huckfinns

last days

2008-05-04T14:46:03Z

ive drank my weight in gold & i feel wealthy this morning. (king's OJ for breakfast.) i am going to los angeles, kiss my polite behind see-you-never or come-back-soon. u pick, u prince.

leaving las vegas

2008-05-02T02:38:57Z

there was a cherry coke on a counter today, so i drank it without asking or paying. it was really good, i am impolite. i tied my hair in tiny knots to say hello & i bought tons of produce. & then it got hot & i started to sweat & i wanted to throw tomatoes around the flea market. granma said No. i made her garlic bread & she slept like the sweetheart of heroic drunks. i am really interested in frances farmer & learning about fast car maintenance. i know it all means something, cos the beauty marks turn on like a constellation atop my skin when they hear about my knowledge for wondering. connect the dots, trace the trail, lights of liberty ignite tonight. i have a weird habit/hobby of screen-capping movies. it's fun but never means anything. i guess ill show them here if you want to see something that is like freedom these are stills from leaving las vegas. nicolas cage is boss. fin.

huckfinns @ 2008-04-27T20:12:00

2008-04-28T00:13:17Z

15. love story

2008-04-12T21:58:04Z

i am feeling real crummy, like sick, so i just read all day. 1 part in hammock 1 part on velvet sofa 1 part in bed then mama told me to get her some liquor. good day. i read love story. that shit isnt cheesy. it's really the opposite of that, if the opposite of that isnt like war. it's about a boy & his wife & also about a boy & his father. the latter love story isnt the love story that's written about on the back of the book, but it's just as important. more important too? the writing is really clever, like awkward poetry, & im kind of unbelievable about it in that erich segal was commisioned to write the book after he'd already written the screenplay. weird right. the book & the movie were released the same year. the book on valentine's day. aw how supremely cheese.

it takes place in the 60s, at harvard + radcliffe & the realms beyond graduation. i love those kinds of preppie pieces. an especially witty girl falls in love with a rich, equally quick boy. they call each other bitch & sonovabitch fondly. they are in stoopid love. they get married right after college & boy is cut-off by parents, so they live in squalor for a little while & it's kind of romantic i guess maybe im not so sure about that part. then he gets a big time job in new york city & life looks good, but then she dies.

this book was an incredible bruiser. go out & get it. my copy is ancient & green & tear stained. seriously, there's 30 year old human excrement on the pages i think.

13. winne-the-pooh + 14. pride & prejudice

2008-04-02T21:41:24Z

hi. once i got engulfed in twin peaks it engulfed me, that's that, & i forgot about any other form of productive recreation. i havent created anything in awhile. for my birthday i made a cake made of flowers & blueberries that didnt have to be heated up. someone said catch her with a net, lock her up!

i read winnie-the-pooh for the first time. who knew that babies' fairy tales could be grown girls' absolute anthem. a.a. milne is a sharp, sharp person with good wit & a big heavy head on her shoulders. maybe it's a boy, i havent done my homework. but ive done my research: in real-life, you do not need algebraaa. i also read pride & prejudice. that is for some juice-freaks, or freaks into pills. we are all freaks, we should all read jane austen. her sentences are kind of repetitive AND she really doesnt pay attention to grade-school rules of grammar for being the best writer of a long-time. all time? she spells things wrong, but i think that's supposed to be acceptable or cute. & she says: 'lizzy bennett & lydia bennett walked to the barn to fetch a pail of water. in the barn they met sister jack & she showed them her scars, her sins. she was afraid of the inflamation around her friend's thigh.' in that last sentence, i dont know WHO she is. it could be lizzy, it could be lydia, it could be sister jack because jane austen is obviously a pro at being cryptic. jane austen needs to clarify & remember what 3rd grade taught her. because really the she is supposed to be sister jack, but i think we're supposed to understand it is lizzy even though lizzy is NOT the last proper noun established before taking on the simple she. what if we dont understand, like me, i did not understand. will i never be a well bred scholar fit for kings & a prince of pastors here in my century? it was a good book. thick. smelled good. writes-for-you-softly. i thought mr. bennett kind of sucked & i know everybody usually really admires him as a minor character. mrs. bennett was definitely the neurotic better half & mr. darcy is dreamy as holy crimes, how did ms. austen know how to do it. god's gifts are for sharing, good child.

