blogwaitingforthewords-blog

[blogwaitingforthewords-blog]

Today I baked jam drops for the first time in ages! I finished reading the first of the short stories in the collection, then I started reading a different book. I like to break up short story collections like that. The book I’m reading now is 90 Packets of Instant Noodles by Deb Fitzpatrick. It’s set in Western Australia, and you can really tell from the way everyone speaks. I went for a walk down town to deliver some jam drops to my dad at work, and on the way there and back I read 70 pages, so it’s quite a light read. Also, it was absolutely scorching! Not quite drop dead hot, but it the tar on the road was getting a little bit shiny and sticky. You can’t not love Australia in January. (In the photo, my little brother insisted on doing a heart).

[blogwaitingforthewords-blog]

Firelighters

The first part of a short story by me.

   Holding my breath, I strike the match against the coarse side of the box. I exhale disappointedly as, again, the weak little home-brand stick snaps, but still - again - I light it with my fingertips nearly touching the flaming head. Wincing, I drop it into the fire. I mean, it’s not a fire yet, but it will be. Eventually.

  Feeling just a tiny bit stubborn, I pull out another match and drag it against the box. Oh good, it’s lit without snapping this time. Gently, I lower and hold it in the middle of my messy pile of long dead pine needles and slightly damp twigs. Yes! Is it catching?! No. No, it is not.

  The pine needles are littered with some half burnt, some snapped and some barely blackened matchsticks. It looks precisely how a campfire absolutely shouldn’t look. Maybe it’s time to give up. I really shouldn’t waste any more matches. Or have used this many in the first place.

  So, for the fifteenth (or thereabouts) time, I ready the match for lighting.

  An icy drop falls from a tall gum that’s dangling its branches high above my head and lands on my poised hand.

  Suddenly, I hear everything around me. The birds singing to the world their morning wake up call: honeyeaters in the trees to my left, the leaves glowing emerald in the rising sun; thornbills twittering down by the river; treecreepers somewhere behind me. Water rushing over the stones in the shallowest parts of the river, steady and unchanging. People snapping twigs at the campsite around the bend.

  Although this is a place we come to often on day trips, the last time I actually camped here was when I was about twelve, and the others had stayed home so it was just Dad and I. It must have been around November or December, because the weather was warm enough to swim, but there weren’t any fireflies. I spent ages floating around in the deep pool between two sets of rapids, laughing and clinging to a long, flat piece of wood that I had found. Do not judge me for this, but I named my driftwood “Magpie”. Why? I have no clue.

[blogwaitingforthewords-blog]

Took a day trip to the coast with my family. This picture is one I took while I was reading by the Nymboida River, where we stopped on the way home. I’ve finally started reading The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories that I got for my birthday. It’s really good so far. One of my favourite things in the world is to see places that I’ve been to mentioned in books. The main character in the first story, The Story of Tomoda and Matsunaga by Tanizaki Jun’Ichirō, stays in Nara, which is a beautiful little town near Kyoto with deer walking around the streets. When I was there, my friends and I were approached by elementary students and asked questions about our favourite Japanese foods.

[blogwaitingforthewords-blog]

I finished my second book of the year last night! (Well, very early this morning). And I loved it so much! I usually don’t like to watch a movie before I read the book, but I watched it at a sleepover with friends before I even knew there was a book. I’m so pumped to read the next one!!!

[blogwaitingforthewords-blog]

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde - Review

The classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde blew my mind. The good bits, the bad bits - all of it had my brain running in constant overdrive. Perhaps a large part of that is the fact that I’ve read few of the classic genre in the past. Even if that is the case, I can not ignore the fact that there were so many concepts that required heavy thought.

First of all, Lord Henry Wotton was a walking encyclopedia of paradoxes and controversial ideas if ever I saw one. He seriously took every single opportunity he was given to spout his opinion on every topic under the sun, giving the reader (or myself, at least) whiplash trying to work out what on earth any of this has to do with the story. Of course, thinking about it now I see that it was mostly - aside from the bits where what he says literally makes the whole story - just character development: building Lord Henry’s reputation as a man who manipulates anyone with ears, and who cares nothing for society, or for what is good. Lord Henry is definitely the most interesting character in this book, and possibly among the most interesting I’ve encountered in any book. I was going to do some perusal of the internet on what other people thought of the personality and intentions of Lord Henry, but after seeing the suggested searches that popped up I decided to not press enter. “Is Lord Henry the devil?” “Is Lord Henry the antagonist?” “Is Lord Henry evil?” All of those questions are kind of exactly what I have been wondering since around about chapter eight. “I have never seen you really and absolutely angry, but I can fancy how delightful you looked,” he says to Dorian on page 100. These are the words of a man who feels no emotion but pleasure, and had me thinking “psychopath.” Something else that made me wonder if he were a psychopath is that love and art are both a recurring theme to his ramblings. On pg. 28, he claims that they are “both simply forms of imitation.” The way speaks of love and other similar things is always from an observer's perspective, or like that of an elderly person, one who has experienced so much and no longer lives and feels. So, perhaps Lord Henry is a psychopath, or perhaps he is the evil devil antagonist. Or maybe he is good. What do you think?

Artist Basil Hallward is another central character who has a significant impact on the story. He is the one who paints the famous picture of Dorian Gray, and who Dorian blames for the way his life went off the rails. However, unlike Lord Henry, Basil appears quite innocent, and I can’t think of many reasons to say otherwise. Everything he did he did with Dorian’s best interest in mind.

All in all, I think I would rate this book a whole four stars. The main reason, and I know this isn’t fair, is because of how tedious just one point was, when Wilde was writing about Dorians interests. I recommend it to you if you want to do some questioning of your own moral views.

[blogwaitingforthewords-blog]

“The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself...”

Lord Henry in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray