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This might seem like an attempt to amuse you guys, but it's actually for me. I realized that when I wrote up why I wasn't watching my DVDs (see here), it was actually encouragement to watch a great deal of them. Now all that's unwatched includes R.O.D. the TV, Kimagure Orange Road and the freebies. (I decided I'm going to find a way to get rid of How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. I know it stinks. I already have a small collection of "Movies safe to show to any female friends from past eras of my life without any nerd in them," so all is well.) So I'll do this with my "partially read" books tag on LibraryThing: the unloved, bastard child of my unread tag.
To get it out of the way, the book I'm reading now is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. This book seems to have suffered something of a backlash. According to Librarything, 8,161 people own this book. About 200 something haven't read it, and more than a few gave up half-way in disgust. I actually had never heard of it until LibraryThing. But apparently people drooled over it because 1.) A bunch of reviewers going for buzzwords over accuracy called it "Harry Potter for Adults" (prompting Stephen King to quip, "Harry Potter is Harry Potter for adults, you dweebs.") 2.) Neil Gaiman has been a champion of author Susanna Clarke for sometime. Now, most of the time I really, really like Neil Gaiman. Sandman is awesome, his readings are so good my Mom likes him and he's not an egotistical maniac. But other people seem convinced the guy is some sort of demi-God and I just can't get behind that. (I mean, what the FUCK was up with that "My STD gave me a personality transplant!" shit in Smoke and Mirrors? Also, Mirrormask was lame and whoever said Pan's Labyrinth is just Mirrormask in World War II, we're all entitled to your opinions and your opinion is stupid. :-P) So I think when many of them found, "Oh ... an 800-page slow-moving book written in faux 18th-century language isn't quite to my taste even though I really like Neil Gaiman and Harry Potter" a lot of them were kind of pissed off. But luckily for me, I like all three. So I'm in 100 pages and I'm really enjoying it.
Phew! That was way too many words to say "This is the book I'm considered actively reading now and I really like it." Oh well. I really wanted to share my thoughts on the whole backlash, I guess.
Okay, books on the partially read pile.
A couple of them I consider "active" books. I'm not exactly reading them from one cover to another, but they're short stories, and I want to be more versed in short stories, so I'll pick them up when I just need something quick. These include The Portable Dorothy Parker, The Best American Short Stories 2002, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare and The Complete Poems of John Keats.
Of these I'm probably enjoying Parker the most, as she's extremely funny when she's not depressing me. (Poor old girl reminds me too much of me, I swear.) If I had to guess I'm about three fourths done with the book. Mostly reviews and old odds and ends are left, a couple of stories. Poetry I'm all done with.
The Best Stories 2002 I'm almost half-way done. But I'm not that happy about it. I'm not sure if the current standard for good short stories is "Vaguely insignificant event happens which actually reveals a deep meaning and turning point in the characters' psyche that you can only see if you squint very hard" and I'm just a plebeian who's missed the boat or it's just Sue Miller's taste that I don't like or ... whatever. Anyway, it's sort of lame. I like about half of the stories so far, but others are like, "Am I missing something or do you suck? I can't tell." (Also, can the absolutely distasteful "13-year-old boy learns how to be a man by losing his virginity a.k.a. BEING USED by a 40-year-old married woman" plotline die a horrible death? PLEASE?) I still want to start buying this series, though. King did the series this year; I hope his taste matches up better with mine.
Poe and Lovecraft I haven't read much of. Okay, Lovecraft I've only read the one story, but I plan to do better soon no rly! Poe I would read more if it weren't for the 40 pagers and the book being this totally huge thing I bought on the discount rack. Oh well. Bettery try harder.
Keats (which I bought while a teenager and picked up again) I was slowly reading until I hit the part of the book where I got to "Endymion" and said, "Hmmm ... maybe I need a clean plate" because a 100+ page epic by Keats worries me a bit, especially in the early stage of his work where he hasn't quite reached the clarity of something like "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I feel a bit torn over Keats. I really liked him in high school. For some reason my British Literature class was obsessed with DOOM! GLOOM! EVIL will ALWAYS TRIUMPH!!!! Because reading Macbeth, Brave New World and Lord of the Flies back-to-back with more "your pitiful life is short" poems as the meat in the Doom Club sandwich will do that to a bunch of teenagers. But Keats had the good sense to die of tuberculosis in his twenties before he turned into a cynical fucker, and I really appreciated that. But now as I read his early stuff ... man, he turns going on and on about flowers into ... okay, well, into an art. :-P He's extremely pretty. For awhile he was my favorite poet for this stuff, but it may be changing and I'm not sure I can take 100 pages of him. Oh well, maybe it'll be better than I expected. It starts off with a famous quote that he invented, so that's a good start, right? Means someone was reading it. Of course, people read Bulwer-Lytton (is he really as bad as people say?).
