Tuesday Photo: pretty please?

A Charitable Birthday

Oh hey, my birthday is coming, and maybe you’re intending to help me to celebrate it (how nice of you) but don’t want to do something as conventional as a present (though I am always happy to receive them), and if so, read on. Thing is, it’s been a while since I’ve received anything especially meaningful for my birthday. I’m not actually in dire need of anything, and all of this spending money on me could probably be put to better use. So I was just thinking, if you’re up for it, then making a donation on my behalf would be a lovely gesture.

Here a few possibilities, then, with the lovely thing being that it still ends up looking quite like a birthday thing since most of these will come with some sort of acknowledgement or keepsake that you can pretend is my birthday present:

No, it’s not a charity, but one of the things you could contribute to is the David Lynch documentary project called the Lynch three Project. The lithograph is very nice and it would be lovely to be able to hang it somewhere in my room. [via Lynch three Project] I don’t know if it ships here, but I sure hope so.

Alternately, you can also support the efforts of the World Wide Fund for Nature, more popular known as the WWF. They have this lovely thing where you can have a plushie and a photograph as a keepsake if you make a donation. [via WWF] I’m mostly partial to the Amur Leopard.

“Puppies Behind Bars trains inmates to raise puppies to become service dogs for the disabled and explosive detection canines for law enforcement.” If purchased from the site, 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the Puppies Behind Bars photograph book will go towards helping the puppies. [via Puppies Behind Bars]

You could also make a gift donation to the World Land Trust, of which Sir David Attenborough is a patron. [via The World Land Trust]

Finally, while it isn’t a donation per se, a portion of the proceeds from these art prints at The Working Proof will go to corresponding charities. [via The Working Proof]

And if none of this appeals to you and all else fails, when you can’t find a present, don’t know what I like to eat, and are pulling your hair out over Gloomsday, always remember that you can fetch me a balloon. Really, I’m not that hard to please.

d

Saturday Photo: a certain softness

Friday

Oh hello. Happy Friday the 13th, you dastardly bunch.

d

Just popping by.

I realised I missed Wednesday. It was not entirely intentional, but the best I could probably do is not to make a mess of this entry.

School’s started, yes, and it has mostly been a fairly unremarkable week. On the nicer side of things, I’ve made a new friend, a complete surprise when you realise that all of my classes thus far were supposed to be with familiar people. On the less nice side of things, I find myself conflicted about some stuff, and I also realise it’s going to be a rather hectic semester. To that end, I’ve tried to get a head start on things by tackling some of my texts sooner than I was planning. I’m still not quite sure it’s going to work.

Other than that it has been quite pleasant seeing all the familiar faces. Some of them have come back from exchange programmes and the like, so… it’s been quite a while. It’s interesting, to say the least, to see how people have changed, but also interesting is to realise how I’ve changed.

Tomorrow’s kind of a big day. It’ll be my first day of literature classes, and in fact I’ll have, by my own measure, a whole day of them. I’ve got five hours with an hour’s break in between, and thereafter I’ll be having the last of another lecture series. It’s a busy day, and a big day because I don’t really know what to think going into these brand new literature classes. It is all slightly exciting, well, very exciting, and yet also all rather intimidating. It’s not just the subject, but the people. New people, plenty of new people. Hopefully we will be making many more new friends, but who’s to say?

Meanwhile, I’ve been having a few ideas. I am a little upset at not actually being able to complete my first editing of Singapura, which I should say is still looking for a new title, though the ideas keep that part of me satisfied for now. I’m sure most of the ideas will be quarantined, never to see the light of day again, but we always remain hopeful that one or two of them will have the staying power to outlive the bad ones. It should be said, however, that some of these bad ones are impossibly hardy and make a habit of surfacing like ghosts in idle minds.

d

Thursday Photo: =P

Tuesday Photo: shaggy bear

National Day

Happy National Day, everyone!

d

Saturday Photo: lazing around

Acquisitons, recent and foreseeable.

New Book Order

• Elizabeth Costello, J. M. Coetzee. My favourite Coetzee book; one day I just felt the need to get it onto my shelves, so there it is.
• Tinkers, Paul Harding. Recent Pulitzer Prize winner; I have no idea what it is about.
• Collected Poems, Philip Larkin. Hello, Mr. Larkin! Always good to see you.
• The Ruined Map, Kōbō Abe. Probably less well-known around these parts; here is a tasty article about him. [via The Millions]

Textbooks I Need

So according to the reading list of my two subjects, here are the texts that I need:

• Crick Crack Monkey, Merle Hodge.
• The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro. As you will know I have never read this before; people always talk about it, and I’m quietly hopeful that it’ll be as good as Never Let Me Go, if not better; I was somehow quite disappointed with Nocturnes.
• In the Castle of My Skin, George Lamming.
• Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie.
• Disgrace, J. M. Coetzee. I have this; my first reading of this was a library copy so this is brand new; it was on my waiting list; it is one of the few books that I won’t have to buy.
• Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad. I have this too, and it is in fact one of the oldest books on my shelves; it is somewhat out of shape and very yellow, but that only adds to its charm; one of the books of my youth and therefore a personal favourite, but I’m not too sure about how it will fare with all of these years that have passed.
• Texts for nothing, Samuel Beckett. I suppose this means Stories and Texts for Nothing, though it could also mean that without the three stories.
• Contempt, Alberto Moravia.
• Marat/Sade, Peter Weiss. Ah yes, otherwise known as The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade.
• A Woman Alone, etc., Rame and Fo. Hmm, I guess I’ll have to ask about the et cetera bit.
• A Heart So White, Javier Marías. I was actually planning to get started on Marías because I’ve read more than a few recommendations for Your Face Tomorrow; I had not quite anticipated that school would give me a helping hand of some sort.
• Crabwalk, Gűnter Grass.
• Selected poems by Zbigniew Herbert. I’ve only read one of his poems, so this is pretty much a great opportunity.

Meanwhile, Movies

Oh yes, we’re doing a few movies too:

• Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola. This is the only film I’ve watched on this list.
• Ararat, Atom Egoyan.
• Ulysses’ Gaze, Theo Angelopoulos.

Time, Mr. Freeman?

That’s actually more to cover than I thought, so I don’t know where my normal day-to-day reading will fit in, but I hope I manage to make time. Here are some of the immediate highlights from my waiting list:

• The Museum of Eterna’s Novel (The First Good Novel), Macedonio Fernández. I’ve been waiting a long time to read this.
• To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf.
• Rimbaud Complete, Arthur Rimbaud. Hello, Mr. Rimbaud! Always good to see you, too.
• The Implacable Order of Things, José Luís Peixoto.

And of course, a bunch of other things.

“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t contemplate them… but these are extraordinary times.”

d