New beginnings.

2012 has got off to a rather lovely start books wise. Unable to commit to just one blissful new book on my love of my life kindle I have instead plumped for lots. I have made inroads into them all but am nowhere finishing any of them, striving as I am to read so many at once!

'American Gods' by Neil Gaimen is shaping up very nicely and I am enjoying having him take a more serious and less shallow interaction with his topic matter. For once it is also a lot less of a fantasy novel for while it utterly is so, it is still set loosely within our world, rather than entering another world as 'Neverwhere' and 'Stardust' do. I already like it a great deal more than his other books.

'Death at Pemberley' by 'P.D. James is also most interesting. She is a prolific crime novelist and up until now I had never read her work, preferring my crime to be of the middle-class lacking in blood variety that dear old Agatha Christie was so perfect at. In this book she has taken 'Pride and Prejudice' (definitely in my top ten all time favourite books) and sets her novel 6 or so years after the marriage of Darcy and Elizabeth. The premise still being the solving of a crime, however, for one night Lydia comes screaming into Pemberley claiming Wickham has been murdered. The book so far is just readable but frankly after the first few pages which were a delight, conjuring up as they did the magic of Austen, the style in which James is writing becomes very irritating. She is clearly trying to write in the style of Austen but it lacks the humour and the ease and feels very stilted and heavy-handed. This is a shame as the actual plot is rather good.

'The American Senator' by Anthony Trollope is absolutely marvellous. I have read a great deal of his work but up until now (barring perhaps the excellent 'Lady Anna') I haven't felt he came anywhere near his magnum opus 'The Way We Live Now'. But 'The American Senator' is proving to be jolly good and almost in the same sort of way. There is an excellently scheming heroine who reminds one a good deal of Rebecca Sharp in 'Vanity Fair', a real heroine who as always is a bit of a milk sop, engagements, love interests, battles over ethics, an American who challenges the way of life of the English upper classes... it is a joy to read and so delightfully long that it can accompany me for a good long time.

'Westwood' by Stella Gibbons which is okay... I loved 'Cold Comfort Farm' and adore 'Nightingale Wood' but so far this is not living up to expectations. I was half expecting this for when an author is so universally known only for one book it takes a bit of a leap to bother with the others, but 'Nightingale Wood' I loved so much I thought perhaps her other work had been unfairly looked over. I will stick it out but the pleasure in her words, her usual witty turns of phrase do seem to be lacking.

Also 'Service with a Smile' by the ever charming P.G. Wodehouse. It is his usual best and is a delightful Blandings book. I do love Wodehouse, he really takes a lot of beating and I have never read anything remotely like him in style or content.

The utter joy of the kindle is that one can also download samples of books so for my perusal I have 'A Game of Thrones' by George R.R. Martin and 'Rangarok: The End of the Gods' by A.S. Byatt.

Blast from the past.

Decided that I needed to do some research into the whole friends with benefits idea in regards to Lancelot and so spent yesterday watching 'When Harry Met Sally', 'Friends with Benefits' and 'No Strings Attached' thanks to the wonders of megavideo. The former I rather enjoyed but although I did like that they got together at the end I found it all strangely passionless... oh for sure they loved each other and had great fun and chemistry in that sense together, but there never felt like there was a physical attraction between them. There never felt any overwhelming lust and need between them to hook up and so I was left a little off put by that. Where as I thought the friends who get together thanks to a cringy double date were wonderful and I did much more believe in their chemistry. 'Friends with Benefits' had its moments, particularly thanks to a wonderful performance by Patricia Clarkson as the mother of the female lead, but I found it pretty tedious. It wasn't all funny and sexy but instead both characters though very attractive were really very dull. And the plot was nonexistent. It all felt much more like a couple who just have a rocky start to their relationship rather than any interesting and potentially challenging material about f**k buddies. However, it was head and shoulders above 'No Strings Attached' which despite the ever watchable Natalie Portman I found so dreary I couldn't be bothered to finish it. Which there is absolutely no need to do anyway as from the beginning we are all convinced (and quite right I might add) that the two characters will eventually get together and admit that they are in love.

I wonder if my research is slightly off... Books and Hollywood have already convinced me of the might and power of love, and how I will one day find the perfect man for me etc etc etc, could it be possible that Hollywood has also given me the wrong message about being special friends with a boy? Could it possibly be that Lancelot and I having gone down that path won't one day turn to each other and admit out love? But then if that does happen surely we will slip immediately into the plot of the ghastly 'One Day' (both book and film so it must be accurate) and over the years be friends of varying sorts before at long last getting married?

