Growth Through Pain

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is the second of three books I chose for myself on our list. I've been meaning to read this book since I met Joe and I believe I purchased it when we were killing some time in a book store before a movie on our first date. I've picked it up and started it a half a dozen times but never finished it. This time around, I couldn't put it down. After really thinking about, I really connected with the title and the main character of Esther. Plath does a beautiful job with the metaphor of a bell jar and doesn't over-do it. To save you the time of google-ing a bell jar, its a piece of lab equipment used to create a vacuum. And I found it to be an amazing metaphor for Esther's depression and anxiety as well as my own experiences with the disorder.

I never made it past the scene where Esther witnesses a live birth. I would attribute my ability to get past that scene entirely to seeing my sister give birth last October. Before that it seemed unreal. If you're going to read this book, you should keep in mind the story takes place in the 1950's so a lot of seemingly strange events take place that were probably fairly common in that time. I'll ignore the fact that this book would be a great study of women during that time because there is so much I could say about the sexism in this book but I don't think I could ever finish this review. Instead, I just want to point out a few things that still baffle me that I'm pretty sure have nothing to do with Esther herself. The first example that comes to mind is at one point Esther describes mixing a raw egg with some raw hamburger in a teacup and eats it. I'm not sure if it's because her neurosis or just a typical thing to do back then...

I think my favorite part of this book is the subtle way everyone in Esther's life brings her down. I didn't notice it until Esther's doctor very late in the book stops allowing people to come visit Esther. When I spent more time thinking about the main people in her life (her mother, Buddy, Joan, and Doreen), in some way they all pull Esther in unhealthy directions. They feed their own problems without much care for Esther and it isn't noticed by her mother until about midway through the book that there is any sort of change in Esther. By this point though, the reader can clearly see Esther is past the point of her mother's help and clearly needs a lot of professional help. Esther spends a great deal of time shielding them from her emotional distress.

Her descent into depression and then her healing process are really beautifully written. It's a really nice smooth transition with obvious milestones and setbacks. If you have no experience with depression, this book gives a great picture into what the mind is capable of.

"How did I know that someday- at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere- the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?"

The Writer and The Writer's Brother

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh was interesting to say the least. I really enjoyed it but to be honest, it's not for everyone. If you're offended by swearing and torture, don't bother... That being said, I couldn't put this one down. It's probably one of the greatest plays I've ever read. In the end, nothing feels useless. Every part of the plot seems to tie in really nicely with no real moments of "Why is this happening?"

I think what I really liked about this play was the implications that there has to be some sort of tragedy in your life to really give you purpose. I like that Katurian's trauma is knowing his parents beat his brother to give his own writing depth. It's really twisted but at the same time it's a great realization that there has to be something in your life to give it meaning. If it was all happy, there would be no meaning. And it's not just Katurian's life that is improved by trauma. The cops also find meaning in their own tragedies. It ties the whole the play together.


The little side stories of the play are really genius. I could really see how effective they would be on stage. I think they really add to the whole twisted plot. The few pictures I've seen from the production of the show these little side stories and they all have a certain element of creepiness I can't describe.


This play was really hard to review. I didn't have any major criticisms and it's difficult to discuss without giving the whole story away.

Four Legs Good! Two Legs Bad!

Animal Farm
By George Orwell


This is one of the novels Jenn picked for me to read this summer, and I've been meaning to read it for about ten years, since my friend Jef gave me his copy and told me I had to read it.  I read it on my kindle app though.

I really liked this novel basically right from the start.  Major's speech inspiring the various animals to rebel against their human oppressors is a great scene, and it makes it all the more sad that Major dies in the first chapter before being able to see his dream fulfilled.  I quickly fell in love with several of the characters.  Particularly the hard-working horse, Boxer, but I was also very intrigued by the cat in the opening chapter, when the farm takes a vote about whether or not rats should be treated equally along with the other animals, and the cat votes both yes and no.  That struck me as very funny for some reason.  I wish there were more of the cat later in the book, but she just kinda fades away.

