I'm too alive right now...

This is old news now, a 2006 book, and I don't even own it.

'The Next Big Thing - A Short Story About the Creative Process"

It is authored by Aesop Rock and illustrated by Jeremy Fish. His website here is full of some weird drawings. So if you like the unexpected and the absurd, check it out here. 

All I know about the creative process is that I don't know much. Creativity is being increasingly commodified, and to put it bluntly, if this goes too much further we are all screwed. Think Farenheit 911, think the Time Machine. 

So there are no flowers in this book, no goddesses of creativity, and no three muses. Nuh uh. There are skulls, pigs, nice hats, hotdogs and pin up girls, which to me seems to have a lot more to do with my own experience of creativity. 

Falkor

Today is a great day for luck dragon riding. Falkor the luck dragon is one of my favourite characters in fiction. Or reality. Whichever. I'm still a bit peeved that I haven't found the book that will take me to Fantastica, or the wardrobe that will take me to Narnia, or the wings that mean I can take the second star to the right and straight on til morning to Neverland. But I think there's hope yet. 

"Once someone dreams a dream, it can't just drop out of existence. But if the dreamer can't remember it, what becomes of it? It lives on in Fantastica, deep under earth. There are forgotten dreams stored in many layers. The deeper one digs, the closer they are. All Fantastica rests on a foundation of forgotten dreams."

The Neverending Story is a wonderful book, much better than the movie, and Michael Ende is also well known for his other children's book, Momo. As with most good children's books, it is one that most adults would do well to read. It is the story of a little homeless girl who begins to realise that everyone around her is becoming the victim of a complex plot to steal their lives, a second at a time. 

"People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them anymore. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had. " 

"Calendars and clocks exist to measure time, but that signifies little because we all know that an hour can seem as eternity or pass in a flash, according to how we spend it." 

Sunset Limited

I’d like to talk about books on this blog. This is probably the beginning of ambitious goals that never eventuate. I also plan to do some outfits posts and blog on my attempt to sew a gown for a themed party.

Anyway, I’ll work through some of my favourite books, and rest assured that you are getting the cream of a very varied crop. Which begs the question – why do crops have creams?

James Lee Burke has always featured on my family bookshelf. I will read almost anything if it’s left within reach, and so I had a go at a few of his novels when I was younger. None ever gripped me, and I had trouble getting past the first page. I’m not sure if this was because Burke can be quite a dense writer, or perhaps the vocabulary was too hard for me, or perhaps the topics simply didn’t interest me. It also had an aura of airport fiction about it, which to my mind was not a good thing.

One night I saw a movie based on one of Burke’s novels, and this inspired me to keep on past page one of ‘Sunset Limited’. I was hooked. What I had taken at first for boring and fatuous landscape descriptions transformed into prose of incredibly beauty, and characters with previously silly-sounding names enticed me into their world.

“The eastern horizon was strung with rain clouds and the sun should have risen out of the water like a mist-shrouded egg yolk, but it didn’t. Its red light mushroomed along the horizon, then rose into the sky in a cross, burning in the center, as though fire were trying to take the shape of a man, and the water turned the heavy dark colour of blood.”

Almost every author has a go at the sunrise, now almost a clichéd convention of literature, but Burke’s is saturated with symbolism of religion and war, an indicator of the forces that are about to steamroll through the lives of the novel’s characters.

Tommy Lee Jones also starred in an adaptation of Burke’s novel ‘In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead’, which is my favourite Burke novel. It hasn’t yet been released in Australia and when it is it will probably go straight to DVD.

If you enjoy mysteries or thrillers, Burke is a great way to get your fix without resorting to soggy paperbacks from the 2-for-$5 bin that overuse italics and dead bodies.

 

Tale as old as time

A few months ago I read about a woman who was so organised (read obsessive) that she stored all her books with the spines facing inwards so the shelves appreared a fairly uniform beigey-white colour. How did she find a book when she wanted it? She remembered where it was. This worked for her, but personally I don't think this is a very fun way to store your books.

The Bibliochaise and the adorable Bibliopouf are a much nicer alternative.

Or for those very special books...

My favourite unusual book storage idea is definitely the lovely Joe bookshelf by Ibride. These French conceptual designers have a strange sense of humour. The website is worth a look, if only for the hilarious but eerie 1920s family portrait where all the heads have been replaced with kangaroo heads. They also have decapitated deer and emu tables. But Joe is whole, a lovely big white polar bear:

I have a bit of a thing about bookshelves. I love books, hence places where you find lots of books are nice. I'm a strong believer in custom bookshelves being the only way to go - anything else ends up sagging away from the wall when you fill it up, and is not the best use of space. Floor to ceiling bookshelves, preferably wall to wall...yes, that would be a library.

Of course the best example is to be found in a french castle. The Beast knew what he was doing when he gave Belle his library.

"You... you like it?"

"It's wonderful!"

"Then it's yours."

Sadly the world is no longer full of wolf-filled forests with magical castles and mysteriously hairy occupants. Which is a sad state of affairs, not least because the world is still overflowing with beautiful maidens who want more than a provincial life.