Posted: 26th March 2010
Disappointing Literature and a Little to Taste
Categorized: music, musings, personal, themes.
I guess I never really understood the OS wars. Why people would blindly pledge themselves to one company is beyond me, but even paying half one’s attention to some of the comments (read: crap) one can find on technology blogs these days becomes depressing. I must admit switching to Ubuntu was not without its superficial reasons: Gnome-Do is awesome and the Dust theme is gorgeous. But I also wanted a view from the other side.
It was my birthday. I was given books. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Unsurprisingly, the author ruined what would have been a fantastic story by a failure of an ending. The story was intricate, the characters interesting. Dr Iannis died pointlessly, his tale left untold. Why the author chose to neglect that and write about the rather boring moaning of Pelagia for a third of the book is beyond me. Killing him like that was also…saddening. Iannis was much, much more interesting than his daughter protagonist, who spends most of the book lamenting the fact that every male on the island seems to want her. She is a blank, the book revolving around her, so maintaining the blank and killing off everyone else is illogical.
I also received a sketchbook. Not an off-the-shelf one—Bella actually stitched each page together by hand. It’s beautiful. There are few things I have been more proud to own, that make me happy to see and use. I must admit, my drawing skills are limited, but I still savour it. Presents are rarely as thoughtful as that.
Ndubz wrote a book. I had no idea he was literate…
I’m now using Last.fm to track my music habits. It’s beautiful, I must admit. I have been doing desktop wallpapers based on my favourite artists due to the amount of pictures they make available. Apparently I listen to Paramore a lot more than I thought. And I don’t know why Cobra Starship are on there. Cobra Starship are awful.
Joanna and I are still together, though why she settles is unknown to me. I find myself watching the Matrix (the third one, whatever it’s called). I’d forgotten how progressively bad the series got. This one is the merde du merde.
I’m rambling again. I’m too tired to care. Too. Much. Work.
2 comments
He died “pointlessly” a) unpointlessly to save them, and b) because de Bernières is always beautiful and tragic, the two at once because what he writes is true. People do die “pointlessly” in earthquakes, people’s lives do end up like Pelagia’s. Not shying away from less interesting, fitting or appealing endings for the reader is part of what makes him a great writer. Life is illogical.
But there was no need for him to die. The novel would have been all the more satisfying had Pelagia died instead–it would have got rid of her, at least. She comes off as a self-indulgent bitch who developed early and is far too aware of how much she is adored, and the incident highlights it further. Once more, she’s effectively characterless as a result. The next few chapters are devoid of anything (and I don’t know about you but I struggle to read if I don’t care what happens to the main protagonist.) The novel had worked till that point because of the rich ensemble of supporting characters, but we’re left with new ones who haven’t had their personalities portrayed because he’s killed off or removed anyone who brought the novel to life. It’s all fluff till the captain returns. And that’s my problem with it. His death would have worked had the captain been introduced shortly after.
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