Yeah I was actually going to show that to you if you didn't discover it yourself. Girl is an imbecile.

Review I put on Goodreads:

****

In a way, this rating is a shot in the dark. Reading it the first time, half the sentences in part one made me exclaim with joy, and half scream in agony—a gorgeous passage was frequently followed by an unbearably ugly one—even if the ugliness was only a word. Toward the end of part one, I guessed at the "twist" (it's not actually a twist in any substantial sense of the word, since it becomes increasingly obvious before it is officially revealed) that explains why the book is written the way it is. However, while all great books need multiple readings before they can be unlocked, Atonement compels a second reading more than most books. Even though I read the majority of the book with correct suspicions about what was reliable and what was not, I did not read it with the correct knowledge coursing through my veins—I lacked that feeling and that lack dulled the impact of some passages. So, as I said, this rating is a shot in the dark. In a very real sense, I haven't read this book yet, though every word has passed before my eyes. This is a rating based on the promise my first reading made about the nature of my second reading. But it was a compelling promise: the first reading ended with my hands clutching my head, then a long session lying in bed, listening to Arvo Part's Tabula Rasa and trying to reconcile my existence to this book.

Doreen's review.

Honoré de Balzac - Père Goriot

Over the past two weeks:

Henry V (alright)
Everything Is Illuminated (liked a lot)
Sense of an Ending (loved a lot)
Unbearable Lightness of Being (loved)

Now onto Midnight's Children and then Borges' Collected Fictions...

I've been busy at work and lazy in my free time, so this is over the past month.

Read:

The Handmaid's Tale (8/10)
God is Not Great (7/10)
The World as it is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress (7.5/10)

Reading:

Marquis de Sade, a Life
Siddhartha

Going to read soon:

Voltaire's Bastards: the Dictatorship of Reason in the West

Finished The Sound and the Fury and I can't say I'm disappointed exactly, but I didn't love it as much as I remember doing the first time I read it. I don't find it as compelling as As I Lay Dying, particularly the second half, and in part I think it may have been ruined somewhat by my initial approach to it. I read in high school when I wasn't the reader I am today and, though it wasn't for a class or anything, I kind of approached it that way, using resources like Sparknotes and Wikipedia to help me through the troublesome parts, which ultimately, I feel, left me with something of a watered-down or at least immature understanding of the novel. And now reading it a second time, the incidents as they're presented are much easier to fit together, but I wish they weren't because the method of putting them together is clearly a very important part of the book or Faulkner wouldn't have put Benjy's section first and I think I lost a lot of what could've been revealed to me, much better reader that I am now than when I initially read it, by reading it at too early a time. Or maybe I'm just not as big a fan as I thought I was.

One thing that struck me on this reading was that I was far less sympathetic for Quentin (the boy) than I was the first time through. I think I even imagined him as some sort of Faulkner stand-in then. Really, he's just a pathetic, idealistic boy who's no less misogynistic than his brother or father. I don't think I picked up on the rampant misogyny in the novel the first time through, or at least how big a part it plays in what seems to be Faulkner's condemnation of the South's outdated values.

And now back to Vineland, where I stalled about halfway through a couple-three months ago.

Also, I miss my alma mater's library. Not only did they have a wonderful collection of films, but whenever I finished a novel that I read in my free time, I could stroll on over and pick up a book of criticism about it and really dig into it. I really want to do the same with The Sound and the Fury but I don't think I have the same resources at hand anymore.

On that note, if anybody knows any scholarly articles about Faulkner or Sound that can be found online, send them my way.

A lot of people say that Faulkner was himself a misogynist.

You mean like in real life or based upon the worldview he creates in his fiction?

The latter. Feminists say he tends to favor bovine, mindless females. I need to read him more carefully to see if I agree with that, though.

Well, The Sound and the Fury certainly pushes toward that interpretation. Caddy and Quentin are not some sort of proto-feminists whose rejection of ideal Southern gender roles is lauded or viewed in any way positively. Caddy in a very real sense ruins her brother's life by her promiscuity - and I don't mean Quentin, who has himself (and his father) to blame far more for his suicide - I mean Jason, who was promised a job at Caddy's husband's bank until he left her for birthing a child that wasn't his, and the family not having the money to send him to school, he lost any real chance of success.

At the same time, though, it does seem that adherence to old Southern ideals - particularly regarding women - is what brought down the family, e.g. the cynicism of Jason and his father and the naive idealism that leads to Quentin's suicide.

I didn't find As I Lay Dying to be misogynist, though, but there are also fewer women in that one. The chapter that Addie narrates is anything but mindless or bovine.

As I mentioned above, I'm back into Vineland and I so, so love Pynchon's writing. It's so warm and inviting, and his novels set in California have a streak of sentimental nostalgia that just melts my heart. I feel, I don't know, safe and warm reading his novels. I know what I'm going to get and I know I'm going to love it. I'm sad that once I finish Vineland, it's over - I'll have read everything he's published.

his little book of early short stories too?