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just a sucker for references. the moment i realized that murakami was paying tribute to carver with the book just below that post, and that generally he was super influenced by his occasionally zen like writings and super condensed short stories i just ran to the local bookstore. it was june 2009 and i was working during the nightime, as a phone operator and the atmosphere of the office during these hours made me feel connected to those non-hero figures of carver. i dunno.
i don't know why i left this book RIGHT in the middle, maybe that has to do with my constant rising lack of focus, goals and concentration. the pure funny thing is that i also bought another raymond carver collection the same day, cathedral. haha, i was so sure that i would read the first one.
how silly and how typical of me?
oh! during a trip to xanthi (a town in northern greece) i had wwtawwtal with me, and my super cool uberfriend george kietzis told me that raymond carver's short stories were the backbone for
robert altman's shortcuts.
how cool was that?
how ignorant i am sometimes (ie always)?
ok, this is super strange. haruki murakami is among my favorite novelists (and the wind-up bird chronicle must be THE book for me) but this.... what the fuck!!! no interest whatsoever! i bought it the first day it came out, and although normally i devour murakami's novels in 3 or 4 days, i couldn't care less about his inner thoughts regarding discipline and marathons and running and more running and travelling around the world etc etc... you get the point.
the funny thing is that i initially thought that by getting into this book then probably i would feel a little bit guilty for my non-athletic lifestyle... but noooooo! in fact this book made me lead a murakami-excluding path for my next choices. i had to read dance dance dance to get the old spark back.
anyway, the cool thing remains that murakami started running after he turned 32, so i guess i can store more chocolates untill then.
after my dearest friend lopi sent me as a gift mark haddon's curious incident, and after i devoured it in three days, i thought that the next step for me would be to go straight ahead to the bookstore and buy mark haddon's latest novel.
i have never finished reading the first page of it, but for some reason it seems like it's weighting more to the depressing side of the scale. i don't know if i am ready for this, even after 4 months. maybe i will give it as a gift to someone. or maybe i won't. i think i won't.
just a sucker for cool stuff. upon reading the plot of this side of paradise, after staring at the amazing title and thinking that "maybe this could be the entry point for me regarding f. scott fitzgerald" i just put my hand in my pocket. it was just two months after my incompetency regarding the great gatsby but still, for some reason i thought that i could stand up to this and read it.
of course i didn't, and i don't even know where it is. but the cover remains ultra amazing along with that "dover thrift editions" subtitle. these are the things, the little details that define me. or i just hope that someday they will...
these little details and my "on the verge to obsessive stupidity" behavioral patterns.
ok, for this i should be ashamed. but still, i bought it just before beginning my military service at the greek army, almost 3 years ago. and these were some hard times for me. during the time spent at the training camp i read many books, namely mostly murakami novels, woody allen's mere anarchy, kurt vonnegut's cat's cradle and more. but great gatsby was my first failing after a long series of "successes". i really tried to delve into it, but the language really didn't help. maybe me and classic american literature will never get along together. but i will keep on trying.
for some reason, i don't want to read a greek translation. so i will just wait for some months, considering that my english is improving a liiiittle bit day by day. or is it just my impression, and my next attempt on scott fidgerald, will lead to another (cosmic i should say) failure.
my dearest friend iosifidis kept praising to me the virtues of this book. me and george are big fans of milan kundera's writings, we both tried to read gravity's rainbow and failed, and on top of that, he is my fucking hero (i mean george), so i had to prove myself worth of this challenge. besides that, philip roth is one of the favorite woody allen authors, so i had some bonus motivation to read this book.
the bad thing was that i started reading this just after middlesex. the shock there was a big one, and for some reason i could not engage with the musings and misdemeanors of david kepesh. but i think that i could finish it one day.
i think i left it lying there after 50pages. which means something i guess. and apart from that, i can clearly recall myself enjoying it while reading it.
hmm, maybe i'll give it a try sometime soon.
in the next five years.
we went for a walk at a fnac with my girl, to buy middlesex for her. i saw the cover of rashomon, and i instantly thought: "what the heck, seems super cool. after all it's just short stories, i love short stories!"*
i just bought it without a second thought. japan+short stories+my girl in radius of 1 meter = 100 x coolness factor.
we went home. we laid in bed. i tried to start reading the first page. it seemed super boring. i haven't opened it since. it was november '09.
nice cover though.
*i don't. i just love haruki murakami's short stories. raymond chandler just lays there, unfinished.
i came back in barcelona after christmas, so hot on buying V. by thomas pynchon. i always had a problem with gravity's rainbow(that will be another post), so i thought "hey, maybe V. will clear things for me"
i didn't find V.
i bought david foster wallace's magnum opus.
the cover is amazing.
the book still looks total neat near my bed, with the bookmark still on page 5, after 3 months.
alright!
