It's raining and, according to the weather people, is going to be so for quite some time. Yay! The previous two or three days had been edging perilously close towards become rather too warm and sultry for comfort so a good bit of rain is a pleasing thing. There have also been one or two other pleasing things in the days since my last journal entry too, along with a quantity of worry and angst which for me is inescapable but fortunately that hasn't spiralled to any particularly distressing levels just yet. In the general though, this week seems to have been rather quiet really by my standards.

Whilst the herring gull chicks that had been perched in nests upon the roof tops around my flat have now begun to stretch their wings a bit and take their first few unsteady wanderings I was also treated to the delightful sight of a few hundred starlings flocking over the town and preparing to roost. I'd never seen such a display before, except on television, and the movements of so many starlings together in the soft evening light really is quite a mesemeric thing to watch. I wonder where they all came from and why I haven't seen such a thing about town before. Perhaps this year has been a little more favourable for nature than the last few? Certainly I think I've seen more swallows around than I remember and a fair number of butterflies. I suppose this summer has been a bit more warm and settled than previous recent offerings, despite the odd rain shower.

Meanwhile, Wednesday 15th was my Dad's birthday so I phoned him up and we talked. His recovery from the heart-attack seems to be going well, no further signs of illness. They'd been out to Haddon Hall in the morning and were off for a birthday meal at step-sister's house in the evening. Heh, no chance then that he's keeping that strictly to the levels of rest suggested by the doctors but he's still rather impatient with the restrictions that step-mum is managing to keep him to, and with not being able to get back to work yet. Still I suppose these are all good signs and things seem to be going well.

Meanwhile, I also just got my overdue assignment back on The Color Purple. For various reasons I didn't expect the greatest of marks, but I'm consistently surprised by all the scores I get for everything. What, I has intelligence? Don't be silly! Still, I'm particularly surprised indeed to discover that I scored 80% for this assignment! How did that happen? Heh, I wonder sort of scores I would get if I really put the time and study effort into reading and preparing my essays that I feel that I should be doing! Perhaps one day too I might actually feel myself worthy of praise rather than just adept at academic conventions and a little bit lucky. Still, 80%, and I thought this was going to be my lowest mark of the course. Shows what I know in more way than one maybe? Will take more than that to convince my insecure brain though, that I know very well indeed.

Anywho, besides that I've had a busy couple of days in the shop and today a routine trip to the jobcentre. After a bit of a ponder I then chose to spend much of the rest of my day reading The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson. A while since I've read something without then writing an essay at the end, heh, but then I went and wrote a review of it on Facebook so that perhaps missed the point! Still it is interesting the difference in the experience of a reading a book for pleasure and inspiration compared with reading for study. I think though the processes are complementary to each other though rather than at odds. Reading for pleasure is a magical, transformative and enhancing experience of course, but study adds depth of understanding, opens up new perspectives and broadens horizons. Different but complementary experiences, though I am a literary creature I suppose and maybe it would be different for others with more natural affinity for other art forms?

Either way, The PowerBook is a gorgeous tale filled with Winterson's usual beautifully lyrical prose. Perhaps not my favourite of her books that I have read, certain devices of the story (particularly around the transformative power of story writing) do not quite come off for me, but still a wonderful book. Indeed, perhaps a little unfair that I spent most of my little review detailing my small criticisms when most of the book is wonderful. Still, it's Jeanette Winterson writing so you can take it as read that the book is largely enchanting. It's those other bits that require explanation. Anyways, in case anyone happens by, not on Facebook, but with a wish to read I'll attach my little review here too. I'd quite like to hear other views and perspectives. If you've not read it I don't think it should spoil much of the experience, though you might not fully get all my views. In the meantime, hopes the stories you be writing are going smoothly...

There is perhaps a certain irony that I read this today, outside of my literature course, partly out of a desire of reading something that I didn't have to write an essay on when I had finished, and now I'm writing a little essay on it. But anyways....

Jeanette Winterson's prose remains ever a beautiful and lyrical thing. Her evocations of thought and feeling really enfold you and draw you into the characters and her decriptive writing sets the scenes with sublime details. This is certainly a beautiful, thoughtful and moving book though at the crunch I'm not quite sure I like it as much as some of her other books I've read. Whilst the story itself may be a delightful creation the elements which you might call the story of the story perhaps don't work quite so well.

The trouble with a story that uses the device of referring to the process of reading and writing stories, the bounds between the fictional and the real, beginnings and ends and so forth is that it draws too much attention to itself. It is perhaps a little too pleased with itself and by trying to impress upon you the shifting boundaries between the real and the idealised and the power of the story it brings into starker focus the factity of what you are holding in your hand. A physical book, writing fixed in black and white and bound by the limits of its covers. The more it seeks to blur the line between fact and fiction, reality and desire, the more stark facts seem to make the effort to reassert themselves.

Furthermore this the The PowerBook and books are by their nature confident things, even the ones that pretend not to be. They are secure in their bindings, the black and white certainty of the ink on the page and a conclusion in sight. Confident and freely fictional. Reality is the reverse and whilst this may not have been the aim of the story, it doesn't quite sit well with me personally that the lyrical beauty of the prose is not really reflective of the fears and insecurities of the physical world. Though it is an intelligent thought to invest the PowerBook with the power of the writer, writing themselves and being changed by the writing, and the second-half of the book is perhaps better at it than the first (it has perhaps done more to earn such philosophising by then) it still doesn't quite sit right with me personally. Although the more I have sat and reflected the more I have slowly warmed to the ideas, yet it is still not with the intensity of love and magic I have found in some of Winterson's other stories.

Still this remains a beautiful, charming, moving and thought provoking story and certainly a great pleasure and inspiring thing to read and reflect upon.