A blossoming career

The Nauseated Reader

"Things have broken free from their names. They are there, grotesque, stubborn. gigantic, and it seems ridiculous to call them seats or say anything at all about them: I am in the midst of Things, which cannot be given names."

"Words have disappeared, and with them the meaning of things, the methods of using them, the feeble landmarks which men have traced on their surface."

-p 180 and 182, Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre.


Wow, I'm a writer quoting Sartre- how original. I'm been ploughing 'Nausea' for some time now; not for existential enlightenment, but it's one of those books you feel you need to check out. A literary classic, like 'Of Mice and Men', or 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. My bookcase groans with the increasing tide of books I tell myslef I must read, in order to be 'well-read'. That's rubbish really: there's so much out there, I'm sure it's capable of being well-read by going through many channels.

I've read 11 of the "100 novels everyone should read" (according to the Daily Telegraph), and a further six of them I own, waiting to be digested. I fare slightly better on the BBC's Big Read list of 100 novels, having consumed 12 of them: although three of these are Roald Dahl books I read when I was ten.

However, these lists only consider novels. Would they include 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius', 'Prozac Nation', or 'Round Ireland with a Fridge'?

I feel the need to read more, and perhaps, write less. I'm mot sure whether this is a good thing or not. Or maybe, like Sartre's character, I need to explore life and feelings a little more first of all.