i am now reading something about a western front. i am 120 pages in & i dont know the title. i am really paying very little attention to life. i will probably get stabbed in the face tonight. i am also reading the book of lost things when my dad is looking. he thinks i am a warrior princess good at demolishing novels. i am, on tuesdays & thursdays. today is wednesday, get outta my face pops.

huckfinns @ 2008-02-28T09:36:00

2008-02-28T14:37:54Z

12. naked

2008-02-23T17:05:20Z

i think i read david sedaris the way old, sad ladies read nora roberts & danielle steel. he's a good fix when i don't know what else to read. he's a really neat guy; he used to clean houses in suspenders before he learned to write for money. he has fantasies of what i have fantasies of too. of being a member of a regal family with especially regal names, who among their many assets are blessed with especially regal skin that glows. in his fantasy of glowing skins, he fantasizes about going to bed with a sock tied around his eyes in order to fall asleep. FANTASIES. naked is like most everything he writes; it's a compilation of funny anecdotes from his childhood til present. it's really special.

after i read any david sedaris i like to torment myself with visions of inadequacy. could i ever make my life seem so interesting on paper, with interjections of cute & clever all over the pages? no, of course not. he is a small literary miracle i guess. however, as all the stories that comprise his memoirs are basically grim & dismal that kind of dress up in Witty, i think publication is an exercise in weird masochism on his part. that's special too.

now im reading pride & prejudice. fantasy.

11. the awakening

2008-02-14T17:51:18Z

earlier this week i finished the awakening & it exploded my world. it was written by kate chopin a hundred years ago. i'm often really intimidated by classic books unless theyre written by d.h. lawrence or camus. so naturally, i was really intimidated by this book & it took a lot of courage to pick it up. really, i had to pull my teeth & command read; it'd been on my bookshelf for like a year & a half after a special thing told me he heard my favorite things in it when he read it. his gesture rolled right off my back then.

it's written excellently; i finished it in 2 afternoons. you couldve done it in one, but there was this almighty wind outside & i was really into listening to haunted music in my room & doing nothing else recreational. it's written with this modern air & old fashioned elegant thought which makes a really perfect voice that equals = timeless. it's about edna who is married & young & pretty, long blonde, & lives by the gulf of mexico. she loves her children & loves her husband, but she's bored & weary & chooses to wake up her soul in an effort to defeat boredom, weariness. there were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why, -- when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium & humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable anihilation. she could not work on such a day, nor weave fancies to stir her pulses & warm her blood. this was really eerie when i read it. it's not carpe diem shit though; she really subtly wakes her soul, you have to have wide open eyes. she also falls in love with somebody who is not her husband, but she's been falling in love with everybody else all her life. she learns to swim good too.

this book is holy cake or something. i recommend it if you like finding really believable, comic relationships in books. kate chopin's not funny, but her characters are, & theyre accurate humans. i recommend it if you like mad decent english too. i recommend it also if you want to laugh at what willa cather called "sex fiction." ignorant hussy. it'd be more appropriately categorized as a political romance. also, the copy i have is filled with some of her short stories too. those are really good. theyre small but have big ironic endings all about you.

zomg

2008-02-12T18:49:51Z

10. an unfortunate woman

2008-02-07T21:16:28Z

there's never gonna be such thing as a poor man's richard brautigan.

an unfortunate woman was published after his death, by his daughter. it was one of his last pieces which was arguably not written for eventual publication. i am so happy it was though! most of kafka's work was published after his death by a friend who he entrusted to burn all his manuscripts. his friend didnt burn nothin & thus, kafka! my friend who really likes richard brautigan too said she doesnt know if she'll ever read an unfortunate woman. out of principle? she argued with me & asked what if we removed the paint from jackson pollock's current works to get to the hidden pictures underneath. it would be defacing & immoral, unright, shady. i dont know what she's talking about.

