But on to the books:
Both books I finished in April were for my classics book club, although I wasn't able to attend the meetup, because my aunt was in town. We had fun!
The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce – I would give this book about three and a half or maybe four stars. I am fascinated about stream of consciousness
writing and just Modernism in general so I had wanted to read this book for a
long time. To my surprise though, much
of the book didn’t really seem to be fully stream of consciousness to me. It is supposed to be the more mainstream
companion to his most major work, Ulysses, which I have also always wanted to
read. I will read it one day! The story is simply a character study of you
guessed it-the artist as a young man, although the main character’s name is
Stephen Dedalus. Even though I was not
raised Catholic, I could relate to his fundamentalist upbringing with his
worries about going to Hell. My parents
are not fundamentalist, but they couldn’t save me from the influence of the youth
minister that came to our church when I was preteen and tasting the first
fruits of depression. She was pretty
conservative and I started ruminating and worrying about whether I was good
enough and whether I would go to heaven or not.
Unfortunately, I think that is a fairly common experience in the Bible
Belt. Nearly everyone I knew at the time belonged to a church’s youth group and
while it helped us gain some friends, it also helped us gain a lot of neuroses
too. If I ever have kids, I will do more
investigating on the youth minister’s beliefs and practices before letting my
children stay in his or hers care. Back
to the book, I really enjoyed and related to it until about three fourths
through and then the story just seemed to fizzle out. It took me a long time to read it, because my
interest just fell flat towards the end, which is why I did not give it five
stars.
The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – This book,
I enjoyed the whole way through. It was
a fun read and I read it pretty fast. I
wasn’t too excited about reading it, because I already knew the general story,
but it turned out to be very enjoyable.
Dorian Gray really turns into a despicable character and it’s
interesting to try to figure out what is making him so. Is it really all because of Lord Henry’s
influence? Or perhaps it is Basil’s
fault for praising Gray’s looks so much.
Because Gray is so stunning, no one wants to place the blame on
Gray, himself-surely a person’s inner beauty is reflected on the outside, right? This same mindset reminds me of the privilege
bestowed on thin people in today’s society.
A fat person is considered ugly by today’s standards and lazy and
unhealthy and unintelligent. Surely, we
say, their looks indicate that there is something wrong with their
character... I really recommend this
book-it’s fun, exciting, and still raises questions about the way we are quick
to excuse the actions of the people our society deems beautiful and our society’s
preoccupation with youth.
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