The Sonnets is a recent pickup again that I don't know why I haven't gotten to it earlier ... especially REALLY earlier when I was a psychotic slashgirl with a superiority complex who would have been really into this sort of thing. Now I'm more interested in the beauty of the language instead of the hidden penis jokes. What a drag. :-P
Oh, there's also the other stories in my copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'm not really excited about them, but I'll read them anyway. Why not?
I've got two back-in-New-Jersey books that I read while visiting my Mom: Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize (an ex-Dad present I didn't read when I initially got it), which is good - especially to figure out which poets I like BenJonsonYou'reABeautifulMan!!!! - but I'm not memorizing shit. I'm also reading the ex-textbook Points of View, which is made up of short stories. It's OK and has some essentials in it "The Lottery", "A Telephone Call", "Here I Stand Ironing" ... and some stuff some famous men wrote too. ;-D (Baldwin is awesome ... Capote not so much.) Although I resent how much I HAVE to read of PoV. My teacher (who sucked, by the way) had us read maybe about eight stories in that freaking book and the book has FORTY-FOUR. At least with 30/30, another ex-textbook of short stories that I since finished, we already read a third! But EIGHT! That is the suck. :-( As of this writing I've only read 13. Well, some should be pretty good, at least.
Other things I'm reading include The Tanakh a.k.a. the Jewish Bible. But other than my binge when I read all of Samuel on Yom Kippur I haven't gotten much farther. I also bought a King James Bible before when I thought I was going to read it to be all literary and stuff back when I was 13 ... wait, I still think that, nevermind. I don't think I'm going to re-read the "Old Testament" in it but I'll read the Christian part of the book after I've finished mine. At this rate that should be sometime in 2015. :-P Also in the wee religious pile is Where Judaism Differs, which is basically a Rabbi explaining in an enlightening, nonthreatening manner the unique aspects of the Jewish faith, or a self-congratulatory preening, depending on what kind of person you are. I kid, I kid. I actually was reading this book after high school and enjoying it but it begged for a lot of deep thought and then COLLEGE HAPPENED and I haven't gotten to read the book since. Bummer. :-( I still love it; it was a personal present from my old Rabbi and I very much mean to finish it ... this year, in fact. It's been far too long. Oh, and there's also The Source by James Michener, something my parents thought I should read ages ago that I've still held onto, but fuck that noise ... if I'm going to read a doorstop on Biblical times I should probably read the Bible first. That doesn't mean I'm not interested; but I doubt I'll pick the book up again anytime soon. 2018?
A couple books I have on hold: my omnibuses of The Chronicles of Narnia (yeah, that's also a lot of words when I could get the original source but ... don't most kids read this first, anyway?) and The Oz Chronicles. I liked the books I read in them but ... eh, reading them all at once is a bit overkill, you know? I should probably get to Prince Caspian before the movie comes out, though ... is it still coming out? Oh, and this is the same with The Riverside Shakespeare. I'd love to read A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I'd rather let King Lear (which I recently finished) set in ... and we don't need crossover.(No, I don't know why I'm cool with the sonnets ... look, it's different!)
There's a couple of books I tried, said "Fuck it" but now what to pick up again and finish just to say I did. One is Mrs. Dalloway, which I tried once, told myself I needed greater concentration than I was currently willing to give it, and am still waiting for that one magic weekend when I'll read it straight through. (I swear it's coming!) The other is Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes. I bought this book as a "OMG! I need something!" at a Kevin Smith signing before realizing this book was actually really, really, really, really boring and I've tried to read it twice to no avail but Kevin Smith has a PERSONALIZED NOTE to me there. I can't just bookmooch this thing. :-( So I'm determined. Spike Lee and Michael Moore are colorful characters so it has to get better - right? ;_; Other tried-and-faileds include Our Mutual Friend, which is strange because I normally love Charles Dickens -- but okay because I plan to read all of his books in publishing order in an attempt to drive myself insane at one point so there you go. I also tried to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame soon after the Disney movie came out and failed, but I was also, like, 12 or something so I cut myself some slack.
