On a business trip, on a plane, I had encountered a conversation with a random passenger that once more goes back to that ongoing debate in the literary world on the ‘chic lit’ genre.
“You’re not actually going to read that?” a middle-aged woman, who sat next to me, peered over my shoulder and raised an eyebrow, as she pointed to the latest Lauren Weisberger’s flick, “Chasing Harry Winston,” that I had in my lap.
“I sure am,” I smiled broadly, licked my finger and flipped the page. “I’d let you borrow it after I was done, but my sister…”
“Oh, no, no,” she stopped me with a wave of a hand as if I just offered her a poisonous apple, and moved in closer to whisper. “And, I know, you look like an intelligent young lady,” she patted my shoulder to convince me of that. “But my daughter reads books like that. It’s junk. And I just wish she didn’t. It seem so, I don’t know,” - here she moved her hands up and down in a quick gesture to suggest THE CRIME – “worthless.”
“Worthless, hmmm, um, no,” I said, looking down at the book again. “Funny, romantic, and entertaining, yes,” I nodded my head. “But not worthless. I wouldn’t worry about it, though,” I added. “At least you know since she reads romances, she’s a lover, not a hater,” I joked.
The expression on my neighbor’s face indicated she didn’t find my comment funny. She gave out a heavy sigh and leaned close again, her eyes piercing into mine as if to say, Now listen to me closely, little girl, make one more comment like that, and I’ll strangle you. “It ruins your generation.”
I looked at her. She wasn’t joking.
“Mmm, yeah,” I nodded my head. “I really doubt that,” I said, after which the woman sighed again and turned her head to the window.
Whaaateeever! I truly hope when I’ll have a child someday, I’ll never stress so much over harmless, funny romances (what is at the end a big deal?), and conversations like that, again to me, seem to be very condescending and too critical, especially from the people who don’t realize how much work goes into finishing those books.
The flight was about four hours long, which gave me enough time to read the book. And during a time of work, going out, reading and writing days and not enough sleep, it certainly gave me a trip out of my everyday life, because, I took it exactly for what it was. A fun, relaxing read with a fairy tale ending that for a moment took my mind off things. So, tell me again, why is it worthless?
I welcome all the responses that spin the other side of the argument!
I just read a literary review of “Oscar’s Books,” a new biography of Oscar Wilde, by Thomas Wright. Wright became interested in Oscar Wilde at an early age, and had read “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” twenty times before he was fifteen. His passion for Wilde’s writing grew into an obsession “to touch every book Wilde had ever touched.” When he won a $5,000 prize from the Royal Society of Literature, he spent it all at Sotheby’s on one of Wilde’s personal copies of Swinburne’s essays and studies.
The interesting thing about this biography is that it is entirely speculation based on Wilde’s personal library, and the times of his life in which he read certain books. There are certain aspects of this style of “biography” that will irk a lot of people, as it’s generally considered better to know than to imagine when writing about a person’s life, but there are things about this book that strike me as very interesting. The author took the time to do extensive research into rare archives on Wilde’s book collection, and from there, learned much about the writer’s life. True, what he didn’t learn from the archives, he suggests, but that’s what interests me: the legacy we leave through the books we own.
My grandmother once gave me twenty dollars (a very big deal at the time) to go through her gigantic library and carefully paste her professionally printed calligraphy nameplates on the inside of each cover. It took me an entire weekend to do it, but I learned so much about her life that I hadn’t thought to ask her just by reading the titles of all of her books, by reading the clandestine notes in the margins, the greetings and professions of love on the title pages. Needless to say, realizing what books my grandmother owned sparked some very interesting conversations between us.
Books (the actual printed kind, not just the idea) are very important to me. I love scanning people’s bookshelves. I love buying used books that have Polaroids and notes and shopping lists tucked inside. I love learning something about someone through their reading habits. I can’t imagine living in my apartment without my books (as Wilde survived in prison for two years with only a prayer book), and I can’t imagine anyone else not having a bookshelf. It makes me wonder what someone could learn about me from my bookshelf, and what legacy I’ll be leaving through my personal library.
I just read a literary review of “Oscar’s Books,” a new biography of Oscar Wilde, by Thomas Wright. Wright became interested in Oscar Wilde at an early age, and had read “The Portrait of Dorian Gray” twenty times before he was fifteen. His passion for Wilde’s writing grew into an obsession “to touch every book Wilde had ever touched.” When he won a $5,000 prize from the Royal Society of Literature, he spent it all at Sotheby’s on one of Wilde’s personal copies of Swinburne’s essays and studies.
