Fantabulous, my own blog. What larks. I now join the ranks of millions all over the world in posting my musings out into the world of the wide-wide-web. This might yet prove to be a grand mistake, however it has been advised that I find some sort of creative outlet for the goings-on and happenings in my life. I couldn't help but think of this as a terribly self indulgent thing to do - absolutely nothing of note happens in my life, therefore this could be impossibly boring for any poor soul to stumble across this. I thought, however, it was time to move beyond the sundry bounds of Facebook 'notes'.
It would be quite a fair judgement to say that my student life in the grand city of Exeter now centres mostly around my next Starbucks-tall-skinny-vanilla-latte-no-cream. I am not quite sure whether it is a tragic or heartening fact that the man in the local Exeter High Street branch knows my order off by heart. This might have something to with the fact my darling friend and confidante Emmy spend hours and hours in said branch. Our addiction to the frothy steamed goodness is a mere contributing factor for this glorified wasting of time. Starbucks also happens to be warm, with an excellent background hum of conversation and also boasts several of Exeter's finest Strange People to act as unwitting subjects of my scrutiny. Oddly enough, it also allows my mind to focus on whatever mindless drivel I've been set to read for the week. I can honestly say that it will take a lot of lattes to get through the up-coming Ulysses. I almost started having palpitations when I saw it in all its 732-page glory.
This is hardly an inspiring statement from a 2nd year English student. But it is not without reason; my degree is slowly but surely sucking away my enthusiasm and enjoyment of reading. This is because I am subjected to (in my wizened opinion) god-awful books, and poetry for that matter. I have absolutely no patience, for instance, for the pages and pages of prose entirely lacking in punctuation. This is perfectly constituted within Gertrude Stein's An Autobiography of Alice B. Tolkas which only left me with an intense desire to go through the entire book again, adding appropriate commas, semi-colons and sentence-rearrangements. Kim by Rudyard Kipling might have won the Nobel Prize for Literature, yet it does not prevent it from being mind-numbingly boring, especially to the female reader. The entire novel concerns nothing but a big boy's game.
Amongst other works, I have had to force my eyes to read some truly devastatingly boring prose recently. Heralded as an apparent cultural classic, the prize of American Literature, Moby Dick caused physical brain pain for the majority of my English peers. It was torture for the eyes; despite being made aware of the incredible and unending riches to be found within Melville's masterpiece, it did not stop it from being just horrendously, mind-numbingly dull.
Do forgive my cynicism; there is a lot more of it to come. This first attempt at a post details the facts I am a 2nd year English student at Exeter University, and I hate most of what I have to read - how encouraging and thrilling. Do be assured, dear reader, that I do have something of an essence of the good in my life. I have the most wonderful friends who share my love for good food, quick humour, hard work and of course, love of the latte. I am also indebted to my boyfriend for keeping me sane, and the works of Graham Greene and Shakespeare to keep my faith in literature (believe it or not). And Emmy-Lou to stop me from kicking holes in the wall and wearing away the skin on my hands with fruitless cleaning efforts. And I am absolutely prepared for the fact that I will undoubtedly end up the female equivalent of Victor Meldrew by the age of 30.
Look at that, I wrote a blog post instead of reading Henry IV. Damn.
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