Life Highlights: Weekly Reading (with an Emphasis on Eliot)

"April is the cruellest month..."

Bowie once said that, "when I'm relaxed what I do is read" and described a good week as one in which he pored through "three or four books". [x] And this week I was able to finish three lovely books - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen, What is Art? by Leo Tolstoy, and Selected Poems by T.S. Eliot. Indeed, there is nothing better than being able to pore over some excellent texts like these.

The last of which was a particular delight I finished tonight, as I hadn't realised that I was lacking in my education of Eliot until recently. Like most people aware of pop culture, I knew of his poetry ("The Waste Land", of course, being the most famous), so I assumed that I had read him at some point in my years of consuming literature. However, after cracking open the book, I realised that I've actually never read Eliot (as in from a primary source), and I have only ever heard of him.

Although I haven't made the time to go over all the poems as thoroughly as, say, Bowie's catalogue, I already can tell you that Eliot's writing certainly stands up to its reputation. Mysterious, creepy, bleak, and enigmatic as all heck, Eliot is a wonderful writer who is worth going back to again and again (although he may not, perhaps, be the most appropriate author to read during the festive season). His poem "The Waste Land" is actually one of Bowie's Top 100 Favourite Books, and you can tell, as echoes from that work, as well as many of Eliot's other writings, leak their way into Bowie (most notably on his albums: Ziggy Stardust, Young Americans , The Next Day, Diamond Dogs, and David Bowie  (67)).

Which, speaking of music, my friend Sarabeth made a particularly excellent recommendation as well to listen to "Quatuor pour la fin du Temps" by Olivier Messiaen while reading the mysterious, darkened, bleak landscapes that Eliot depicts.