"how did you break yr leg?" they ask eagerly, or they pretend to be nonchalant about it. "broke yr leg, huh?"
sure, yeah, it's broken all right.
but they wont let it go at that.
they want dramatic details & there are no dramatic details. all broken leg stories are is being at the wrong place at the right time, & then snap goes the calcium.
i have heard hundreds of broken leg stories.
the first time i broke my leg by stumbling over a root & falling down a four-foot hill, that's right four feet, everybody in san francisco wanted to know how i broke my leg. i got so goddamn tired of telling everybody that i stumbled over a root & fell four feet. they always looked at me as if i werent telling them the truth, that i was telling them a fairy tale, so one afternoon in a taxicab i did.
"broken leg?" the cabby said, watching me struggle into the cab with a pair of crutches & a cast on my leg. those are certainly obvious clues.
"looks like it," i said, going no further with it, & telling the driver where i wanted to go in a very precise, telegram-style form of direction. i hoped that would throw him off the scent.
i knew i had failed when he asked me where i wanted to go. i repeated my telegram of final destination & waited for the question.
"broken leg?" he repeated, already set on his course. "how did you break yr leg?"
"dragon," i said.

huckfinns @ 2008-02-07T11:27:00

2008-02-07T16:28:10Z

09. neverwhere

2008-02-04T20:10:44Z

i think neil gaiman really is well suited to be the patron saint of good books. neverwhere isnt as good as stardust, but it's still an awesome & terrifying book. it's probably among the most important books somebody could ever read.

this is what it is about.

richard is a scottish boy living in london, leading a tidy, linear life when one night he plays the part of good samaritan & helps a bloodied homeless girl laying in the middle of the sidewalk. he barely notices her lying there, the way we all barely see homeless people, but he sees her nonetheless & his heart is all a burdened, so he helps her. the whole book is actually pretty sharp social commentary. neil gaiman shows the world of london-below, which is the world that belongs to bums & hobos, lots of them, & it's all magic & danger. london-above - london as we know it - is ignorant of london-below because it chooses to be. it chooses to ignore, dismiss, scoff at the inhabitants of london-below. it is the dull, grey world vacant of magic & majesty that we are supposedly pleased to live in.

richard becomes sort of prisoner to london-below after doing his good deed. then he gets to do stuff like this.

richard makes another entry in his mental diary. today i've survived walking the plank, the kiss of death, & a lecture on inflicting pain. right now i'm on my way through a labyrinth with a mad bastard who came back from the dead & a bodyguard who turned out to be...whatever the opposite of bodyguard is. i am so far out of my depth that... metaphors failed him, then. he had gone beyond the world of metaphor & simile into the place of things that are, & it was changing him.

i love adventure books, fantastical adventures that have the weight of something real, something powerfully humane that isn't fantasy at all. among all richard's frightful other-world adventures, the most scary thing he has to do is something so basic & fundamentally horrifying: he has to defeat his own demons, defeat the urge to kill himself when tormented by the reality of insanity. it's perfect! i sound psychotic.

there's something totally other-world about neil gaiman himself. he's so funny, & is so effortlessly engaging. i feel like a certain kind of person reads his writing & feels like they found what they've been looking for: the perfect book. i've never liked other fantasy-fiction - harry potters, lord of the rings, the golden compass - & i know all those writers have got to be excellent storytellers, but they just dont touch me right. he makes literature feel in line with the planets.

