26 July 2016

fangirl

I just finished Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, in a quick two day stretch. It was lovely! The book was light, but good. The characters and plot just made me want to immerse myself in their world and never get out. The main girl, Cath, she is a writer. And her descriptions of why she writes, how she feels when she is writing, is how I feel when I read! (why oh why doesn't someone want to pay me to read?!!)
Why do I write? Cath tried to come up with a profound answer… 
To be somewhere else… 
To get free of ourselves 
And it was doubly awesome, because I picked up Fangirl after three aborted books. After I finished sacred games by Vikram Chandra, I was totally off my game in knowing what to read. Then I had headaches and dizziness issues, which meant I couldn’t read much anyways. All the light we cannot see by Anthony Doerr is one of the most awesome books ever, a book that I will recommend to everyone, one of those oh-my-god-you-have-to-read-this-at-some-point-in-your-life books. So I thought I would try another one of his novels, amazing grace. But I just could not fathom it at all. The prose, the plot; none of it made sense. Then I tried human traces by Sebastian Faulks, which had been sitting dormant in my kindle for at least a couple of years. I like Faulks’ writing (a week in December and birdsong are my favourite novels of his), but I am not into the subject of human traces –psychiatry. So I gave up after a couple of chapters. Next was zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald, which all the reviews said was like an m m kaye novel –well, m m kaye was my absolute favourite for a few teenage years, so I thought why not. But I couldn’t get past the first few pages! (I am hoping that if I pick it up again in another frame of mind, I will enjoy it..) Finally, after much upset at not having something great on hand to read, I got fangirl. And it was exactly what I needed. It just sucked me in, whirled me around in its lovely world, and then threw me back out again :) 

I found the whole fanfiction thing interesting. I know it exists, but that is really all I know. I learnt of its existence during the harry potter era.. I found it weird-fascinating-cool that people were so into harry potter that they were writing up stuff themselves and having conventions and whatnot. I love harry potter, and I love discussing the books and movies, but that is really it. I may dream of going to Hogwarts, but no further. I didn’t want to read what other harry potter stuff people were writing –j k rowling’s work was enough for me. So I found cath and her addiction to the fictional characters of simon and baz fascinating. That she would rather write about them, then turn in something original for one of her classes –wow. But most of all, It was nice to be immersed. Why else do I read, if not to get caught up somewhere else? I will happily play host to cath, Reagan, levi and others in my head for the next few days :))

#microblog mondays
 

3 comments:

Lollipop Goldstein said...

Did you know she wrote a second, companion book for Fangirl called Carry On? It's the fan fiction book about Simon Snow. It's very very clever.

Unknown said...

I admire people like you who can jump genres. I'm a nervous nelly. I like the comfort of my old style murder mysteries. I spent a good part of today driving the librarian nuts because she kept suggesting authors to me, and I kept shooting her down because all I really wanted her to do was promise me that Agatha Christie was still alive and about to release her new book.

JustHeather said...

I know what you mean about finding it hard to pick another book to read after a good one. Sometimes I flounder around a bit until I find the next book. I've not read most of the books you mentioned, however Harry Potter I did finally read a couple of years ago. Loved it.