queerbychoice | Birthday Presents!

I have birthday presents! Every present I received is a book, except for one (or possibly two, if you count the cat vomit splattered all over my carpet as my birthday present from Stardust). They are not Harry Potter, though. Everyone is much too crazy over Harry Potter. I mean, I'll read the new book eventually, probably even within the next month or two, but all this desperation to read the book immediately on the first day it's released is just silly. And as for the people refusing to go near the Internet at all right now for fear of spoilers: They are right that finding out the ending probably would totally ruin their enjoyment of the book, but in my opinion, this says a lot about how bad the book is. Nobody complains that knowing the ending of Moby Dick ruined the book for them. They might like Moby Dick or they might hate Moby Dick, but knowing the ending ahead of time has nothing to do with it. Personally, I liked Moby Dick a lot more than I've liked any of the Harry Potter books, and this difference is why.

(And no, I will definitely not post any Harry Potter spoilers even when I do eventually obtain the book, so stop worrying already. They are not interesting enough to merit writing about!)

Anyway, here are the books I did receive for my birthday:

Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 by Vera Brittain
Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Sound of the Mountain by Yasunari Kawabata
A Fisherman of the Inland Sea by Ursula K. Le Guin
Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche by Haruki Murakami
I Am a Cat by Natsume Soseki
The Fur Person by May Sarton
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind
The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki
Sexual (Dis)Orientation: Gender, Sex, Desire and Self-Fashioning by Tamsin Wilton

The one non-book I received was the CD Counterfeit² by Martin L. Gore. I long ago ceased to be anywhere near as crazy about him as I was in my teenagehood, but I will say this for him: His voice is still very beautiful, and it is definitely not his fault that his cover version of the song "Stardust" on this album is currently strongly associated in my mind with cat vomit.

The cat was purring happily and apparently perfectly recovered by the time I returned home from my parents' house, as indeed cats usually do seem to be whenever they have just finished splattering their insides all over a bedroom. Hopefully she won't be due for her next round of vomiting for another several months now. (Going longer than that without vomiting seems to be too much to expect of a cat. Or at least of this cat.)

I do kind of wonder whether my being away all evening at my parents' house immediately after having been away all day at work caused this round of massive vomiting, because she's made it very clear long before this that she hates being left alone for long time periods. In the future, I need to find a way to communicate the concept of "birthday" to her.

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I remember enjoying The Fur Person a lot (as well as others of May Sarton's books - hopefully you'll also like it ! and Happy belated Birthday to you

What I'm saying is that they are of a type that in my opinion is not as good; in other words, no matter how many other people may like that type, I don't like that type. :p Harry Potter books tend to make people unable to put them down, and people who are normally unable to finish books because they hate reading are therefore able to finish them, and conclude that the books must be good since they were able to finish. But I am able to finish most non-suspenseful books comfortably, being motivated to read by my admiration of the beautiful sentences and profound revelations about life rather than by having a suspense-carrot dangled in front of me the whole way. So when Harry Potter books tease me with carrots and demand that I not put them down for one second until the end even though the sentences are not beautiful and the meaning is not profound at all, I end up reading them at a thoroughly uncomfortable pace (being unable to do anything else whatsoever for 24 hours until I finish) and then feeling totally unsatisfied at the end. Like someone offered me something that looked like a delicious meal and I ran 20 miles to reach it and then it turned out to be just a sculpture of a delicious meal made out of solid flour dyed with food coloring, technically edible but so far from being a masterpiece that I really can't forgive the person who interrupted my life so severely for something so disappointing.

Thank you!

If you've not seen it, Kon Ichikawa's film of The Makioka Sisters is also wonderful.

nice list of books! :)

quick question about the CD - it's Martin Gore from Depeche Mode, yes? I know, I should know it is or not, but my memory sucks sometimes.

And the song Stardust, who's the writer/composer?

Sorry to hear about the cat vomit, btw, nothing quite like waking up and finding a little 'present' on the rug... mine did that to me last week.

Nobody complains that knowing the ending of Moby Dick ruined the book for them.

Because so few people actually enjoyed reading it :)

I don't mind spoilers myself, and certainly knowing the ending of Harry Potter didn't spoil it for me. But I suspect that reading Moby Dick would have been awful for me even if I had known the end. As it was I spent the book wondering if it actually had an end.

I loved Vera Brittain's book; such a novel perspective on what is (unsurprisingly) such a male-dominated field of history. Enjoy!

I actually really liked it. I hadn't expected to like it, because I'd grown up hearing my mother incessantly describe it as the most horirbly boring book ever. But I liked it!

Yes, it's that Martin Gore. "Stardust" is written by David Essex.

Oooh, I just read 'I am a Cat' - it's lovely but a bit hard going in places - great for cat lovers though!!

WOW! I can't believe how many books you got. It's like you have a retainer at Amazon. Very impressive. I read the Rwanda book, but none of the others. Although I did see the movie "Perfume."

Now, back to my Harry Potter...

Moby Dick is brilliant. Have you ever read any of Herman Melville's other novels? (Probably you have, if your birthday reading list is any indication!!)

Hmmm, I am intrigued by I Am a Cat. Rabid cat-person that I am, I am intrigued by a furst-purrson narrative. May have to check it out.

=^..^=

Another of my gifts, The Fur Person by May Sarton, is also all about a cat.

Only his novella Billy Budd. Is there another one that you'd particularly recommend?

Happy birthday!

*******************HUGS*******************************

Oh and lucky YOU! Yer bday fell on international cat spew day. Our cat Ash apparently knew all about it too......he left LOTS of hairball vomit around yesterday in celebration :)

Maybe he was trying to remind me it was your bday?

ANyhoo, much love to you!!!!!! I hope you had a GREAT day. OH and YAY that your car is safer and BOO that it cost that much to make it safe!

What an interesting assortment of books! And belated happy birthday! I'm feeling a bit...dismayed at the thought that I'm now in my early 30s, and have responded by having all my hair cut off (actually, I had every intention of having it cut off well before the post-birthday dismay set in!). Anyway, I hope that you're feeling more zen about your advancing years!

Typee and Redburn are excellent!

Birthday Presents!

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HAPPY BELATED DING DANG BDAY!!!!

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