08. notes from underground

2008-01-22T18:36:16Z

notes from underground is kind of torturous. yr reading about the most miserable, irrational, masochistic, vain person you could probably ever dream of. gosh he's so vain it's as if he were skinless. he's nameless in the book but i like to refer to him as pet scoundrel. it's truly psychotic how skewed this man's values are, how righteous he is about the trivial surface of things. he is poor & impoverished all his life, yet he projects an image unto everyone around him of pride, power, & superiority, with one motive supporting his livelihood : to humilate all of them, to bring them to their knees. ive never read bret easton ellis, but i imagine pet scoundrel rivals patrick bateman as the most horrifying embodiment of human despair.

it's not easy to read this book, just as it is not easy to really discuss it without writing something like a thesis. the book is broken into two parts; the first is about a rambly old man (he's 40 but the book was written in 19th century russia so 40 is feeble). he has imprisoned himself in some remote dwelling. he likes it there. he has yr attention & thinks he circumstantially deserves yr respect, so he rants. he rants about his isolation, is explicit about his intense skepticism, rationalizes everything irrational about him. he schools you on life according to pet scoundrel. he says being a lazy man is the best man you can be, because at least you are positive about one thing. you are lazy ! he goes on a tirade about active people & how they really lack intelligence because if they weren't active they wouldnt be able to stand their immobility & their solitude with their stupidity. he, thus, is an extremely intelligent creature. this goes on for about 50 pages, & he scolds you if you laugh.

the actual story begins after that. i read it outloud. otherwise, i kept losing myself & letting my head roll away. it was the middle of the night & i just spoke the words audibly enough that i heard their weight. i was then able to finish the book in that one sitting. ive never actually read a book outloud to myself; it was excellent, i will do it again. pet scoundrel is a young man in this second part of the book. he is a civil servant, living in squalor & is proud ! (he actually hates himself.) he is absolutely disgusted by society & consumed by skepticism. it cripples him; he cant function as a normal person. he is so incapable of acceptable human interaction because of his skepticism, he creates conflicts in an effort to stir something resembling human emotion inside of him. he is the awkward acquaintance that comes to dinner & says inappropriate things. he is the man at the brothel the whore has nightmares about receiving. he is the passenger that hits the cabbie on the back of the head inciting him to go faster.

& somehow pet scoundrel is one of the most passionate characters ive ever encountered. is that seedy ? he is so passionate about living that he frightens himself into destitution, fearing he'd never be able to live properly given his surroundings, given the people near him. he bathes in books & compares his own world to the ones of literature. this is the only scale on which he weighs his own worth. so of course, internally, he finds himself inferior. (externally, he is the most intelligent, worthy man in all of petersburg !) he is an absolute paradox, filled with passion & energy about a world that is incapable of meeting his lofty expectations. there are a few moments of sheer beauty towards the end of the book, the kind that are enhanced by the sorrow of the pages surrounding. he lays next to a prostitute named liza who is young & blushes easy unaware of evil yet, unaware of decay. (remember when yr parents used to buy you picture books with yr name in the title to make you eager & the stuff inside more applicable to you ? whether it be about porcupines collecting grapes or a goblin in finland.) he tells her about love & dying in one breath, about the world he wishes were his own.

people like to count only their troubles, not the good things in their lives. if they looked properly, theyd see that everybody has his share of happiness allotted to him. but imagine a family where everything goes well, with god's blessing; your husband is good & loves & cherishes you, wont take a step away from you! how good life is in such a family. even, sometimes, with troubles & with sorrow, but good all the same. besides, who has no troubles? perhaps you will get married & find out for yourself. but think, let's say of the early years of marriage to a man you love : the happiness, the happiness of it sometimes! why, you see it all around. in the beginning, even quarrels with the husband end well. some women, the more theyre in love, the more quarrels theyll pick with their husbands. really, i knew a woman like that. 'i love you so much,' shed say, 'it's out of love that i torment you, so youll feel it.' do you know that it is possible to torment another out of love? it's mostly women that do it, thinking to themselves, 'i'll make it up to him afterwards with all my love, with the tenderest caresses -- it doesn't matter if i make him suffer a bit first.' & everybody admires you in the house, everything is sweet & gay & peaceful & honest...

he tells her about a father's love for his daughter & how rich it is. how love is god's mystery & should be hidden from outsiders' eyes, whatever happens. this makes it holier. of course he quickly realizes that over the course of his oration his vanity suffered, & he describes wanting to shake her. he simply humiliates her later on instead.

i know i have to read this book again. it's only a slight 130 pages, but it achieves a magnitude that is galactic. by the way, fyodor dostoevseky wrote this, like dove.

