it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live
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HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!!!!
I’ve been away from this blog one whole month.. wow. That’s…………lame. I want to come back. But things have been happening a lot lately I don’t know where to start. I’ll come back properly when I do know how to start. Until then, I hope our 2012 is gonna be awesome!
(In Response to Charles Warnke’s You Should Date An Illiterate Girl.)
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
Well, it turned out we haven’t evacuated yet. Nor will we, I think. The flood doesn’t seem to recede any time soon, only increase in height. In the meantime I have lost the will to blog about my life.
That’s why I’m introducing you to a newly created blog of mine: B’s Book Blog! I just felt like having it.. you know.
I figured when I’ve written a huge amount of reviews, I might use the blog as my portfolio to apply for a job. What job might that be? Hmm, I was thinking about a book reviewer in some newspapers or magazines. Anyway, no plan on that yet. I talked to Mom about it, and she said it’s a good idea. She also agreed with me that I should have written a lot of reviews before I take a chance at applying for anything, to save myself from disappointment and humiliation at being turned down because I don’t have enough work samples or something.
I myself have written until now only a small number of reviews, some of which shouldn’t even be called reviews, but rants instead. So I’m working on that, revising, defining, re-writing, reasoning, explaining… It’s actually a fun thing to do! I’m well aware that I’ve posted only4 reviews so far, but there are more coming soon!
Alright. I’m TRYING to stay calm but apparently it’s not working. We’re EVACUATING soon–the FLOOD is here. 1 meter high. I’m gonna be gone for I don’t know how long!!!!!!
GOODBYE for now!!!!!!!
This is very interesting. I never knew that size of books actually matter that much.
To break it down for future reference:
As for me, I don’t really care about size. What I care most is the quality of paper. I absolutely hate rough paper, the kind whose very pores and printing imperfections can be clearly observed when you look really closely. *cough*massmarketpaperback*cough* I love publishers like Picador and Macmillan. Yeah, I’m that obsessed meticulous. It’s because I keep all of my books, I don’t intend to ever sell them. So it’s really important that the paper lasts and doesn’t get all yellow and crispy over the course of 15 years or something. And then there’s the question of covers. Shitty covers–goodbye. Pretty covers–welcome. And the font. Font is really important. Bad + small fonts can ruin my will to continue reading. The safest bet for me is Times New Roman. I hate the font Harper Trophy publisher uses–I don’t know what it’s called. I like Penguins Classics font, though I hate its paper quality.
When it comes to paperback and hardcover, I almost always prefer paperback. It’s cheaper and lighter. But if it concerns books I seriously love, it’s hardcover all the way (like Harry Potter series).
Books can be something you can spend all day and night obsessing over, you know. I like to just sit there in front of my bookshelves and take it all in–the sight, the smell, the joy of having them around. It’s just delightful. I would take some books out and flip through them, checking for damage, and put them back in. I would re-arrange them monthly, or even every week, just for the joy of doing it. And when I’m in a bookstore, I like to take time choosing between editions. It takes as much art as science to make a decision, for it’s possible that each edition has both qualities that I like and dislike. For example, one edition with pretty cover might have ugly font face and inappropriate font size, whereas the other with acceptable to ugly cover design might come with excellent paper. See? It’s a difficult task that takes a lot of pondering and guts to make a decision.
Obsessive talking over. I’m going back to my current reading: Sammy’s Hill. The first chicklit book of the year 2011 (see how good I’ve done? This is the FIRST. And it’s about politics!)
PS. The author, Kristin Gore, is Al Gore’s daughter!
PSS. I just knew that the movie adaptation is on its way!