Now, Jenn informs me that every character in Animal Farm is meant to represent an actual person involved in the rise of communism.  She suggested that I read the novel along with the sparknotes to get these little insights, but I opted to just read it and enjoy this story being told without trying to understand all the parallels and allusions to historical figures who I probably know little about anyway.  Actually, while I read Animal Farm I was reminded of Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus, which chronicles his father's life in Germany during the holocaust.  In Maus, each race is represented by a different species of animals (Jews are mice, Germans are pigs, Americans are dogs, etc), and I couldn't get those correlations out of my head while reading Animal Farm.

For such a short novel, the story does get a little boring at parts, but I ultimately love where it ends up.  Napoleon's rise to power, and Boxer's death are deeply powerful.  I love how Napoleon changes the commandments of the farm without any shred of democracy, and ultimately cuts a deal with the humans so that most of the farm is hurled back to the slavery they began with.  It's a very sad and pessimistic ending, but I can't imagine how else it would have ended.  My one criticism of the story is the continual building and destroying of the windmill.  I think they ended up building it three times, and the first time it was destroyed in the night, it was genuinely heart breaking.  The second time, I was over it.

Bejees!

The Iceman Cometh
by Eugene O'Neill


Next on the list of plays I've never read but should is The Iceman Cometh.  I've owned this copy of the play for years and honestly believe I bought it because it has Kevin Spacey on the cover.  I am a fan.  I've even tried to read the play before; a few times.  However, I could never get past the four pages of stage directions and descriptions that open the play.  Forcing myself to get through the play this time, these stage directions are still my biggest criticism of the piece.

It amazes me when I read a classic piece of drama, or even a new piece that's winning all kinds of awards and acclaim, and they just suck.  The stories aren't necessarily bad, but there are so many flaws in the dramaturgy that I can't imagine it ever even being read by anyone important.  That's how I feel about Iceman Cometh.  Like I said, the huge flaw is the sheer volume of stage directions here.  Each act begins with a length description of the set, which is bad enough, but then littered throughout every scene is tons and tons of little stage directions prescriptively outlining every movement the actors make.  There are also several stage directions instructing the actors how to read given lines.  This drives me crazy.  You can't be a control freak and a playwright.  It's possibly the most collaborative art form out there, and you have to be okay with your script being interpreted by a large group of directors and actors.  If you can't handle that, then don't be a playwright because I guarantee that whenever a director or actor picks up Iceman Cometh for a production, they immediately ignore all the stage directions.

Second, there are too many characters here.  There are maybe 3 characters in the play that I'm at all interested in, and the rest feel mostly like filler.  Hickey is great.  He's very well-written, and has his shit together, and I found myself just trying to get through the rest of the play to get to the next Hickey scene.  His story line is compelling, and I like the bartender character a lot, but the rest of these people are worthless.

There are other little things about the play that annoy me as well, like O'Neill's tendency to write in really thick dialects.  Bejees it's irritating.  Overall, I just think it's a poorly constructed play, and that detracts from what I think is a pretty good story.  I'd definitely be interested in seeing the piece performed one day, but I'll never attempt to read it again.

I Am Sherlocked

The Hound of the Baskervilles

By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This is my second Sherlock Holmes novel after reading A Study in Scarlet last summer, and I definitely want to read a lot more Sherlock stuff soon.  Jenn was nice enough to get me a collection of Sherlock Holmes short stories with a picture of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman on the cover.  Of course, the two brilliant actors play Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson respectively in the new (ingenious) Sherlock TV series on the BBC.

There's a lot I want to talk about with Hound.  First of all, if you read Jenn's post, she talks about how this novel is not a great mystery.  I have to agree.  I didn't actually state out loud at any point who I thought the killer was, but had someone asked me to make a guess, I would have been right.  I don't think that's a problem though.  Yes, Study in Scarlet does a better job of keeping the reader guessing, but Hound kinda feels more like an episode of Columbo, where you practically see the murder taking place and know who did it, but the fun is watching the great detective figure it out.  