Other ex-textbooks include The Federalist Papers, which reading for pleasure is a sign of insanity but one day I WILL DO IT!!! Although I have no idea when ... (2020?). There's also Strange Defeat, which is a classic historical text from a French Jew after his country fell in World War II. I'm hoping to read that this year, too. And the Middle-English version of The Canterbury Tales. A bit of an odd choice for a re-read ... we did read at least all the important stuff in the college Chaucer class, but I'm a thorough geek. I thought of buying a Modern English version to supplement it. But as hard as the original is, I get the same feeling when I see those "Shakespeare-side-by-side-with-stupid-version" by this point. "Bah! That's for babies! I can be smart!" and then I go back to struggling with the text forever and missing a good chunk of it. But I feel better about myself. :-P
There's a couple of comics on this list. I recently finished my Essentials of Spider-Man Vol. 6 (which was good, but I miss Stan), and Marvel Team-Up (which was pretty stupid, but entertaining in that it made me stop thinking about what a dick Peter was being to Gwen near her death. If he kept picking on her for hanging out with Flash when he clearly didn't have any time to give the poor girl who was obviously throwing herself at him the time of day, she deserved to keep the Goblin babies from him, in my totally right opinion :-P.) So now Essential Spider-Man Vol. 7 is left, of which I think I've only read the Clone Saga (heck, I bought it for the originally Clone Saga). I'm on a Spidey break now, though. I also have Universe X Vol. 1. I bought this when I considered that I just wanted to read the Earth X: Spidey issue (which was very good), but figured the actual issue would be hard tracking down and buying the whole series was more economical. I haven't read the rest of it because ... well, I haven't read Earth X. And I haven't read Earth X because I haven't bought it. And I haven't bought it because while the monkey tricks are clever (okay, the monkey tricks are the whole reason anyone buys the book ... nobody wants to actually read the story, they just want to see fat Spidey, chick!Thor and Namor on fire) whenever I read the synopsis of what happened in the grand story, my brain gets the urge to eat itself. But I will buy it one day. Because ... hey, fat Spidey, chick!Thor and Namor on fire. ... I'm rather simple. I also have How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. I was ready to tell myself, "Honey, give it up. You can only draw vaguely anime pin-ups of your favorite characters." and give it away. But Chris said to keep it, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, and I have my parents' old Signed English Starter because I know the sign language alphabet so why can't I learn the rest of the language? :-D Y'know ... like in 2050.
Heh. Okay, that's the list. See you later.
To get it out of the way, the book I'm reading now is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell. This book seems to have suffered something of a backlash. According to Librarything, 8,161 people own this book. About 200 something haven't read it, and more than a few gave up half-way in disgust. I actually had never heard of it until LibraryThing. But apparently people drooled over it because 1.) A bunch of reviewers going for buzzwords over accuracy called it "Harry Potter for Adults" (prompting Stephen King to quip, "Harry Potter is Harry Potter for adults, you dweebs.") 2.) Neil Gaiman has been a champion of author Susanna Clarke for sometime. Now, most of the time I really, really like Neil Gaiman. Sandman is awesome, his readings are so good my Mom likes him and he's not an egotistical maniac. But other people seem convinced the guy is some sort of demi-God and I just can't get behind that. (I mean, what the FUCK was up with that "My STD gave me a personality transplant!" shit in Smoke and Mirrors? Also, Mirrormask was lame and whoever said Pan's Labyrinth is just Mirrormask in World War II, we're all entitled to your opinions and your opinion is stupid. :-P) So I think when many of them found, "Oh ... an 800-page slow-moving book written in faux 18th-century language isn't quite to my taste even though I really like Neil Gaiman and Harry Potter" a lot of them were kind of pissed off. But luckily for me, I like all three. So I'm in 100 pages and I'm really enjoying it.
Phew! That was way too many words to say "This is the book I'm considered actively reading now and I really like it." Oh well. I really wanted to share my thoughts on the whole backlash, I guess.
Okay, books on the partially read pile.
A couple of them I consider "active" books. I'm not exactly reading them from one cover to another, but they're short stories, and I want to be more versed in short stories, so I'll pick them up when I just need something quick. These include The Portable Dorothy Parker, The Best American Short Stories 2002, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, The Sonnets of William Shakespeare and The Complete Poems of John Keats.
