Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

I have a new book icon! It seemed like time for an icon spring cleaning, so I've been hunting new icons down. I like to imagine the tiny carriage just sort of sprouted out of the book.

Wednesday reading meme:

What I Just Finished Reading

I...have actually not finished anything new since the last time I posted this meme, not counting books for class that are probably not of much interest to you unless you feel a burning desire to learn more about Charles Willson Peale, an early American artist who named all his children after artists.

Seriously. His sons were Rubens and Rembrandt and Raphaelle and Titian. I bet they didn’t get teased at school at all. (And his daughter - who he also taught to paint - he named Angelica Kauffman, after the Swiss painter.)

What I’m Reading Now

Sherwood Smith’s Danse de la Folie. Now, you may object that I was reading this two weeks ago, as indeed I was, but it is on my Kindle and...I kind of forgot to take my Kindle with me over spring break. O.o

So I am reading it now! Kitty just intervened in an abduction that turned out not to be an abduction at all. ILU Kitty!

What I’m Reading Next

Probably Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Irony of American History, because we read about it in one of the books I read for class and it sounds fascinating. It’s about pride and hubris and original sin!

I also mean to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, mostly because it is short, and also because hopefully it will make me care more about my Postcolonial Theory class. We actually had a vote yesterday on whether to read more Homi Bhabha, and everyone in the class but me voted yes. WHY GOD WHY?

Comments

[ladyherenya]

I have an intense hatred of Heart of Darkness, which has not diminished over the years since I studied it, and which renders me incapable of saying anything intelligent about it...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I just finished There Eyes Were Watching God. So glad I read it *now* and not because I was required to at some point in school. I *really* liked it, and want to blog about it at some point--it was such an unusual story, with such an independent-thinking protagonist, and the ways she, and the narrator, saw things was at times just so beautiful, to my mind.

Plus, it had a description of a hurricane and its aftermath that was so tangible, and seemed to repeat so strongly what we saw after Katrina--and yet Their Eyes Were Watching God was written like seventy years earlier. A real the-more-things-change moment....

One thing I'd been waiting for was when the title-drop line would come, and how it would fit in, since no one in the book was particularly religious, and that got me thinking about titles in general and their significance. (Still thinking: no conclusions yet.)

Not that I think it's a perfect story, but even things that are not what I'd expect or advise in a story are interesting to me, because Zora Neale Hurston chose to do it that way, and I find myself thinking, okay, why? (Plus, it's funny coming at her fiction from her ethnography and folklife research, because I can see where she's inserted her research into her story.)

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling I would grow up to be the same sort of parent Charles Willson Peale was. Although I am not sure what theme I would name the hypothetical children after. Arctic explorers, possibly.

WHY GOD WHY?

Probably because they have all been forced to read it twice, like I was, and hated every single sentence. Although if Postcolonial Theory is your thing, maybe you will not hate it. But oh god, I hated it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Ha, give them something to live up to, right? "Now children, you know I'll always love you, but whoever grows up to explore TRACKLESS WASTES will clearly be the favorite."

But why would they vote to read it again if they've already read it twice and hated it???? Is it Stockholm syndrome?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

People seem to either love or hate Heart of Darkness, usually with a burning fiery passion either way. Maybe I should put it off until May...

[seascribe.livejournal.com]

Oh sorry, I was LJing before sufficient tea had been consumed. I was talking about hating Heart of Darkness, which was not at all clear. But I see upthread I am not alone in my intense and burning hatred of it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how you got from Heart of Darkness to Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Anyway. We read TEWWG in high school, and I think you're probably right that it's a better book if you read it at your own time, because we powered through it and that rather spoiled things. (My teacher that year was a very nice young woman - gosh, now I'm probably nearly as old as she was - with no sense of time management. We clipped through Grapes of Wrath at 50 to 100 pages a day.)

I didn't know Hurston did ethnography. I bet I would enjoy reading that - presuming it's not totally dry, which I know old ethnography texts sometimes are?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I was hoping I could make myself like Postcolonial Theory more by reading Heart of Darkness, on the grounds that it was a novel and not Homi Bhabha, but it sounds like this is a bad life plan. Maybe I should just reread A Passage to India, never mind how everyone is always arguing about whether it's anti-colonial or not.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Whoops, I did the thing of posting a comment as a response to a comment instead of as a comment to the entry--sorry ladyherenya! (She won't see my apology unless she scrolls down, though....) --so that's how you get from Heart of Darkness to ITEWWG :-P

Oh, it's not dry at all! She was a very involved participant. She also collected folksongs; you can download her singing some of the songs she collect--I have some on my iTunes. It makes me feel so close to her, hearing her actual voice.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

(sorry about my misplaced comment! I had intended it for the entry but ended up responding to your comment instead--and totally off topic)

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Charles Willson Peale and his sons are my jam! I was in love with Rubens for a while.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I confess I do not know much about CWP's sons except their names. Oh, and that Raphaelle was forever sitting around, failing to paint pictures at a rate fast enough to support his wife and kids, and Peale was always writing him letters going "Son you know I love you but PAINT FASTER."

[ladyherenya]

That's okay, I figured it must have just been misplaced.