Why I did not finish The Secret History

Until earlier today I was reading my way through Donna Tartt's The Secret History, but at page 401 (of the existing 628), I stopped and moved on to another book. Now, as I obviously cannot write a full review on the book, as I had planned to do had I finished it, I have decided to instead write an entry on why I will not finish it.

In the beginning, or, rather, all trough the first half of it, it was very interesting; lovely group of main characters (some more difficult to sympathize with/understand, but interesting nonetheless); nice, adequate descriptions; fantastic use of language; etcetera. I particularly liked the way the ending was spoiled in the beginning of the book, namely the murder of a major character (I do not consider this a spoiler as it is mentioned on the very first page).

Or, rather, what I thought to be the ending. As it turned out, the believed "ending" occurred halfway through the book. Up to the point of the murdering, it was all very interesting; exciting at times, more puzzling at others, as books goes. Sadly, after the murder had occurred, the reading experience went downhill. For a couple of hundred pages it was interesting to be given an insight of the aftermath of a murder, but after a while it grew very dull, in spite of the entrance of FBI and all that; dull, in fact, to the point where I did not even care about how this all would end, and the book mainly bored me, and, in my opinion, when this is how you feel about a book, it is better to put it down and perhaps pick it up later, instead of staggering on slowly and without interest. (My mother wisely informed me that this is also a healthy approach to have to e.g. relationships.)

So, to wrap this up, that is basically why I stopped my reading of The Secret History on page 401. This might mean that I missed out on a fantastic ending or the breathtaking event on page 402, but that is something I am willing to sacrifice; especially as I am already on page 101 in Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay.

The Bird in the Birdcage

You have no idea

What it is like

To be me

Likewise,

I have no idea

What it is like

To be you

I am tethered inside my own, clustered mind

And I am afraid that if I ever were to leave

I would not find my way back

Into this clustered mind of mine

Maybe you feel the same

Or maybe you feel comfortable where you are

In your mind

Perhaps you are not tethered to yours

Perhaps it is not clustered

In which case, I wish I could be you

To know what it is like

To be where you are

Inside your free mind

As I have never been to such a place

Or perhaps

You do not wish

To let my clustered mind in

As yours is perfectly comfortable

Whilst mine is not

But I will never know

In fact

I have no idea

What it is like

To be you

Likewise,

You have no idea

What it is like

To be me

"You CAN'T wear that item like that!"

Welcome to a brand new episode of Things That Bothers Me. This week: people giving too many shits about how other people chose to wear their items of clothing, because this kind of criticism is something that I see far too often. (It might be one of those things that aren't really worth being bothered by, but as it happens, it bothers me, so now I'm going to write a blog entry about it because I want to.)

Far too often I happen to come by people going 'I can't believe people can wear that kind of crop top in this weather!' or, as I actually heard today, 'You can't wear leggings with just a small shirt! Leggings aren't pants!'. These are examples of people giving way too many shits about what other people chose to wear. No, I can't see why someone would wear a crop top with an open jacket when it's winter outside because it must be bloody freezing; neither would I wear leggings with nothing but a small shirt to accompany it, but as it happens, the people wearing it would, and one hopes that the people with crop tops doesn't freeze too much. I myself am not completely estranged to more 'unusual' clothing, actually.

Frankly, what I or you would or wouldn't wear is unimportant when it comes to what other people wear. Because they are neither you nor me, and them wearing whatever they wear doesn't affect either of us more than we let it do. If someone wears something that makes them feel pretty and comfortable (or whatever feeling they're going for), let them. Nothing suits one better than whatever gives one confidence and/or makes one feel comfortable. This might sound like a real cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason. People knocking on other people's confidence even though it's really not their business is just plain sad. Seriously. Don't.

