osprey_archer: (books)
[personal profile] osprey_archer
What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I tried to read this book in high school, and bailed at about the part where Esther’s boyfriend I guess? but she doesn’t seem to actually like him Buddy Willard strips off and she mentally compares his dangly bits to a chicken gizzard. It just struck me as unreadably depressing - not just that particular bit (that was more of a “straw that broke the camel’s back” moment), but the way that it encapsulates Esther’s general feelings about people in general, the faint weary distant disdain.

I found it less crushing reading it now, possibly because I don’t identify with book characters as instinctively as I did as a teenager (whether or not I actually had anything in common with a character), and so Esther’s way of thinking felt less sticky to me this time around. Because it did feel sticky - like walking through cobwebs - you walk away from it and it clings to you long after you walked through.

What I’m Reading Now

I’m still reading along in Marie Brennan’s Turning Darkness into Light. The translation of the ancient text is heating up! It took me a while to get into it (it’s a translation of an ancient epic, and generally I struggle with ancient epics, even made-up ones) but all of a sudden I’ve gotten invested not only in the epic itself but in the political background to its translation. Why, given his history of anti-Draconean sentiment, is Lord Glenleigh paying Audrey and Kudshayn to translate this epic - right before a conference that will discuss the legal status of the Draconean people worldwide? His scheme is unclear but probably dastardly.

I’ve also read onward in Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition. A lynching has just been narrowly averted (but the white man who actually committed the crime - in blackface, in order to pin it on a family retainer - has escaped scot free), and now Mrs. Carteret is contemplating whether to share her inheritance with her half-black half-sister, as per the terms of their shared father’s will. Will justice prevail?? UNLIKELY.

What I Plan to Read Next

Finishing The Bell Jar means that I’ve finished my most recent book list, so after some thought I’ve decided that my next booklist will be the Newbery Honor books of the 2010s. My eventual goal is to read all the Newbery Honor books, but there are two to four books per year for going on a century, which makes… three hundred or so books, give or take…Oh my God.

So I’m doing it by decade so that each individual book list seems more feasible. In the 2010s, I’ve actually read all the books from 2014 onward, plus a smattering from earlier years, so I’ve got only eight books to go! First up: Phillip Hoose’s Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice.

Date: 2019-12-04 02:29 pm (UTC)
troisoiseaux: (business pup)
From: [personal profile] troisoiseaux
I had a similar experience with trying to read The Bell Jar; I tried in high school and again a year or two into university, and ended up bailing both times because it was so smotheringly depressing it felt like trying to swallow cotton and made me deeply anxious. Maybe I’ll try reading it again some day when, like you said, there’s a little more distance between me and my teenage angst, but..... *insert shrug emoji here*

Date: 2019-12-04 03:17 pm (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
Heh, I always found that moment deeply hilarious -- like "That's the one we're looking for -- that last-chicken-in-the-shop look!" (Red Dwarf) It's so surreal and depersonalizing and yet at the same time such a homely ugly image. And Esther has just said "No, only statues" -- like, say, the David. Poor Buddy is not that, LOL. It's so wicked and withering. Then again one shrink wrote disapprovingly in my college medical file that I had a "negative, sardonic sense of humor".

I know people who have been really distressed (or even triggered, ack) by the depressive and suicidal parts, or even just how alienated and dissociated Esther is right from the beginning. For some reason that never bothered me....altho I first found the book when I was in boarding school and we were at a teacher's house for a party. I went through the bookshelves, found that one (we'd just read Ariel in English) and spent the rest of the evening reading it in a corner. Haaah.

Date: 2019-12-04 04:45 pm (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
Oh yeah, people react the same way to her poetry (and the poetry of other confessional women poets too). Not many lukewarm reactions!

Date: 2019-12-04 05:52 pm (UTC)
rachelmanija: (Books: old)
From: [personal profile] rachelmanija
I am very excited by your Newbery Honor project.

Date: 2019-12-04 07:02 pm (UTC)
copperfyre: (crow)
From: [personal profile] copperfyre
This comment cracked me up maybe more than it should have done.

But reading all the Newbery Honor books sounds super interesting! I went and had a look at the list of them and a lot of them I recognise (though may not have read) but a lot I have never heard of.

Date: 2019-12-05 05:30 pm (UTC)
copperfyre: (pink flower)
From: [personal profile] copperfyre
That seems like a reasonable conclusion to me!

Date: 2019-12-05 10:57 pm (UTC)
brigdh: (Default)
From: [personal profile] brigdh
Ooh, this made me really want to read "Turning Darkness into Light"!

And even though I haven't read it, I love your description of "The Bell Jar" as cobwebby.

Date: 2019-12-06 10:17 pm (UTC)
brigdh: (Default)
From: [personal profile] brigdh
I haven't, whoops! I didn't realize this was part of the same world. I have been meaning to read The Memoirs of Lady Trent for ages though, so this encourages me to push them up my list.

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