Well a girl can hope! The problem of course being (which is horribly obvious and equally horribly true) that I already adore him and he almost certainly (books have taught me that one is never sure what the man really feels, just look at Mr Darcy for dear old Lizzie Bennett had no idea he wanted to marry her until he proposed) doesn't feel the same way about me. I do wish I could convince myself he doesn't care for me... but sadly it is always possible to delude oneself and hold tightly onto little gestures or comments and give them a value and impetus they were not meant to contain.

But now that another uni term has begun I have lots to keep me occupied, not least that yesterday I made the alarming discovery that the hot lecturer I asked out last term has not moved on to another university as I was previously informed was the plan, but is in fact still here! I am horrified! Oh dear god the thought of having him as a lecturer again is so embarrassing... in fact I don't have him as a lecturer I am pretty sure but that still leaves the infinitely worse problem that I might get him as a tutor... that would be a nightmare as tutorial groups are very small and there would be so many opportunities for eye-contact and him thinking I had turned up earlier in order to try and speak to him alone.

I still feel that life is short and that one should grab any opportunities to go out with someone you like but really this is why one doesn't ask out a lecturer! I feel very cross and betrayed, he was supposed to be teaching somewhere else by now, I had it on good authority he wouldn't be teaching here still! Oh well with any luck I won't get taught by him, but that does still leave the dreaded possibility that I will bump into him, and in fact could bump into him at any time... But though I am now fearing such an encounter, just like in the case of Lancelot it does still occur to me at the back of mind that something might still happen between us... gosh I need to get a grip and stop daydreaming but it would be so lovely...

But I am keeping busy with men who are actually available and do actually fancy me and tomorrow is date number 3 with Mr Blonde while a chap who asked me out years ago (I was with Germanicus at the time and had to say no) has been back in touch and we are going to meet for drinks soon. Oh it is nice to feel one has options!

Confusion.

A few weeks ago I started writing emails to my ex-boyfriend by instead of sending them to him I have saved them all in my draft email folder. It feels really cathartic and cleansing to be able to tell him all the things I feel about our split and about him, and yet for him not to know or respond. While we were together I used to tell him about how I felt and he used to not properly listen/ change the subject/ totally forget what I had said a few minutes later and so this way works even better as it means there is now no reason for me to get cross with him for having failed to listen to me.

I used to think that men in real life were not a patch on men in books and while this remains largely true I must add the caveat that men in books also fall short of the ideal. I know think that ideal men are probably best illustrated by film rather than fiction. Mr Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ was a cold fish who was very rude to Lizzie Bennet and his only redeeming feature was his wealth, Anna Karrenina and Madame Bovary had a rotten time with men, Rhett Butler only amused himself with Scarlett O’Hara and then left her for merely being the same person she was all along and I can’t think of a single book in which the man both beautifully professes his love and then manages to live up to it afterwards. 

My ex and I have been split for slightly over two months now, two very long months in which I have not had nearly enough to occupy my time and so I have brooded rather while he has made himself very busy indeed and underwent no period of mourning where you don’t stir out of pjs all day and eat way too much while watching a lot of Murder She Wrote… We met up a couple of weeks ago to exchange our things which I found weird but he seemed to like. He wanted to see me again, in fact was most eager to do so and on Monday we did. We not only had lunch together but then met again in the evening for dinner and drinks. I am not being vain, I truly am not when I say that he wants to get back together. From some of the things he said, the way he tried to hold my hand several times etc. He does. And yet he doesn’t. He is not the kind to make any great romantic running after me, he is the type to sit back and see me lots of times and just wait for something to happen without planning anything romantic and without even thinking to himself that he should dress up, take me somewhere special and say wonderful things before kissing me. He will have no plan because that was the way it was when we got together in the beginning, he just kept asking me out and eventually things progressed.

I don’t want to sound bitter, I am not. In fact I was the one who split up with him. I am only confused and unsure of what I want. He is lovely and although there were other things behind the breakup the catalyst was definitely his pulling out of our plans to live together. That is what makes it so confusing: I split up with him because I loved him enough to live together but because he didn’t and I felt a great need to protect myself by not staying with someone who didn’t love me as much as I loved them.

What makes it all more confusing is that I can’t think of a single book where there is the same dilema! Even the torrid romantic life of Natasha in ‘War and Peace’ did not encounter this problem. On a side note I was frightfully disappointed by the way she ended up. She was stunningly beautiful and charming and catnip to men and yet she ended up with the most boring chap in the whole book and turned out frumpy, fat and a complete housewife. I was horrified! I saw the opera of the same book last year and thought it rather marvelous although in it for some ridiculous reason they missed the whole ending and Natasha actually didn’t end up with the bore which I found rather amusing!