Random stuff on account of not doing anything besides drinking

What does it say about me that this morning I had to check on the computer which weekday it was, but I was fully aware of the date?

What does it say about me that I have a brain melt (not a sandwich, and also not to be confused with a delicious brain taco) whenever the internet goes down, drink a bottle of wine and cry myself to sleep? I mean, I miss the hubby being here at home with me, but without internet I feel like I cease to exist. This is probably why I relate so well to julochka (who, according to the SA connotation of the word is a total babe, and also perhaps according to the American connotation, but that's not what I'm into). I can't but relate to her fear of going up in Chenin fumes if there's no 24h internet access.

Why am I on the verge of firing the maid again? Is it me after all? But, in my defense, she still did not understand what the wheels on the vacuum cleaner were for (she was carrying [and dropping] the thing) now that she finally understood that not only carpets are to be vacuumed. And I do think she is the explanation for my beat up toothbrush (Now keep another one underneath the sink. Yup. Paranoia).

What is this obsession that I have developed with sugar free chocolate? And yes, because I know you were wondering, it is in fact true what it says on the packaging: "Excessive consumption may have laxative effect".

Is it really possible to love a book as much as I love Junot Diaz's (this is allowed grammar nowadays) The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I don't want it to end, which is an awesome excuse for not reading it and hanging out on the internet instead. Yesterday afternoon was bad - without the web I was forced to read 120 pages. I feel sad, since I know Oscar croaks.

Why does coffee taste better from a big cup? It does. It really does.

Why am I effectually avoiding my flesh and blood friends? Have I inadvertently gone completely hermit? Is it possible to count giving the guy mowing your lawn a glass of water as a friendly encounter?

I think today I'll have to venture out into the real world and go have coffee at a friend's house. Enough is enough.

Edit: I realize that combining large amounts of laxative chocolate and going out might not be the sanest thing to do, but I'm going to give it a go nonetheless. Bear with me.

Dangerous reading - the attack of the more obscure classics

Since actually stepping out of the house for any extended periods of time might just be too overwhelming for my what in a week seems to have become a shut-in's psyche (Maybe I've spent too much time in the bathrobe and it has put in roots?), I've decided to create a deadline that will get me to doing something, instead of just compulsively refreshing several different sites. Hurrah for stuff to do, even if it is within the confines of this house.

Because I'm all about books now (uhm, one post?), and lists, I've decided to do this 'my year of reading dangerously' challenge. I realize that it is already May, and the year is almost halfway through, but what the heck, I'll get to reading some stuff I've been putting off - my ominous dust gathers that is.

Here they are:

• The book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow
  
• Concerning Violence by Frantz Fanon
  
• The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz
  
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
  
• Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
  
• Den Afrikanske farm by Karen Blixen
• A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
• Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
• The Courilof Affair by Irene Nemirovsky
• Traveller to the East by Thomas Mofolo
• The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing
• The Plumed Serpent by D.H. Lawrence
• The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

I really was going to get to them soon enough. Yup.

What do you mean vitamin-D?

The battle of the bricks

Or actually there really is no battle. 

Brick number 1, or the 'bad brick'

I have owned Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts for quite a while now, and have been wading through it at an uncommonly slow pace. It just seems that every time I pick it up it keeps getting worse. I am on page 200-something and the book is more than 900 pages. This might just be one of the very few books I will let go and happily never look back (unless I decide for some reason to read my own blog).

So what gives? Well, what some people refer to as 'one line philosophical nuggets' in this text drive me up the wall with their utter dimwittedness, or with the alarming rate at which the characters keep dropping these 'pseudo-philosophical tidbits'. And these are characters that are flat, stereotypical caricatures, the worst of which is the self-aggrandizing narrator - the alter ego of the author. The book is supposedly based on the author's exploits after fleeing the Australian legal system, which just brings everything further down a few billion notches for me. Roberts didn't even make this stuff up. He just churned out an embellished account of what happened in extremely bad prose. Be warned, if you do not like to rant about bad books leave this one on the shelf. 

On Goodreads, a book-enthusiasts' networking site, one reader, Paula, had this to say on Roberts' apparent need to tell instead of showing the reader: 

"Either Roberts doesn't trust his own writing capabilities and has to explain everything, in which case he is a bad author, or he doesn't trust his audience to draw their own conclusions, in which case he is a bad author."

Another reader, Jack, had this brilliant 'nugget' to drop about this 'book':

"It's only use is as a barometer: view anyone who enjoyed this with suspicion." 

As 'judge your neighbor by the books he or she reads' pretty much sums up my personal life philosophy, I could not have said it better myself.

Brick number 2, or the 'best brick ever'

I wonder why I have constantly shied away from Tolstoy's work. I remember reading Anna Karenina as a young girl, but the only thing that seems to have stuck from then is the plot. The reason for this could be that I was reading the book in Finnish, which is never a good idea if an option in any of the major languages is available. Finnish is a tough language, and unfortunately most 'non-Finnish' sentiments aren't easily expressed in this tongue. I know this as I fancied myself a future translator during the first half of my varied university career, also known as 'What will I ever do with my life' - the looong battle with education. None of my then classmates became prose translators and as far as I know none of them are reading books in Finnish, unless they were originally written in that language.

But I digress. I am currently a little under 200 pages into Tolstoy's War and Peace and I can't help but gush. This 1455 page (Signet Classics edition) book (I want to use a grander word. Is there one?) will very likely turn out to be the greatest book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. And it is translated from the original Russian, which just adds another mind blowing element to the text. It almost seems as if Tolstoy had in fact been writing in English. The book positively transcends the language barriers and captures the reader, even one who has no real understanding of (or possibly even interest in) 19th century Russia. Oh, gush, gush, and some more gush and glowing words. 

However, the truth with writing about this book is that there really isn't anything to add. This epic is part of the global literary canon and possibly the best novel ever written. The only thing left to say is that I pity the person who does not get the chance to read this book in their lifetime. 

I'm willing to lend out my copy once I'm done, which I suspect won't take that long. So expect a 'day-after-Christmas' post anytime soon, since that is definitely how I will be feeling when I'm done.