s1600/i+love+you+so+much.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggfZrgFZJbQj-yO6kMY1eF379v9CJYgnrqW0ypqO3pqNDI0WMWVD2oEBJ6OxIJEaObqjiFi-TrV9swtwPTiqFvzVoqfvY2kZJR8Uip37TUbC2C4rXPT86UVGO5ppqo0EXhrZ1ocR-t3k0/s320/i+love+you+so+much.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">me @ them/this book</td></tr>
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Now we draw to a question.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">What Comes Next? </span></b><br />
<strike>(You've been freed, do you know how hard it is to lead? You're on your own! <a href="https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/282108364137356477/">“Awesome! Wow!"</a> Do you have a clue what happens now?)</strike><br />
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“Well, redrafting, obviously, Emily!"<br />
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<b>Actually, no.</b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKxCJDpWCQ6z9dYoyedMDAdWv74ahBXyi1DcUo5yay189C5Bbot-DYff3U8w9C8WfOs8E0LeM6Ro_3Zm37lvBX8zn7jwR9uaOlWaSxiCZY3e_5pBjVyDF4y-JqAZk0bVmqPZ0ymjcHNM/s1600/what%2521.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKxCJDpWCQ6z9dYoyedMDAdWv74ahBXyi1DcUo5yay189C5Bbot-DYff3U8w9C8WfOs8E0LeM6Ro_3Zm37lvBX8zn7jwR9uaOlWaSxiCZY3e_5pBjVyDF4y-JqAZk0bVmqPZ0ymjcHNM/s1600/what%2521.gif" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Good question, Ross, let me explain.</td></tr>
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Honestly, my book is perfect, so it doesn't need to be redrafted.* Well ... maybe not. Let us dip into my life schedule for the next few months. “Gee, Emily, sounds fun." Yeah, I know, what can I say?</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*That was a joke, to clarify. Such a joke. I mean, a <i>joke</i>. If you read this first draft -- which no one ever will, obviously, except me, when I cry painfully over how bad it is -- you would know <i>how much of a joke</i> that was.</span><br /><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">In January I am moving to Kenya.</span></b><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Image result for i didn't see that coming gif" src="http://65.media.tumblr.com/ca4138b37747d43d721d642bea4033c0/tumblr_inline_noc76l4y4s1t64ki9_500.gif" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kidding. You already knew. But we can at least pretend I kept some of the element of surprise.</td></tr>
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<b>I will be living in Kenya until May.</b> (Doing school and church work, if you didn't know.)<b> </b>That's over four months. And here's the nub and gist of the matter: I will not have consistent electricity. </div>
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Now, I handwrite, and I'm sure that when I second draft, I shall rewrite/add many, many, <i>many </i>scenes (because, structure? What the heck is structure? I know already that the book is seething with plot holes and saggy bits. I just, uh, don't know what they are). But I will be working from the typed* first draft. Which means I need my laptop. <b>And I don't really want to rely on it when I'm in Kenya.</b></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Nearly typed. I'm getting there. If you're interested, I've got 81 284 words typed, and just over ten chapters to go.</span></div>
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There are Various Reasons for this. We won't have many plug sockets in the house. No internet. Sometimes we might have power cuts. My laptop is temperamental to say the least. What if it crashes? Will I able to get it fixed cheaply in Nairobi? I don't know. Also, I won't have masses of space to take stuff, and I <i>do</i> need clothes and other life necessities (boring, I know), and <b>four months' supply of books. </b>Will I even have space for a laptop?<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>“So, are you just not going to write a novel while you're in Kenya?"</b></span><br />
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<img alt="Image result for hahaha good one gif" height="244" src="http://media.tumblr.com/f571206dafd74b3de5eddbb7778ed49c/tumblr_inline_mfrszzlGdX1r0321r.gif" width="320" /><br />
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As <i>if</i>. I would <i>die</i>. May I <i>never</i> go four months (nearly six months, starting from now) without writing a novel. <b>So, what then?</b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">I'm going to write LesMisBook.</span></b><br />
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This post is already ridiculously long, so if you're saying “LesMisBook, what's LesMisBook?", you're going to have to wait. But I can say it is a contemporary. So I will be taking a break from fantasy. And maybe that will be good for me?<br />