07. the time traveler's wife

2008-01-19T05:59:19Z

i think the circumstances under which i read this book are the only circumstances under which id ever read it. i dont like the title to start with. i still dont like the title. i hate the title, & the author, audrey niffeneggar, is better than that. it's bad representation of her work. also, i dont like contemporary love stories. but i read this anyway.

it was really cold on tuesday. i was in a cafe near a fire reading winter's tale & i couldnt keep warm. i walked to jeanette's to distract myself from the cold. & she has peanut butter. she invited me into her big brand new bed that her papa built. we watched episodes of the office on her computer, played with makeup, i browsed her tiny bookshelf, & she told me to READ THAT. the time traveler's wife. & i did, right there under her covers, stayed warm too.

it took me til today to finish cos it's a big book, just over 500 pages. it's a really good story & that's all that matters mostly. henry is a time traveler. time traveling is a result of a genetic mutation. time traveling is a disease the way down syndrome is a disease. his life is very circular. it's impossible to differentiate cause & effect. he is a living example of the chicken & also the egg. this is confusing at first but then becomes kind of fascinating. it's like solving a logic puzzle & being amazed & proud when it all adds up perfect. i like logic puzzles. amidst all the time travel malarky, henry falls in love. it's a very strange & epic love that spends its life trying to prove that time is nothing. i like that thought & find it very applicable, even (especially) outside of science fiction.

i really liked henry. he's such a solid, well-formulated character. i cant believe a girl built him. i like him the way i really like zooey glass, & the way i like prince hal. i like him very much. there were a lot of characters in this book & they were all pretty fleshy. they all were very real. it was impressive. the prose isnt all that beautiful though; the writing is writ with a purpose, to deliver a story. you dont linger on the words. (i really like to linger on words.) regardless, niffeneggar is an excellent storyteller & probably made of a billion budding writers' wet dreams.

huckfinns @ 2008-01-16T09:44:00

2008-01-16T14:45:12Z

06. bird by bird

2008-01-15T18:34:13Z

last night, i turned off all the lights & watched television. i havent sat in front of the television in awhile. it is fun. i left one light on, that was black & blue & reminds my living room of a cave in snow. our heat is pretty lousy. beetlejuice was on so i watched that. i havent watched it in so many years. when i was little, i really liked pee wee's big adventure, edward scissorhands, & beetlejuice. batman too. i had a life-size cardboard figure of the joker in my bedroom, next to my bunk bed. maybe even my crib. i was really little. i remember these movies & the pajamas of my childhood, the ones with the feet, interchangeably; i wore them a lot. tim burton really knew how to sing my strange dark soul to sleep.

my cousin gave me a couple of books awhile ago that he said he thought id really like, bird by bird being one of them. the cover says that it's some instructions on writing & life. it is that, but it's more this : a smart smart lady telling funny stories that have happened to her & in some way have helped her become a better person, writer or otherwise. my cousin isn't a writer, he's a biochemist, or a farmer, he hasnt decided, & he really liked this book. it basically offers open discussion about why we're passionate about anything, how we're bestowed with unparalleled gifts & why we should utilize them til our dying day. anne lamott is extremely wise within the realms of writing, & she illustrates with words that goes beyond simply saying what she knows. reading writing like this feels like worshipping buildings.

in one part, she demonstrates a writing exercise by talking about school lunches. how in elementary school, a child was assessed based on his bagged lunch. even though the cafeteria looked like a harmless refuge for kids to sit around & eat lunch in, it was a much more grave place than that. she starts by discussing what was acceptable as the centerpiece of the lunch or the sandwich - unoffensive cheeses, bologna, peanut butter & jelly were fine if your parents understood the jelly/jam issue. grape jelly was best, strawberry was second, & everything else was iffy. she explains how apricot jam was the worst of it all, but if yr dad was making lunch, you could count on getting apricot jam. fathers love apricot jam, & we dont know why.

in general when fathers made lunches, things always turned out badly. fathers were oblivious, they were like foreigners. for instance, a code bolgna sandwich meant white bread, one or two slices of bologna, mustard, one wilted piece of iceberg lettuce. fathers, to begin with, always used non regulation bread, & then buttered it, which made the sandwich about as tradable as a piece of haggis. also, everything was always falling out of the sandwiches fathers made. im not sure why.

