on the importance of reading: tag, I'm it!
I got this list of question off a. raw's blog:
1. one book that changed your life:
Daughters of Copperwoman “by” Anne Cameron
(I’m going to squeeze in Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Brave New World, and Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke). All read when I was 13-14, and pivotal in shaping my ideas on time, womanliness, and multiple realities. I must include them all; they’re a cocktail of my burgeoning.
Hmmm. I think I should scrap all of my theory-reading and get back to my beginnings in Sci Fi and Fantasy.
2. one book you’ve read more than once:
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
"Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion."
3. one book that has made you cry: (newly remembered question)
"The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath
I FINALLY read the Bell Jar this year. It's a phenomenal read, but I'm glad I didn't read it until now; I wasn't ready until now. You need to already know that you're of sound intelligence, that you're work/creativity/passions are valued (by you mostly, but also the community), and that you can do WHATEVER you want. These are things a woman must know. Plath only half-knew these things, in a time when all society told her the opposite.
The book affirms all we know about the relations of talented & brilliant woman and men, and who gets short-changed in that equation (for those who don't know, it's the one who drives herself nuts taking care of children in the remote English country-side [while hubby-poet snogs first-years] and solves the problem by sticking her head in an oven).
Multiply by Elizabeth Smart, and, well, its horrifying how mothering/creating/success was so stymied for so many women. At least Smart survived. Is it different now?
So, in answer to this question of crying: In "The Bell Jar" Plath survives her first case of suicide and institutionalization; I the reader know that after this novel was lived she entered two more time-tested institutions: Academia and Marriage.
They destroyed her. and I cried and cried.
4. one book that made you giddy:
Eunoia by Christian Bok, especially in performance, espacially Chapter U.
“Ubu cups Lulu’s dugs; Ubu rubs Lulu’s buns; thus Lulu must pull Ubu’s pud...Ubu stuffs Ruth’s bum (such fun).”
5. one book that you wish had been written:
“How to have Children and Tenure within the Next 10 Years of My Life: an Explanatory Guide and Timeline”.
6. one book you wish had never been written:
Science of Survival by L. Ron Hubbard (1951)
7. one book you’re currently reading:
Quantum Feminist Mnemotechnics by Carolyn Guertin (Ph.D Dissertation 2003). This is what I keep trying to start as research for my thesis.
I actually just finished Chris Kraus’s Aliens and Anorexia, and I Love Dick
8. one book you’ve been meaning to read:
Silence by John Cage - it’s been sitting neglected on my shelf since fall 2004.
Please listen to Cage's story about translating a Basho poem about Mushrooms. pine mushroom. ignorance. leaf of tree. adhesiveness.
9. now tag people.
Christina and Sean, Leslie, Martha, and Morgan
**All welcome to post their answers!**
Labels: literature, pop culture
posted by Arty Povera @ 10:57 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
What happened to Question number 3? And what does tagging mean? I am so unhip... was that a question?
I will be sportsgirllike and complete this as well... albeit, briefly.
1. Life changing book:
"The Kite Runner". Not so much life changing as it was written the way I want to write books. Other than that... the things I've read by Jeannette Winterspoon(?). Her style is just so interesting.
2. Read more than once:
Haven't done this (I think) since I was a kid, but I would definitely read "High Fidelity" again.
3. PURPLE...????
4. Giddy book: Um...my diary and journal, and re-reading anything else I wrote when I was a "different person".
5. I wish I'd written:
"The Paperbag Princess". How cool would I be!
6. I wish it wasn't written:
"The Davinci Code"... half true. I think it's crap, but like Michael Moore movies, it opens some people up to ideas they haven't had before that I seem to take for granted. So, moreso, wish I'd never read.
7. Currently reading:
"Without Apology - Girls, Women and the Desire to Fight" by Leah Hager Cohen. Borrowed from my boxing coach.
8. Meaning to read:
"Memores of a Geisha", "The Hurricane", "I Know This Much is True". I've had the lot of them for at least 5 years and haven't cracked them open yet... sigh.
9. Tag people...
You're it?
Oh fun!
1. Changed my life:
Salinger's catcher. Made me curse like christ ever after, and convinced it was better to be a brat than not.
Friedan's mystique. Made me bloody happy to be born a woman when I was (versus any time before our after), and re-convinced me that domestification was for parakeets.
2. I read Atwood's Handmaid's Tale many times, plus I saw the opera, (that involved naked boobies on the Hummingbird stage). I continue to feel I am living the misogynist apocalypse she foresaw...like, did everyone hear today that Planned Parenthood Fredericton is shutting down? No more sexual health services in the PROVINCE for women over 24.
3. what happened to number 3? Number three could be best non-fiction book, or best-looking book. The best-looking book I have is probably a cookbook with falshy photos of italian food.
4. Made me giddy:
John Irving, almost every time, but especially Garp and Hotel NH and Owen Meany. In general I love novels about sexualized family dysfunction and religious obsessions.
5: I wish I wrote HOWL by ginsberg, and I wish I lived all the crap he supposedly lived to write it, wish I were that brave and tarnished, still howling, and living in san francisco.
6: one book that should have never been written was that goddamn da vinci code. that was bad.
7. i'm reading clara callan by richard wright, and all the characters are awesome 1930's dames living single and sexy and drinking gin. before that i read zadie smith's latest, on beauty, and it sucked- everyone underdeveloped, and the story overwrought.
8. i've never read the bell jar.
tag: are you out there heather & max? rosco too should pontificate on this...
I FINALLY read the Bell Jar this year for a course. It's a phenomenal read, but I'm glad I didn't read it until now.
I wasn't ready until now. You need to already know that you're of sound intelligence, that you're work/creativity/passions are valued (by you mostly, but also the community), and that you can do WHATEVER you want. These are things a woman must know. Plath only half-knew these things, in a time when all society told her the opposite.
The book both affirms all we know about the relations of talented & brilliant men and woman, and who gets short-changed in that equation (for those who don't know, it's the one who drives herself nuts taking care of children in the remote English country-side [while hubby-poet snogs first-years] and solves the problem by sticking her head in an oven).
Multiply by Elizabeth Smart, and, well, its mystifying that mothering/creating/success was so stymied for so many women. At least Smart survived.
Is it different now?
OH! Question number 3 was "what book made you cry?" I didn't want to answer, nothing leapt to mind. Well, I cried over the Bell Jar.
Plath survives her first case of suicide and institutionalization; I the reader know that after this novel was lived she entered two more time-tested institutions: Academia and Marriage.
They destroyed her. and I cried and cried.
The Bell Jar! Of course you should read it, especially if Catcher "changed your life". When I read the Bell Jar this year, I kept thinking "Why didn't any of my English teachers tell me to read this book?" And then I read a little bit more and realized why. Ha. Anyways, I also think the book goes slightly downhill, but the beginning, the anger that is expressed, the dry wit... amazing.
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