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It's a tough one. I have very mixed feelings. Because on the one hand, I <i>love</i> the LesMisBook concept/characters/high presence of Nutella sandwiches, and I can't wait to write it! But on the other, the thought of leaving <i>Stay in the City</i> in its lonely first draft state -- the thought of leaving Ivaria, leaving my babies -- <i>fills me with torturous horror. </i>And I know that once I start LesMisBook I'll have a whale of a time, and end up being sorry to leave it, but ... still. How do I write a book that's not part of the TCATT series?? I never have! I don't know how!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5jBOHqT-uTKCHwkr2jWO1NKqzE57GM0PBq30V9diD9IHK6fFTvotqq2ci2xU6r8jqEtXSM4BMOhzH0VyyaihbCFi7SqWmHR0s1rWnKiWXlXi8YN6fGiCBLf-BF-VMBEOEJuVawlBOeYc/s1600/scared+wrapped+in+hair.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5jBOHqT-uTKCHwkr2jWO1NKqzE57GM0PBq30V9diD9IHK6fFTvotqq2ci2xU6r8jqEtXSM4BMOhzH0VyyaihbCFi7SqWmHR0s1rWnKiWXlXi8YN6fGiCBLf-BF-VMBEOEJuVawlBOeYc/s320/scared+wrapped+in+hair.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>And that probably accounts for my finishing blues. </b>The knowledge that I'm <i>leaving</i> this world and won't be back until <i>May</i>. Which is <i>ages</i> away!</div>
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And <i>that</i> was slightly rambling and mildly angsty dip into my writer's brain, and if you read this far, I salute you. Thank you. <b>But you must tell me: did you finish NaNo??</b> YOU ARE AMAZING. We can pretend I did, too (rather than just coincidentally finishing a novel on November 30th) and celebrate together! (I'm eating Bitsa Wispa, that's my celebration. What is your celebratory food?)</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With you, with <i>Stay in the City</i> ... ~loud sobbing~</td></tr>
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But I shall return -- because, in case you missed it, I finished my book, so I now actually have time for things. Life updates! Starting Sparks updates! Tags! Book reviews! A short story! My Kenya TBR pile! Maybe even a vlog! The excitement is just too much, isn't it? <b>Until then, friends, goodnight.</b></div>
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~***~</div>
Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-54392417631275981032016-11-22T22:30:00.001+00:002016-11-22T22:30:33.991+00:00THE SECRET HISTORY // “beauty is terror"<blockquote style="background-color: white; font-family: "IM Fell Double Pica"; text-align: center;">
<i>Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. (p5)</i></blockquote>
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So begins <i>The Secret History</i> by Donna Tartt. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbs=simg:CAESmwEJqeorifCLovQajwELEKjU2AQaCAgECAkIFwg9DAsQsIynCBpiCmAIAxIoiRHpGvARihGpBZAQkBeOEPsO_1A7vJNMshC75LZsujiShLoItgy7SLBowiX3uoPcRdIcHdY3CQvj5Z_19wEjdVkltRtKMTYoEVkradTutavb52OPy5BIUe3Rk1IAQMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgQYM0h0DA&q=piazza+della+signoria&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4iZCArL3QAhXMIsAKHSeMCaAQsw4ILQ&biw=1366&bih=662#imgrc=J4ZT2AR85weWJM%3A">[source]</a> // Neda Khorami // yes, I posted this image recently, but I love it and it fits this book <i>so well</i> and also this is <i>my </i>blog I do what I want.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/search/feed%20grunge">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<i><br />Richard Papen is nineteen when he reaches Hampden College, Vermont. Estranged from his cheap Californian parents, who do not understand his love of literature or his “morbid longing for the picturesque", he flees the West Coast to realise his dreams of beauty and elegance. After embarking on a literature degree he is swept into Hampden College's enigmatic Classics department: an exclusive group of five glamorously unreachable students, presided over by the mysterious, charming Julian Morrow. When Richard enters the group -- and the study of Greek -- he finds friendship like never before, and soon shuts out the rest of the world. But there is a darkness in his new group which he must begin to recognise, and as he begins to ask questions he may be pulled beneath the surface forever.</i></div>
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~***~</div>
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<i>The Secret History</i> is a magnificent epic and a soul-jarring story of a boy's coming of age. If you don't know how much I love Tartt's <i>The Goldfinch</i> you obviously don't pay much attention to this blog. Going into <i>The Secret History </i>I was understandably nervous -- it's always dangerous reading another book by the author of your fave, because <i>what if it's a disappointment</i> -- but Tartt's captivating writing and crafting of a story pulled me along just as before.</div>
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Richard, our narrator, is a perfect study of a teenager caught up in a heady love of the exquisite. As those wonderful first lines show, he is a romantic, plunging after after beauty “at all costs", and in this I relate to him almost painfully. </div>
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<i>I read </i>The Great Gatsby.<i> It is one of my favourite books and I had taken it out of the library in hopes that it would cheer me up; of course, it only made me feel worse, since in my own humorless state I failed to see anything except what I construed as certain tragic similarities between Gatsby and myself. (p82)</i></blockquote>
