You know you’re a (foolish) lit nerd when you quote the last lines of Ulysses in an email to your (male) teacher about University applications (after having watched a youtube video a few months ago in which Stephen Fry says that it’s his favourite book and talks about the overwhelming positivity of ‘yes!’ and so thinking that quoting it would be a good way of expressing positivity) without actually knowing the context of that last chapter since you’ve only gotten up to Oxen of the Sun. So embarrassing.

#Joyce #Ulysses

You know you’re a lit nerd when you’ve considered naming one James and the other Joyce if you ever have twins.

Sorry, for some reason this has my name attatched… to clarify, this is from Tara (teajaylea@gmail.com), with many thanks! :D

You know you’re a lit nerd when books are “Es muss sein!” of your life.

So what’s everyone reading at the moment?

I am currently reading “The Collector” by John Fowles, after finishing “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” by the same author last week.

“The French Lieutenant’s Woman”explores the position of women in Victorian society through Sarah Woodruff, who was “ruined” by her affair with the French Lieutenant of the title. The writing style in it is very unusual - it has an omniscient, modern narrator who, though narrating a Victorian novel, references more modern concepts and history (he says that one of the characters has interview techniques that remind him of the Gestapo, for example). It also has three “alternate endings”, which is slightly confusing, but is a fascinating idea.
It also contains a sex scene that Fowles states as being 90 seconds long. Which thoroughly amused me. 

“The Collector” is a far darker novel about a man who abducts the woman he has been stalking, in order that she should get to know him and fall in love with him. While she lives in his cellar. The style is far different - the abductor narrates it, for a start, which certainly makes it an uncomfortable read, as the reader is inclined to sympathise with him, even though he is clearly in the wrong. It also has clear echoes of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” - the woman abducted is called Miranda, and she refers to the narrator as her “Caliban”. Though I haven’t read a lot of it yet, I can tell it’s going to be a “put-in-pride-of-place-on-the-bookshelf” sort of book.

So what are you all reading? Feel free to drop off some reviews either in the ask or in the submissions page, book recommendations are always welcome.

You know you’re a lit nerd when you’re gasping for air trying to breathe whilst exercising, and all you can think is, sucks to your ass-mar.

You know you’re a lit nerd when you use colons and semi-colons in day-to-day typing.

Inspired by peemsterandhalsadick

You know you’re a lit nerd when your book controls your social life, and if this should reverse, all hell would break loose.

Inspired by peemsterandhalsadick :)

You know you’re a lit nerd when Elizabeth in “Frankenstein” is the most perfect, and therefore the most BORING, character ever.

You know you’re a lit nerd when you wonder what the second Mrs de Winter’s “unusual” first name was.

You know you’re a lit nerd when you wonder what Julia’s Room 101 would have been.

Hey guys,

Check out my lovely new archive! All posts are organised by book and by author, or, if not relating directly to a novel, under “reader problems”, in the sidebars of the blog’s main page.

I’m very proud of it :D

Enjoy! :)