This is very quickly becoming one of my favorite books of all danged time.
i just read it this weekend.
it's perfect.
it's perfect.
i'm hearing some good things about dfw's introduction.
there's nothing i want at the farmington library right now. i am not mired in any book. i need help.
i'm really, really loving this book...especially the smart things she has to say about the boys' club in contemporary american literature. very funny, very wry, but not at the expense of actual emotion.
Finally. Here. And. Thank. Christ.
i love hearing zadie smith talk; i think she's a brilliant thinker, and a classic reader. (not to mention a fantastic dresser.) i'd much rather she start publishing nonfiction, because her fiction is good with some great moments, but never truly great. her introduction to the 'best american nonrequired reading' anthology a few years back is a good example of what she can do when writing well about reading.
some disturbingly familiar insight into a certain kind of female mind...and i don't care about the complaints about the book's main character being too narcissistic, because 1) she's in a novel and you don't have to be best friends with her and 2) most of us are, at least a little and mostly a lot, and the character doesn't pretend otherwise. now i've filled my petulance quota for the day; on to other things!
i once had a dream that i found a hardcover john cage book in a used bookstore, and the moment i picked it up, i felt a profound, beyond bone-deep sense that this was The One, The Book. it was one of the most comforting dreams i've ever woken from.
a year or so later, i found 'silence' in a pile of books i was sorting through at the used bookstore where i worked at the time, and i felt a little thrill...
not quite The One, but i'm holding onto it anyway.
a year or so later, i found 'silence' in a pile of books i was sorting through at the used bookstore where i worked at the time, and i felt a little thrill...
not quite The One, but i'm holding onto it anyway.
it's finally here! and marvellous.
val sent this to me for christmas! it's amazing that it exists, and more amazing that i have it in my house!
just started this morning, got 30 pages in, resented having to leave it to go about the business of the day. this is a good sign.
god bless interlibrary loan. it arrived yesterday, i'm about a third of the way through, and i effing love it. that's all. just effing love it.
i've resisted this book mightily, mostly due to too many hearty recommendations (so i guess i'm a little more like jeremy than i realized,) but i finally caved and picked it up at the library a few days ago. (that, in and of itself, is no mean feat: the thing weighs a metric ton. seriously. i weighed it at the grocery store, in one of those things that you're supposed to weigh cherries and broccoli in. turns out they can hold more than you ever thought they could!) normally, i'd be excited at the prospect of a book being so big and potentially good--its goodness will last so long!--but in this case it made the book even more off-putting than the apparent subject, which is usually not my bag.
all this is to say that i'm a hundred pages in, and it's actually pretty good. the blurber's comparisons to austen's wit are fair enough (though i say this as a person who'd read little austen before last summer.) and the magic business, even though it's the main subject, is strangely understated: a freshly dead young lady is resurrected with relatively little fanfare; everyone sort of says how neat it is, and she asks for a cup of tea.
i'm keeping my fingers crossed that i still feel this way in 200, 300, 400 pages.
...........
two weeks later: i've about stalled at pg 150. i don't know if i'll ever go back. but i'm not taking it off the list quite yet...
...........
a week later still: i'm never going to finish this book.
all this is to say that i'm a hundred pages in, and it's actually pretty good. the blurber's comparisons to austen's wit are fair enough (though i say this as a person who'd read little austen before last summer.) and the magic business, even though it's the main subject, is strangely understated: a freshly dead young lady is resurrected with relatively little fanfare; everyone sort of says how neat it is, and she asks for a cup of tea.
i'm keeping my fingers crossed that i still feel this way in 200, 300, 400 pages.
...........
two weeks later: i've about stalled at pg 150. i don't know if i'll ever go back. but i'm not taking it off the list quite yet...
...........
a week later still: i'm never going to finish this book.
this was my favorite, favorite, favorite when i was young. i read it approximately eleventy million times.
well-intentioned, perhaps, but obnoxious & poorly written. plus, for someone so up-with-ladies, she says some undercutting stuff about women who aren't *her* type of ladies.
rereading in honor of the lobster festival here in rockland, which we just survived again...
i don't know anything about the cats, but i know i liked this one, and the other bits of his stuff i've seen around in collections and whatnot. it's for girls who like boys, boys who like girls, boys who like boys, girls who like girls, boys who like cats, girls who like t-shirts, and everybody else.
I'm getting some casual crying done, let me tell you.