An 8 year old boy had a younger sister who was dying of leukemia, & he was told that without a blood transfusion, she would die. his parents explained to him that his blood was probably compatible with hers, & that if so, he could be the blood donor. they asked him if they could test his blood. he said sure. so they did & it was a good match. then they asked if he would give his sister a pint of his blood, that it could be her only chance of living. he said he would have to think about it overnight.

they next day he went to his parents & said he was willing to donate the blood. so they took him to the hospital where he was put on a gurney beside his 6 year old sister. both of them were hooked up to IVs. a nurse withdrew a pint of blood from the boy, which was then put into the girl's IV. the boy lay on the gurney in silence while the blood dripped into his sister, until the doctor came over to see how he was doing. then the boy opened his eyes & asked, "how soon will i start to die?"

the chapter this story is in is called 'giving' & lamott's trying to make a point about how innocent you should be as a writer, naively so. how writers' whole definitition of beauty is based on their conscience & being familiar with it, being constantly aware that something is beautiful because it is right.

05. sputnik sweetheart

2008-01-14T02:34:53Z

ive always heard really wonderful things about haruki murikami, but id never forced myself to read anything. last week i found a slim copy of sputnik sweetheart with a picture of a soft, small carnivore girl on the cover & wanted to take her home. this book was awful. i absolutely did not like it. it wasnt quite a travesty, as i wouldnt have finished it if it was, but im baffled. isnt murikami dubbed as the literary genius of the 21st century ?

sputnik sweetheart is about a girl, sumire, who quits college to become a novelist, but her dreams are deterred when she falls in love with an older woman. the older woman invites sumire to become her business associate, & in a short while, sumire vanishes. the story is so unrealistic, it's painful to endure. im not even referring to the big plot points; the conversation is unrealistic, the daily routines are unrealistic, the relationships are unrealistic. the writing is repeatitive & too stuffed with metaphors, all of which are weak. it was as if murikami couldnt decide whether to put more of his heart into the writing itself or into the story, so both come off as half witted. & id like to be optimistic & say that he wasn't trying to create an existentialist tone, but i think he was, & it was a really pathetic one.

maybe this wasn't the best murikami to start with, or maybe he satisfies a certain literary taste that just isn't my own. he reminds me a lot of michael chabon, & i know plenty of people who adore michael chabon when i kindly call him rotton. either way, i just didnt like this & wouldnt recommend it to anybody i love.

huckfinns @ 2008-01-13T12:35:00

2008-01-13T17:37:32Z

04. the road

2008-01-12T05:13:44Z

yikes i spent all day reading again. i went to the asian market & bought some pops around 5, but, mostly it was the space heater near my sweater near my flannel all day. what a good day !

the road is the masterpiece. i keep reading really awesome books, i dont know. this book was mighty, im especially moved by it. it's about a boy & his father continuing life in a post apocolyptic world. theyre traveling a very bleak expanse of what is left of the earth, by foot, on an old state road. theyre going south where they might find warmth, they might find some semblance of civilization, they might find reason. how the world ended isn't very clear. the trees fell, there's ash everywhere, cows are extinct. sometimes they encounter someone who is basically molten, having been struck by lightening. it couldve been a nuclear war i guess, or it could have been an act of god in the form of a natural disaster. i prefer to think the latter - something entirely unpredictable, from another realm, as the whole story has a very biblical strength to it.

