I don't know how many people read this blog. I realize it isn't for everyone, especially the casual blog reader. However, for those who have been reading it (or at least know about it and its routine), I should apologize for being so incredibly late on updating.
Unfortunately, with my new job, my life has become a whirlwind, and I no longer have the luxury of waking up in the morning, reading for a few hours, doing whatever throughout my day, reading again for another hour, doing some more stuff, and then reading again before bedtime. Life is fast-paced, and I was jarred, utterly, with my new schedule of go, go, go. Because I wasn't prepared for it, I wasn't prepared to keep up my same rigorous reading schedule, and soon days would pass without the cover so much as being looked at. How depressing.
However! I resolved with myself that, if I can't keep up a book a week, I can at least keep reading, no matter how long it takes. Really, a book a week is quick, but I was able to do it because my time in school and work had reduced dramatically. Now that my schedule is not as laid back as it was, I can't spend nearly as much reading as I'd like to. I just can't. I don't know where in my day I could squeeze in a few hours. A half hour, yes, but hours on end?
All this to say: yes, I'm stil reading, and I'm still very much interested and curious and speculative. I just don't think I can finish this project in 15 weeks like I had hoped. And that's okay. What I'm doing with my time is worthwhile, and as long as I keep opening that book, it doesn't matter if it takes me years.
Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's talk about To Kill a Mockingbird!
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
Quick Synopsis: A young brother and sister, Jem and Scout, deal with their town's racial injustice as their father defends a black man on trial, and are mightily captivated by Boo Radley, a man that never leaves his house.
I had heard so much about this book but knew so little. I remember my friends reading it in high school. I knew the character Boo Radley, I knew it was about a black man raping a young white girl, and... that was about it. I actually thought Harper Lee was a man. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found out she's a woman. What an inspiration.
I love this book. I mean, I LOVE it. It is my favorite so far, and probably will be on my top three of all time. It was hard for me to not finish it in a week because I wanted to get through it so badly, but really, I'm glad I took my time with it. I was able to spend more time with the characters, I was able live in Maycomb just a little bit longer, I was able to become a kid again.
And that's the magic of this book: Lee captures the wonderment and curiosity and bewilderment of these children so well. Some critics have said that they didn't buy it because how could our first person narrator, a 7 year old, narrate a story with such clarity and precision, such force and lyricism? What the "critics" weren't realizing was that it wasn't narrated by a 7 year old. It was narrated by an old woman, a woman who has spent years pondering this time in her life and finally decided to tell this story, to figure it out and make sense of it all. Even with the huge temporal distance between the time-now narrator (the old woman) and the time-then narrator (Scout at 7 years old), the magic of her childhood was never lost. I see this world as the 7 year old sees it because that's how the narrator sees it--she doesn't see it as an old woman. Lee knew exactly what she was doing.
Not only was I drawn by the sheer beauty of the language, but the story is one I found myself truly caring about. Boo Radley, this enigmatic being, this thing that the children both fear and revere, isn't just something to give the kids something to do. He stands for something, and what got me was that I didn't know what it was right away. I had to get deeply involved in the other story, the story about the trial that their father, Atticus, was defending, to really understand the significance of Boo and his place in the world and in the story.
And that's why it's so good: everything connects back to each other. It all makes sense. And it's beautiful. I cried. I admit it, I had tears in my eyes when I finished it.
I won't go into too much further detail in case you haven't read it--and if you haven't, I HIGHLY suggest that you do.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
If you really want to hear about it...
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Salinger
Quick synopsis: A young man named Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of his school and searches for something--anything--that isn't phony or lousy, although almost everything he comes in contact with is just that.
This is the only book on my list that I once began. Many years ago, I went through a phase, a short phase, of wanting to read books like the ones I'm reading now. I started with The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't get very far. I think I stopped somewhere in the beginning, because then, I didn't have much tolerance for books that didn't grab me right away. And, truthfully, my tolerance level may have only gone up just a tad--but if it weren't for the commitment I made to myself, I probably would have closed this book before its end again.
But this is not the place to rant about how unentertained I was. I'm here to speculate why this book, THIS book, has become an American classic.
