in sickness and in health

daphne du maurier has got to be the most warped author ever... and not in the stephen king way... stephen king is just plain sick... with her, her sickness is almost intangible. she's so... intense. i just finished reading her short stories... and i think a part of me envies her... the ability to think on so many levels... to come up with such morbid interpretations of relatively mundane things. this woman kicks ass. she's just... brilliant. although i have been scorned at, very recently, for reading her... "i read du maurier when i was 13". my reply to that? "whatever" a couple of other books i recently read, but wouldnt really recommend them to anyone are by robert ludlum. which isnt saying they were bad. it's just saying ludlum really isnt my cup of tea. and im sure i can make that claim having read the bourne identity, and the bourne supremacy... both of which i found written in a very similar style. his books are a must read if you want to know exactly how much pressure to exert at what point on the arm to hear the bone "craaack"... i was very sure i wasnt overly fond of him once i had finished the bourne identity...but force of habit and extreme boredom led me to pick up the sequel... and anyways, i have this rule of reading the book before watching the movie, one i have almost always been able to comply with, except in the case of andrew loydd webber's the phantom of the opera. (and not for a minute did i regret my decision to get the DVD. the musical is absotively fantabulous. the book? *faints*) i swear, that book is perhaps as unreadable as james joyce's ulysses... or maybe i'm being too harsh... but considering how unreadable ulysses is, i just think it's unfair to consider it in the top 100 books of all times. while we are on the subject of awful books, add a portrait of the artist as a young man to the list. consider the title, and imagine how much fun the book is going to be. =P but coming back to the books i HAVE read, and ludlum in particular, i would read the bourne ultimatum if i could get my hands on it (keeping with tradition, i prefer not to buy books... it's cheaper to read and return, and buy only what u think is worth owning); for a couple of reasons. a) i do things complete sets. and b) while ludlum isnt someone i'd recommend, that doesnt mean he's someone i wouldnt read. (i tend to treat myself rather shabbily). i remember doing that with erich segal. i owned/read about more than half a dozen books of his (which thankfully my best friend gave away on my behalf). except for love story, which everyone and their dog has read, i cannot recall a single book of his which was outstanding in terms of conent. that guy was literally a waste of time. *shudder* terrible, terrible stuff. anyways, i dont particularly want to blog about erich segal, and im pretty much done with ludlum... so i guess... that's about it? ----------------------------------------------------- "love means never having to say you are sorry" -- love story.