My Book Recommendation

Hey everyone!
I'm going to recommend a book by one of my favourite authors, Bret Easton Ellis. I'm currently reading his second novel, Rules of Attraction. Published in 1987.

It was made into a film in 2002.

The blurb is as follows:

Incisive, controversial and startlingly funny, The Rules of Attraction examines a group of affluent students at a small, self-consciously bohemian, liberal-arts college on America’s East Coast.

Lauren, who changes the man in her bed even more often than she changes course, is dating Victor but sleeping with Sean. Sean – cool, ambivalent and deeply cynical – might be in love with Lauren, but he’s not going to let that stop him from bedding Paul. Paul, as shrewd as he is passionate, is Lauren’s ex-lover and the final point in this curious triangle. This is a breathtaking tale of sex, expectation, desire and frustration.

‘A tour of the heart of darkness, a moral armageddon’ The Times

‘Compelling . . . sympathetic to his “lost generation” the way only Fitzgerald was about his’Vanity Fair

‘One of the primary inside sources in upper-middle-class America’s continuing investigation of what has happened to its children’ New York Times

‘Inspired. A wonderfully comic novel’ Gore Vidal

Place prose- Asylum

Tick tock. Tick tock.... it was all I could hear from my cot, solitary confinement makes me very lonely. I was put in here because the Lord told me that Sister Agatha was the Devil incarnate and not to take the pills she gives me. I always obey the Lord.

Sometimes I am bad, that's when they start to take my things away, it was my blanket first, then my pillow and tonight they went for the mattress. I didn't care. The Lord would save me. When I pray I like to huddle in the corner and rock back and forth, mostly because I am scared the Sisters will see me. The Sisters are bad people.

The first week I was here they took away my hairbrush, I don't know why, all I did was hit someone with it. My hair is now in matted clumps, Sister Mabel told me not even getting in the bath will fix it. My arms are covered in red marks and silvery scars, I don't know why. It must be the Devil.

The Sisters have exorcised me twice, the Priest was a nice man, but I tried to tell them that I had no demon, it was the Sisters who did. That's what got me put in here.

My feet are cold; I'm not allowed shoes or socks. My arms are cold; my sleeves are too short and my blanket is gone. Sometimes I am sad; the other people here are scary and like to shout things at me. I begged for my things back, but Sister Mary said that the Lord told her not to give them to me, she's a liar. She's just angry because I found the lipstick she wasn't supposed to have and used it to write on the wall. I didn't write anything that wasn't true, so I don't know why she's upset. It was a very nice red colour and my wall looks a lot better now. I wish I had a window, but the Sisters won't let me out of my cell. I hate it here. I hate them. The Lord will save me.

Place prose

A chill spread through me, I felt like I had interrupted something. The tree seemed to pause in mid-step over the old house. Roots, perched like tentacles, spilled down onto the ground, pooling at my feet.

The whole place smelled of rot, damp and moss, as if touching anything would cause it to decompose and be lost forever. Everything within the house had long since rotted away, including, I would guess, its past inhabitants. Woodland creatures took refuge between its walls, like something out of a fairy tale. I wanted to stay, but it wasn't safe, and I'd read enough fairy tales to know that the giant would probably be on its way soon.

The wind whistled, something was on its way here, I ran to the house and jumped in through one of the windows with no glass, spooking rats, squirrels and bats to name but a few. Empty bed frames and an old oak table were all that remained of the past owners, apart from an old net curtain, which lay torn and half rotten on the floor, its former glorious white colour had gone to the dirty grey of dust. Once I decided it was safe I was gone, never looking back at the tentacled tree, which had probably moved on its way to wherever it had been going before. I wiped it from my mind like a dead bug on a car windscreen, pulling up my hood and running along to grandma's house.

Place piece (draft)- The Library

The computing section. Silence. Volumes untouched by student hands, pages without a crease. Game Coding gathers dust, last taken out in January 2010 by a boy who just wanted to see the pictures. Under every librarian's "shush" one can hear the desperate cries of books unread, having never been enjoyed or appreciated by the eyes of a reader, screams muffled by dust, no one hears them. How To Program Java flies from its shelf, as if setting itself up to trap a reader between its 1580 pages, only for it to be roughly shoved back in the right place.

Other volumes lay beneath shelves, left by students intending to return for them. They stay silent, waiting for their rescue, but they'll be waiting for a long time, those students to longer go here.

Place piece- To all the Unfortunates in G Block

It had gotten warmer since the beginning, heat created from the friction of pens to notebooks as ideas flowed from the mind to the wrist. Chairs pulled wonky and tables pulled in close, as if the creativity will rub off on one another. Fingers pull thick hair aside, clearing the way for eyes to read back over paragraphs and pages. The clock, displaying the total wrong time, daren't tick for fear of breaking the flow. Ideas run out, dripping like a leaky tap before returning to the previous stream. So much goes on yet nothing happens. It's silent. The world outside goes on, unable to see the ideas fly like sparks around the room. The air is thick, trembling with energy. The abandoned technology is all exiled into one corner, where it may distract no one. 'Twas just a room in a creaky old shack, an annexe with a name as welcoming as the place was pleasant 'G Block'. Only the Unfortunates are left here, with its creaky door and corridor with no lights and a phone with no dial tone, to give the illusion that one could call for help. G2, fallen posters on the ground and a door linking each room to the next, urging Unfortunates to watch one another. It wasn't all bad, the radiatorworked at least, caged to prevent theft, and the adjustment of the settings. Parabulas stain the board, from the Unfortunates who were here before, no one bothered wondering what had happened to them, after all, they were already gone.

