Booki wooks.

Me n Ant are going to get back into reading. I've decided I'm gonna work my way through some of the more subversive allegorical writers that I don't know, and for the sake of it I was thinking of working through the Nobel laureates. This was started with me starting to watch Blindness last night when I'd heard that it's an epidemic story but with allegorical meanings underlying. I was worried it might be like our project, which, if we do it right, should be the sort of allegorical work that fits nicely into genre, where the story plays on one level as a realistic and somewhat plausible narrative of an unusual situation, but has underlying layers of deeper metaphor and meaning to be considered and applied to your life upon more extensive thought. Like Inception or Moon, only not as awesome. Little did I know Blindness is not a film with a plausible narrative but cleverly weaving some minor threads of allegory into it but a deeply subversive and intensely allegorical piece dealing entirely with the human condition, powerfully overlaying any concern with plausibility of realism in order to lambast you with the power of its emotional experience. As well as magical realism, but I won't comment of that because, frankly, I'm not completely sure I know what it is. Anyhoo, I suddenly felt pretty stupid I'd never heard of the book.

So, we are reading books. Ant is going to read House of Leaves, primarily because it's my favourite book and I like to claim that it is such an incredible experience that it made me stop reading fiction novels because I had found my ultimate favourite book ever. In reality it might have had something to do with the fact I was sick of how much fiction I was reading at the time and it was a great excuse to stop altogether; I had developed this habit of reading about two or three books a week, but also a horrible habit of not stopping if I liked a book, so that I would stay awake to finish no matter how long that took. This naturally screwed my schedule and sleep patterns quite a bit, and added to that that often the book I was enjoying would end up being very substandard by the end I'd feel like I'd screwed up my schedule for nothing, n started thinking I should stop the hobby altogether since 9 out of 10 books wouldn't have felt worth it afterwards. In keeping with that this will be a novel experience to be me, no pun intended, to start reading again, since its been about 10 years since I read fiction novels regularly. In the intervening years I've read maybe four, five novels, either because they are Palahniuk books or they were one of Ant's favourites. Hence why Ant is reading House of Leaves. Then Glamourama.

Me, I'm starting with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, then I might try The Stranger and The Plague again, since I stopped reading them only out of inconvenient life issues, like a family member telling me on the phone for five hours a day how close they are to killing themselves, for eight months. Then I might try Celine again, though I'm not sure I'm going to like his stuff no matter how appropriate to my tastes it might seem. Then maybe Lust, The Time of The Hero, Conversation in the Cathedral, The War of the End of the World, The Crucible, The Coming of Age (which I had on my shelf at one point but now it appears to have gone for a walk), The Blood of Others, When Things of The Spirit Come First, Cancer Ward, Humboldt's Gift, An Enemy of The People, Tinkers, Tertullian's Apology, When We Dead Awaken, Brand, Peer Gynt,  any juvenalian satire you can think of, and some Pinter. For a start.