I love reading about Sherlock Holmes.  He is one of the all time great literary characters and Doyle keeps him endlessly entertaining.  So, it's even more impressive that in Hound Holmes isn't in about half the novel.  In the story, Holmes sends Watson ahead to Baskerville Hall to guard Henry Baskerville, while he remains in London to work on another case.  He disappears for many chapters before finally turning up again towards the end.  It's a really bold choice, and I respect that while I don't necessarily agree with it.  Still, he manages to keep the story interesting while it's centered on Watson and his reports to Holmes back in London.  Study in Scarlet had a similar (sort of) digression by providing a five chapter biography of the killer.  It was very disorienting, and I like how Hound of the Baskervilles does stay focused on our principle characters.  

The relationship between Holmes and Watson is fantastic.  I was completely invested in this book from the first chapter because Holmes asks Watson to give his theories about the case they're working on, and Watson outlines a very logical, concise, sensible theory about the victim, which Holmes them completely demolishes.  He thanks Watson basically for being so stupid that it helps his vastly superior mind jump from the mundane to the ingenious.  Holmes' brilliance and the inevitable arrogance it brings is a lot of fun to read about, but there's also a definite compassion for Watson deep inside him.  It's much clearer here than in Scarlet, which makes sense since the characters had just met in Scarlet.

Bottom line:  I can't wait to get to more Sherlock Holmes stories soon.  I think I have to read the novel with Professor Moriarty next, because I've seen several film/television adaptations of the infamous villain and I'm very curious to see Doyle's original vision of the crime lord.

The hound isn't the only thing you'll see coming.

I was really looking forward to reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because of the amazing looks of Benedict Cumberbatch and the even more amazing writing of Steven Moffat. But I'm really sad to say this won't be the most positive of the reviews I do on this list. Don't get me wrong, it's an amazing crime novel and you can't go wrong reading anything with the infamous detective but I have two major points that would keep me from just giving a blanket recommendation that everyone should read this.

To start with, if you are looking for a really good mystery and I mean a mystery that really keeps you guessing, this is not for you. I'd tell you to run off and read any of Agatha Christie's novels. Not that this isn't a mystery, mind you. It's just not particularly... mysterious. I guessed the killer and the motive almost as soon as the evidence was presented. Which isn't bad. It just makes it less of a mystery when you get to the end. At no point while reading this did I say, "Oh crap, I did not see that coming!" It was very cool how the evidence is weaved into every part of the story and at points, even Watson writes some details off as important but if you know anything about Sherlock Holmes, no detail is too small. It seemed new details revealed themselves on almost every page and some seemed so trivial to begin with but became important pieces to the story in the end.

I don't think this is a great place to start with Sherlock Holmes. I've seen both Robert Downing Jr. movies and I've seen most of the aforementioned brilliance of Moffat's BBC adaptation and this book was seriously lacking in the famous detective department. We don't get to witness the brilliance of Holmes' keen observation powers except for a few brief chapters in the beginning and the end. I was missing reading about the great detective in action. But it piqued my interest in the novels themselves and I'd love to go back and read the other three. This one was a quick read for such a long book. The action moves along at a good pace and I got to a point where I didn't want to put it down.

Hey, I just met you... And this is crazy... But can I follow you to Phoenix when you abort our baby?

My second play for the summer is Phoenix by Scott Organ. 

I really enjoyed this one. It has a really great pace with two characters. They have a quick back and forth that is really easy to read and I bet it would be really great on stage with the right actors. I've seen two people plays before and Joe tells me they can be difficult to write but I thought this one was really great. I see why he chose it.

As my title gives away, Bruce follows Sue to Phoenix when she aborts their baby after a one night stand. And you'd think it would be fairly predictable from there. But it's not really. Both characters have surprises. Sue shows that not all women are obsessed with marriage and babies. And Bruce shows that not all men are afraid putting themselves out there. That's what I love about this play. Bruce points out that their situation is exactly a rarity in modern society. But it doesn't have to end with hurt feelings either. Sure, you could die in a car accident but that doesn't mean you stop driving, does it? If you let the feelings come naturally and are honest with yourself, something really awesome could come out of something really unpleasant. I don't read a lot of plays (besides Joe's work) so sometimes I had a little trouble deciding what tone the character was going for but there were only a few moments where I had to reread a couple of lines to see the shift in tone. If you're not interested in plays or you've been turned off because of being forced into Shakespeare, this is definitely a great play to get back into it.

