Cardamom and Moss: A Pilfering

You, my mythological readers, are perhaps wondering where the title of this blog comes from. It does not, alas, come from my brain, because my brain is not nearly so lovely. (It is squishy, and thieving. Or at the very least, squirrel-like.) Rather, it comes from the brain of Ray Bradbury.

To be perfectly honest, I never expected to like Fahrenheit 451. I somehow managed to escape it being force-fed to me in high school, and it never came up in college until I decided it was high time I actually read it. With some prompting from a vlogbrothers video. I mean, I love dystopian sci-fi, but I always expected it was going to be a little too sci-fi, where all the literary merit is in the metaphor of the plot.

What I didn't expect was for the writing to be absolutely beautiful. Lyrical, rich, and beautiful, but in a tasteful, appropriate way for the subject matter. As one of my former Creative Writing professors might say, Ray Bradbury knows how to write a sentence.

 This is the passage my blog title found itself from:

The shape exploded away. The eyes vanished. The leafpiles flew up in a dry shower.

Montag was alone in the wilderness.

A deer. He smelled the heavy musk-like perfume mingled with blood and the gummed exhalation of the animal's breath, all cardamom and moss and ragweed odour in this huge night where the trees ran at him, ran, pulled away, to the pulse of the heart behind his eyes (137).

To be perfectly honest, I don't remember a lot about what's happening in this scene, since I read the book last year. All I know is that something about those words was so beautiful to me that I haven't been able to delete the book off of my Nook, even though I know I probably won't read it again, or at least for a long while yet. Perhaps it's silly, but something about that trio of words collided with me on a personal level that I don't think I often experience as a reader. Something about the combination of food and nature imagery, I suppose.

An Introduction

I've resisted doing something like this for a long time, largely because I am terrible at keeping up with blogs. I had a food blog (still have, technically), which I haven't updated in two summers, even though I am a better cook now. And – to my detriment – I don't really read blogs. But what I do read is books. Apparently, a lot of books. Since 2008, I've made it my goal to read at least fifty books each year, and since then, I've managed to do so, fluctuating between fifty and one hundred books. (Though let's be honest; it's usually around sixty-five.) I said 'apparently a lot' before because I know of a lot of people who consistently read a hundred or more books a year, and I am humbled by them.

Anyway. When I finish reading a book, I log it in the current year's spreadsheet, occasionally with a little bit of literary-type analysis if I'm feeling so moved. Often, things just descend into capslocky keymashes of rage or joy. They don't always, though. And usually, I've been content to keep my thoughts to myself. Except about three weeks ago, I graduated from college, where I was an English major and a History minor. Turns out, I'm the sort of person who likes to ferret out the deeper meanings of primary sources. Who knew? I had a hard time with school, and often resented much of the work I had to put into it. But now that I've graduated, I find I need some sort of outlet. I need to close read things. Books, mostly, although the beautiful thing about knowing how to close 'read' is that you can apply it to all sorts of mediums, even films. Even people. Everything has symbolism or metaphor, whether intentional or not. Guh. What do you mean, college taught me a skill I will carry with me for the rest of my life? Preposterous!

Anyway again – because this rambling is almost reminiscent of the huge introductory paragraphs I would write in my essays to make sure I would meet the page limit – this is going to be a mostly literature-y blog. With other things like films being discussed as if they were literature. (I love it when other mediums come off as literary.) This blog is going to (hopefully) be much more coherent than this post. It is going to use passive voice, because no one is grading me. Unless you really want to. This is a blog for geeky people, so I respect your intellectual quirks. There will be justified text, because all other text alignments are hideous. I will update on no schedule whatsoever, and there may be layers of cobwebs from grandmother spiders clinging to every surface before I flit back here on a whim. I did a Creative Writing emphasis, so there will probably be weird imagery like that all over the place. I have a particular, though not exclusive, passion for YA Lit.

I don't think I will do book reviews, per se, more like analyses of certain thematic elements. I know when I finish reading a compelling book, I often like to Google how other people have not only reacted to, but interpreted, certain elements. Sometimes I even rely on blog posts to help me understand a particularly difficult metaphor, which often solidifies my understanding of an entire book.

So basically, my goal is to not only help me, but to help you. Perhaps you are weathering the same void into which I am shouting, and we will hear each other's echoes. Or perhaps not. But gentle reader, lift your face into the wind and enjoy it.