The Inkling Volume 1

EX Libris
By Miss Fletcher
From the shelves of her own personal library, Miss Fletcher details her most treasured
reads.
1. ‘Mrs Dalloway’ - Virginia Woolf
There is something endlessly fascinating about the limits of human perception -
and the inescapable journeys our thoughts can travel through in an instant. In
classic Woolfian style, we journey through multiple streams of consciousness to
experience the lives of a discontented high-society wife and a war veteran
suffering from his fighting days. It’s one of the few books that I’d happily reread;
the prose has a musicality to it and I’m forever startled by the
craftsmanship involved in the undulating, yet perfected, sentences.
2.
‘Alice in Wonderland’ - Lewis Carroll
I begrudgingly admit that a mathematician’s novel has weaselled into my
affections, but I can’t tell whether it’s the entertainment value or the ‘I-have-noclue-what’s-happening’
aspect of Alice in Wonderland, that makes this a firm
favourite in my library. Devilishly witty and irreverent at times, Carroll fires zany
situation after zany situation at Alice, our heroine, who, though baffled, is
surprisingly unfazed by events in Wonderland. There are too many excellent
characters, but best of all is the Mad Hatter whose unsolved riddle ‘Why is a
raven like a writing desk?’ continues to perplex readers.
3.
‘The Great Gatsby’ - F. Scott Fitzgerald / ‘Save Me the Waltz’ - Zelda Fitzgerald
Anyone who’s been in my class will know that I have an obsession with all things
1920s. From the glamour of wealthy Americans to the charms of liberated
flapper girls, the Roaring Twenties would be top of my list of stops if I owned a
time machine. In part, this is thanks to Fitzgerald and his bittersweet novels (his
wife, Zelda Fitzgerald’s, ‘Save Me the Waltz’ is fascinating too). The brilliance of
‘The Great Gatsby’ is in its ability to have you simultaneously envy, berate and
grieve for each of its central characters, Fitzgerald mastering the complexities
of human nature. It’s better than the film (sorry, Leo).