Oh hey... Leonardo DiCarprio is in this book...

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is by far my favorite book we've read so far. I'm rather disappointed Joe found it inaccessible. I found it really easy to follow once you get past the wordiness of it.

I am so excited to see this on screen at the end of the year. I think it is really well cast and the story lends itself so well to a fast paced drama of the flapper era. The intriguing characters are both so complex and simple. They seem to have a lot going on on the surface but when you realized their motivations, its so simple. To paraphrase Jordan Baker at the first Gatsby summer party, busy characters are more intimate. You really get to know this group of characters well and I felt for their struggles. Their stories seem really deep but Fitzgerald does a great job of tying them all together. The only one I was really hoping for more from was Jordan Baker but I supposed because the narrator was half in love with her, it's easy to see why we don't get to know her better as Nick spends more time with Gatsby than Jordan.

I have to comment on the amazing love triangle going on here. Well, it's really more of a love polygon. I would have to guess that this is part of what trips people up when they say they don't like The Great Gatsby. What you have to remember though is all of the main 6 characters' motivations are tied back to this love polygon. I won't give you a full map of who loves whom and who is having an affair with whom but the way it all ties together is really great. It really adds to the intrigue of the story. As a modern reader, I could see how things should be but from a historical stand point, I can also see why they didn't work out. It was a really well written tangle of love. But don't expect smutty love scenes. Fitzgerald writes about evenings of wild parties and the privacy of large groups.

Once More Into the Breach

King Henry V
By William Shakespeare


You know all those conspiracy theories about William Shakespeare?  That he often stole his stories, or even that he didn't write all of his plays but took credit for other people's work?  After reading Henry V I kinda get it.  I've read a lot of Shakespeare's plays.  Ideally, I'll eventually read them all, but I'd say I've read about half at this point - mostly the comedies and tragedies, with only a few of the histories here and there.  Henry V is unlike any Shakespeare play I've ever read.  It's the first of his plays that I could possibly believe was written by someone else.  The language is very Shakespearean of course, and all the iambic pentameter fun is alive and well in this piece, but he's using elements that I've never seen in his other work.  He writes in different dialects (broken English and French) throughout the play, one of the characters has a sort of speech impediment where all of his Bs become Ps, and there are long exchanges of dialogue in French.  Obviously, the play is mostly set in France so the use of French makes sense, except that I've never seen it in another Shakespeare play.  And it's not like none of his other plays take place in other countries.  There's no Italian in Romeo and Juliet for example.

Now, maybe he felt comfortable using French here because as England's neighbor to the south, Shakespeare's audience could pick up a lot of the meaning in the French scenes.  I don't know.  I will say that I do like scenes in plays in unfamiliar languages.  That can be done very effectively, and there are a couple of instances here where I think it would be very effective on stage.  There's one entire scene in French, and while I think I'd enjoy watching it on stage and not knowing what was being said, just reading it, I do want to go and look up what that scene is about.  The other scene is where Henry is attempting to woo Katherine at the end of the play through the use of an interpreter and more broken English.

Overall, I really liked this play.  I've owned the film version with Kenneth Branagh for years but have never watched it, but now I will definitely have to.  I think Henry is an interesting character, being so passionate and quick to go to war in the beginning, but finding mercy through his success in battle.  It works well for me.

Is it a sin to kill a Mockingjay too?

To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee


I am very familiar with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.  I've seen the movie a few times, and I was in a staged version of the story back in 2003, but I've never read the original novel.  First of all, I have to say that both of the adaptations that I've been exposed to are fantastic.  Obviously, the film is one of the best movies ever made, but it's also an incredibly good adaptation of the novel.  The play was a very different entity on its own; cutting out characters and introducing characters earlier in the story so that the actors weren't waiting around all night to have a couple of scenes.  I'm especially grateful of the playwright's choices because I played Bob Ewell, and if I had to wait for the court case to come on stage I would have gone out of my mind.  In the play, we see Ewell very briefly early on, and then he also shows up at the jailhouse to lynch Tom Robinson while Atticus is there standing guard.  This all worked out pretty well for me.

