Alavi Anan Meem
Almost every time I drop acid (something I've come to associate with clarity), I find myself returning to my favorite poem from “The Great Fires,” the book of poetry I cherish the most in the world.
Then, in a frenzy, I try to decode its meaning for unsuspecting strangers, wildly gesticulating toward any bonfire unfortunate enough to be nearby and exclaiming, “Can't you SEE the WOOD”, desperately hoping they'll catch my drift before I set the whole place on fire.
In the 1970s, the poet Jack Gilbert lived in Japan with his partner, the sculptor Michiko Nogami. Tragically, Ms. Nogami succumbed to cancer in 1982. In her memory, Gilbert wrote “The Great Fires”, a collection that meditates on the decade following his beloved wife's passing, offering stark and lyrical poems that portray grief, and the love from which it stems, as enduring physical burdens. Grief, like fire, represents the bare bones of love, persisting after the passage of time and the trials of life have stripped it down to its essence.
My dog-eared copy of this book is one of my most treasured possessions because, among all the words I've encountered, Jack Gilbert's poetry comes closest to capturing the language of love as I experience it, which, almost coincidentally, is the language of grief.
Here it is:
“We think the fire eats the wood.
We are wrong. The wood reaches out
to the flame. The fire licks at
what the wood harbors, and the wood
gives itself away to that intimacy,
the manner in which we and the world
meet each new day. Harm and boon
in the meetings. As heart meets what
is not heart, the way the spirit
encounters the flesh and the mouth meets
the foreignness in another mouth. We stand
looking at the ruin of our garden
in the early dark of November, hearing crows
go over while the first snow shines coldly
everywhere. Grief makes the heart
apparent as much as sudden happiness can.”
She had been following the advice of charlatans, who had the impertinence to speak for their own creator.
Throw in a few conspiracy theories, a professor, and a gasp, how original murder to set it off, and you've got Angels and Demons. This book might as well have been written for children, it has no emotions, no sentiments or gut reaction or humanity. It's a thriller, and like all thrillers it's fast paced and explosive and chilling but it just HAS. NO. HEART. Angels and Demons isn't great literature, but I don't always want to read great literature. Sometimes I just want a GOOD READ (lame, I know) and Angels and Demons was entertainment at it's most bookish form. :D
Sidney Sheldon's books served as my gateway into an adult world — teeming with power, money, ambition, betrayal, revenge, madness, greed, lust — themes which simultaneously captivated and repelled me. Despite their inclusion for cheap thrills, they formed the cornerstone of page-turning stories.
Master of the Game, an epic saga spanning three generations, remains etched in my mind. Its cartoonishly evil characters and their web of corruption have stayed with me. Though flawed, it embodies the essence of what a thriller should be, culminating in a conclusion where no one emerges unscathed.
Sheldon's exploration of success's price and the corrupting nature of power was simplistic enough to spark introspection in my teenage self. Master of the Game was a formative reading experience, so whenever someone asks me for a thriller recommendation, it is the first book that springs to mind as its ability to linger in my memory, with every horrifying detail still vivid, sets it apart from the rest.
I WANT MY BRAIN CELLS BACK. This book . . . I can't even . . . it's SHEER MINDFUCK. Like, when I read:“Okay, and what do I get out of this?”He shrugs and looks almost apologetic.“Me,” he says simply.” And this turns women on. MY INNOCENCE. I'm only...I'm sixteen. I shouldn't have read this. No, sir. Just . . . no. My faith in Erotica has been destroyed forever. Oh, Christian Fifty Shades of I Don't Have A Bad Enough Word For You Grey. You know what? It doesn't matter if you're sexy and enigmatic enough to have slept with 20 willing women. It doesn't matter if you're so filthy rich your (apparently prodigious) dick is made of pure gold. YOU DON'T MAKE ME HOT, YOU SICK FUCK. As you can see, these two piss me off. Christian and Anastasia are Edward and Bella all over again. You know, the “He's a prick but she doesn't deserve even him” thing S. Meyer had going. Copied to perfection.P.S Someone just told me this is a fan fiction of Twilight. So that's why. I should have known.I kept screaming at her to WAKE THE FUCK UP. The relief I felt when she finally ran was . . . it was beyond words.I don't have a problem with the sex. I'm not going to run away screaming just because it has S&M. But this was supposed to be erotic. Only, the thing is, it's not. It was just raw sex. Not arousing. I'm a feminist, but I can admit that the idea of giving in makes me hotter than the idea of being a dominatrix all decked out in leather. So I can relate to Ana there, although I don't really want the Fifty Shades of Grey submission fantasy some of you go for.But the rest?“Oh, My.” “Inner goddess.”“You could still run for the hills. Come, I want to show you my playroom.” “He reaches between my legs and pulls on the blue string...what! And...gently pulls my tampon out and tosses it into the nearby toilet.”