Cruises: The thing of nightmares? And The Handmaid's Tale.

[thistlechaser]

Okay, brain, this is getting silly. Yes, I did not at all like going on a cruise (to put it mildly). But I was bored and unhappy, I was not at any point scared. In fact, the days where the sea was the worst, when everyone else was sick? I enjoyed that the most.

So why, please tell me why, nearly every nightmare I've had since then was about being on a cruise ship? Last night I had a dream I decided to take another cruise to Alaska (...) but as I was getting on the ship we discovered my payment hadn't gone through, none of my paperwork was filled out, I realized I had forgotten to pack even a jacket, and I had forgotten to make arrangements for my cat, so she had to spend 10 days alone in my apartment.

I guess my stress dreams want a vacation?

Books: While I have the first book of Wool for free, I couldn't take another dark end-of-the-world story after finishing two books of that, so I started a different one instead. Little did I realize it wasn't all that different!

I'm not very far into The Handmaid's Tale, maybe six (short) chapters or so. I almost gave up on the book in the first three -- it was another dark book, when I wanted something different, but more than that I hated her writing. She uses semicolons and commas wrong. For example, (paraphrasing, I don't have the book in front of me).

He liked the color blue; too.

Commas were oddly used, quite overused. The whole thing just made me twitch and frown.

Then something happened. I stopped seeing all the issues and instead started "hearing" the writing. It was amazing. I don't mean the subject matter, but how she used words and grammar. This is going to be cliche, but it felt like it was caressing my ears. The tempo of it? The timing? The flow? The music of her text is amazing. (It even got to points where I lost track of what she was writing about and was just listening to how it sounded, which again makes no sense, this is an ebook, not an audio one.)

The plot of the book, which started slow and didn't catch my interest through the first couple chapters, has now hooked me as well.

Too bad this won't be book #25 when I finish it, it would have been a great book to end the year on.

Comments

[halogin.livejournal.com]

I love Margaret Atwood's writing and narrative style. :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm happily in that camp too now!

[teaandfailure.livejournal.com]

May I recommend her book Oryx and Crake to end on? It's kind of a companion book to Handmaid's Tale, in that Handmaids is dystopia by way of excessive religion, and Oryx is dystopia by way of excessive SCIENCE.

I like your description of how you went from annoyed by her writing to falling into the flow... I never noticed it with Atwood, but I did notice that when I read The Road. My first reaction was, "Jumping Jehosephat, this is some pretentious difficult stuff." Then I got into his groove and I loved it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes! I saw mention of that book while looking for this one, I'm going to read it for sure. In fact, I should buy it now so I have it on hand.

[halogin.livejournal.com]

Yeeees. Also an excellent book. I have it and Year of the Flood.

[machinegirl.livejournal.com]

OMFG ORYX AND CRAKE IS AWESOME.

So is The Blind Assassin, but that took me a little bit to get into.

[lokyst.livejournal.com]

Regarding your dream, is there some upcoming event in your life that you feel unprepared for?

I remember when I was writing up my thesis I would constantly have nightmares about missing the train etc. even though I had been catching public transport for years. I just had anxiety about the thesis deadline I had to meet. My brain just took that anxiety and tried to deal with it in a scenario I had previously experienced.

Of course, when I started having anxiety dreams about my 2hour commute in rush hour traffic it was a far more literal scenario. :p

A few studies have investigated dreams as a means for the brain to plan for new scenarios - hence Tetris dreams - and, in my case, dreams about slamming on the brakes because there was an unseen traffic jam just over the rise of that hill.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes and no. I'm in a new group at work, which is a much better group, but it's all NEW and SCARY and WHAT IF I FAIL. My whole life is stressy now, so I think it's more of a general thing.

I hope I can get back to good, fun dreams again! And no more traffic dreams for you, too!

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

but as I was getting on the ship we discovered my payment hadn't gone through, none of my paperwork was filled out, I realized I had forgotten to pack even a jacket, and I had forgotten to make arrangements for my cat

And you weren't wearing any pants, in front of your high school English class, while giving a speech! Also the Proms tomorrow!

Hopefully you get back into a more comfortable cycle soon and the dreams figure themselves out.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I know! Such typical stress-things. I wish my brain would be more creative!

Thanks. :D <3

[liedra.livejournal.com]

I love Atwood! You're right about her writing caressing you. I like to think of it as poetry/prose, that's why she does some of that odd punctuation stuff. It's about putting pauses in to make you consider what she's written.

Very glad you're enjoying the Handmaid's Tale. It was my first Atwood too, and remains one of my steadfast favourite sci-fi novels.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I found that (sadly) I have to be in the right mindset to enjoy it. Last night I was back to 'Get on with it! Story progress! Enough silly wording and descriptions!'. Hopefully today I'll be able to slow down again and enjoy the writing once more. (It's her own fault! It's a good story, I want to know what happens next! :P )