Booooooks
Over the last few days I have continued on my quest to gather as much reading knowledge as is humanly possible, before I must succumb to the call of my academic reading lists. I have since read said reading lists and read a book from them, which I actually enjoyed.
In one of my modules, we are lucky enough to be visited by a writer/publisher/agent/poet/industry professional of some variety. We were informed that we would be meeting Marcus Sedgwick, a writer who, admittedly I had not encountered before. So, as a diligent student, I set off for the library in search of the teen section to track down his work. I came across his She is not Invisible.
The book charts the journey of Laureth who (SPOILER ALERT) is blind and kind of abducts her younger brother to hitch on a flight to America, to track down their father who has gone missing. Their father is a famous writer, called Jack Peak, who is obsessed with coincidences and has been trying to write a book about them for years. The book charts Laureth and Benjamin's capers to track down their father and features many questionable coincidences and plot twists, but I was most interested about what the book revealed about the nature of writers.
Her father carries what he refers to as 'the black book' in which he writes all of his ideas. He is plagued by narrative and characters which he cannot quite articulate and is constantly at war with his family over his struggles to be creative and social. I resonate with Jack Peak. Despite not being an active character in the book until the end (and having quite a dull resolution to the quest) he is ever present in the narrative through Benjamin reading his notebook. I particularly love the way Laureth, as a sixteen year old girl, tries to conceptualise her father's work and the nature of writers in general:
'Dad's always talking about writers. How they hear characters speaking to them and are compelled to write about them. He says if other people hear voices in their heads they get locked up in rooms that have nothing sharp in them. Maybe writers are just a bit bonkers anyway. Maybe any writer's Google searches would get a normal person committed.'
I absolutely loved this sentiment and it linked directly to my first lecture of this semester last night. Our lecturer discussed the importance of research and the wonders of the internet and the variety of Google Searches writers must have.
I also believe that perhaps writers are a little bit nuts.
Creativity could be closely linked to madness, we do hear voices and we do spend a lot of time in our own heads. Much of Sedgwick's book focuses on the work of psychoanalysts who devoted their lives to their theories surrounding coincidences, some eventually going insane and harming themselves.
As Aristotle said, 'no great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.' And perhaps he is right. Carl Jung and other psychoanalysts which the book discusses were certainly great minds, but perhaps without the sound of mind at times.
Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was glad to read it as an older reader, I don't think I would have understood the nuances of being a writer and the nature of creativity had I read it as a teen reader.
A wonderful start to the Semester!
Today's soundtrack: Natives
Marcus Sedgwick, She is not Invisible (London: Indigo, 2014), p. 183.
In one of my modules, we are lucky enough to be visited by a writer/publisher/agent/poet/industry professional of some variety. We were informed that we would be meeting Marcus Sedgwick, a writer who, admittedly I had not encountered before. So, as a diligent student, I set off for the library in search of the teen section to track down his work. I came across his She is not Invisible.
The book charts the journey of Laureth who (SPOILER ALERT) is blind and kind of abducts her younger brother to hitch on a flight to America, to track down their father who has gone missing. Their father is a famous writer, called Jack Peak, who is obsessed with coincidences and has been trying to write a book about them for years. The book charts Laureth and Benjamin's capers to track down their father and features many questionable coincidences and plot twists, but I was most interested about what the book revealed about the nature of writers.
Her father carries what he refers to as 'the black book' in which he writes all of his ideas. He is plagued by narrative and characters which he cannot quite articulate and is constantly at war with his family over his struggles to be creative and social. I resonate with Jack Peak. Despite not being an active character in the book until the end (and having quite a dull resolution to the quest) he is ever present in the narrative through Benjamin reading his notebook. I particularly love the way Laureth, as a sixteen year old girl, tries to conceptualise her father's work and the nature of writers in general:
'Dad's always talking about writers. How they hear characters speaking to them and are compelled to write about them. He says if other people hear voices in their heads they get locked up in rooms that have nothing sharp in them. Maybe writers are just a bit bonkers anyway. Maybe any writer's Google searches would get a normal person committed.'
I absolutely loved this sentiment and it linked directly to my first lecture of this semester last night. Our lecturer discussed the importance of research and the wonders of the internet and the variety of Google Searches writers must have.
I also believe that perhaps writers are a little bit nuts.
Creativity could be closely linked to madness, we do hear voices and we do spend a lot of time in our own heads. Much of Sedgwick's book focuses on the work of psychoanalysts who devoted their lives to their theories surrounding coincidences, some eventually going insane and harming themselves.
As Aristotle said, 'no great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.' And perhaps he is right. Carl Jung and other psychoanalysts which the book discusses were certainly great minds, but perhaps without the sound of mind at times.
Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and was glad to read it as an older reader, I don't think I would have understood the nuances of being a writer and the nature of creativity had I read it as a teen reader.
A wonderful start to the Semester!
Today's soundtrack: Natives
Marcus Sedgwick, She is not Invisible (London: Indigo, 2014), p. 183.
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