I imagine a lot of people are like this - when they read a book after seeing the movie, their brain plays out the scenes in their imagination using the actors from the movie.  I only bring it up because my brain had two casts to act out the scenes with.  I used actors from the movie a lot, but also the brilliant cast I performed the play with.  It got a little strange in my head at times but all worked out pretty well.

I think this is the best novel I've ever read.  Narrowly beating out The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers which is still the only book I've read that I haven't been able to put down.  While Mockingbird didn't have that particular effect on me, I think overall it's a better made novel.  I recently watched and reviewed a short PBS documentary on Harper Lee for my friend's website and in that video, one of the editors for Mockingbird talked about its early drafts, and how it felt like a very episodic collection of short stories.  The final draft definitely has that feeling too, with entire chapters feeling completely disconnected from the overall story, but this didn't bother me at all.  It struck me as a very "southern" approach to writing, like I was sitting on some old lady's porch on a summer evening while she told me stories from her life.  It was a very relaxing way to approach a novel.

I don't want to go on and on in this post, but I did want to write about one scene in particular that was cut out of both adaptations (at least, I think it was...).  In the book, Maycomb gets unseasonably cold one winter and they're hit with a huge snow storm.  With the snow piling up, everyone is cranking up their stoves and fireplaces to combat the cold.  In the middle of the night, one of the Finchs' neighbor's houses catches on fire, and the whole neighborhood has to pull together to rescue the elderly couple from their burning home.  I just found the juxtaposition between the ice cold and the burning heat so powerful and telling of the themes of the book, and then of course Boo Radley slips a blanket over Scout's shoulders to keep her warm in the snow and disappears just as quickly.  It's a really great moment because throughout the whole book, the reader is as excited to maybe get a glimpse of Boo as the kids are.

Hamlet's BFFs

Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard is the first play I read for our summer reading project. If you haven't read Shakespeare's Hamlet, go do that first. And if it's been five years, like it has for me, go read it again. I wish I had done that because I had a lot of questions while I was reading it.

In case you don't know, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Hamlet's friends. But they never appear in the original. So this story attempts to explain what they are doing during the drama with Hamlet and how they end up dead. If you don't like Shakespeare, you probably won't like this. Despite being written in 1966, Stoppard stays true to Hamlet with his use of Shakespearean language.

Roz and Guil spend the whole play confused. They don't remember where they came from and they don't understand their own deaths. To add to their confusion, and sometimes mine, random characters occasionally pop on stage to give cryptic speeches and disappear again. And all this confusion makes Roz and Guil indecisive. Even when they discover they are taking their friend to his death, they are unable to save him. For me it was all confusing. Roz's and Guil's stupidity seems unreal. They go to their deaths knowingly and willingly. And when they attempt to catch Hamlet hiding Polonius' body, they hold their belts out like a kid trying to catch the robbers in his house. It really is childlike they way they stumble along.

I think after watching the movie and possibly a second read, I'll like it a lot more. I am just so excited about some books coming up that I just wanted to get through this book.

Culture Shock Like Whoa

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden is the first book of Joe and my's original book list. Again, I'm not an English major or anything fancy like that so take my review as such...
Where my first read was short and sweet and took me two sittings to get through, Geisha took me a long time to finish up. Joe complains about how slow it is to get started but I actually really liked the back story of Chiyo. It gives you really great perspective to the choices she makes later in her life. I also think her sister's story would have no weight if you didn't get the full story of how they became to be sold into the geisha world.
The one thing that really gets me about this book is the culture shock. Being American, there was this amazing quality of unknown. Despite knowing she is a geisha in the end, I still found myself wondering what was going when Chiyo and her sister are taken from their hometown. The culture shock is apparent in every aspect of geisha life. I had absolutely no background knowledge of geisha. It made reading this book really fun because I had no expectations of what was to happen. Even with WWII happening in the middle, I still had no clue how would this would effect the geisha. And I love how "normal" some of the really unusual events feel. The explanation of how they sell their virginity seemed like a completely normal event despite the whole prostitution thing...
I need to get better about this writing thing. It's really hard to write critically about fiction. I'll get better, I promise.

