As the title suggests, my novel-to-be is still celibate. Something about remaining virtuous and s on. Well who am I to argue with it. So whilst I was not working on my novel or my blog, I was partaking in an equally(or more) enthralling endeavor, that of, reading. I typically read whatever holds my fancy and my to-be-read list of books grows longer, because a typical bibliophile li
Thats all I've got!
ke me, just keeps adding more and more to the list. The aftermath results in me wallowing in misery and shame, for shirking my novel-writing and blog-updating duties and indulging in some light reading which did not bring me any closer to cracking my list.
Nevertheless, I’m back(with a vengeance) to blogging at the very least, but because I read some books on my toilet-paper roll of a list, I don’t feel so miserable. But before I start going on about those, lets get something straight about the novel.
So I know its ironic that I began this blog sith the intent of writing my novel, however, I want to experiment and explore more texts, and methods of writing before I jump headfirst into such an overtly ardent task. I guess you can call me a perfectionist( whoever is reading out there, that is), I want to write my novel in a clear-headed and mature way. I know its not a snap of the fingers, but I want it perfect, now and 20 years later when I read it.
Water For Elephants. ( love the shiny coat)
Back to the book reading. So the books that I read are fairly popular. Incidentally all three of them related are were of the Holocaust, or the German Occupation or more popularly World War 2 . The first one that I read( from my list, not the first of the summer, good heavens!) was Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen. I must confess I would not have come across this book if it hadn’t been for Robert Pattinson’s role in the movie, based on the book. I was kind of apprehensive about reading it, because as a child, circuses were pretty much in every book , be it Enid Blyton or otherwise. And admittedly, it was the picture of Rob in a tuxedo, dancing with Reese Witherspoon ( and sucking face with her ) that was the catalyst in me reading the novel. Nevertheless it was a fast-paced read with not too much emotion, some comic relief was added. I felt there was a little too much sex in the book for being categorized in the YA section. However, what I liked was that the book takes place in the present time where a 90 year old version of the main hero reminisces about his time during the, world war 2, when he joined a circus (the Benzini Brothers) . So the actual plot is about a 23 year old man during 1939 and how, when now he is , 90 or 93, ( you’ll see in the book why) he is nostalgic about that wonderful period. I did come away from it learning a lot of things, for
Counldn't resist
example the wealth of knowledge stored inside the old, that could easily be the makings of a bestseller, amongst other things.
That is the one thing I always try to do is , try to see what I learned from the book. It was a lovely read, and not much mention of the Holocaust. The life of the circus is/was very entertaining. The reason I felt it lacked emotion was because that it was from the point of view of a man. The man (Jacob)’s parents die in the beginning of the book. But this wasn’t overly-dramatized, so hence the no-tears formula.
As much as I want to continue on with the review of the rest of the two, I will stop here and make preparations to construct this sinful, seductive masterpiece :-
Can I lick images through the screen? No? Okay.
Thanks for reading,
EQ