Of these I'm probably enjoying Parker the most, as she's extremely funny when she's not depressing me. (Poor old girl reminds me too much of me, I swear.) If I had to guess I'm about three fourths done with the book. Mostly reviews and old odds and ends are left, a couple of stories. Poetry I'm all done with.
The Best Stories 2002 I'm almost half-way done. But I'm not that happy about it. I'm not sure if the current standard for good short stories is "Vaguely insignificant event happens which actually reveals a deep meaning and turning point in the characters' psyche that you can only see if you squint very hard" and I'm just a plebeian who's missed the boat or it's just Sue Miller's taste that I don't like or ... whatever. Anyway, it's sort of lame. I like about half of the stories so far, but others are like, "Am I missing something or do you suck? I can't tell." (Also, can the absolutely distasteful "13-year-old boy learns how to be a man by losing his virginity a.k.a. BEING USED by a 40-year-old married woman" plotline die a horrible death? PLEASE?) I still want to start buying this series, though. King did the series this year; I hope his taste matches up better with mine.
Poe and Lovecraft I haven't read much of. Okay, Lovecraft I've only read the one story, but I plan to do better soon no rly! Poe I would read more if it weren't for the 40 pagers and the book being this totally huge thing I bought on the discount rack. Oh well. Bettery try harder.
Keats (which I bought while a teenager and picked up again) I was slowly reading until I hit the part of the book where I got to "Endymion" and said, "Hmmm ... maybe I need a clean plate" because a 100+ page epic by Keats worries me a bit, especially in the early stage of his work where he hasn't quite reached the clarity of something like "La Belle Dame sans Merci." I feel a bit torn over Keats. I really liked him in high school. For some reason my British Literature class was obsessed with DOOM! GLOOM! EVIL will ALWAYS TRIUMPH!!!! Because reading Macbeth, Brave New World and Lord of the Flies back-to-back with more "your pitiful life is short" poems as the meat in the Doom Club sandwich will do that to a bunch of teenagers. But Keats had the good sense to die of tuberculosis in his twenties before he turned into a cynical fucker, and I really appreciated that. But now as I read his early stuff ... man, he turns going on and on about flowers into ... okay, well, into an art. :-P He's extremely pretty. For awhile he was my favorite poet for this stuff, but it may be changing and I'm not sure I can take 100 pages of him. Oh well, maybe it'll be better than I expected. It starts off with a famous quote that he invented, so that's a good start, right? Means someone was reading it. Of course, people read Bulwer-Lytton (is he really as bad as people say?).
The Sonnets is a recent pickup again that I don't know why I haven't gotten to it earlier ... especially REALLY earlier when I was a psychotic slashgirl with a superiority complex who would have been really into this sort of thing. Now I'm more interested in the beauty of the language instead of the hidden penis jokes. What a drag. :-P
Oh, there's also the other stories in my copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'm not really excited about them, but I'll read them anyway. Why not?
I've got two back-in-New-Jersey books that I read while visiting my Mom: Committed to Memory: 100 Best Poems to Memorize (an ex-Dad present I didn't read when I initially got it), which is good - especially to figure out which poets I like BenJonsonYou'reABeautifulMan!!!! - but I'm not memorizing shit. I'm also reading the ex-textbook Points of View, which is made up of short stories. It's OK and has some essentials in it "The Lottery", "A Telephone Call", "Here I Stand Ironing" ... and some stuff some famous men wrote too. ;-D (Baldwin is awesome ... Capote not so much.) Although I resent how much I HAVE to read of PoV. My teacher (who sucked, by the way) had us read maybe about eight stories in that freaking book and the book has FORTY-FOUR. At least with 30/30, another ex-textbook of short stories that I since finished, we already read a third! But EIGHT! That is the suck. :-( As of this writing I've only read 13. Well, some should be pretty good, at least.