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Gatsby is the gold standard of hopeless romantics everywhere, and this comparison between him and Richard -- more than that, Richard's reflective <i>consciousness </i>of his own pretensions and morbidity in making such a comparison -- is a perfect picture of his character. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(And how exciting is it, too, when characters love the books/music you love? I remember my thrill in <i>The Goldfinch</i> as Theo referenced Harry Potter, Radiohead and Belle & Sebastian. There's nothing better.)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.8px;"><a href="http://tak3ucare.tumblr.com/post/141056908209/discovered-by-grunge-top-via-crazycandyland">[source]</a></td></tr>
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When Richard arrives at Hampden College he is bowled over by the beauty of Vermont, so different to California; by the romantic melancholy of the whole place: </div>
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<i>Hampden College, Hampden, Vermont. Even the name had an austere Anglican cadence, to my ear at least, which yearned hopelessly for England ... It [in photos</i>] <i>was suffused with a weak, academic light – different from Plano [Richard's hometown in California], different from anything I had ever known – a light that made me think of long hours in dusty libraries, and old books, and silence. (p10)</i></blockquote>
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To me this was one of the most successful things about the novel: Tartt's ability to capture so perfectly a teenager's feeling of serendipity in places and friendships. <b>Potentially my favourite passage:</b></div>
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<i>It is easy to see things in retrospect. But I was ignorant then of everything but my own happiness, and I don't know what else to say except that life itself seemed very magical in those days: a web of symbol, coincidence, premonition, omen. Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together -- my future, my past, the whole of my life -- and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say </i>oh! oh! oh! <i>(p107)</i></blockquote>
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The novel hinges on Richard's being swept along by his new friends, his initial blindness to and later complicity in what's going on. The prologue begins thus:</div>
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<i>The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation. ... It is difficult to believe that Henry's modest plan could have worked so well despite these unforeseen events. (p1)</i></blockquote>
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So from the first page we know that Bunny dies, and the prologue introduces the terrible sense of danger that pervades the novel. The reader can never claim to be ignorant of the darkness, <i>and yet </i>we are still swept up as Richard is, believing that everything is wonderful. This is Tartt's mastery. We see the world through Richard's eyes, and share his perceptions. When you go back afterwards and begin to unpick it all, realisations come to you that, while reading, you do not have -- I did not have, at least. <i>The Goldfinch</i> too begins at the end, with a prologue, and then takes us back through the story, and Tartt shows her genius for leading the reader by the hand, immersing us totally in her world.</div>
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<tr><td><img alt="Eliot: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/ba/18/dd/ba18dd142208b02c9e9c945b6877fa35.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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<b>“Beauty is terror."</b>All of Tartt's writing, in a way, can be said to be the study of beauty. <i>The Goldfinch</i> is a book about visual art, but <i>The Secret History</i> is a book about literature. Studying Greek literature, to be precise.</div>
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<i style="text-align: justify;">“All right," Julian said, looking around the table. </i><i style="text-align: justify;">“I hope we're all ready to leave the phenomenal world, and enter into the sublime?" (p39)</i></blockquote>
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I'm glad I had some classical education -- it's nice to read a chat about <i>The Aeneid</i> and know what's going on -- but any booklover can appreciate Julian's genius and the class members' love of books and of Greek. <b>Books about books</b> are among my favourite things ever.</div>
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<b>The settings were stunning.</b> Much and often have I gone on about New York, Las Vegas and Amsterdam in <i>The Goldfinch,</i> and the Vermont Tartt paints in <i>The Secret History</i> is breathtaking. I visited Vermont once, many years ago, and am now desperate to return.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BCC3jrQhspY/">[source]</a> // art by <a href="http://hawwaetc.com/">Hawwa</a> // another of my favourite quotations</td></tr>