One of things I've thought about was its connection and relatability to teenagers. So many high schoolers read this book because, I'm sure, they feel the same way as Holden does. They have the same unexplainable angst, the same desires (or lack thereof), the same worry and fear of identity. I believe the ending is what has made it so timeless. If Holden hadn't changed (and some critics do argue that he didn't change and he was still just as "lousy" as he was in the beginning), then this book would have gone no where. But for two-hundred-some-odd pages, we're subjected to this whiney guy who is never in the mood to do anything, gets kicked out of school AGAIN, and seemingly has no direction, no care in his life whatsoever. Yet, as it ends with the beautiful image of him sitting in the pouring rain, watching his kid sister Phoebe, whom he truly adores, I can't help but think that that's what makes this book so great: that it goes beyond the depressive moods and the listlessness of Holden. It becomes something larger than him, which we never really get to experience until the end.
The stylistic choices of Salinger were spot on, and although the tone of the piece began to irritate me, I do feel like this is another reason this book has achieved such status. I'm not too familiar with contemporary American literature, especially literature published when Catcher was published, so I can't say that this style was "inventive" or "unique" (I hope to learn this, though, in my many years of studying literature), but I can say it seems to ring as innovative and ingenious. I can imagine being in the early Fifties and reading this book and seeing the slang and the cursing and the casual and conversational tone and being shocked that "lit-re-ture" would sound like this. And if you want to become a classic, I've learned, you've got to shock people.
I don't really have much more to say about the book.
I do, however, want to give a shout-out to my girl Kati Spayde, whose book I inherited when I bought it at a used-bookstore at Amazon.com. Kati had highlighted about 73% of the book. She even wrote things like, "New character!!" or "Why can't Holden enjoy the small things?" I found myself competing with this Kati Spayde, thinking, I'll show her--I'll show her what REAL annotation looks like. I wonder if her teacher would give me the same 86% that she received.
by J.D. Salinger
Quick synopsis: A young man named Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of his school and searches for something--anything--that isn't phony or lousy, although almost everything he comes in contact with is just that.
This is the only book on my list that I once began. Many years ago, I went through a phase, a short phase, of wanting to read books like the ones I'm reading now. I started with The Catcher in the Rye. I didn't get very far. I think I stopped somewhere in the beginning, because then, I didn't have much tolerance for books that didn't grab me right away. And, truthfully, my tolerance level may have only gone up just a tad--but if it weren't for the commitment I made to myself, I probably would have closed this book before its end again.
But this is not the place to rant about how unentertained I was. I'm here to speculate why this book, THIS book, has become an American classic.
One of things I've thought about was its connection and relatability to teenagers. So many high schoolers read this book because, I'm sure, they feel the same way as Holden does. They have the same unexplainable angst, the same desires (or lack thereof), the same worry and fear of identity. I believe the ending is what has made it so timeless. If Holden hadn't changed (and some critics do argue that he didn't change and he was still just as "lousy" as he was in the beginning), then this book would have gone no where. But for two-hundred-some-odd pages, we're subjected to this whiney guy who is never in the mood to do anything, gets kicked out of school AGAIN, and seemingly has no direction, no care in his life whatsoever. Yet, as it ends with the beautiful image of him sitting in the pouring rain, watching his kid sister Phoebe, whom he truly adores, I can't help but think that that's what makes this book so great: that it goes beyond the depressive moods and the listlessness of Holden. It becomes something larger than him, which we never really get to experience until the end.
The stylistic choices of Salinger were spot on, and although the tone of the piece began to irritate me, I do feel like this is another reason this book has achieved such status. I'm not too familiar with contemporary American literature, especially literature published when Catcher was published, so I can't say that this style was "inventive" or "unique" (I hope to learn this, though, in my many years of studying literature), but I can say it seems to ring as innovative and ingenious. I can imagine being in the early Fifties and reading this book and seeing the slang and the cursing and the casual and conversational tone and being shocked that "lit-re-ture" would sound like this. And if you want to become a classic, I've learned, you've got to shock people.
I don't really have much more to say about the book.
I do, however, want to give a shout-out to my girl Kati Spayde, whose book I inherited when I bought it at a used-bookstore at Amazon.com. Kati had highlighted about 73% of the book. She even wrote things like, "New character!!" or "Why can't Holden enjoy the small things?" I found myself competing with this Kati Spayde, thinking, I'll show her--I'll show her what REAL annotation looks like. I wonder if her teacher would give me the same 86% that she received.
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