Favourite Sentences VIII

Butterflies sailed across the open field, and the air was tinged with the sweet smell of peaches and warm earth. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, letting the scents travel through my body. I was in the middle of an accidental kind of happiness that made me grateful for having a nose. 

From Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

Beth Hoffman

Page 234

It's summertime and joy on the page. I absolutely love the way that reading this made me feel.

Some of my favourite sentences: Part VII

And though the professional jargon didn't desert him - it's second nature - his prose accumulated awkwardly. Individual words brought to mind unwieldy objects - bicycles, deckchairs, coat hangers - strewn across his path. He composed a sentence in his head, then lost it on the page, or typed himself into a grammatical cul-de-sac and had to sweat his way out.

From Saturday 

Ian McEwan

page 11

Not only is this sentence wonderfully evocative, it captures how I feel on a bad thesis writing day. Sometimes it flows, other times it's an uphill battle. Just got to push through the pain!!

Some of my favourite sentences: Part VI

...and I was not immune to the power of that shimmering fiction that any citizen of an oppressive and aggressively nationalistic country will understand only too well: the magical unity conjured by the word we.

From Snow

Orhan Pamuk

page 393 

The Beeb banned Blyton??!

Enid Blyton

Image credit: Here

As a pint-sized bookworm I read whatever I could get my hands on but majority of what I cut my literary teeth on as a nipper were the many and varied works of the one and only Enid Blyton. I fantasized about being in the Secret Seven, I wished I went to school at a boarding school and I have a vivid idea of what Toffee Shocks, Pop Biscuits and Google Buns taste like. I absolutely worshipped Enid Blyton. 


So when I read this article on Stuff.co.nz I was agog. The BBC banned Enid Blyton?! Apparently it was because her books didn't "have enough literary value". Literary value? Seven year olds were reading this, not uni students! Her books were ripping good reads and gave many a child an outlet for their "let's get away from the parents and roam the moors" daydreams (or was that just me?) At least, according to the article, some of her work was eventually featured on the BBC - a mere 5 years before her death. It's a little too late but it's something, I guess. 


I suspect that if I were to revisit some of these childhood faves now they will have lost some of their magic (blast being an adult!) and apparently dear old Enid wasn't exactly the nicest person alive, but all the same. These books have shaped not only my childhood but the childhoods of millions of children all over the world.


Did you read Enid Blyton? If so, what was your favourite book/ series from her? Vote in the poll!


I'm throwing my hat in for Malory Towers. 

Image credit: Enid Blyton Society

'Kathmeista Weekly' Top Ten

Publisher's Weekly released their Top 100 list this month and as a result have created quite a stir due to a complete and total lack of women writers in their Top 10 list. This despite Hilary Mantel winning the Booker for Wolf Hall, A.S. Byatt being nominated for the same award and literary giant Margaret Atwood releasing a new novel in September. They claim a lack of bias, gender or otherwise. I raise my eyebrows in a skeptical manner and say "Oh really."

After listening to Books on the Nightstand last night I decided that it would only be right and fair, given my skepticism, to have good look at my shelves and see what, if any, bias lurked there. Actually, its more to measure the extent of the bias as I know right off the bat that I have a strong preference for women writers. Just how strong was what I wanted to know.

As it happens, my bookshelves comprise (currently) 125 books - not a huge number but then I live in a not-huge apartment in Taiwan, so bear with me. Of those books, 39% were written by men, 60% were written by women and 1% were written by women under male pseudonyms. A strongly biased sample, yes - because frankly, I don't think it's possible to avoid bias in literature. It all comes down to taste after all and if mainly men are picking the lists, then I'm not surprised if male authors are winning the top spots. If it were up to me, I'd end up picking an almost all-female cast. Perhaps the gender balance of the judging panel should be re-examined.

In any case - it's just a list after all. It's a matter of opinion. My Top Ten is below.... what are your top ten books on your shelves?

'Kathmeista Weekly' Top Ten from my shelf (not just 2009):

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
3. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
4. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
6. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
7. On Beauty by Zadie Smith
8. Perfume by Patrick Suskind
9. Look at me by Anita Brookner
10. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor

Some of my favourite sentences: Part III

I've been very re-miss on keeping this up to date, but that doesn't mean I haven't come across some fantastic turns of phrase, truisms or use of the English language.

One that I wanted to include here is not for its beauty but for how true it is. If you're a booky type like me, you'll know.

"Bookish people, who are often maladroit people, persist in thinking they can master any subtlety so long as it has been shaped into acceptable expository prose."

Carol Shields

Unless

Some of my favourite sentences: Part II

This particular gem comes from a New Zealand novel called Relative Strangers by Emma Neale.

"As soon as he got part way across the floor: iiirrrrr. He'd hit a floorboard that sounded like it was auditioning for a haunted house soundtrack." (138).

This one made me laugh out loud, I just love it. The sheer genius of it meant that I had to add it to my collection. More to follow...

That's just brilliant.

I've been reading Carol Ann Duffy's "The World's Wife" for one of my papers recently and came across what I believe to be my Poem of the Year. "The World's Wife" is a series of poems written from the perspectives of the female counterparts to a wide variety of famous and infamous male personages. It's a great read, thoroughly enjoyable, however my absolute favourite and one that has to be shared is this one.

Mrs Icarus

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, grade A pillock.


Ah the irreverence!! I adore it.

Some of my favourite sentences: Part I

Do you ever read a sentence in a book or a line in a poem and stop, your breath taken away by the beauty or resonance or truth of it? I know I take great delight when I find these nuggets of pure literary gold, so I have decided to gather them all together in one place so others can appreciate them too. Here are a few of my favourite sentences/lines/phrases:

"A gossamer blanket of coal dust floated down like a dirty blessing and gently smothered the traffic."

From God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (p.86)


"Then a pair of taxis went head to head in a distant country so suddenly I didn't see the difference but it was a wide white threshold."

From 'a woman, a rose and what has it to do with her or they with one another?' by Michele Leggott in as far as I can see (p.36)


"I go to libraries because they are the ocean"

From 'perse' by Michele Leggott in as far as I can see (p.12)


More to follow...