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<b style="font-weight: bold;">The prose was exquisite.</b> Tartt really is in a class of her own. Her writing style is described as<i> </i><span style="text-align: justify;">“Dickensian", </span><span style="text-align: justify;">“Victorian" and </span><span style="text-align: justify;">“neo-classical". In a world of journalistic style where we're encouraged to use short, snappy sentences in short, snappy paragraphs, she is a unique delight. She uses period sentences! A lot! <b>A period sentence is a thing of great beauty.</b> I've been having a slight existential crisis these last couple of days because a wonderful Beta Bae of mine sent TCATT back, and when commenting on my fondness for a long sentence, she mentioned that they are not popular in YA. Which is true. They are not. And I was <i>overwhelmed by sudden fear</i> because I know that the Tartt style <span style="font-size: x-small;">(which I 900% try to emulate)</span> is not in vogue. But then I thought about how <i>amazing </i>Tartt's prose is, and how I could read it for a thousand years without getting bored, and felt better.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">(Though, one does then start <i>comparing oneself </i>to Tartt, and this is a mistake. Trust me. You will not come off anything other than <u>very badly.</u> Ahahahaah--)</span></span></div>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">As well as her beautifully constructed sentences and passages, Tartt's metaphors and emotive language is extraordinary.</span></div>
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<i>Francis talking, gesticulating wildly in his white robe and Henry with his hands clasped behind his back, Satan listening patiently to the ranting of some desert prophet.</i></blockquote>
Rarely have I seen a more perfect metaphor. Can you not picture it <i>just so</i>? Tartt is a magician.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mysticmamma.com/readthesigns/">[source]</a></td></tr>
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<b>At the end of the day, I can only bow in admiration of this extraordinary writer. Her characterisation, theme, setting, plot, pacing, and prose are unmatched. Read Tartt; in doing so you will taste the very best.</b></div>
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~***~</div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.” (p2)</span></i></div>
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Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-797055056494841024.post-56457573683047972612016-11-08T17:30:00.000+00:002016-11-08T17:59:20.146+00:00Occasionally I Win Things<div style="text-align: center;">
Sometimes these things result in book tokens.</div>
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Always I buy pretty books.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3znBfbcMwzIVoQOcH55WOeXOYMAhFx3PsIslplbJKNNoZ397qpQSUju-RvdPN-WAqjOOjnTQeWalfrP-jOHwjKzo9outIY-jPEHa9RuxhwNv_dFyBbdURnh_65ulKMWYDwuwNUXMue2s/s1600/IMG_1491.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3znBfbcMwzIVoQOcH55WOeXOYMAhFx3PsIslplbJKNNoZ397qpQSUju-RvdPN-WAqjOOjnTQeWalfrP-jOHwjKzo9outIY-jPEHa9RuxhwNv_dFyBbdURnh_65ulKMWYDwuwNUXMue2s/s640/IMG_1491.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>June 2016 </b>// check that colour scheme! Books know how to take a good picture, I'm just saying.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5gEC0t3P6guNy25mbz7IhRfgkPwBJWIX6CCku6H_wejCcdnDKQWrNXILr3iGCvUb9ht_r0OLed9VlqJrZtHZQIc6jC3tBTIBNP1H_zXaB-cyVBGxbTwqORvBzxhDqVscsYTiJK_75Nw/s1600/IMG_1543.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="596" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw5gEC0t3P6guNy25mbz7IhRfgkPwBJWIX6CCku6H_wejCcdnDKQWrNXILr3iGCvUb9ht_r0OLed9VlqJrZtHZQIc6jC3tBTIBNP1H_zXaB-cyVBGxbTwqORvBzxhDqVscsYTiJK_75Nw/s640/IMG_1543.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">This was a cracking book. I did not agree with everything she said -- namely, that a writer needs to have a mind “incandescent, unimpeded" by their problems, “with no desire to protest, to preach, to proclaim an injury, to pay off a score, to make the world the witness of some hardship or grievance", and that's why history produced so few great female writers, because women were generally so oppressed. Whereas, surely, it is protest and pain that makes good writing? Suffering that makes art? A desire to speak about what is important to you?</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">In spite of this, my big problem, it was a hugely interesting book. You know -- because I never stop going on about it -- <b>how obsessed I am with having a room of one's own.</b> </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">(I chat fully about that <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/written-life.html">here</a>, in the bit called #Write-spiration.)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Me: Metafiction?!