Before I commence the promised raving about The Silent Woman, Janet Malcolm’s book about (sort of) Sylvia Plath, I will state my position on Sylvia Plath. I like some of her poems a crazy lot and some of her (extremely famous) poems (like “Daddy”) not that much at all. I have read very few Ted Hughes poems but have always disliked the ones I did read. One time when I saw the two of them referred to as “the Hugheses” in a modern college syllabus, I became massively enraged on Sylvia Plath’s behalf. I think Ted Hughes was a cad…
19 CommentsReading the End Posts
What I wanted: A corrective emotional experience to How Shakespeare Changed Everything, which I hated. Why I didn’t read Will in the World, which I own and still haven’t read, rather than going to the library to get this: Y’all, I don’t know. I felt like a how their reputation happened sort of a book. My satisfaction level: Moderate. To be fair I don’t think I’d have felt any different if I’d read Will in the World, and perhaps less satisfied because it wouldn’t have been the sort of book I was in the mood for, which, again, was a…
8 CommentsI posted a post too soon instead of scheduling it. Ignore my last post, if you have Google Reader! Ignore it! It’s not Ada Leverson’s birthday yet! (When I do this, I feel disproportionately embarrassed like it is a major social gaffe for which you will all (well, all the Google Reader users) judge me. Even though I know that you won’t.)
8 CommentsNot to be confused with The End of Everything! But read roughly around the same time. I know. I was really slow in reviewing this. I am just bad at reviews this years, you guys. I need to institute a system to make myself be more systematic. Rachel (come visit soon, Rachel!) told me that she had to give me a book and for me to tell her what I thought about it, because she had loved it but it also made her really angry, and she wanted to know if my reaction would be the same. It was, except…
12 CommentsI am late to the Marilyn Johnson party, y’all. I am not fashionably late. I am so late the servers are washing glasses and the other guests have long since departed for the after-party at the library books bar. By which I mean, y’all have probably all already read this and gone on to read This Book Is Overdue, and by now y’all are probably Marilyn Johnson’s agent for her next book about, I don’t know, the lives of book scouts or something. So, sorry. As my mother says, sometimes it be’s that way. The Dead Beat is about obituaries:…
34 CommentsOh this book. Oh it hurt my heart. All the time I was reading it and thinking how it reminded me of an illustrated, more grown-up version of There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, which I read when I was a little kid. I still tear up slightly when I read There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom. Don’t judge. Louis Sachar can’t tug on my heartstrings? Junior lives on the Spokane Indian Reservation, where he regularly gets beaten up because he is a weird kid. He has a stutter and a large head and brain damage from being…
28 CommentsOkay, so. I didn’t write the Monday BBAW community post where I would say, this blogger is the best! And this blogger is also the best! And so on, and so forth! I didn’t do that because the time slot I had intended to devote to doing that on Sunday, I instead spent suddenly weirdly caring a lot a lot about the Jets/Cowboys game and coming very close to bursting into tears when the Jets won. I don’t care about the Jets. It was the 9/11 anniversary and they kept showing footage of the Tribute in Light, and that was…
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