I'll Be Seeing You

I should be doing something totally different (as usual) but I needed this time for writing and sharing my ideas. My financial situation is better not spoken about, and it's no use anyway, so let's just skip it. By luck I will have handed my tax documentation by this time tomorrow. I'm trying to be positive. I'm reading a very inspiring book, The Great Escape (in Hungarian: Kilenc magyar, aki világgá ment és megváltoztatta a világot) by Kati Marton. It's about nine very famous Hungarian Jews, who lived in the twentieth century, and created wonderful things, which are acknowledged world-wide, only nobody knows they were Hungarian. I'll deal with it in more details. Let's just state for the moment that they were much more persistent in following their dreams than me, and suffered a great deal, too.

I've read two books recently, of which I haven't written yet. The first one, Remarkably Jane by Jennifer Adams, I got for my namesday last Thursday. It is a collection of quotes on Jane Austen, made by critics, actors, writers, and others. The quotes are arranged according to topics, such as characters, sexuality, etc. It is a very beautiful book with ornamented pages, which reminds me of gift books. It could be a valuable source for an academic paper as well, you know, in need of a good quote you could just open it and find something sounding. My only problem is that it cannot be read properly, from page one to the end. I mean, how am I supposed to remember it? Another thing that struck me is the caption that it is the author's seventh book. I mean, to what extent can we call it her work? Surely she collected and arranged all these quotes, but her own text is about three pages long. What this book reminded me is to read more of Austen's work, and also The Jane Austen Book Club, as suggested by my soulmate blogger.
Book #22 this year was The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. The name came to me by accident. I'd read about a contemporary book that included Carter's name in the title, though I cannot remember what it was and how I found that. Anyway, I found this book at the library, and this is a true piece of jewel. Carter has a unique voice and a peculiar way of looking at the world. This is a very gothic world, which slightly reminds me of Poe's stories, especially "The House of Usher." 

Angela Carter


This book contains short stories which are remakes of classical stories, such as Bluebeard, Beauty and the Beast, Puss-in-Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, etc. In most of them the fable is interwoven with elements of the modern world. Some of the stories she revisited more than once, each time taking a different turn, and thus giving a new meaning to them. The naive beauty is a recurring character in her stories, but there is always some twist to it, e.g. the victim becomes the aggressor etc. Probably my favorite one is "Puss-in-Boots." It is narrated by the cat himself, who has a very good sense of humor and a material attitude towards the world. The story is about conquering the wife of a mean old man, which reminds of Boccaccio's novellas.
I'll be back with a list of English vocab taken from The Time Travellers Wife, though I don't know when. I have to keep busy.