Re-reading The Awakening by Kate Chopin for my Realism class. Have I mentioned how little I care for this book? It isn't Chopin. I love Chopin's short fiction. ("A Gentleman of Bayou Teche" remains one of my favorite regionalism stories.) I just can't take this book. She just whines for a hundred pages. She just whines.
A-MEN.
I can't STAND that book. One of my finest moments in college came during a discussion about that book where I kept listening to students rambling on and on about how she was some sort of feminist icon and empowered woman and all kinds of claptrap. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore.
"She's a COWARD!" I said. "She can't deal with her family so she abandons her children to the care of a father that she can't stand, she runs around for 250 pages doing nothing, and when she finally decides to KILL herself, she can't even be proactive about THAT! She walks out into the ocean and LETS IT TAKE HER!"
Got an A in that class, bitches.
Funny superheroes, chilling monsters and much more. Here's where to buy eBooks, print books or audiobooks of Other People's Heroes, The Beginner, and all of my available writing: Blake's Now Available Page
Have you ever read any of her short fiction, Blake? You actually get a pretty good sense of Chopin as a good writer. The free version of The Awakening on the Kindle store has a few short stories included, including "Desiree's Baby," which I feel is a much stronger piece of feminist literature. Also some interesting statements on race.Originally Posted by Blake Petit
Yeah, I've read some of her shorts. I even teach "Story of an Hour" to my 11th graders. Much better work.
Funny superheroes, chilling monsters and much more. Here's where to buy eBooks, print books or audiobooks of Other People's Heroes, The Beginner, and all of my available writing: Blake's Now Available Page
Finished The Awakening. It's funny. One of my classmates suggested the best way to read it was to consider Edna a teenager. I have to say, using that analysis, the book presents some interesting ideas I had never thought about.
Still hate it, though.
Up next is Maggie: Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane. It's our first foray into Naturalism, and I guess it's so depressing, Crane had to self-publish it. Hooray!
Finally finished Carte Blanche, the newest James Bond novel and my first non-Fleming one. Turns out it's a literary reboot, having 007 born in 1979 and an Afghan War vet. Thought it was very good. The author, Jeffery Deaver, describes people and places in a way very similar to how Fleming did. My two faults: sometimes too much happens in one day for me to believe, and a bit too often something happens, but then a page later you learn it didn't happen because ten minutes or an hour or a day earlier someone did something to prepare (like a person is suddenly shot, but then you flash back to a scene an hour earlier where the person who you never expected to be shot in the first place puts on hidden body armour)
Still, an enjoyable read, and one that encourages me to give the 20+ other non-Fleming books a try.
Finally got through Mile 81, which only counts as a story. I'll review it here the same as I did on Goodreads: Can't sleep, car'll eat me. (So silly.)
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets made me want to shoot myself. That is all.
About 50 pages from finishing American Sniper. After I'm done, I'll hit Lone Survivor and Seal Team 6. Quite the stretch of Seal stories. I also just got done reading Gauntlgrym and Neverwinter, Salvatore's latest Drizzt stories.
Side note, have any of you read Atlas Shrugged? I love the story, but jesus its an incredibly tough read. I dont mean as far as the literature itself, but her pacing is so odd. I love her ability to describe her characters, their feelings, and the surroundings. But sometimes, she takes it to far. She'll take 4 pages to describe a one off characters emotion when it could be done in 1 and a half pages.
The Genius and the Goddess, by Aldous Huxley.
Strange that we're still ranting about the same crap Huxley was way back in the day.
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