Current Read 3: Elphame's Choice

"We are the soul of woman
A wondorous gift
Both rich and knowing
In praise we lift!"

With the word lift the women raised their arms to the domed ceiling and spun, humming the melody together. The silky clothing they wore drifted around their bodies like falling leaves, framing them in shimmering rays of changing light. All of the women were smiling, as if they were taking part in an event filled with such wonder that it was impossible to contain within them, and the happiness came spilling out of their bodies. ..."

Current Read 2: Cannery Row by John Steinback

" Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine caneeries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said. "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody.

Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and how he would have meant the same thing. ... "

- Steinback

Current Read: Poetry: The Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

Love Letter by Sylvia Plath

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just tow me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.

That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chisled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheeks of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I was was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mice-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, and arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

Current Read 1: Noonshade By James Barclay

My tale on the short story, 'Our Lady of the Massacre' by Angela Carter

Angela Carter's collection " Black Venus " has been a plunge into the world of feminism largely combined with patriarchy and the supposed justification of colonization. 'Our Lady of the Massacre' ( the third story in this collection) reverts around the identity of a naivete girl under her English mistress whose journey then proceeds as a plantation worker in Virginia and her escape to the Indian community which she stumbles upon accidentally, finally back again to be captured by the white masters. As I read through, what shined out weren't the literary contours rather it was her prose, her language that made everything just come of some imaginary sharp edge. As I read fiction, a single story of carter turns out to be my doze of literary theory for the day.

Take 11!

Why should books not be treated as everyday objects, as necessary and as available as socks and tea?

— Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading

My Blessing To All Those People Who Can't Live Without Books...

The Last Few Words ...

Ever since I've known how to read I've always treated books more as teachers than friends. Their voice has always assumed a superiority above my own. But something happened yesterday afternoon. Something that I've never experienced all this while with books. The book I finished last was still echoing its few words very subtly in my unconscious. I went up to my shelf, opened it up and got the book out. At the last page of the book I wrote down a few words of my own. The journey then became a new beginning from an old end. My  voice was now added to the book's. My tiny shadowy footsteps through the pages disappeared into its spine. The conversation continued with those few freshly written words and now I await the answer.

My First Ever Reading Lamp : Courtesy my Best Friend

** It was the most unexpected and the most beautiful friendship day gift I've ever received. The minute I was at home, at night, I very purposefully switched off all my bedroom lights, arranged my pillow just so, and started reading under it. Bliss! **