twins

[fahye]

+ Good things about choir conductor: his energy, his sense of fun, his willingness to shake us out of our comfort zone a bit.
- Bad things about choir conductor: his belief that we can memorise eleven trickily arranged songs in time for the concert when we haven't even sung half of them more than twice, his vagueness when it comes to cutoffs and relaxed interpretation of rhythm, his inability to pause so that the soprano section leader (hi there!) can stick up her hand and reel off a list of sections the sops ARE SUCKING AT AND NEED TO HAVE NOTEBASHED. AARGGGHH. I CANNOT DO MY JOB IF YOU WON'T LET ME DO MY JOB, DUDE.

+ Bones is starting again soon! \o/
- Every time I see the words 'fall TV schedule' I want to lie down and have a very unattractive five-year-old tantrum. Damn you, America! Damn you, people with free time!

+ I am trying to eat more healthily!
- I AM SO BAD AT IT. OH GOD. I stole a mini lemon tart from one of the tables of free food that just sort of blink into existence around the clinical school whenever there's an event on, and it was the first thing with proper amounts of sugar or fat in it that I'd had all day, and I just about had a seizure of gastronomical joy.

I'm hungry :(

~

Sidenote:

On the recommendations of a couple of people I have started reading Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. I am not very far into it but, uh, so far it reads as heavily influenced by Arturo Perez-Reverte's The Dumas Club. Has anyone read both? Can I get some reassurance that TSotW will get a backbone of its own soon? So far it seems as though it's relying on its ornate prose to hold itself up.

Also reading: Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, which I am enjoying hugely despite the fact that I haven't the foggiest what's going on most of the time.

Comments

[skygiants]

I have read both, but I do not remember The Dumas Club well enough to compare really. :( I do have general impressions of Dumas Club not feeling as substantive as Shadow of the Wind to me; on the other hand, that might just be because Shadow of the Wind is super-stuffed with hilarious gothic plotlines involving forbidden love and secret babies.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

I loved The Dumas Club to TINY PIECES, but it's true that going by the comparative lengths of the books, more will probably HAPPEN in Shadow. I will definitely keep reading! I'm sure I'll get swallowed up by it soon enough.

Certainly you can make a distinction between the overall tones, which are Gothic Noir and Exceedingly Gothic. And I think I prefer Noir, all told.

[schiarire.livejournal.com]

Everyone I love loves The Master and Margarita but when I tried to read it I could not get stuck in! I gave it a good like, 200 pages, too. I think I am missing something.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

If someone asked me what I liked about it I would probably stare at them hopelessly and then mumble something about Pilate having a migraine, but I am having fun with even the crazy and nonsensemaking bits. I think, though, that it's another of those Classic Satires that I would appreciate a lot more if I knew anything at all about the history involved (see also:Midnight's Children, The Tin Drum).