bluiis | Entries tagged with mark twain

It's one in the morning and I can't sleep. We just went to bed forty-five minutes ago, and I wasn't really tired then, but figured I'd be when I slipped beneath the beconning sheets. Except they weren't beconning. They had no appeal at all. So I lay there with Jon's arm over me, trying to move just enough to get him to roll over, but not enough to wake him up. There's a fine balance. Eventually, he rolled over. And Sox came to my pillow and still sleep alluded me. (I think the fact that I don't write is apparent in my spelling--it's atrocious!)

I kept thinking, "Go type. Then you'll sleep. Go post something on LJ, ya bad journal keeper. Go write!" So finally I listened to the voice in my head. You know, maybe it was the muse speaking. I haven't been listening lately, so I think I've forgotten the sound of her voice. And the muse is definitely a she.

Anyway, I couldn't sleep, so here I am. And I have nothing to say. I'm not really tired, but I don't want to complain about something or someone while in here. And I don't really have anything interesting to say.

I guess I could talk about Mark Twain. Now there's an interesting writer. What's the first book that comes to mind when you think of him? For me, it's Huckleberry Finn, followed closely by Tom Sawyer. Never do I think The Innocent's Abroad. But we have that book, and we haven't been to the library in a long time (I owe for three lost books, and Jon has a fine for books that we've had for over a month and a half now). And I'm undeniably a bookworm. I gotta have a book to read, or I go crazy. And you know, you get tired of reading the same old books over and over and over. So I picked up The Innocent's Abroad, thinking it would be about some misplaced or misguided children. Boy was I wrong! It's about some American's who've decided to see the world on a crusise who have nothing but time on their side, and who can go wherever they want.

But it's not the plot that has me rivited (I've not been able to read it for a couple of days). It's the prose. He writes beautifully, and if it's not beautiful, it's at least crisp. He has literally taken my breath away with certain passages. And though I like Huck and Tom, and Twain's short stories, I've never credited him with the genius that he truly has. The Innocent's Abroad is truly beautiful. The story drags a little, but the writing is beautiful.