Other things I'm reading include The Tanakh a.k.a. the Jewish Bible. But other than my binge when I read all of Samuel on Yom Kippur I haven't gotten much farther. I also bought a King James Bible before when I thought I was going to read it to be all literary and stuff back when I was 13 ... wait, I still think that, nevermind. I don't think I'm going to re-read the "Old Testament" in it but I'll read the Christian part of the book after I've finished mine. At this rate that should be sometime in 2015. :-P Also in the wee religious pile is Where Judaism Differs, which is basically a Rabbi explaining in an enlightening, nonthreatening manner the unique aspects of the Jewish faith, or a self-congratulatory preening, depending on what kind of person you are. I kid, I kid. I actually was reading this book after high school and enjoying it but it begged for a lot of deep thought and then COLLEGE HAPPENED and I haven't gotten to read the book since. Bummer. :-( I still love it; it was a personal present from my old Rabbi and I very much mean to finish it ... this year, in fact. It's been far too long. Oh, and there's also The Source by James Michener, something my parents thought I should read ages ago that I've still held onto, but fuck that noise ... if I'm going to read a doorstop on Biblical times I should probably read the Bible first. That doesn't mean I'm not interested; but I doubt I'll pick the book up again anytime soon. 2018?
A couple books I have on hold: my omnibuses of The Chronicles of Narnia (yeah, that's also a lot of words when I could get the original source but ... don't most kids read this first, anyway?) and The Oz Chronicles. I liked the books I read in them but ... eh, reading them all at once is a bit overkill, you know? I should probably get to Prince Caspian before the movie comes out, though ... is it still coming out? Oh, and this is the same with The Riverside Shakespeare. I'd love to read A Midsummer Night's Dream, but I'd rather let King Lear (which I recently finished) set in ... and we don't need crossover.(No, I don't know why I'm cool with the sonnets ... look, it's different!)
There's a couple of books I tried, said "Fuck it" but now what to pick up again and finish just to say I did. One is Mrs. Dalloway, which I tried once, told myself I needed greater concentration than I was currently willing to give it, and am still waiting for that one magic weekend when I'll read it straight through. (I swear it's coming!) The other is Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes. I bought this book as a "OMG! I need something!" at a Kevin Smith signing before realizing this book was actually really, really, really, really boring and I've tried to read it twice to no avail but Kevin Smith has a PERSONALIZED NOTE to me there. I can't just bookmooch this thing. :-( So I'm determined. Spike Lee and Michael Moore are colorful characters so it has to get better - right? ;_; Other tried-and-faileds include Our Mutual Friend, which is strange because I normally love Charles Dickens -- but okay because I plan to read all of his books in publishing order in an attempt to drive myself insane at one point so there you go. I also tried to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame soon after the Disney movie came out and failed, but I was also, like, 12 or something so I cut myself some slack.
Other ex-textbooks include The Federalist Papers, which reading for pleasure is a sign of insanity but one day I WILL DO IT!!! Although I have no idea when ... (2020?). There's also Strange Defeat, which is a classic historical text from a French Jew after his country fell in World War II. I'm hoping to read that this year, too. And the Middle-English version of The Canterbury Tales. A bit of an odd choice for a re-read ... we did read at least all the important stuff in the college Chaucer class, but I'm a thorough geek. I thought of buying a Modern English version to supplement it. But as hard as the original is, I get the same feeling when I see those "Shakespeare-side-by-side-with-stupid-version" by this point. "Bah! That's for babies! I can be smart!" and then I go back to struggling with the text forever and missing a good chunk of it. But I feel better about myself. :-P
There's a couple of comics on this list. I recently finished my Essentials of Spider-Man Vol. 6 (which was good, but I miss Stan), and Marvel Team-Up (which was pretty stupid, but entertaining in that it made me stop thinking about what a dick Peter was being to Gwen near her death. If he kept picking on her for hanging out with Flash when he clearly didn't have any time to give the poor girl who was obviously throwing herself at him the time of day, she deserved to keep the Goblin babies from him, in my totally right opinion :-P.) So now Essential Spider-Man Vol. 7 is left, of which I think I've only read the Clone Saga (heck, I bought it for the originally Clone Saga). I'm on a Spidey break now, though. I also have Universe X Vol. 1. I bought this when I considered that I just wanted to read the Earth X: Spidey issue (which was very good), but figured the actual issue would be hard tracking down and buying the whole series was more economical. I haven't read the rest of it because ... well, I haven't read Earth X. And I haven't read Earth X because I haven't bought it. And I haven't bought it because while the monkey tricks are clever (okay, the monkey tricks are the whole reason anyone buys the book ... nobody wants to actually read the story, they just want to see fat Spidey, chick!Thor and Namor on fire) whenever I read the synopsis of what happened in the grand story, my brain gets the urge to eat itself. But I will buy it one day. Because ... hey, fat Spidey, chick!Thor and Namor on fire. ... I'm rather simple. I also have How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. I was ready to tell myself, "Honey, give it up. You can only draw vaguely anime pin-ups of your favorite characters." and give it away. But Chris said to keep it, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Oh, and I have my parents' old Signed English Starter because I know the sign language alphabet so why can't I learn the rest of the language? :-D Y'know ... like in 2050.