<br /><br />Me:</span><img alt="Image result for up doug gif" height="176" src="https://media.giphy.com/media/KMxc5wMC9wPXq/giphy.gif" width="320" /><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />I've not read this one yet, but I'm proper excited. </span><span style="font-size: xx-small;">(Though reading plays is quite hard. In October I DNF'd a book for the first time in living memory, because it was a play and I was struggling to visualise it. So we shall see.)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><i>On The Beach At Night Alone </i>by Walt Whitman</b> // I wasn't a massive fan. But would read Whitman again.<br /><br /><i>“On the beach at night alone,<br />As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,<br />As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future."</i><br /><br /><b><i>Letters to a Young Poet</i> by Rainer Maria Rilke</b> // I HAVE A FUN STORY ABOUT THIS ONE! </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">(At least, I think it's a fun story. Stop rolling your eyes. You don't <i>have </i>to read my blog.) </span><span style="font-size: small;">Once upon a long time ago, I had a tumblr, and in my brief forays on that website I found and loved this:</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, page 35.: " src="https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/26/3c/78/263c788b2aeea7a20d1cbb6fbe4d6167.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
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It lived in my heart -- the <i>questions themselves, </i>the <i>very foreign tongue, </i>the slightly messy underlining -- and then I stopped using my tumblr, but <i>then</i>, months later, what should pop up on Pinterest but the same image? And where had that person Pinned it from? <u>My old redundant tumblr!</u> And I smiled gleefully and Pinned it (and even now, only the two of us on the whole of Pinterest have it saved), and <i>then </i>I realised that the author of these lines, Rainer Maria Rilke -- whose name, when I first fell in love with them, I did not know -- was the Rilke from Wolves of Mercy Falls series by Maggie Stiefvater, whom Sam loves. The Wolves of Mercy Falls series / Sam / Rilke which I had been loving independently of this image, because I'd never made the connection!</div>
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<b>And <i>that </i>is what we call book serendipity. </b>And when I bought this book, what else did I buy, if not ...</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Sinner</i> by Maggie Stiefvater!<br /><br />So you see, everything is connected.<br /><br />HOW CAN WE SAY HOW MUCH I LOVE THIS BOOK/AUTHOR/SERIES? <i>Sinner </i>was an absolute <i>triumph, </i>the perfect culmination for the wonderful Wolves of Mercy Falls. Click <a href="http://sparrowsflysouth.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/why-you-should-be-reading-wolves-of.html">here</a> for ALL MY FEELINGS.</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">Because Fitzgerald. I'm yet to read this. Did you know “tender is the night" comes from a poem by Keats? I was reading Keats last year and come across it and spent a while pointing at the book and grinning. Other book titles from Romantic poets -- putting me in a similar pointing/grinning position -- include </span><span style="font-size: small;">“not a drop to drink", </span><span style="font-size: small;">“under the greenwood tree" </span><span style="font-size: small;">and </span><span style="font-size: small;">“alone on a wide, wide sea."</span>(Also, <u style="font-size: medium;">how pretty</u><span style="font-size: small;"> is this book? I would never really buy a hardback firsthand, </span><i style="font-size: medium;">unless </i><span style="font-size: small;">I had book tokens. Look at it. SHINY.) </span></td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">If anyone tells you it's not beneficial to put your books in trees and photograph them ... <i>ignore them. </i>They have not your interests at heart.*</span><br />
*If you read this and said, “Hamilton reference!" ... I like you. You can stay.<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><br />I thought I'd end this post with my fave. <i>Tales from Ovid</i> was properly great, and <i>River </i>was absolutely wonderful, one of my favourite books this year.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: small; text-align: center;"><br />~***~</span></div>
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<b>What is your most recent bookish purchase? What's been your favourite book of the year? (Now it is nearly over: it's legit snowing where I am.) And do you have any stories of bookish serendipity?</b></div>
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</span><span style="font-size: small; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: center;">
<i>“So we stood, alive in the river of light</i></div>
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<i> Among the creatures of light, creatures of light." </i></div>
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~ Ted Hughes, <i>That Morning</i></div>
</span>Emilyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08057480293595295502noreply@blogger.com24