Books, books, wonderful books. During the school year, I read a lot for class. In two English classes alone this past semester I read 16 books. While I love many of the books I read in class and they become some of my favorites, it isn't the same process as reading for pleasure in my own time. When I read for class, I'm often going as fast as I can, tallying up how many hours it will take me to read another 200 pages, hunched up in the library with a pen in my hand. But when I read for pleasure I can relax and absorb the plot without contemplating the use of the picturesque, or the author's views on evolution. I must admit as time goes on the lines between reading for pleasure and for class get blurred in that way. After three years of studying English at the college level, I do find myself analyzing the text for feminist theories and wondering what the symbolic geography lends to the family dynamic in any given novel. I remember my English teacher in high school telling me how lucky I was that I could still read a book without a pen in my hand. Now, as those days seem numbered for me, I see what he meant.
But now let me share some of the books I've been reading lately for pleasure.
The Marriage Plot
Back in March, I read Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot and I could hardly put it down. It took me about five days to read the hefty thing, while clocking in some significant spring-break-type reading hours. The plot centers around a young woman right before, during, and for a year or so after college graduation. I loved the book's play on the "marriage plot". This is the very theme she focuses her senior thesis on, and it is also what her life seems to be for the duration of the novel, making it a sort of meta-plot. It can make my head hurt a little to think about all the implications involved, but it hurts in a good way. She is caught in a love-triangle between a guy she's been friends with since freshman year and clearly adores her, and a mysterious beau who comes on the scene and has a reputation for being charming, but also kind of "off". We follow the love story from beginning to end, with all the heart-lifting and sinking moments that go along with it. As her dark lover reveals more and more personality traits that make the reader hesitate, our heroine falls deeper and deeper in love with him, becoming less able to see the pause-rendering traits herself. This novel explores mental health, love, and becoming an adult--and ultimately yourself-- in a poetic way.
“People don't save other people. People save themselves.” ― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
“She wasn't all that interested, as a reader, in the reader. She was still partial to that increasingly eclipsed entity: the writer. Madeleine had a feeling that most semiotic theorists had been unpopular as children, often bullied or overlooked, and so had directed their lingering rage onto literature. They wanted to demote the author. They wanted a book, that hard-won, transcendent thing, to be a text, contingent, indeterminate, and open for suggestions. They wanted the reader to be the main thing. Because they were readers.Whereas Madeleine was perfectly happy with the idea of genius. She wanted a book to take her places she couldn't get to herself. She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
The Lord of the Rings
I know I'm a little late to the game. But I figure, better late than never. Plus, I'm taking a science-fiction-and-fantasy course in the fall, and I figure this is part of the base knowledge necessary. This is one of those books (or trilogies) that engulf you. The absolute foreign nature of what Tolkein presents the reader which requires him/her to abandon any notion of how things are supposed to work in order to think and breathe in the world he has created. The simple parts of human nature explored in the book--through the ring, through the journeys, through the adventures--are aspects of life that everyone can relate to, no matter how young or old. I haven't finished, nor am I even close to finishing, but so far, I can understand the hype. The characters are iconic and timeless. I'm already looking forward to sharing The Lord of the Rings with my own children, hopefully at an age earlier than I've come across it.
“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
Next on my list:
Jane Eyre
All the Light We Cannot See
The Girl on the Train
Yes Please
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