Observations as I read

As I get further into Women in Love, I am finding that it is truly a book that explores the human soul. We're talking there being not much happening in the sense of actual actions, and a whole lot happening in each character's mind. There's dialogue, but the dialogue is definitely the kind that says one easy-enough-to-understand thing on the surface, but eludes to something much deeper, much more complicated. It's quite the exercise for the reading mind.

There was one chunk of a chapter that I could swear is exactly what my creative writing teacher told us not to do when we're writing, albeit he was talking about short stories.

You see, D.H. Lawrence has this way, as many other authors do from his time, and even today do, of exploring a character's one thought, and pretty much beating it over the head senseless. In turn, it beats the reader over the head senseless, too. He doesn't do it throughout, but there was one particular episode where Ursula was sitting at home waiting one Sunday for her beau to call on her. Her thoughts, as she waits, are centered around the idea that she is going to die, the same way that anyone anxious to hear from their love interest, and unsure when that will be, feels like they're going to die.

It would have sufficed to just say, "Ursula felt like she was going to die, as she waited for Birkin's form to appear." Instead, we are given about five pages talking about how she is better off dead, that there was nothing left in life for her, because she had experienced all that she wanted or could want to experience in life (except of course for Birkin to show up), and therefore, death was only the next step in life.

It's very philosophical and internal a conflict, which although it fits the mood and style of this book, it was just long enough to bore me for a spell, but not long enough to turn me off and away from the entire work.

On a happy endnote: Ursula's beau, Birkin, does finally show up.

Until next time...

Still working on it

Don't worry, this is not a post to tell you that I'm about to drop another book out of boredom. On the contrary. I am loving Women in Love. I'd tell you what page I'm on, but this particular e-book version doesn't have page numbers. I've just reached chapter fourteen, and it's looking like one of the Brangwen sisters has finally connected with her love interest.

This is a really lovely book, and I'm cherishing every moment I'm spending with it. I'm not sure if this is a good or a bad thing, but it seems that we are being shown everything, every little detail about a character is shown through their actions, or echoed in their thoughts and lines. It gets meticulous every once in a while, but for the most part, it does what fiction ought to do, which is create action, and through that action create tension. I believe that D.H. Lawrence does just that, and that's what makes him one of the masters, in my humble opinion.

I'd like to add that up until recently, I have been a generally fast reader, mainly because I had the luxury of being able to sit and ignore everything for a whole day, for instance, and just read. I can't do that anymore, so I can only read a little bit at a time, and some days I don't even read at all. It makes me sad, but that's life, I guess.

Well, that's it for now from me. Until next time...

A little off the topic, but not really...

The other day I was stuck somewhere away from home without the book I am currently reading, Women in Love, by D.H. Lawrence. It's not that I forgot it, but rather that it was too big and bulky for my bag that day, and besides, I didn't think I'd be in a reading mood.

The thing about moods is that they change, and, more often than not, pop up unexpectedly. That is precisely what happened to me the day I decided to not take my book with me; I felt like reading my book, but it was at home, where I wasn't.

Ever since the idea of e-books was introduced as a serious option, I have had a hostile aversion to it. As I said in a column I wrote recently talking about e-reading, "... the mere mention of e-reading has been something I greet with a big fat X, like the one people make with their fingers to ward off evil." But, like moods change, so do views.

I've been slowly inching toward accepting e-reading as a reading option that exists, not a force that will drive the bound book into extinction. I say option, because the day I was nowhere near the book I was in the mood to read I had my iPod Touch with me. There was also free wifi. So, I went to the apps store and performed a search there for Women in Love. Sure enough, it was available, and for free, no less. So, I downloaded it and passed some time with reading the very thing I wanted to read, in the font I wanted, in the size I wanted.

I can't deny that it was cool to still be able to have something that was nowhere near me, suddenly, with little effort, right at my fingertips. I felt cool, a woman of my time. A woman in love with technology.

After that experience, I decided to just continue reading Women in Love in e-form, because I have yet to read an entire book that way. Also because many believe that this is the way publishers are going, I guess I should get used to it.

Afterall, humans have had to embrace change in order to improve themselves throughout history. Look at it this way: First, it was drawings on cave walls, then it was cuneiform on clay tablets, then it was writing on animal skin, then papyrus... our written mediums have always been changing, and e-reading is just another link in a long chain of innovations for the betterment of how we record and communicate information.

Now I think I'm gonna go e-read. Until next time...

A bad case of "I'm gonna have to let you go..."

It's official that I've abandoned Revolutionary Road. I tried long and hard, but I just couldn't get through it. I couldn't get through a second round of misery, with more details, no less. I finally decided to pull out the fancy bookmark where I had left it a week before and placed it in another book.

Though I feel awful that in this blog's infancy I've already managed to abandon two books, sometimes you have to abandon the book that's stalling your reading list's progress. There's just no other way around it sometimes.

I mentioned in one of my posts that I had read D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and found it to be wonderful. As a result I decided to read another one of his books, and I settled on Women in Love.

I've already made it through two chapters of Women in Love, and although it starts off a little awkward by just diving into a scene between Gudrun and Ursula, the two heroines of the novel, I am really enjoying it. I especially can't wait for the story to develop further so that the sisters begin their relationships with the two men we've already been introduced to through Gudrun's and Ursula's eyes. It seems that there will be dramatic, romantic events that only Lawrence can create with raw beauty.

It's amazing to me how a man could write what and how a woman feels as well as Lawrence. Maybe it was just luck on Lawrence's part, or maybe it was knowledge that was passed down to him, or maybe he's just one of those people who understand what other people are feeling, whether he has walked a mile in their shoes or not; whatever is behind this enviable artistic ability, I feel that there is in me a little bit of every woman that Lawrence describes in his novels. It's almost eerie, but definitely refreshing.

On another note, and in honor of Read Across America day I wanted to spread the word that I am very much into keeping a virtual bookshelf to share my reading activity with anyone who's interested. So far, I've found two services to do this through. One is weRead, and although I've kept it for over a year now, and it's where you will find the most up-to-date information and reviews for a huge chunk of the books I've read throughout my life, I only know how to access it through Facebook. The other virtual bookshelf I keep is through goodreads.com, which I downloaded as an app for my iPod Touch.

I just started using goodreads the other day, so it's a little sparse at the moment, but I am going to try to at least copy and paste my reviews from weRead when I have time, so that both bookshelves are up-to-date. You can find me at Goodreads under the username Reemawi, in the meantime.

I guess that's it for now. Until next time...