Heh. Okay, that's the list. See you later.
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You forgot that said insignificant event usually has something to do with trendily unsatisfactory sex.
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r'lyehreally good, butr'lyehreally, it's not. Lovecraft uses a lot of what I call "thesaurus words". That is to say, he uses a lot of vocabulary that even someone like me--who has arguably the largest vocabulary in my group of literary friends--doesn't get immediately. So, have a thesaurus or dictionary handy whenever you read it, and don't be afraid to get to the end of a short story and say to yourself, "WTF was that all about?"I do hear, however, that his "child authors" are a bit easier to read.
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Short story collections are tricky. As you pointed out, they're highly dependent upon one person's idea of 'good'. One textbook of short stories I read was flooded with war stories. Obviously, the teacher who chose it liked it, but war stories in general are WAY depressing and I don't care how critically acclaimed "The Things They Carried" was; it sucked. I could list shit carried by mall-walkers and it would tell you something about the people. It would only become poignant in any way if they died tragically! Pffft.
I had a handful of 'partially read' on my to-read shelf and I finally decided to shelve or bookmooch 'em. One, (Elantris by Sanderson) I decided to keep trying, but man, "I'm a zombie. Woe is me!" and "Damn! I'm an intelligent woman trapped in a new, strange, and highly misogynistic country!" is really hard to take. It's not uplifting, that's for damn sure. I continue to hear great things about the book and it is a stand-alone story, so ... it has to get better. Doesn't it??
The last time we talked about Dorothy Parker, I had to go and read some of her poetry again. I do love her work. I can see some of the ways you two are similar.
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Usually I can't find an emotional connection to war stories but I have to defend "The Things They Carried" a little bit because I have a thing for short stories in creative formats. I liked "How to Talk to Your Mother (Notes)" by Lorrie Moore and "Boys" by Rick Moody for the same reason. (I would also probably enjoy that mall-walkers story, I'm sad to say.) And I also felt like I got the point of TTTC, whereas something like ... say, "Sugar Tit" just makes me feel like an idiot.
Yeah, if you really dislike a book it's best to get rid of it. Most of what's on my partially read list I do enjoy just ... not all at once. Or not everything in it. There have been a few stories in 2002 I've liked. Michael Chabon wrote an interesting one about a son picking a pumpkin for his son and meeting another kid on the way that I rather liked. There was also this interesting one about a Haitian couple that married and then spent seven years apart ... not much of a plot, but the unraveling of the relationship and how they live I found interesting. But of course then it's offset by "UGH! Arthur Miller, 13-year-old boys having sex with 40-year-old women is ABUSE, not a way for him to have a breakthrough on the piano!"
I think where I really find a kindred spirit with her is her ability to portray the depths of depression over love really well while also having enough foresight to realize how ridiculous it is. My favorite instance of this is "Sentiment" when the narrator works herself up into a frenzy over going near an ex's neighborhood and then at the end realizes "Wait! This isn't the right place." Very brilliant AND funny. She also wears her kind of witty, funny, '20s party-girl self on her sleeve while wearing her sensitive heart on the other. The only times I really don't feel much in tune with her are stories like "The Sexes" or "Here we Are." They're funny, but if I acted like those girls in the relationships I'd probably commit myself into a looney bin.
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If you like any of them, please use them!
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I admit that TTTC at least had a different format. I felt like anyone could list stuff, though. It didn't strike me as being a terribly talented piece of work, but perhaps that has more to do with the way my instructor touted the story.
In the case of your Kevin Smith book, I would shelve it because of the inscription, even if I never got through it. One of the partially-read books I shelved was the sequel to a book I enjoyed. However, in the sequel, the author took away everything that made the main character special/neat/powerful-- sort of like the writer who took away all of Wonder Woman's powers so she could settle down with her boyfriend. Just absurd. Still, it's the sequel and I have this ... collection issue. I'm sure you understand.
I've always hated Arthur Miller. Thank the gods he's dead or he'd still be churning out critically accaimed shit English teachers would be forced to foist off on their students.
"Sentiment" sounds like a story I would enjoy, too. Your comments remind me of that Annie Lennox song you like with the horrid video about the jilted woman being all dramatic. :D I agree, BTW.