Sadly though, people don't always wear certain items of clothing in certain ways just because they like them. There is, of course, the issue of fashion. I can almost certainly say that some of the people who wear crop tops and leggings don't do it because they want to, but because it happen to be fashion. Possibly, these people (or at least some of them) doesn't feel confident in these clothes at all, which is really sad, since one should wear one feels like. But since one hardly can tell them apart from the confident ones by the same glance that it takes to judge them, skip the judging part. This is a different problem which also needs a different approach; criticising someone's clothes won't help anyone in any case.

So, basically, don't criticise peoples way of dressing even if it doesn't make sense to you, because it doesn't have to make sense to you. Odds are that the person you criticise hasn't dressed in order to please you, anyway.

They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul

They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul

Which is incorrect

Yet, a small truth in it lies.

You see, in the eyes

You can see no soul,

But you can see the dreams.

As people believe

That they are safely concealed

Inside their minds,

They actually live vivid lives

Inside their eyes.

But then again,

What defines a soul

If not its dreams?

So maybe it is true

What they say

When they say that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

Play, darling, play

Play, darling, play

Play for now

Play for then

Play for life

Not for later

Nor for death

For now will never come again

And soon now is gone

Death lies before us

Then now was then but that now is gone

Existing only in our memories

Later does not exist yet

Soon later is now and now is then

Soon always will be now and now always will be then

Death is always near

But play for now and play for then

Play, darling, play

Don’t waste your life on death.

We Forgot We Were Human - A short story

~~~

In humanity's great rush for the future, we forgot the most important thing that we could possibly forget. However, as we had forgotten about it, we did not think about it, which eventually led us to this.

Poetry does not exist anymore; neither does music or any fictional literature at all, because such phenomenons are all based on emotions and feelings, which do not exist. Not anymore.

We operate as we have for centuries; we wake up, go to work, go home, sleep, wake up, and so forth. No one really knows why any longer, but that is irrelevant. It is what we have done for centuries, ergo the norm, and the norm is all we have to tell us what to do. Without it, we could not function. It is said that humans used to say that about emotion, but we have no need for emotion. Not anymore.

I do not feel. I have never felt, and therefore I am unaware of how feeling feels like. I only know that I have never felt it because if I had felt it, I would have felt it. It is what is said about feeling and emotion; that you could feel it. But I cannot. No one can. Not anymore.

Although, I have read about it in ancient books, probably from the 19th and 20th century. For a while, such books where hidden away so that we would not risk to read them and be 'inspired' (whatever the meaning of that word is) to feel; however, that was soon considered unnecessary as no one sought them. No one cared any longer, because the feeling had already begun to fade. I know that the books speak of feelings because they use those strange words, and they describe them; 'anger', 'stress', 'happiness', 'feeling low'. I soon stopped reading them because they were meaningless; they all took it as for granted that I, too, felt, which I have never done. They wondered why, asked for my emotions, and I tried to explain that I do not feel. They denied the truth I presented to them, and therefore I stopped reading them; they denied the norm, as no one does. Not anymore.

This is where humanity's great rush for the future has led us; this is what happened when we forgot the most important thing that we could ever forget. But I do not care. No one does. I have no opinion; there are no opinions. Not anymore.

This is the story of how we lost the most important thing we ever could lose, the one that makes a human human; this is the story of how we forgot we were human.

~~~

The Light Within

There is an old house down by the moor
It has a rumour of being haunted
Perhaps you have heard the story before?

In which case, I shall not bother to tell it
But I have made some interesting observations
Involving a spirit

Now, you might from this have concluded
That I believe to have seen a ghost by the moor
But no, I am not yet quite so deluded

For, you see, it is not a disembodied person
Which has caught my eye;
It is not it's previous inhabitant, Mrs Anderson

No, this house holds
Something quite more extraordinary;
As is told in none of the tales of olds

At night
The whole house will shimmer
With an inward light

For the spirit of the house
Is the house itself
And not the deceased spouse

You might ponder
Why this seemingly simple house
Is filled with such wonder?

That, I cannot answer
Yet, depending on your preferred ideology
There are some suspicions
Some involving ancient, alien technology

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