‘Ghost Stories’ by M.R. James

I don’t have much time to read fiction nowadays because of professional reading but I cannot go without it so I’m trying to get to a compromise. I reached out for the shelf and grabbed Ghost Stories. I have always loved this sort of tales because my grandpa used to tell us ghost stories when I was a kid. I haven’t overcome this yet but no problem since I was looking for some light enterntaining reading.

I’ve read two today and I’ve promised myself a couple of minutes everyday to read one a day. Extremely well-written, very haunting, very atmospheric, with the tension building up at each paragraph. Looking forward to the next one tomorrow  – oh the pleasures of self-indulging reading!!

‘The White Tiger’ by Aravind Adiga

Eduardo got this book as a present from Sara, a couple of months ago, and devoured it in three days. Since I decided to take a couple of days free between the last assignment and the next I decided that thsi could perhaps be a perfect choice. If it had engaged Eduardo that much, it had to be good! I as right. It makes for enticing reading because it is so different that it is almost shocking. It is not every day that you listen to a first person narrator and really have the impression that you are in contact with a real person. This is fiction at its best!

How close to reality is the social scenario depicted in the book only some Indians can tell, but for us as readers, it doesn’t really matter that much. What is important is the plot and the execution. It’s straightforward, punchy, crispy, at times moving, at times revolting and wholly surpising if you don’t come from such cultural background. I’ve never been to India, but if one day I go there it will be hard not to have the white tiger stealthily following my steps around.

Sigh no more

William Shakespeare – from As You Like it

 

Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,

    Men are deceivers ever,

One foot in sea, and one on shore,

    To one thing constant never,

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds or woe

    Into hey nonny, nonny.

 

Sigh no more ditties, sing no more

    Of dumps so dull and heavy.

The fraud of men was ever so

    Since summer first was leafy.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,

    And be you blithe and bonny,

Converting all your sounds of woe

    Into hey nonny, nonny.

 

Happy B-day Will!

Bright star

John Keats

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art-

     Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

     Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

    Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

    Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -

No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

    Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel forever its soft fall and swell,

    Awake forever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever – or else swoon to death.

‘The Kite Runner’ by Khaled Housseini

I cannot remember the last time I had wept reading a novel. I think it was about 25 years ago reading Wuthering Heights! Now, this tale of loss, friendship, human frailty and redemption has made me drop some tears again. Super story that granted me some hours of non-stop reading and also make me look at people from the part of the world with different eyes. Not sure about the ending, sounds a bit sentimental and unrealistic but the author is forgiven for all the marvellous narrative he provided along the book.

A must!

Fern Hill

 

Dylan Thomas

 

     Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs

     About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,

       The night above the dingle starry,

         Time let me hail and climb

       Golden in the heydays of his eyes,

     And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns

     And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves

         Trail with daisies and barley

       Down the rivers of the windfall light.

 

     And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns

     About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,

       In the sun that is young once only,

         Time let me play and be

       Golden in the mercy of his means,

     And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves

     Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,

         And the sabbath rang slowly

       In the pebbles of the holy streams.

 

     All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay

     Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air

       And playing, lovely and watery

         And fire green as grass.

       And nightly under the simple stars

     As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,

     All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars

       Flying with the ricks, and the horses

         Flashing into the dark.

 

     And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white

     With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all

       Shining, it was Adam and maiden,

         The sky gathered again

       And the sun grew round that very day.

     So it must have been after the birth of the simple light

     In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm

       Out of the whinnying green stable

         On to the fields of praise.

 

     And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house

     Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,

       In the sun born over and over,

         I ran my heedless ways,

       My wishes raced through the house high hay

     And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows

     In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs

       Before the children green and golden

         Follow him out of grace.

 

     Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me

     Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,

       In the moon that is always rising,

         Nor that riding to sleep

       I should hear him fly with the high fields

     And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.

     Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

         Time held me green and dying

       Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Snowman

 Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Desert Places

Robert Frost

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh fast

In a field I looked into going past

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble sowing last.

 

The woods around it have it – it is theirs

All animals are smoothered in their lairs,

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

 

And lonely as it is, that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less -

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

With no expression, nothing to express.

 

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars – on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much near home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

Spring and Fall

 Gerald M. Hopkins

 

Margaret, are you grieving 
 Over Goldengrove unleaving? 
 Leaves, like the things of man, you 
 With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? 
 Ah! as the heart grows older 
 It will come to such sights colder 
 By and by, nor spare a sigh 
 Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; 
 And yet you will weep and know why. 
 Now no matter, child, the name: 
 Sorrow’s springs are the same. 
 Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed 
 What heart heard of, ghost guessed: 
 It is the blight man was born for, 
 It is Margaret you mourn for.

‘The Children of Húrin’ by J.R.R. Tolkien

Christmas break means Christmas reading

I had already met Húrin and the tales of Turin Turambar in the Silmarillion, but this time it is told in further details. If it all sounded harrowing and poignant in the previous book now it just sounds tragic. Somehow knowing the details of what happened to Turin and how he was also responsible for making Morgoth’s designs come true due to his sheer stupidity, pride and arrogance makes me pity less for him and his house.

I think Tolkien had no illusions about the human race whatsoever. He didn’t love his humans, he was merciless towards them because even if you shed a tear or two for the descendents of Hurin, it is only the father himself who deserves compassion and this because Hurin was wise and lived by the teachings of the Eldar.

Oh dear, I wish I had more time to spend on Middle-Earth!!