Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

I've finally cracked and decided to do the Wednesday Reading Meme all the cool kids are doing, because I feel like I don't post about books much anymore and it makes me sad. :(

Of course this is partly because most of my reading these days is for class, and really, none of you want to hear endless mournful plaints about how sometimes reading postcolonial theory reminds me of reading Chuang Tzu, way back in freshman studies. The writing in both is impenetrable (though in completely different ways) and possibly they're trying to teach a similar lesson about the unknowableness of things.

But at least Chuang Tzu has parables about, like, frogs and butterflies.

What I Just Finished Reading

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is...surprisingly awesome! If we had read this in American Lit in high school rather than Hawthorne and Twain, maybe I wouldn't have such deeply ingrained anti-American literature feelings in my heart.

I liked it so much that I'm going to write my eight-page paper about identity about it, focusing on the sentimentalist vision of individual sympathy overcoming preexisting loyalties/identities, like, say, "law-abiding American citizen who doesn't help escaped slaves."

What I'm Reading Now

I'm working on Edwin Arlington Robinson's Merlin, which is a book-length poem about...Merlin and Vivian and the end of Camelot? I don't even know. I thought it might be useful for my project about World War I stuff, but if it's saying anything about World War I it's awfully oblique about it.

But! More fun! I'm also reading Sherwood Smith's Danse de la Folie, a Regency romance. The first couple of chapters were set-up and thus a little dull, but once the heroines meet everything begins to gallop forward. Sensible, thoughtful Clarissa is fun (though I'm kind of sorry she's being set up with the staid Marquess rather than his younger brother Ned), and I <3 <3 <3 giddy romantic "I want to write a novel! With Greek banditti who speak the Greek of Thucydides!" Kitty.

We haven't met her hero yet and I hope he is ridiculously romantic. Like, maybe a French spy romantic. A French spy who reads Thucydides!

What I'm Reading Next

I need to read George DuMaurier's Trilby, which is about artists and bohemia and France (yay!) and also apparently dives into a pit of anti-Semitism halfway through (boo!). And also Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, but I'm putting that off until after spring break because Hawthorne. Also maybe Pamela Dean's Tam Lin? We'll see how next week pans out.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Kitty is delightful! And I have a deplorable anti-AmLit bias myself. Never could get over it, even with a minor in English.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

none of you want to hear endless mournful plaints about how sometimes reading postcolonial theory reminds me of reading Chuang Tzu, way back in freshman studies.

I do! I do! And you obliged, so that's fine :-)

Danse de la Folie is on my list of books I want to read.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I often feel like Great American Writers are so busy trying to write Great American Books that they forget that they need to be, well, entertaining.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Danse de la Folie is a lot of fun! Spring break is just around the corner, and that's the only thing that keeps me from diving into the book right now.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I need to get that Sherwood Smith book!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's a fun one!

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Ditoing the 'US lit's not really for me' thing. I mean sure, some examples really REALLY do it for me, but it was such an /emphasis/ in my education, at the expense of well-roundedness, and as a whole--it's just not *that* fly? :/

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

We had both a Brit Lit and an Am Lit class at my school, so I suppose I never thought about the well-roundedness aspect. But sure, that could definitely be a problem.

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Mm, I never read like... more Dickens that Christmas Carol? until on my own after university. I mean I read Shakespeare in school and Hardy (though it was optional/special interest) in uni, but not in any kind of context? And to do US lit without doing like the big Brit Lit greatest hits, and almost /nothing/ French, German, Italian etc. in translation, is kind of weird.