I Capture the Castle

Definitely recommended!

It is seldom that I find a book that keeps me coming back because of a compelling narrator. It can be the tone or the plot or the language, but it is unusual to find a really compelling narrator. But however seldom it is, I have now found one. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith is a first-person narrative, and Cassandra, the narrator, is really nice, and I found that while I was reading the book, I just wanted to get back to it to spend time with her. And now I actually miss her. It makes me sad that I won't ever hear new words from her in my head.

The book is written as a series of journals spanning about a year in Cassandra's family's life. They live in a castle, and Cassandra sets out meaning to capture each member of the family and their lives. Events that reveal the characters roll along, and most of the characters go though change, large or small. The story is told subjectively, but the narrator is so awesome that I don't mind being inside her mind at all.

The style is easy, and the images and metaphors are good, and used sparsely. I caught myself wishing that I could be friends with Cassandra - and it almost felt like I was while reading the book. Of all the characters I have ever encountered in books, she is one of my favourites (I could never choose between friends). Her journey is really remarkable, she really grows up during this book, making it a coming of age story. But she manages to go through all of it without loosing herself at all, and I find that impressive.

I Capture the Castle gave me inspiration to write more in my own journal. I write much more now than I did before. Earlier this year, I bought myself a fountain pen, and I LOVE writing with it in my paperblanks journal. My expenses related to writing has gone up, given the increased rate at which I go through journals (what used to take more than a year to fill, now takes only three to four months) and how often I have to change the ink cartridge (about once a week). But I think it's worth it. I am now putting many of my thoughts into writing, and it really helps me to sort through them.

Awesome Lizzie Bennet Diary!

This is becoming quite a long blog post, but I have one more thing I want to say. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is nearing its conclusion, and they have finally released a diary to go with it! So that will definitely be my next journal - I am hoping for it as a birthday present. I just hope that the pages are thick enough to avoid bleed through from the ink (I guess changing ink colour to cyan would help a little, but I prefer black).


I really hope the next adaptation the LBD team decide to do isn't far away, because I don't know how I will cope without my Lizzie fix.

No milk today

I am sitting here at my kitchen table. As usual here in England, it is raining. For the first time in a long time, the weather corresponds to my mood. Yesterday evening, my love (I still call her that - I still love her) decided to leave me. She packed her bags and left. Just like that. She left the kingdom where she had reigned as queen, and she left me behind. So now I sit here, staring out at the rain, thinking of the sodden note outside my door - No milk today. The empty bottle from yesterday is standing lonely beside it. The people who pass my nondescript door don't know the significance of this little note - it seems a common enough sight. How could they know that this message means the end of my all hopes and dreams? How could they know how good things were only yesterday, and how much everything has changed?

We had wonderful parties, dancing through the night. Everyone was  happy, and I was probably the happiest of them all. As the music played, we danced faster and faster, swirling in each other's arms. We looked into each other's eyes, and we could both feel the spark becoming a flame. From that our romance just escalated. The fire burned higher and higher, fueled by the milk she was constantly drinking. She had no good explanation of this peculiar behaviour - she just said that she liked it. And I loved kissing away her milky mustache, so I didn't complain.

Now, I can't help but think of her when I see a milk bottle. And all that is left is this place, dark, empty, and lonely. I sit behind the lace curtains of the kitchen in my terraced house and peek out into the awful street outside. But this horrible, dark, lonely place becomes a shrine when I think about my love. It reminds me of the things we did together, and I remember my love for her. My little terraced house is just a two up two down, but still it can rise so high and fall so hard.

So, milkman, I will have no milk today - my love has gone away. The empty bottle on my doorstep is a symbol of the dawn after the endless party-night. Of waking up to reality after the fairytale dream world of the night. All that is left is this dark and lonely place where I sit staring out at the rain, and will probably be doing that for quite a while.

This is my interpretation of the song No Milk Today by Herman's Hermits. I have taken liberties with the story line, and this is strictly my interpretation. I do not pretend to know the true meaning of the song. Listen to the song below.

Snail mail

I recently started exchanging letters with some of my friends - real, pen and paper letters. With a stamp on an envelope. It is actually quite a different experience from communicating over the internet, via chat or e-mail. And definitely different from skype or telephone. When you don't send it just by clicking a button (or enter), you think more about what you write. And you can add other cool things, like illustrations and drawings, not only emoticons. When I sit down to write a letter, I find I am so used to using emoticons to express myself using the written word that they sometimes sneak in. I think this is a testament to how much more (and more often) I write on computers than on paper when communicating with someone else through writing.

