A Portrait of the Artist as Semi-Unwashed Essay Writer: Still life featuring Woolf and Forster, St Andrews, March 2013

I don’t know if it shows, but Modernism is my whole life at the moment.

Spring Break is very much proving to be a complete misnomer - I maintain that it is neither spring (at any given time there is at least one kind of precipitation hammering at my window, including, but not limited to, snow and hail), nor am I remotely having a break from anything other than human contact.

Ah well, best crack on.

This is an apology post. I’m sorry for being utterly absent for nearly three weeks, leaving you all to deal with the abject misery that must be surviving without Rosa Reads. It was irresponsible and cruel of me.

On the off-chance that you managed to get through this traumatic time and are still out there, here are some things you might like to know:

• My only excuse for not posting is that life got in the way. Mostly this is the result of university work. If you’re interested in what I’m reading for my degree at the moment, check out this and this, which are the modules I’m taking this semester.
• In terms of non-compulsory reading, I have just finished Woolf’s The Waves, and am contemplating finally getting stuck into Les Misérables, although this will depend on how much I catch up on my uni reading.
• Which brings us to the reason I am currently available to write even this rubbishy little post - I’m on Spring Break! Which should mean two weeks of unadulterated pleasure somewhere warm and carefree, but actually means two weeks of desperately trying to catch up with the two novels a week I should have been reading for the past eight weeks, as well as churning out two essays, whilst alone in my freezing little flat in St Andrews.
• The other thing I’m hoping to get done is internship applications. I’ve sent off a couple (to HarperCollins and the London Review of Books because I have unrealistic expectations), but there’s more to do. If anyone feels like offering me a job - paid or unpaid, glamorous or not at all - this summer, please find my email address at the bottom of my bio page.

So, that’s my current literary situation in four bullet points. I really hope to get a couple of reviews done and posted here before Spring Break is over, and I’ll try and post other tidbits as well. Thanks for sticking around.

As usual my family know how to make my birthday and Christmas excellent. These are my literary gifts!

Pictured: almost everything Virginia Woolf has ever written, a set of mini notebooks with Penguin Classics designs, a signed book of sonnets by James Nash, who happens to be my neighbour.

Not pictured: Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies (seen in this video), a copy of Life of Pi (which I’ve unfortunately already read), John Burnside’s A Summer of Drowning (from my buddy Holly), Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables (from my flatmate Sarah), a bilingual edition of Aimé Césaire’s Notebook of a Return to my Native Land (from my friend Morgan, who’s studying in Paris at the moment, and bought it at Shakespeare and Co. for me, along with one of their tote bags).

So, I reckon I’m pretty lucky to have such considerate and thoughtful friends and family, who clearly know exactly how to make me happy! (I am arguably easily pleased)

Happy Holidays from Rosa Reads!

(via booklover)

This is a collection of short stories (part of the Penguin Mini Modern Classics range), each of which I shall be reviewing individually.

The Lady in the Looking-Glass: A Reflection

An intricately detailed, beautifully written description of a room, a mirror, the lady of the house and (of course, for this is Woolf) her thoughts on this particular summer afternoon. And really merely that. The carefully crafted vision is shattered (mirror-like, duh) at the end, and the reader is left with…well, very little actually.

A Society

A generally comedic and slightly surreal first person account of the forming and eventual disintegration of a women’s club. It didn’t leave much of an impression, if I’m honest, but one can see how it tied in to the issues of the day. Think Mrs Dalloway toned way way way down.

The Mark on the Wall

I enjoyed this mainly because I felt that Woolf was almost taking the piss out of her own literary technique. It is so utterly stream-of-consciousness and plotless - so completely given over to inner speculation, description and thought processes - that I almost* felt like I should abandon my love of modernism and return to the solid platform of traditional storytelling. But then Woolf provides an ending so painfully self-aware and undermining that it brings the whole thing firmly back into the realm of smart, experimental writing.

Solid Objects

This was my favourite of the collection, and yet it was also the least Woolfian, perhaps because the protagonist was male, which is pretty uncommon in her work (if anyone so much as thinks about citing Orlando to me at this point I will come down on them like a tonne of Orlando-fangirling bricks). I don’t have much to say about Solid Objects (often a problem when I like stuff), other than the fact that I couldn’t decide whether it was gloriously hopeful or heartbreakingly sad. Decide for yourselves - prizes** for those who convince me one way or the other.

* Read: “not at all”, but whatever.

** Nope.

fuckyeahlesbianliterature:

Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath