A quick trip to the basement of Von's bookstore this morning resulted in the purchase of the above stack of books. Let the summer reading begin. Now I just have to decide where I want to start. Do I take on the most difficult (Of Human Bondage, of course) right away? Or ease in slow with say, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a nonfiction nature narrative? This would be a safe bet for a couple of reasons:
1. I just finished her memoir An American Childhood and am a little bit in love with her. Annie Dillard = amazing, pretty much.
2. It won the Pulitzer.
3. On the back of the book, Melvin Maddocks calls it "a remarkable psalm of terror and celebration." Um, yes please.
Then again, my father has hold me no fewer than 10 times and with no small amount of seriousness in his voice that Of Human Bondage will teach me the meaning of life. It usually comes up at the dinner table. "It will teach you the meaning of life," he says, very simply. "Pass the asparagus."
Maybe I should just start with Anne Sexton. Summer is nothing if not the the time to depress oneself reading the letters of a suicidal poet.
Von's was also carrying what looked to be the entire series of The Babysitter's Club in their young adult section. It might have been a huge mistake to pass them up. If I'm still thinking about it tomorrow, I'm going back. I owe it to my eight year-old self to at least buy one or two.
5 comments:
"Summer is nothing if not the the time to depress oneself reading the letters of a suicidal poet."
Amen, sister.
Also, I think I have in a closet or storage unit somewhere the entire collection of the Babysitter's Club, or at least numbers 1-110. After that, I stopped buying them.
My mom says the same of Of Human Bondage. Maybe we can get Brian to take one of the stupid books off his list and replace it with this one... if not, you and I can go rogue and read O.H.B. this summer anyway.
Surely he would add it. I mean, it's THE MEANING OF LIFE.
i have that annie dillard
I really liked the Anne Sexton Letters volume. I bought two copies of it, just in case, as was my logic at the time, I wore the first one out. Hell, she goes to Capri on a transatlantic liner and complains that the breeze is too strong for her to be able to smoke properly while on deck. Fun times.
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