Writing a letter is a bit more challenging than just writing a note or a short e-mail. It is a relatively slow process, and you have to think about what you are writing and form it into a coherent structure with sentences, paragraphs, beginnings, and ends. At the same time, I like to write informal letters - letters where you just write down whatever you think about at that time and answer the questions from the letter you receive. That way, you become closer friends, by getting a piece of that person's mind at many different points in time.

It is lovely receiving letters, and you get more letters if you send more letters - that's my understanding of things, anyway. Actually, exchanging letters is kind of magical. Suddenly, collecting the post becomes exciting - has he or she written today? So, if you want some more excitement, awesome and lovely things in your life - start exchanging letters with a friend! Don't just hope you'll happen to be online at the same time on facebook, do something about it! Or get a pen pal, maybe from an exotic country or another culture. That way, you will learn about a new culture at the same time as making new friends! The postage does cost some money, but personally, I think it's worth it.

Brio and creativity

Word of the week: Brio - enthusiastic vigour, or great energy and confidence. (Merrian-Webster online dictionary)

I think I need a little more brio in my life. Some zest in the things I do. I am really feeling the autumn coming with shorter, colder days, and after a busy weekend catching up with old friends and getting new ones, I feel I need something that will energize me. Enthusiasm in what I do is often essential to give me that extra push through the boring everyday tasks.

Lately I have had this feeling that I want to create something - be creative. But I have so much to do, and I know that ideas don't come unless I invite them in. So I just go around trying out different mediums to express myself creatively, and try to feed my addiction to creating. It is a bit weird to have these periods where I just want to create something all the time, although I have few ideas, just a nagging feeling.

Random bad drawing of a giraffe
with broken legs (I'm bad at drawing legs)
in front of a Kilmanjaro I wish had that much snow on it's peak.
The original random line became the giraffe's back and neck.

I feel like when I suppress my need to express myself creatively long enough, it just bubbles to the surface like this, giving me this distracting need to do something - anything - creative. As I said, I don't have many concrete ideas, but often, if I just start creating something random (like drawing a picture of a giraffe  eating from a tree in front of Mount Kilmanjaro - from one random line), it's like I unclog the pipes, and the creativity starts flowing again. Not very well at first - frequent blockages are usual - but creativity, like so many other things, improves with frequent usage and practice.

I would really like to keep my creative side honed and ready on demand, but so often I don't have the capacity and energy needed. It's yet another facet of my life that I have to fit in and balance correctly with all the other important things. But my comfort is that I doubt I can destroy my creative side. It will always be there, just sometimes buried deeper than other times. The tubing will there, it just needs some periodic maintenance or a thorough cleaning to work again.

Books read: 45
Pages read: 12971

PS: Since I write this blog partly (or maybe mainly) to keep my creative side awake, I will be posting some of the written things I create here. Mostly, poems go on this blog, while photos go on tumblr. My output for the latter isn't very big, so don't expect much original content over there on tumblr (but you can still find funny, pretty, nerdy, book-related, nerdfightastic, and wonderful things here.)

The romp in the park

A beautiful morning in the whole of the nation, the hobbit awakened the princess. Diaries written that day tell that Matilda, the princess, decided to have a day of naked liberty in the park. Everyone thought it was a good idea, and also an event furthering the education of little Tree, which is what the twits of the town of the two towers called the mayor's son. The mockingjay was singing in the treetop, and the hunger games, a game to see who could eat the most, was well under way.

The big, fat general, or the BFG, as the fantastic Mr Fox had called him, was the judge of the competition, together with a golden mare. The general was wearing clothes the colour of magic, and was high on juice from the night before. The winner of the competition was therefore chosen by a horse, and the life of Pi (so called for being small and round) just became more interesting. Horsefeathers! he exclaimed as his hair was catching fire and he stood there with his prize. The fellowship of the ring (the fire brigade of the town) rushed him to the seventh well, which was the closest. Harry Potter and the deathly hallows, the master potter and the gardeners of the town, stood watching as all this was happening, ready to continue watering the plants (and guests), as they had been doing, without fault, for the last 3096 days.

The father of the princess, who had been researching fantastic beasts, and where to find them, was on his way home again. On his journeys he had met Charlie, and the great glass elevator (a fantastic transparent beast who was hovering behind him), and another Charlie, and the chocolate factory (a strange, multicoloured animal which regularly defecated the most wonderful chocolate). The return of the king was accompanied by the sound of music from an orchestra conducted by the great Gatsby, the best conductor in the country. The ceremonial 13 little blue envelopes of the city (for wealth and stability) were presented to the king, and the celebrations continued into the night.

Books read: 30
Pages read: 7969