the best part about the book is how well cormac mccarthy explores the human condition. how the basic instincts of humans are at two opposite poles - absolutely horrifying or absolutely good. i love stories about how decrepit man becomes in the face of lawlessness & lack of order. how we're predominantly selfish & disgusting when not guided by a more tangible force than god. mccarthy employs seriously terrifying examples of this.

i also really liked how he dealt with the option of suicide for the survivors as not a last resort but simply as a resort. no one is quite sure what theyre traveling for, living for, & if theyre prepared for it. even if they knew what to do, would they want to do it ? what if you were the last one left. what if you did that to yourself. though the book has only two leading characters - the man & the boy - there was once a woman. she convinced herself that her world ended when she birthed the boy. she & the man debated the pros & cons of self destruction for hundreds of nights with absolute earnestness & rationale. not out of cowardice but out of practicality, she disappears by her own hand early on in the novel. one of the most frightening events of the book happens right after the boy & the man flee from a house occupied by cannibals & take cover in the eaves of the woods. the father has one round left in his pistol & he hands it to the boy, who is supposed to be around 10 i think, & instructs him to "do it just like i showed you" if they come this way. put it inside yr mouth & aim up. the father refuses to kill his son himself, but he finds security in the boy knowing to do it if the time comes. this is their lifeline.

the book is beautiful, beautiful. mccarthy's writing style is super solid & matter of fact, yet it's a very visual book. i saw them eating peaches from tins, saw them dressing under pines, saw their faces, saw the road. though you have to hunt for it, the overarching theme of the book is the goodness in people. how when desperation is waking, encountering another person on the road means deciding whether or not to come to their aid, whether or not to consider the thought that perhaps in some greater world he will turn into a god & i into a tree.

03. my antonia

2008-01-11T18:33:47Z

i finally finished my antonia & i liked it. i didnt think i would; i was just reading it to be finished with it, a sort of literary obligation to the early 20th century novel. i do like willa cather normally, i didn't chose to read it entirely randomly, though ive only read short stories. this book requires a certain patience that isnt required of her short stories. cather writes really beautifully about the earth & the prairie & the person inside of it, & she writes a lot if you let her. my antonia is mostly a portrait of nebraska, the country & tiny towns of it in the early 1900s, but it's also about the life of a girl observed from the heart of a boy. the narrative perspective is very much like the one in the virgin suicides only a hundred years older. a boy loves & observes a girl from afar, devoted on account of mere curiousity.

the book is broken up into five parts, & the last couple parts are pretty superior to the first. this is why this book requires patience (& interest in the subject matter). it's about growing though, so it's not unreasonable to hate the stubborn & selfimportant antonia in the beginning. i really did not like her at all. she comes with her family from bohemia to the nebraskan prairie. she works on a farm near an american family's farm who immediately take an interest in her. her beauty & ability as a farmhand is overexaggerated. her goodness, kindness of heart et cetera, is overexaggerated too & never actually very apparent, but i guess the narrator's vision is blurred by infatuation. as soon as she starts to grow up, however, her development as a character does as well & i like her a whole lot better. she becomes humbled with age.

i expected there to be more wild adventures about wolves or dysentary, but the relationships among the characters is supposed to be the driving force of the story. there is murder though. that was neat.

my favorite parts are about when all antonia's childhood friends leave the town they grew up in to find fortune in california & in dressmaking & in taking care of sailors. antonia moves to the prairie by herself & has a baby & is never lonesome in her farmhouse buried in corn & wheat. she builds a fruit cave.

02. stardust

2008-01-10T04:44:03Z

upon my best judgement, i decided to ignore the 50 pages i have left in my antonia & read stardust all day instead. i did very little else. today was the best day ive had in many, many months. i think that this is the book ive been waiting to read my whole life. it's a fairy tale that isn't too nostalgic. it's about a land made of ripe plums & witchfires & sheep farmers & fair maidens, onto which a star falls who utters fuck upon her awkward landing.

it's written by neil gaiman. he lives in england & i bet is a little god. im happy someone could so gently ease 'fantastical fiction' into my likes+interests; i barely felt it.