Stella!

The first play on the list I made for myself of plays I've never read but should is A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams.  If you googled lists of plays everyone should read, I'd bet Streetcar would be on most all of them, but for some reason it always slipped by me.  I'm not completely ignorant to Williams' work, but I might as well be.  The only thing I've read by Tennessee Williams is Glass Menagerie which is one of the best plays ever written, and I'd say definitely better than Streetcar but there's a lot of good stuff in this piece too.  I guess I just think Glass Menagerie has more interesting characters, more compelling relationships, and the story's more effectively constructed.

Streetcar Named Desire is about two sisters, Stella and Blanche, and Stella's husband Stanley.  Stanley's a drunk and a gambler and at his worst he can get really abusive.  Stella being the weak, submissive little girl she is can't bring herself to leave Stanley, but when Blanche comes into town, she ends up being a capable foil for Stanley.  This understandably drives Stanley to hate Blanche, and the longer she stays with the couple, the more Stanley is driven insane.

Honestly, through a lot of the reading of this, I couldn't help but picture The Simpsons' musical version of the play, where Marge plays Blanche and uses her fights with Homer to help her get into character.  Seriously, how good was The Simpsons before it got terrible?  Epic.

Anyway, Tennessee Williams is a master of realism, and maybe one of the best playwrights out there for creating rich and interesting characters.  Throughout the entirety of Streetcar all of the characters' actions feel completely grounded in reality; believable to where the character is at that specific moment in the play.

I put A Streetcar Named Desire on this list because I should have read it years ago, but I also wanted to read this play specifically because I'm going to be getting to the film version with Marlon Brando (Like I have to specify...) soon on my AFI Top 100 Blog.  So, keep a look out for my reactions to the film soon.

Companions, Whores, and Geisha

I was on the fence about whether or not to keep this blog, but let's face it, I do enjoy subjecting people to my thoughts about things I've read and seen, so here goes.  The first book on Jenn and my's summer reading list was Memoirs of a Geisha by some guy who was certainly never a geisha, but actually does an amazing job of creating a fictional story chronicling the life of a geisha in Japan in the years surrounding World War II.

Now, going into this book I had very little idea about what a geisha actually is.  I knew they were entertainers; dancing mostly, but had no idea that they are also engaged for long periods of time by men to keep as their mistress.  And yet, they're not prostitutes.  Sure, they sell their virginity to the highest bidder, and have affairs with married men in exchange for money and gifts, but they're not prostitutes.  Actually, they reminded me more of companions on Firefly, but with more makeup.  Obviously reading about another culture as an American can create some discomfort.  Whenever we're dealing with human trafficking, it's a dicey subject, even when it's voluntary and socially acceptable.

I did find myself wishing the story would progress faster.  Maybe it's my playwright mentality, but I think a story should start as late as possible and move efficiently through the characters' development.  Sometimes novels then feel long for the sake of being long.  However, Memoirs of a Geisha being a fake memoir has to adhere to those conventions and thus we need the whole story of Chiyo's life.  I guess it's just awkward to have so many chapters devoted to Chiyo's rebellious nature and other events preventing her from becoming a geisha because we know she's going to become one eventually.  This could have been fixed by just changing the title, but I assume they wanted to draw in an audience with the mysterious allure of geisha life.

Once Chiyo begins her serious training as a geisha, the story really takes off.  It's fascinating to get a realistic look at geisha culture while being presented with one of the most unique love stories you're ever likely to read about.  It's like Cinderella on steroids.  Scary, Japanese steroids...

