On Beauty

Since I now have time abundant, I shall just pen down some of my thoughts on the books I've been reading. The first of which is, Zadie Smith's On Beauty.

It is by far, the most lovely book I have read (but I must qualify, I haven't really read that many books). I'm not really an active book critic and I don'texactly know what aspects of a book people usually look at. All this ignorance is sadly in spite of the fact that I took A level Lit and am supposedly, a more literary person. Just goes to show your education in school really counts for jack shit.

But I can only say that I really love the way Zadie Smith meticulously walks us through the intimacies of each character - their thoughts, their actions, their fears.. all so human! I especially enjoyed the way she deconstructed humanity through her words. She carefully layers thought and emotion and gives careful attention to every character until they seem so damn human, all with their failings and prides. She gives excellent insight into the projected and private images of her characters without being blatantly obvious. I like how she leaves your psychoanalyst mind to play it's tricks and infer into the foibles of every character. Her detailed poring into the minds of her characters may be mistaken for pedantic writing but I found all their musings wholly identifiable.

It made for a very good read. And I'm now moving on to Paul Coelho's The Alchemist. It seems pretty strange with the over simplicity of language and the stark child-likeness of the character portrayal. But I suppose it's supposed to be symbolic. I shall read on and see.

My list of books to read:
1) Paul Coelho's The Alchemist
2) Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (this I read in London when I was 15 but reading it in a foreign country did make it a bit strange and odd some how. So I'm going to read it again)
3) The Time Traveler's Wife
4) Graham Greene's The Quiet American
5) John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath (I tried reading this when I was 16. But I was utterly bored. I think my mind just wasn't capable at the time. Hopefully I'll do better this time.)

Yay. Reading is my new hobby.