Great Gatsby - Chapter 1

In this chapter we are introduced to the narrator Nick Carraway who has returned to the midwest and is writting on events that occurred a couple of years ago when he was living in the suburban area of West Egg.
Nick begins with self analysis, aiming to pin aspects of his character. He gives little detail about his background.
Jay Gatsby, his neighbour on West Egg, lives in a mansion. A wealthy area, a 'consoling proximity of millionaires' and describes buildings in and around the area as 'white palaces'.

Nick Carraway, as narrator, has the reader in confidence. Sharing with us his recollection of a series of  events. At the same time, when re-iterating the story in his own way, is easing him to come to terms with past events. You notice immediately that Nick's style is challenging, sometimes a little difficult. His sentences can be grammatically complex, and at times his vocabulary is obscure.

Nick is not only a narrator but a character in this novel aswell, the first person he analyses is himself. Aspects of his character are shown in the information he offers us, and the way he presents it.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Browning tells this story in third person and throughout the work switches up the rhymes but fluctuates between light and dark when speaking about the townsfolk and the rodents

'To see townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.' (lines 8 & 9)

Nonetheless his stanzas persist to be clever and playful.

Lines 55 to 69: When describing the Piper, there is not once a reference to music, Browning leaves him a unique, solitary stranger, who displays none of his thoughts. Browning lets the Piper stay a mystery, only describing his appearance of vibrant colours, relating to the audience it's for. ('A child's story')

The rhyming pattern to this story flows at an easy pace, giving it almost a sing-a-long approach, like a nursery rhyme, relating again to children. It is also in past tense implying that Browning himself or another was establishing the story to a different character (this is backed up by lines 300 -303 'Willy, let me and you be wipers of scores out with all men' where Browning changes the narrative, making the reader believe maybe 'Willy' is a young boy being told the story, making it 'a childs story') and evidently, the reader.

Browning marks the stranzas like chapters in his story to put them into a timeline from the start til the recent, setting the date in line 274

'On  the twenty second of July'

Porphyrias Lover

One of Robert Brownings earliest and most unsettling poems; Porphyrias Lover has the speaker of the dramatic monologue narrate how he killed his beloved, Porphyria, strangling her with her own 'yellow string' for hair. Doing so to make her his forever. Recalling his story to establish his actions and preserve her death. The language used is simple and structured to sixty lines combined with an asymmetrical rhyming pattern, conveying an absurdity kept beneath our speakers evidently sadistic soothing tone.
The poem shows themes of sex, violence and unnecessary madness which, because of it's time would have been of great interest to the victorian readers, who were seeming fans of sensational horror tales and abandonment of all things moral, but in Porphyria, Browning turns common expectations of such sensationalism by exposing the sex between Porphyria and her lover as normal and natural with lines 'Perfectly pure and good', 'made my heart swell and still it grew' making the reader acknowledge the relationship of sex and violence, then exposing the nature of the speakers delirium.
The reader is left wondering whether to consider the deluded speakers account, and to understand condemnation of sexual misbehavior and why sexuality is most often linked with dominance and power

My Top 5 Books

1. Five Quarters Of The Orange - Joanne Harris
     I have fallen in love with this book. Harris is a fantastic author, who can write about tragic events such as war, work and untimely deaths but still keep your mood at carefree whilst reading it. Harris' writing style I found succulent, as delicious as the food in her book. I wanted to be Framboise, running along the river (Loire), splashing, hanging upside down and causing trouble.
At age nine Framboise and her family make a quick exit out of Les Laveuses. Back to visit her home town, Framboise, now an old woman, is determined to keep the villagers unaware of who she is and away from the what really happened in 1942. This book is beautiful as well as teasing us with exciting information that pulls us to the dramatic moments- Five Quarters of the Orange, a feast for the senses.

2. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
     This book definitely lives up to the hype that's surrounded it, this page turner is full of complex characters and intense situations that make your mind think hard on relationships and friendships, deceit, redemption, heartfelt and ugly. Consuming, upsetting at times, but a great book nonetheless. 

3. Dhampir - Barb and J.C Hendee
    This is a buffy tale mixed with the lord of the rings type. Magiere gains a reputation as the most fearful vampire slayer across the land. Villagers from all distances welcome her with desperation- grateful for riding their homes of the undead menaces. But there's a twist, is it all a game?
This book is not like it's contemporaries, move over Stephenie Meyer, this is a vampire novel to Eclipse all others.

4. Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fanny Flagg
    Flagg is an incredibly entertaining, funny, amazing storyteller. The book, set in the deep south of the states, opens in June 1929 and closes in May 1988. Decades of lives and loves, scandals and barbeque sauce. Couch and Threadgoode are a formidable double act exploring together the memories of Whistle Stop, Idgie and Ruth among other fantastic characters. It delves into racial issues of the twenties and thirties through to the diet dilemmas of the eighties, some of it macabre, some hilarious. This was a thoroughly entertaining novel that made me laugh and cry on equal amounts.

5.