Announcing Zoladdiction 2018 | #Zoladdiction2018 – Sign Up

February is coming to the end soon; it won’t be long ‘till April. And April means: ZOLADDICTION!

As I have already mentioned last month, a new feature is coming up on the fifth anniversary of Zoladdiction this year. Without further ado, voila…

ZOLADDICTION 2018 | #Zoladdiction2018

1. Leave comment with your blog URL (or Goodreads/Facebook) or URL of your sign-up post. You can join as long as the event is still up (no closing date).
2. Reading book(s) or other writings by Émile Zola or about Émile Zola from 1^st to 30^th April. No idea which book to pick? Here is the list of Zola’s complete works.
3. Post your thoughts or reviews of the books, and link it up in the provided linky on the Master Post (will be up on April 1^st). You may post on your blog, Goodreads, or even Facebook.
4. As the main purpose of this event is to spread recognition to Zola, I encourage you to share your posts in social media (Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram) using hashtag: #Zoladdiction2018 and #EmileZola.

#ZolaStyle – MINI THEMED CHALLENGE

To add more fun to Zoladdiction, and to encourage more people to read and love Zola, there will be a mini themed challenge; different theme each year. This year we will do #ZolaStyle—exploring his unique literary style, which I have divided into three categories:

Literal Painting

Zola had great interest in paintings. He had been a strong promoter of Impressionism; supported and befriended young artists such as Manet and Cézanne. His literary style often had quality of a painting. Quote and share those literal paintings you find from the book you are reading, or any book you have read; add paintings or pictures too if you like. You can check this post to get more idea about this literal painting.

Naturalism Metaphor

Zola often uses natural things as metaphor. In The Belly of Paris, for instance, cheeses are described as fruits. In Germinal, the mining machine becomes a giant beast; and a steam locomotive transforms into a woman in La Bete Humaine. Quote and post about this naturalism you find from the book you are reading, or any book you have read. Click this link if you need example.

Heredity Problem

As a Naturalist, Zola believed that human psychology is heavily influenced by heredity and environment. He wrote the twenty novels in The Rougon Macquart series to study this. Analyze, discuss, and post the heredity problem of the book you are reading, or any book you have read.

How #ZolaStyle Works

1. #ZolaStyle challenge is NOT obligatory, you may opt for reading books only.
2. You may post just one or all category for each book – in as many posts as you want; as often as you like, from 1^st to 30^th April.
3. You can use current book you are reading, or any books you have read before.
4. There will be TWO linkys in Master Post: for reviews and for #ZolaStyle challenge (both will be up on April 1^st).
5. It’s not obligatory, but if you own Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook accounts, sharing your #ZolaStyle posts means you are helping in spreading acknowledgement to Zola’s works. Please make sure to use these hashtags: #ZolaStyle #EmileZola #Zoladdiction2018 on your posts.
6. Each #ZolaStyle post linked up at #ZolaStyle linky will be entered to win book(s) by Emile Zola of your choice max $20 from Book Depository. Yay!

Right now I am working on a kind of Zola section in this blog, a dedicated page for Zola. It will mostly contain links to my posts about Zola’s books or books about Zola: reviews, quotes, literary styles. On the later, I plan to put links to some of your posts too from #ZolaStyle.

Are you ready for another (or two, or more) Zola? Join us!

Challenges Update: February

February is always my favorite month. My birthday is on this month, and for me there is always an excitement in the air. In my age one does not really expecting birthday party with many presents; just a quiet lunch with my family. But this year, about a week from my birthday, I had a nice surprise from Adam—he picked me as winner of his #TBR2018RBR mini challenge! As it was Charles Dickens’ birthday, I chose a book from the Vintage Classics Dickens Series. By the way, these series are quite beautiful. My favorite is the Russians Series, but I’m not really into it right now. I have bought one of the Bronte Series last month, and liked it. Anyway, I know the gift is not intentionally for my birthday, but I’m happy to take it as my birthday present! 💝

As for progress, I have been unusually productive so far:

Book(s) read = 5

Review(s) posted = 5

1. Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier for #TBR2018RBR
2. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux for Back to the Classics Challenge 2018 (Re-read a favorite classic)
3. Towards Zero by Agatha Christie for Back to the Classics Challenge 2018 (a classic crime story)
4. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene for #TBR2018RBR and The Classics Club
5. March by Geraldine Brooks for #TBR2018RBR

Question of the month from #TBR2018RBR:

What are your strategies for staying on top of your reading goals? Do you keep a bullet journal or other kind of planner? Do you aim for a certain number of books per week, per month? Do you just “wing it” and let whatever happens, happen? Tell us your secrets!

I make a one-year reading list in Excel; with certain books per month. Of course the books are not just randomly picked; I must keep a balance between tough and light books, classics and popular. Most importantly, I must adapt the list with my own reading pace. This way, I can manage to be on top of my reading goals and to keep up with all the challenges.

Right now I am only several days before ending East of Eden, so I can positively say that I have read 6 books in two months, wow! I love East of Eden so much it takes me nearly a month to finish it—having been savouring it slowly, and often repeating certain passages twice or even thrice. You see…. February always sends good vibes around me! 😉

A Spiritual Canticle by St. John of the Cross: A Reading Journal

I have been meaning to read this book for some times, but I have always dreaded I won’t have enough time to plough the depth of the canticle. So, I decided to read the forty stanzas in forty weeks—one stanza a week. I am reading the Indonesian translation (titled: Madah Rohani), along with comments from a Carmelite priest, which I found very helpful to understand the canticle. This post would be my reading journal for the next forty weeks—I will jot down my thoughts of each stanza every week.