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By the way, did you know the two of them were friends? It was Bulwer-Lytton that encouraged Dickens to give Charles Dickens a happy ending.
I may give SMSD one more try ... some parts did look a bit interesting but ... yeah, if I can't get through it a third time I'll probably shelve it.
As for Miller, I actually do like Crucible and Salesman, but that one story was AWFUL.
Oh, and a reading of "Sentiment" is here.
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I did not know the two authors were friends! How interesting! I wonder if BL was at all bitter about D's success? Of course, D's success came sort-of late, didn't it?
Maybe you should skip to the better parts of SMSD and salvage what you can from it.
Och, I hated Crucible and Salesman. Crucible just seemed to make me hyper-aware of modern-day witch-hunting and Christian zealotry and I have sympathy for the real-life victims of the events portrayed. The whole thing was just very hate-able, IMO. Sure, it was more-or-less meant that way, but it caused me so many bad feelings that I hated reading it. Salesman was depressing and ... humanly wasteful. Miller's topics are just very unpleasant. On top of the unpalatable material, I don't like his writing style. XD
Proof my taste in books is my own: I hate Miller and Faulkner, but I'll read absolutely trashy gay-themed e-books and enjoy them much more than the classics. ::Shrug:: It's all subjective-- much like wine; despite what the critics say, you just have to find and sample what you enjoy.
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Actually, Dickens' success came really early in life, somewhere around his twenties. (What I wrote was wrong; there was one book Bulwer-Lytton recommended a happy ending, Great Expectations.) Bulwer-Lytton was also very popular. But Dickens overall knew a lot of other writers. He had a bit of a rivalry with William Makepeace Thackery, who was maybe the second-biggest writer at the time whereas Dickens was the first-biggest, but I think some of that may have been worsened by Dickens' divorce ... I don't know. I have a huge biography of Dickens and when I read that perhaps it will become clear.
But anyway, yeah. He knew a lot of writers: Hans Christian Anderson, Washington Irving, George Eliot (he was able to guess from her writing that she was a woman), Elizabeth Gaskell, I'm sure there are more ... He was a big name and could be a funny guy so he got along with people, but he also had a temper and once you were out of his circle, you were OUT. (With a few exceptions, he and his best friend John Foster had about three "break-ups" that they recovered from.)
In contrast to all that nerdery I just bleated out, I've never read Faulkner and have no opinion on him. :-)
Oh, but I do have a case of I-don't-recognize-the-famous-author that embarrassed me. I once had to review a freebie mini-comic of this guy doing art to Carl Sandburg's poems. I spent most of my review crowing about how I hated modern poetry and I don't know this guy and he sucks. When I later found that name in a book of poetry I felt REALLY HUMILIATED. Of course, I still don't like the poetry, but not giving the guy a google before I wrote the review was probably a bad thing.
That might be the thing to do with SMSD ... the book is in New Jersey now, but I'll probably play with it if I go on a trip back.
I actually can get behind the criticisms of Miller's writing style. There's something ... almost stale and distant about it. Like you can admire it but you can't love it. I actually think Fences, which I had to do a report on in high school and is considered "The Black Death of a Salesman" was written prettier. Although I don't think you'd like that play; the main character is a bit of a dick, but it does improve on Salesman in that the stepped-out-on wife gets to give her husband a piece of her mind.
As for taste is your own ... well, if I said I wasn't a snob, people would call me a liar. That being said, I do think that sometimes "trashy" literature fills a need for people that they won't get in classic novels. Try as I may, the 19th century isn't going to give me any sassy chick that kills things. (Unless Alan Moore turns Mina Harker into a superhero, but that only happens once in awhile.) I do think some modern literature has objective flaws that need to be pointed out no matter how much someone enjoys them (Hi Dan Brown!) but overall I think only limiting yourself to old stuff is prejudiced and stupid.
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I don't particularly like Carl Sandburg, either. :)
"Stale" is a good word to describe Miller. I think he does it on purpose, for effect, but it's still... stale.
...limiting yourself to old stuff is prejudiced and stupid.
Well said. Yes, times and social mores change. Variety is good. From an educator's standpoint: as long as a person is reading, I won't complain about what they're reading. It's the practice that's important. I'm amused that in Japan, manga are much more difficult to read than most novels because of the challenging kanji they use in addition to the more-common katakana.