insearchofthemoon:emptythreatsoflittlelord:my-ear-trumpetexxmachina:
Woman Reading by Holsoe.
This book just wasn’t dramatic and complex enough, and I didn’t fall in love with the characters. Maybe Forster should have made the characters more extreme; had their traits stick out more. I just didn;t get why George and Lucy loved each other, and I only kind of got why Cecil was a dud.
I think this would make a good movie though. The intrigue and drama of an Italian murder, compared to the stately British countryside. If you can SEE it, the nuances aren’t so hard to understand. In the book, everything was so… mild. I felt as though it was just decided that these two characters would be together, with no attention paid as to how. I’m not even sure how they did end up together! It kind of just faded (like a movie would!) to their being married and on a honeymoon. It kind of irked me, actually.
There were some feminist undertones, but they were most contradicted in the course of the story. Lucy, though a musician, seemed vapid and pliable, until she married George. However, that was simply a break from the people who used to influence her in favor of a new influence. It was a little depressing.
RIP JD Salinger
Persuasion, where did you come from?
How is it that I hadn’t read this book yet? No matter, I cured that malady yesterday. I devoured Persuasion. Though I didn’t agree with some that it’s her best work, I did enjoy it. Anne Elliot, Captain Wentworth and the Sirs Williams and Walters are now familiar to me. I felt I could see the twists coming, though. Maybe that’s because I know Austen so well now.
I wanted more dialogue and description. I wanted more impassioned speeches. I wished to know Wentworth better while Anne was a wonderful protagonist. Most importantly, I felt vindicated and that the world was just upon closing Persuasion. I was inspired to pick up an E.M. Forster book when I returned Persuasion to the library, because they both had little “Assignment” stickers on their spines.
I read Rape New York this week. This book was unique because it stands alone in postulating interesting crime theories, ideas about home space and using the justice system in a positive way to learn about what happens after rape. I highly recommend this book not only for New Yorkers, but people who are interested in reading the firsthand account of a woman who wrote a book after her rape, prosecuted her rapist and her landlord successfully, and got her doctorate all in the aftermath of a traumatic event.
In between bouts of sneezing I finished An American Childhood by Annie Dillard today. I was able to see myself in the only character of the book. This is the second book I’ve read in a row that has one character, and only describes the world they see. This book was from the eyes of someone just like me, and could have been written about my own childhood; some setting adjustments notwithstanding.
Dillard’s writing is descriptive and almost elegiac. Her voice is stilted, emerging and almost sure. This book evokes childhood, which is corny to say considering its title. But the wonder, determination and concentration I felt while a child was all there. Dillard must well remember those years. She must have spent hers the same way I did, with her face in a book and thus unable to hear her parents calling her down for dinner.
Though An American Childhood was one-sided it was not one dimensional. The thread of account bounced around and hit many topics- religion, economics, nature and science- all while relating back to the mind of this child, this child who can stand for any bookish child growing up in America. The issue of privilege, directly confronted in An American Childhood, is something all American children encounter indirectly. The struggle of keeping yourself grounded, appreciative, curious and youthful as you grow older and become jaded took up such a small fraction of this book. The build-up to the moment of adolescent cynicism made me appreciate this character’s childhood as I could feel her impending loss of innocence and new worldliness- because I knew it was coming, because it happened to me.
Annie Dillard, An American Childhood
YES times a million.
(via lovelylinguist)
________. ______________ AN ADULTERY ___ Alexander Theroux. _______________?
Kate Bosworth could play Marina, a character from An Adultery.
I picture Uma Thurman playing Farol Colorado, a character in Justin Theroux’s An Adultery.
I just finished An Adultery by Justin Theroux. Reading this book was like having a microphone up to the brain and thoughts of an over-analytical man. I realized halfway through reading An Adultery that every person has a relationship in their lives that evokes this kind of constant stream of thought. The protagonist is constantly thinking, dissembling, analyzing and questioning. His simple observations take up pages of complicated inner discussion.
This book was intense for that reason; mostly devoid of dialogue, readers simply hear the alternating tortured and ecstatic thoughts of the protagonist. Despite the tediousness nature of hearing something no one usually means you to hear, this book was like a lamp for me- in that most people are similar in the way they relate to others. The fact that a relationship produced so much thought is almost comforting.
This book is vivid, sad and thoughtful.
