September Wrap-Up and October TBR

Wow. This last month has gone so quickly. I've moved in to my new house and have spent the past two and a half weeks living with my housemates. We've gone out a couple of times as returners during freshers week, drunk a tad too much, danced a lot and had sing-along washing-up times. University started last week so I've been attending lots of first lectures and seminars too, as well as beginning to organise the creative writing society. Amongst all that crazyness there hasn't been loads of time for reading, I'm afraid, so this Wrap-up might look a little pathetic. But there you have it!

September Wrap-Up

The first book I read this month I finished in a couple of days when I was on holiday. The Taliban Cricket Club by Timeri N. Murari was incredible. Set in 2000 during the middle-end of the Taliban's reign of Afganistan, the book is based in fact (although the work itself is fiction), and follows the life of a young lady. Rukhsana hates life under the Taliban. They have forced her to give up her job, where a burkha and she cannot leave the house without a male companion. All she and her family want to do is find a way to escape Afganistan and get across the boarder to Pakistan and freedom. When they discover the governments decision to set up a cricket team, Rukhsana believes she has found her cousins way out. Having learnt cricket at university in Delhi, she vows to teach her cousins and help them escape. This book was a fascinating read about the lives of young women under brutal regimes. I was only young during the outbreak of the war in Afganistan and didn't really understand fully the Taliban and its laws. This was an eye-opening read for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it. 4/5

I also read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman whilst on holiday. The only other Gaiman book I'd read was Coraline and I hadn't really enjoyed it, but after hearing him on BBC Radio 3's Arts and Idea's podcast I thought I'd give him another go. I enjoyed this book - or rather collection of interconnected short stories which follow the life of a boy growing up in a graveyard - and gave it 3/5.

The final book I read this month was A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. This book is a lot more enjoyable than it sounds. From the perspective of one of two feuding sisters, this is a surprisingly light read about family life. The father in this is both funny, infuriating and pitiable, the sisters well balanced and not caricatured, and the 'villian' both contemptible and lamentable. I wouldn't palce it in the top 1001 books you have to read before you die, but it's a nice little read. 3/5

And that, sadly, is it, which means I've read 941 pages this month. Which, it's fair to say, is a little bit disappointing after last months success. I did get halfway through The Life of Pi, however, and if I get the chance to finish that tomorrow or Monday I can add that to the pile!

October TBR

I'm not really sure what to put in this. Most of the book I'll be reading will be university stuff, but fingers crossed I'll get around to reading some other bits and bobs too!

As I said, I plan on finishing Life of Pi by Yann Martell in the next couple of days or so, and hopefully I'll also finish Vagina, a new biography too!!

The first of the novels I'll be reading for uni this month is Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. I have always wanted to read this, and am not really sure what it't about, so hopefully that'll be interesting.

The second novel I'll be reading is Gulliver's Travels  by Johnathan Swift. Again, despite going to Gulliver's Kingdom when I was little, I don't really know what this book is about. 

I think I'll leave it at that to be getting on with. Hopefully I'll get into a bit of a routine and I'll post more frequently again!

Best Wishes

xx

The Come Back Blog... Maybe....

Hello Munchkins! Sorry I haven't been around a lot  at all recently, but I've had a crazy amount of reading, essaying, module-choosing and general life stuff going on. So this will either be a very long post filling y'all in or a very short post that says ahhh so busy!

1) Reading. I've started doing a lot more reading outside my course, which is something I've been missing over the past 6 months or so. Every single book I picked up that wasn't on my course I'd end up feeling really guilty about and never completing, and although I enjoy most of my course books you get a totally different feeling when you read a book you want to read, rather than something you have to read. This left me in a bit of a reading rut, if you will, where I wasn't really enjoying reading at all because it felt like a task. I've never felt that way about reading before, and it made me a bit worried to say the least, especially considering my choice of degree. However, when the year started I set myself a goal on goodreads.com, so I'm trying to read 40 books this year. So far I'm on 10, including books for my course and (most importantly) a couple of other books I've picked up along the way, which I will be posting a review of shortly.

2) Essays. So I've had a couple of essays in since I last wrote, and have also got a mark back for one of them. I got a First!! I'm so ridiculously happy it's a little bit unreal. The only problem now is that now I know I can do it, I'm going to get really hard on myself if I don't carry on getting firsts. Which is a bit silly, as a 2.1 in your first year is frickin' good! But yay! Party time!!

3) Module Choosing. This was STRESSFUL. The actual selecting of the modules was easy enough, but the reserve choices freaked me out a bit. I really want my first choices, so I'm a tad nervous if I don't get them. Ah well, I'm sure I can sort things out at a later date if things don't turn out how I'd like them to be...
For my first choice I've picked: 18th Century, Poetry Writing, Prose Writing, Shakespeare, Three Women Writers, and Contemporary fiction. So this should be good!!

4) General Life Stuff. So, my grandmas haven't been all that well recently, and although its probably nothing to worry about, it's been stressing my folks out a bit, which in turn stresses me out. I guess that's actually the bulk of the life stuff, but it feels like a lot more. Oh, and I'm trying to book a holiday to France and nobody is communicating with me and that's unnecessarily stressful too.
In good news, I'm the new Secretary of the Creative Writing Society! Yay! i am very honoured to have be awarded the role... despite the fact it was only me in the running!

Anyway, so, new plan. I really need to write more, and here is an outlet I really should sue more often. So, here's what I'm thinking: new post, 3 times a week. Either on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday or Monday, Wednesday, Friday - we'll see how it goes, eh? Also, posts on a variety of things. Sometimes beauty, sometimes book, sometimes general life and sometimes a piece of creative writing. Sound like a plan? Goodo. It's in writing now...