If you've never seen the film version of Memoirs of a Geisha, you should know that it sucks.  A lot.  And I know everyone says that the book is always better, but I'm not everyone.  I like to appreciate a book and its film adaptation as separate entities, and not be bogged down by all the changes they made to the original story.  Changes have to be made.  Deal with it.  Memoirs of a Geisha is simply a terrible film.  Which I half expected, because there's nothing particularly cinematic about the book.  Mostly because it moves pretty slowly.  It works as a novel, letting the story unfold at a believable pace and not feel rushed, while the film version races through the plot.  I'm not sure it would be possible to create a good film version of Geisha but then again I think anything's possible.

The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.

Joe gave me a list of ten plays to read this summer and because I wanted to choose some readings for myself, I chose a list of three novels for each of us.  The first novel off my personal list is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.  I should confess how I came to choose this as my first personal novel of the summer.  I had some time to kill while Joe was seeing Cabin in the Woods and I decided I could kill two hours easily by choosing my first book.  I only chose Of Mice and Men because it was only about 120 pages and I knew a lot of people had told me how great it was.  So if you read it for no other reason, read it because you can blow through it in an afternoon.

I feel it is necessary to touch on the theme of the American dream that runs through the novel.  I love that this is the first novel I've read that really comments on how impossible the American dream can be.  Lennie and George are making money working for others while trying to save to one day buy a piece of land and be self sufficient.  It seems impossible from the beginning. You just know that something else will get in their way of Lennie's rabbits and yet I still found myself hoping that they would find a way to make it happen.

There is something so beautiful about this novel yet so foreboding of a very dark ending.  I felt myself willing George to find another way but yet I knew that his choice was the most merciful for Lennie. I'm trying to write with the least number of spoilers as possible so if you haven't read it, just get it over with so you can appreciate what I'm saying.

I definitely don't have any major criticisms of the book.  I love how short it is and yet it doesn't feel rushed.  I've never tried to write a book review before and I'm sure Joe will give me some great feedback when he isn't geeking out at an Avengers movie marathon. So that's all I have for now.  I'm about finished with our first shared book so as soon as I finish that up, Joe and I will be writing our own reviews.

"I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads . . . every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ’em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land."

Even More Reading

A quick addendum to the first post.  Since I chose 10 plays for Jenn to read, she's adding 3 books to my list and 3 books to her list.  For now, we're keeping it secret, but I will say that I'm making my way through the first novel pretty quickly, so I'm hoping to post about it soon because I already have a lot I want to talk about.  I may not wait until I'm completely done.  Just playing it by ear.

Joe and Jenn's Summer Reading

So, it turns out that as someone with a Master's Degree in English, I'm woefully and embarrassingly under-read. I've tried to combat this in the last couple of years, but with teaching and writing and (let's face it) watching a lot of TV and Movies, I've failed miserably. I did manage to read a few things last summer. Hunger Games, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Study In Scarlet, and I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities but had a really hard time following it.

This summer, I'm determined to do better. Jenn and I have each made a list of ten books that we want to read, and then we chose 5 books off of each other's list to create a list of ten books to finish before school starts in the fall. On top of the novels, I've made a list of ten plays that I've never read and made a list of ten plays for Jenn to read.

Don't know if I want to share the master list with the blogosphere yet. Might just have that be a surprise until each post is published. Guess I'll check with Jenn and see what she wants to do. Furthermore, I don't know if I want to even document this project with a blog. On the one hand, it helps ensure my success, as evidenced by my continued efforts on my AFI 100 Years 100 Films Blog, but frankly, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I haven't read some of these.

I also don't want to be restricted to the current list. I do want to read the second Hunger Games book at some point, and possibly the third to help avoid any spoilers that might come up now that the films have started coming out. Also, I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'd like to do before I get to that on the AFI Blog. Maybe those will have to go on my shorter, Winter reading list, should something like that exist.

See? Right there, admitting that I've never read To Kill a Mockingbird was a little hard for me to do. But, I've never shied away from something because it was too hard or embarrassing. Ok, I do that all the time, but being online helps make me fearless, so maybe it'll help that as I admit to never reading these books, I've already read them and discussed them in blog form.

We'll see what happens.