15.Nov.2008 Sunday Salon: Nanoremo, Challenge, etc

I intended to join the 2008 Nanowrimo, I have even read the book by the founder: No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty. Alas, I have to cancel my plan. There’s just no way I can fit everything in the month of November, what with the wedding plan, the Japanese exam, and all. So a great literature by me won’t be born this month. Perhaps next year.

Sad for the postponing of novelist transformation, I turned my love to 2008 Nanoremo. Read here for why Matt started the National Novel Reading Month. Fortunately this year Lolita was chosen.

I started Lolita about a year or 2 ago. Then I gave up after about 100 pages or so because I felt the language was just too high and I missed out a lot of the jokes. But I still wanted to finish it, someday. 2008 Nanoremo was a perfect chance for me to start again.

Now you think after 2 years reading many other books, your English could turn a little bit better. But not really. The book still contains a lot of words that might’ve been taken out of this world. I only believe they’re English after I see them in dictionary.com. How Nabokov did this with English as his third language, I cannot comprehend. This time though, I thought, screw it, I’m just gonna keep going til the end and see where Lolita will take me. (I’ve watched the movie with Jeremy Irons in it, so at least I know the general plot)

Lolita also closes up the Wind-Up Book Chronicle challenge that I started a while ago that’s supposed to end 15 Nov 2008. Embarrassingly I hadn’t been able to finish any of the books in the list. But now with Lolita going, at least I will have one book crossed off the list. (Time goes really fast! What’s with all these uncompleted challenges?!)

Reading-wise, apart from Lolita, I also started Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto and a non-fiction: Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks. Reading several books at a time? That’s not a good sign. Kafka on the Shore made me do that. I love Murakami, but this time I don’t care much for the characters. And he just keeps throwing random weird stuffs. I can just imagine him going, “Mmh, what happens if I throw a Johnnie Walker wannabe? (as in the whisky Johnnie) Oh and fish dropping from sky! And a gay he-female on the side would be nice. Ghost too!” I won’t be surprised if there are aliens in the end. I’m going to continue that book, just because I’m curious a Murakami cease to impress me. Has he stopped being (almost) God?