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Aug. 16th, 2004 03:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_losI feel like I'm cramming in the Experiences. Last night Lance, my dad's newly living-in boyfriend, made us watch Raising Arizona for the first time, and today, reading at a pace that will have me ready to get back to work when school starts in a week (219 pages in one day), I finished "Girl with a Peal Earing." I have to say I was somewhat disappointed- one more novel about a woman marrying a man she doesn't really love because her true passion didn't work out, raising kids and kinda-sorta getting over it and I will wretch. It was very shades of "The Red Tent." Better, but still, purposeless.
I guess I read it because my inability to finish "The Blind Assassin" (Margaret Atwood) makes me feel impotent, and I needed the confidence boost wrought by reading a book through to the end. No matter what I do, I can't make myself care enough to pick up that damned novel and finish it. Am I a bad reader, a poor thinker, unable to relate to the work of this acclaimed author, or is this simply a boring book? MY friend Jenny Dine gave it to my for my last birthday, so I have to finish it to be able to talk to her about it, and I'm already too far in to abandon it now, but I wish someone would bludgeon the whiny old self-insertion of a main character to death.
Lance, by the way, rocks hard. While on the way to the state fair, he stopped us to show us these springs and the ruins of this old resort town. Apparently people used to come to bathe in the springs back in the 1800's, but for some reason the resort and the town around it have decayed into nothingness, leaving only the outlines of their foundations, the elegant rock bathing pools now filled with weeds, and a few decayed buildings. When we arrived, there was a blatant NO TRESPASSING sign.
"Should we go in?" I pointed. "There's a-" Lance ripped the sign off it's little post and tossed it into the high grass.
"What sign? I don't see a sign." And he proceeded to get all excited and geeky about how the water in the deep hole the hot spring comes out of bubbles as it rises and smells like sulfur and such.
He's so sweet, and he and my dad are so affectionate and mutually accommodating. I'm really not so awkward anymore about how to act; at first I was all jittery about whether it was acceptable to just come over anymore and such. And what was he to me? It's too late in my life, and he's too young, for him to be a parental figure to me. Without any kind of role for him, I didn't really know how to act. But I've mostly just gone with it. It helps that Lance and I get along and like each other.
I guess I read it because my inability to finish "The Blind Assassin" (Margaret Atwood) makes me feel impotent, and I needed the confidence boost wrought by reading a book through to the end. No matter what I do, I can't make myself care enough to pick up that damned novel and finish it. Am I a bad reader, a poor thinker, unable to relate to the work of this acclaimed author, or is this simply a boring book? MY friend Jenny Dine gave it to my for my last birthday, so I have to finish it to be able to talk to her about it, and I'm already too far in to abandon it now, but I wish someone would bludgeon the whiny old self-insertion of a main character to death.
Lance, by the way, rocks hard. While on the way to the state fair, he stopped us to show us these springs and the ruins of this old resort town. Apparently people used to come to bathe in the springs back in the 1800's, but for some reason the resort and the town around it have decayed into nothingness, leaving only the outlines of their foundations, the elegant rock bathing pools now filled with weeds, and a few decayed buildings. When we arrived, there was a blatant NO TRESPASSING sign.
"Should we go in?" I pointed. "There's a-" Lance ripped the sign off it's little post and tossed it into the high grass.
"What sign? I don't see a sign." And he proceeded to get all excited and geeky about how the water in the deep hole the hot spring comes out of bubbles as it rises and smells like sulfur and such.
He's so sweet, and he and my dad are so affectionate and mutually accommodating. I'm really not so awkward anymore about how to act; at first I was all jittery about whether it was acceptable to just come over anymore and such. And what was he to me? It's too late in my life, and he's too young, for him to be a parental figure to me. Without any kind of role for him, I didn't really know how to act. But I've mostly just gone with it. It helps that Lance and I get along and like each other.
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Date: 2004-08-16 01:54 pm (UTC)Also: Blind Assassin is a bad book, simply boring, don't feel impotent read Game of Thrones. I will buy you a copy and send it to you if you refuse. Potentially even write Zim/Gaz and stand over your head. Bahaha!
Also: if you haven't read China Mieville you're seriously deprived.
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Date: 2004-08-17 01:53 am (UTC)Also, and I think you'd really like her, read Emma Bull. Her book Finder is about elves living with humans in this really cool fantasy city called Borderland (same universe as John Ford's Last Hot Time, which also kicks ass). And her book War of the Oaks is about a Minnesota rock-and-roller who gets drafted to help fairies fight against the Unseely Court. Doesn't that sound cool?
But yeah, if you're having trouble getting through a book, read Emma Bull. None of this Atwood nonsense now, you hear?
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Date: 2004-08-18 07:17 am (UTC)As soon as I finish this fucker, I swear, at least a year's break from her! Potential assignments to read her be damned!
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Date: 2004-08-18 07:12 am (UTC)But I feel a need to read Improving Works of Literature, to the extent that enjoying a sci-fi makes me feel all sick and guilty. I can't read that when I could be reading Tess of the Ubervilles or some Modern Classic ( a la the Fucking Tent Book) that I may be able to reference in an essay or be called upon to know the premise of in the context of a refence! Agh, guilt!
You write Zim/Gax and I will go commit seppuku. Swear it.
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Date: 2004-08-18 07:15 am (UTC)