Best Wishes!

xx

Bet Down, Shine Bright

Yesterday at CWS we studied OULIPO poetry (a French movement in which you write with constraints). So, we were each given a phrase and were challenged to write a poem using only letters found in said phrase. Mine was 'Bet Down, Shine Bright' (which I quite like as a little phrase and might to some more work surrounding it). I was quite proud with mine, so I thought I'd share.

Bet Down, Shine Bright

Hit the thing with the ring so it sings;
Now hide.
Tie the tie in a bow then sigh.
Show the bone to the dog,
Show the hog how to sing.
Ding.
The dog shit,
Hit a nit with a net and neigh.
The dog downs egg-nog
Then snogs the hog.
They sit on the bed with high tog.
Now sing!

It is night and the end is nigh.

Write your own! Pick a random phrase of a website and see what you can do with it! It's a lot of fun!

I promise I'll write about finding a house soon, got three essays due in at the moment and another couple of hundered pages of reading to do by Monday, so I'm going to get on that first!

Best Wishes!

xx

NaNoWriMo

So, for this month I'm taking part in National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write a novel of 50,000 words in November. I won last year, and want to make a streak of it. I'm already miles behind and I'm publisghing my noevl on line in a series of blog posts as I go. Scary.

If you want to read my novel follow this link: www.tobyisajuggler.blogspot.com
If you fancy taking part in NaNo: www.nanowrimo.org
If you're already part of Nano, add me as a buddy! My name is CurlyWurly

TTFN! xx

The Girl Sitting Opposite Me In The Library Looks Like The Spit Of Jennifer Lawrence

I don't know how anybody expects me to concentrate...

Procrastination and Poetry

It's amazing the lengths I will go to procrastinate. This right here is a prime example of my procrastination. Right now I should be either writing an essay that's due in tomorrow, or reading a text (as in a piece of literature not a phoney-type-text) in preparation for Thursday, or (most importantly) considering the questions set out in yesterdays lecture for today's seminar (yikes). But, nevertheless, procrastinate I shall, and if I must procrastinate then what better place to do it than in front of you, the fine people of the internet. (By the by, if you are reading this, drop me a comment to say hi or what not. It'd be lovely to hear from you - particularly if you are one of the people who are visiting this little blog from the Netherlands or Turkey (as Google tells me you are)).

Anyway. Procrastination. Yes.

(As an aside, there is something slightly ironic about the fact that I had to put myself back to track to talk about procrastination, of all things...)

Yesterday I bought a book for my Creative Writing course called "The Art Of Writing Fiction" by Andrew Cowan. Whilst procrastinating from reading "The Pilgrims Progress", which continues to be exceedingly dull, I began to flick through it's pages. Exercise two caught my eye. It goes pretty much as follows:

Imagine you are sitting at your work space ready to write, what things do you to before actually putting pen to paper or fingers to keys? Each activity is worth certain points.
Fiddling (straighting sheets of paper etc): 1 point each
Almost-work-related-distractions (tidying the folders on your computer): 2 points each
Stalling (tidying your room, making coffee etc): 3 points each
Dreaming (more than ten minutes out of a window, more than five with head on desk): 3 points each
Skiving (writing emails, making phone calls etc): 5 points each
Absconding (gardening, decorating etc): 10 points each

0-10: Completely abnormal, relax.
11-20: A necessary amount, but beware of relapse.
21-30: Perhaps these things should have been done earlier...
31+: Completely abnormal, worry.

Tallying up my points I found I was in the 21-30 category... so not too bad but room for improvement. However, it was an interesting exercise to perform, being self-analytical of things you normally wouldn't notice. It also made me consider how procrastination can sometimes be a very helpful thing, how it can let you get round to those jobs you've been putting off for months or allow you to open your mind to something creative that you wouldn't normally do- which could very well be the inspiration for a new venture.

Speaking of which (classy little segue, I know) I was at my Creative Writing Societies (CWS) first open mic night Monday last week. It was fascinating and totally inspirational. Now, I'm not much of a poet, but since then I've written two pieces, both of which I might perform tonight at their Extra Virgin open mic. Scary stuff. One of the pieces is about rape culture, and I want to discuss it in more depth, so I might post that another day, but this piece I'm happy to post now. As I said it was inspired by the showcase, and when walking home from that the fella said "I can imagine you up there reading poetry about pretty boys". This was the result:

My (Ex)Boyfriend’s Haircut

Pretty Boy;

Floppy Hair.

Across the room,

I stop, he stares.

Feel his eyes
Caress my skin.
Catch an eye;
A cheeky grin.

Skinny jeans

Sit low on hips
Eyebrows raised
He bites a lip

Feel the blush

Rise in my cheeks.
Try to pluck
The courage to speak.

He saunters over

Confident.
Offers a drink,
A proper gent.

One drink turns

To two, then three.
Place my hand
Upon his knee.

Four months I leave it

Resting there.
Then Pretty Boy
Cuts his hair.

Average Boy;
Shaven head.
Think I’ll find
A Pretty Boy instead.



So there you have it. My first "creative writing" output on the internet. Although, as we discussed in my first Creative Writing Workshop, was even constitutes as "Creative Writing"?

By the by, as much as I would love to I can't really discuss the content of either of my Creative Writing classes on here. It's a "sacred space" and all that. Y'know. Gutting. But I am LOVING them with all my heart and soul, despite it being early days yet and all that.

TTFN! xx

Currently Reading: The Pilgrims Progress (Oxford World Edition) by John Bunyan
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
The Art of Writing Fiction by Andrew Cowan