The interesting thing about this biography is that it is entirely speculation based on Wilde’s personal library, and the times of his life in which he read certain books. There are certain aspects of this style of “biography” that will irk a lot of people, as it’s generally considered better to know than to imagine when writing about a person’s life, but there are things about this book that strike me as very interesting. The author took the time to do extensive research into rare archives on Wilde’s book collection, and from there, learned much about the writer’s life. True, what he didn’t learn from the archives, he suggests, but that’s what interests me: the legacy we leave through the books we own.
My grandmother once gave me twenty dollars (a very big deal at the time) to go through her gigantic library and carefully paste her professionally printed calligraphy nameplates on the inside of each cover. It took me an entire weekend to do it, but I learned so much about her life that I hadn’t thought to ask her just by reading the titles of all of her books, by reading the clandestine notes in the margins, the greetings and professions of love on the title pages. Needless to say, realizing what books my grandmother owned sparked some very interesting conversations between us.
Books (the actual printed kind, not just the idea) are very important to me. I love scanning people’s bookshelves. I love buying used books that have Polaroids and notes and shopping lists tucked inside. I love learning something about someone through their reading habits. I can’t imagine living in my apartment without my books (as Wilde survived in prison for two years with only a prayer book), and I can’t imagine anyone else not having a bookshelf. It makes me wonder what someone could learn about me from my bookshelf, and what legacy I’ll be leaving through my personal library.
I’ve been hearing about Margaret Atwood for a while now, but it was only recently that I began to read her novels. And now I simply can’t get enough of them.
So I decided to go on here to write my first review on one of her books.
Alias Grace
In her book, Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood takes us back to the nineteenth century to tell us the story of Grace Marks, an Irish immigrant, who gets convicted for her involvement in the brutal murders of her employer, Thomas Kinnear, and Nancy Montgomery, his housekeeper and mistress, to which she claims she has no memory at all. To discern her character’s status as murderer or merely accomplice, the author spins the controversy every which way possible, leaving us with only one question in mind. Is she guilty or not?
What gets me the most about Atwood, though, besides the plot, mystery, creativity, and character development of the story, are the depth and complexity of her sentences.
This is my favorite passage in the book, which consists only of a few sentences. But how much substance does it hold! Take a look:
“It is morning, and time to get up; and today I must go on with the story. Or the story must go on with me, carrying me inside it, along the track it must travel, straight to the end, weeping like a train and deaf and single-eyed and locked tight shut; although I hurl myself against the walls of it and scream and cry, and beg to God to let me out.
When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion; a dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood; like a house in a whirlwind, or else a boat crushed by the icebergs or swept over the rapids, and all aboard powerless to stop it. It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you are telling it, to yourself or someone else.”
These lines cut straight to my heart, and it suddenly clicked in my mind what the author was trying to show all along; they, these sentences alone, hold the vital point of the book; the trick that Atwood is playing. Or at least, that’s what I think. What is that point?
Read the book and fill in the blanks: Like the author of the book says at the end, “the true, historical character of Grace Marks will always remain an ¬______.”
I was so excited about Lollapalooza this year, I was actually nervous.
I couldn’t sleep the night before. I kept getting out of bed and making sure my ticket was in a thick folder, inside a Ziploc bag, in the padded laptop sleeve in my messenger bag. I checked and re-checked the seals on my twin one liter bottles of water, to be sure that I would be allowed to bring them in. I carefully planned my outfit (tall leather boots were sweaty, yes, but I’d rather stand in my own sweat than in a puddle of a stranger’s pee!). I was so ready.
I felt like someone who was new to the whole outdoor festival scene, like I’d never even been to any kind of show before. That wasn’t the case. It’s just that this was the first time that really seemed to matter...what if my ticket got wet or lost or STOLEN? What if my water bottles didn’t pass inspection and I got kicked out?! What if I ate something bad on the morning of the show and was too sick to leave home? The what-ifs were overwhelming.
Because this was Radiohead.
I don’t yet have the words for how amazing the show was...two straight hours of the depths of their enormous catalogue. I don’t even know how to express my absolute satisfaction in every second of the show.
The strength of their act can probably be summed up as follows:
I had an argument recently with a friend who said he “liked” Radiohead, but felt that they were too overrated. He went so far as to say they were “probably the most overrated band of the 90s.” Now, I’m a pretty big fan, if you couldn’t tell, but I’m not one of those die-hards who will stand atop a mountain of their albums and preach the glories of everything they’ve ever done. And it’s cool with me if they’re not your cup of tea. However, I wholly disagreed with this friend’s viewpoint, and I think he got a little glib satisfaction in watching me try my best to argue against it without sounding like a SUPERFAN!, which I hate, obviously.
During the show, my friend, who was somewhere in the almost-silent sea of dazed people, sent me the following text:
“I take back everything I ever said. Holy f***.”
Yeah...I think it’s safe to say I won the argument.
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