“Never trust a man who can dance. “And lastly, (sorry if I missed any), but why is there such parody galore of this travesty of a book? [b:Fifty Shades of Gay 13578663 Fifty Shades of Gay Lola Swain https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333590356s/13578663.jpg 19162324][b:Fifty Shades of Gravy 13644951 Fifty Shades of Gravy Jenny Ric https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337016128s/13644951.jpg 19261557][b:Fifty Shades of Beige 13643699 Fifty Shades of Beige (Book One of the Fifty Shades Parody) Reid Mockery https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336668997s/13643699.jpg 19259352][b:Fifty Shames of Earl Grey 14060248 Fifty Shames of Earl Grey (Fifty Shames #1) Fanny Merkin https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337500200s/14060248.jpg 19697036][b:Fifty-one Shades: A Parody 13548945 Fifty-one Shades A Parody (First Three Chapters) Andrew Shaffer https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1331909924s/13548945.jpg 19114585][b:Fifty Shades of Marker 15705643 Fifty Shades of Marker (Book Two of the Fifty Shades Parody) Reid Mockery https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1339694237s/15705643.jpg 21368589][b:Fifty Shades of Silver Hair and Socks 13647865 Fifty Shades of Silver Hair and Socks (Fifty Shades of Silver #1) Phil Torcivia https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336933815s/13647865.jpg 19266437][b:Fifty Shades of Garbage 14624297 Fifty Shades of Garbage (A Parody) Allie Beck https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1365724440s/14624297.jpg 20268242][b:Fifty Shades of Gary the Vampire: Anais's Sin 14742214 Fifty Shades of Gary the Vampire Anais's Sin (Book 1) Sabrina Swan https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338447518s/14742214.jpg 20389653][b:Fifty Shades of Twilight 15715472 Fifty Shades of Twilight (A Very Naughty PARODY) Secret Anonymous https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340276622s/15715472.jpg 21384897][b:Fifty Shades of Black and Blue 14287981 Fifty Shades of Black and Blue I.B. Naughtie https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1337705164s/14287981.jpg 19927145][b:Fifty Shades of Pink: A Parody 14741753 Fifty Shades of Pink A Parody Faythe America https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338421652s/14741753.jpg 20388888][b:Fifty Shades of Grey and Zombies 15722328 Fifty Shades of Grey and Zombies Grey West https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1340658695s/15722328.jpg 21396318]It's enough to justify Ana saying, “Oh, my.”This is what I wanted to do to the book:
Check. Mate.
Ho-Lee Fuck. This is sexy, hardcore smut. Picture Perfect rocked me. It was erotic perfection.
What I liked:
The sex. THE SEX.
I'm a fan of unresolved sexual tension. And Kurt and Melanie had plenty.
The Kama Sutra positions. Just the idea of posing for a book of erotic pictures is HOT.
What I didn't like:
The cover. It's too direct. And not tempting enough.
The story. It was disappointingly flat. I wanted to care about Kurt and Melanie, but there was nothing to care about.
E. Anderson's faith in dirty words to see her through. It's not enough.
(I'll admit my review is biased because it was my first erotica. Also, I don't read erotica all that much.)
During my preteen years, my best friend began pretending to be a boy named Alex, spinning a story of being from a different religion but willing to convert for me. I never met Alex but we went on to text, on and off, for the next few years. I felt unlovable enough to happily embrace this delusion for a considerable length of time. When she confessed it was her all along, our friendship shattered, leaving me feeling embarrassed and betrayed. It would take me a decade more to see us both for the repressed and fanciful little girls we were, a revelation that lingers in my thoughts.In my early twenties, I came across “From the Land of the Moon” by Milena Agus. The simple story, where a young woman recounts her grandmother's life of arranged marriage, infertility, and solace in a passing romantic encounter with a veteran at a spa, only to unearth a hidden notebook after her death revealing that the affair had been almost entirely fictional, struck a chord. I saw myself in the grandmother's struggle, becoming aware of the absurdly thin and rather beautiful line between imagination and madness. It forced me to confront my own delusions, the consequence of a trauma similar to the one which prompted the grandmother's longing for compassion so intensely it drove her to imagine kindness into reality in its absence.These reflections resurface with greater frequency in my late twenties. Is it any wonder some of my favourite books growing up were stories of unrequited love, such as [b:Love in the Time of Cholera 9712 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644691354l/9712.SY75.jpg 3285349], [b:The Great Gatsby 4671 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490528560l/4671.SY75.jpg 245494], [b:Great Expectations 2623 Great Expectations Charles Dickens https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1631687432l/2623.SY75.jpg 2612809] and most recently [b:White Nights 1772910 White Nights Fyodor Dostoevsky https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1450699039l/1772910.SX50.jpg 4111509]? How many of us must hold onto such functional delusions to survive life?
I know exactly how Grete feels. I have a bug for a brother, too. =_=
Writers from Prague tend to leave indelible impressions on my mind. I'll admit it, I have a pro-Prague bias, I love all things European with the intimacy only a foreigner can achieve. Kafka and Kundera, they are inevitably infused with some of the magic of Prague. Their works are steeped in nuance, they play with overtones and instil their words with ambiguity. All stories are so inherently beautiful in their own right, the act of writing reviews often consist of little more than the cherry-picking of a few choice adjectives, and private, fragmentary reflections on the impotency of words that stubbornly refuse to convey to others the very emotions they provoke in us. The job of the modern writer, then, is to capture that elusive, transient feeling with their words, to bottle it and sell it. Kafka sells despair, but a subtle form of hopelessness that uses the theme of alienation from the rest of the world to express itself. Leaves you just as, if not more, utterly devastated by the end.