Book Recommendation

Hey there
So out of the thousands of books we've read between us we have to recommend something, I'm going to choose  The Silence Of The Lambs series, it's a crime/thriller that's been made into a huge movie franchise.

Serial Killer+ Awesome Detective guy= Epic tale

There's a reason it's so famous, just saying :P

Place- Drill

Left, right, left right left. Left, right, left right left....
The unity of our boots hitting the floor in perfect time seemed to spur on Serge, who was dripping from the heavy rain which pounded down on us all.

"Harry, arms up higher!" He called, marching us through mud and other substances I'm glad I couldn't identify. Our shirts stuck to us, epaulettes swollen like sponges and the boys hats soaked through. The only advantage to the ugly female bowler hat was it didn't have a soft top, and so didn't drink up every drop of rain like a thirsty camel.

Serge and Staff Tweed surveyed us, noting every millisecond someone was out of time, until every step was executed with military precision. Everyone longed for their jumpers and coats, both of which were standard issue but still not to be worn during drill. The calling of warmth and dryness seemed to be the biggest incentive to us, and we'd have followed it like the Bisto kids if we could.

"Halt!" Serge shouted, forcing us all to stop on the next clunk of heavy boots. "Atten-tion!" thumbs hit the seam of trousers and backs were straight as nails on exactly his command, hopefully we were good enough this time.

After four and a half hours in vile rain and thick mud, Serge finally let us stop to eat and get dry, only to continue at dawn. We daren't groan, we had to do an extra half hour last time we did. We had to take what we were told without complaint (or any reaction at all if we're at attention) and treat everything with the most serious manner. This was the big boy league.

Poser- (experiment with slang and swearing)

Bang bang, you're dead
The poem started, and he wished that could be the case. Oh how he wished that the pain deep in his chest would just go, even feeling nothing would be better than this.

Fifty bullets in your head
He wasn't greedy, he just wanted the one. But he didn't have a gun, and no contacts from which to borrow one. It was another bad day for Dene, after forcing down his Prozac dose for the day he dragged his feet to work, serving ungrateful fucks at the till of the corner shop, before getting sent home for being his boss' idea of 'too drunk'. His dented and scuffed hip flask tucked well away in his jeans, he denied being drunk at all, but his pissy-pants, politically correct, fucktard boss sent him home anyway. His mother had warned against people like that, who judge you for no reason, it's what everyone seemed to do to him.

He wished everyone would just leave him alone, but then the only one he didn't want gone was the first to give up on him, calling him a "lost cause" and pissing off with some prick in a shark tooth necklace. But that's okay, his mother hadn't approved of her anyway.

Sometimes he missed his car, other times he was glad it was gone. It meant he didn't have to pay parking to stay home all day. He pumped Drop Dead Cynical by Amaranthe out of his stereo at full volume, mainly to piss off the old bitch who lived in the flat below. Once she hit her ceiling so hard the broom handle went straight through it, she expected Dene to pay, but he of course just pretended not to have any clue who she was. He figured one of these days she'd be put in a home, then someone hot could move in there instead. "I wouldn't mind if it was a hot woman under me." He'd joked with his friends, before they'd gone too of course. No one lasted forever, so he shrugged them off like an oversized coat. He didn't need them to hold him back anyway. Those pricks were going anywhere, and Dene knew he was destined for more, perhaps just on the Other Side.

He settled for another smoke, not caring about the dangers of it, he'd likely be dead before cancer even decided to develop.

He decided to update his Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, keeping everyone updated on his suicidal status. Flicking through his news feeds, everyone seemed to be depressed today.

'Spoken' Youth poem

My Darling
Under the apple tree
Freckled cheeks red with sun
Swell into a smile
She sees me

I am the wind in her hair
The chime in her laughter
 The shine in her eyes
The smile through her tears

I am the strength when she trips
The goodnight kiss
The new speech lisp

My Darling
Under the apple tree
Eyes full of sorrow
Grow with tears
She sees me
No longer

I'm the abandoned swing
The dust
On an old photograph
Hanging wonky on the wall

I am life before the truth
Before the Change
The box of toys in the attic
The crayon stain on the dresser

Remember me as I was
Not as you see me now
Return to me
My Darling
Under that old apple tree

Random thing I found

Rain. More rain seemed to fall every day. Surely the sky would run out of water soon? Drops splattered against the window, before running down and grouping in my now empty flower boxes. I was relieved about having saved my plants a few nights previously.

I looked down at his ring, it was just too big to fit on my finger properly so during the day I wear it on one of the chains he left behind. The ring was silver, a snake wrapped around my finger with a pair of tiny rubies for eyes. Running my finger over it I felt the detail of every scale, the metal cool beneath the warmth of my fingertips. I looked again out of the window, wishing, half hoping to see him walk up the driveway, dripping wet from the rain. I'd run out to meet him, not worrying about the wet or cold. I felt his phantom arms wrap tightly around my waist, thinner now than when I last saw him. His phantom face nuzzle into my neck. His phantom voice lulled my ears and I closed my eyes to take in the illusion my mind had created. Though I knew it was an illusion, it comforted me still. I longed for his presence overall. I wished to know when I might see him again.

We'd had no contact in days. I often read through our past messages just to remind myself on how he typed, how he spoke. I shook my head at the memory of how I'd always correct his grammar, but he never changed it. I guessed that I'd liked that about him.

Childhood Memory Poem

____________________

Choking and spluttering out angry black smoke
the thick vibrations of the great machine
hid my shakes of fear as he
jumped out, leaving me stranded in motion.

Alone in the metal match box
the four year old me screamed, not noticing
the one who left me
was merely walking alongside
chuckling at his version of a joke.

The red box of death continued
up the field it went.
Until he jumped back in
pushing me aside
and so my deserter became my rescuer.