Stanza #1

Where have You hidden Yourself,

And abandoned me in my groaning, O my Beloved?

You have fled like the hart,

Having wounded me.

I ran after You, crying; but You were gone.

My thoughts:

It’s about a soul’s search for unity with God—pictured as a bride who is seeking her bridegroom. It loves God so much that it hurts—longing for the perfect happiness, which is unity with God in Heaven. But when it is still on earth, it must be satisfied by just getting a glimpse of Him. However, right when it feels Him, He would flash out of its reach; and this bleeds the soul so much more. It seems that God deliberately do this to strengthen the soul; to always wait in hope for the eternal "marriage". Apparently the nearer a soul to perfection, the greater it is tortured by love. 

Stanza #2

O shepherds, you who go

Through the sheepcots up the hill,

If you shall see Him

Whom I love the most,

Tell Him I languish, suffer, and die.

My thoughts:

The soul needs an intermediary (pictured as shepherds) to express its love lamentation to God (pictured as hill—or the highest peak). Here the commentator suggests that the intermediary could be its own longing and affection; or it could also means the angels—I am more inclined to the latter. So the soul begs the angels to speak about its sorrowful love to Him (whom the angels could reach easier than the soul) when the time is right for Him (or if God is willing) to listen to it (“if you shall see Him”). Here the soul does not demand anything; it just gives hints about its anguish and let the Lover do what He desires. By humbling itself, perhaps God would take more pity to the soul.

Stanza #3

In search of my Love

I will go over mountains and strands;

I will gather no flowers,

I will fear no wild beasts;

And pass by the mighty and the frontiers.

My thoughts:

Laments and intermediary does not suffice the souls to reach its Beloved; it must move and take active action (searching), i.e. by exercising contemplative life towards wisdom (mountains—higher place) and self-denials (strands—lower place). The soul decides to purify itself from vain pleasures which would block it from God (gather no flowers). Besides that, there are three other enemies that put the soul away from God: 1) The world (wild beasts)—which threatens the soul of losing its friends and belongings; 2) Satan (the mighty)—who will strive the soul from unity with God; 3) The natural rebellion of the flesh against the spirit (the frontiers)—the flesh is the frontier that hinder the soul on its spiritual journey. The soul determines to pass through all these obstacles to find its Lover.

Stanza #4

O groves and thickets

Planted by the hand of the Beloved;

O verdant meads

Enameled with flowers,

Tell me, has He passed by you?

My thoughts:

After preparing the long journey to reach God (on stanza #3), the soul starts its spiritual journey by getting to know Him through His creations. It’s as if the soul begs the nature: show me how beautiful He has created you! It reflects the soul’s longing to grasp His traces/His touch on the creation. While it is still far away from the Lover, at least it can touch and adore His works. Just as a lover loves to touch or kiss a shirt belongs to the absent beloved one.

Stanza #5

A thousand graces diffusing

He passed through the groves in haste,

And merely regarding them

As He passed,

Clothed them with His beauty.

My thoughts:

Nature answers the soul’s entreaty by revealing that God has created the creatures in a very fast [‘He passed…in haste’] and simple action, yet abundant in graces [‘a thousand’]. He created the creatures ‘in haste’ reflects that the universe is just a small act compared to the Incarnation of the Word and the mysteries of the Christian faith. ‘Regarding them’ means that God regards us through His Son. He bestows us graces and gifts to make us perfect (as is in the book of Genesis). [Clothed them with His beauty] means that when Jesus incarnated to man, God exalted mankind, and bestows them with beauty and dignity.

The Phantom of the Opera: Second Reading

Some books must surely be read more than once to get into all the layers it contains! On my first reading of Phantom about seven years ago, I was fascinated more by its gothic theme than by the grotesqueness of its back story. Only now on this second reading did I fully grasp the scary reality underneath the fantastic story; even more because it’s so relevant with the world we live now.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the story, but in short it was believed that a famous Opera House in Paris was haunted by a ghost. Not only demanding to be paid on regular basis, the Opera Ghost (OG) often created inexplicable accidents when the directors didn’t give him what he wanted. Many of the theatre crews have seen scary apparitions. One night a mediocre female singer suddenly became an angelic diva after receiving lessons from an angel of music. These incidents, in the age when superstitious was quite strong, only made the phantom of the opera more sensational.

However, does the phantom really exist? Or is it just a tasteless joke thrown by the resigned managers to prank their successors? We, readers, have actually been warned from the first through the prologue:

“The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet, their mothers,  the box-keepers, the cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom; that is to say, of a spectral shade.”

Because the opera ghost was indeed a real person called Erik. He was born deformed with corpse-like appearance and—as Christine Daaé put it—smelled like death. It saddened me to read how his mother rejected him because of that. I could not imagine growing up deprived of love. Add to it degradation and humility Erik must have experienced from his youth; and in the place of a supposedly loving and genius man, stands a really hideous monster. So, whose fault is it, if many years later what that man thinks is only revenge? It is inevitable.

My thought when I finished this second reading was: what would have happened if Erik was accepted by the society? He might have built grand architecture and brought brilliant innovations to the opera house for its good. But look now what it gets? Almost a major destruction if an innocent young girl had not bravely and lovingly accepted him as a human being. How just a tiny gesture of affection could make such huge change!

Not just about Erik, I think the phantom of the opera also refers to the marginalized people who worked as fireman or other (seemingly) insignificant jobs at the theater. When Christine Daaé showed the bowels of the opera house to Raoul, she pointed to these firemen as “ghosts”. It seems to me that to the glorious upper world, those underground workers are ghosts—nonexistent and insignificant; ugly things that must be kept hidden and forgotten. How relatable it is with our real world!

5 of 5!