Maybe I was supposed to read every OTHER word.

L’Abbe C has such a cool title!  Unfortunately, once I got past the title, I didn’t really get much else about what was going on in this book.  It’s super short, thankfully.  The characters are obsessed with sex and death.  I KNOW I’m missing something in this book.  It’s like I didn’t get the key or something. I hope that Mike or Marissa reads it and comes along and explains it to me.

Sometimes I think I’m not smart enough to be reading these.  I’m obviously struggling through some of them.

Here’s a recipe for Apple Cake.

5-6 apples, peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces

1 c walnuts

1.5 cups sugar

4 t cinnamon

4 t baking powder

2 t vanilla

2 c flour

1 c oil

4 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix together all ingredients other than apples and walnuts in large bowl.  Fold in apples and walnuts.  Pour into glass Pyrex-type baking pan.  Bake for 50-60 minutes.  (Optional: you can mix some sugar and cinnamon together and sprinkle it on top).

I am not a hipster.

Apparently Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes is this hipster odyssey through London in the late 1950s.  Unfortunately, I just Didn’t Get It.  It’s a breezy read, especially just having read a William Faulkner book where you have to concentrate on every word.  But, I’ve missed something, or its coolness is completely lost on me.  Maybe I don’t know enough about England at that time and what was going on…but I didn’t enjoy this book very much at all.  I didn’t like the characters very much and I didn’t feel I could relate to them or what was going on.  And, although I’ve visited London, I don’t know the city well enough to picture where the characters were or what they were doing. 

 

Also, on an embarrassingly superficial note, the copy of the book I borrowed from the library smells very musty.  It is a few feet away from me on the dining room table now and I can SMELL it.  I don’t think this one gets into circulation too much.

 

Next up for me…Marissa has The Abbot C in Connecticut so I will get started with that.  She also has borrowed Ada for me to read during my visit.  It’s something like 589 pages!  (I requested The Absentee via interlibrary loan, but it won’t be in for a while yet.)

William Faulkner...

writes in these really, really long sentences where you start in one place and end in another, so that even great readers (like Marissa, or like my grandmother, who kept a list of every book she’d ever read for what must have been her whole life - a really long list) have to have trouble sometimes following what is going on, especially at the beginning, but then, as the reader keeps reading, it turns out that you get used to the way the sentences are structured, so that as you get further into the book it gets easier and it’s like talking with an old, very verbose friend.

 

AWESOME book.  

I am Sisphyus.

I am Sisphyus and Aaron's Rod is my boulder. Unlike Sisphyus, I will get to the top without my boulder crushing me. In more positive news, L'Abbe C came through interlibrary loan yesterday. I love interlibrary loan!

Marissa

I'm plugging along with Aaron.

D.H. Lawrence is watching me. He's saying, "Get with it already!"

Well, I am working on it, Mr. Lawrence. I'm enjoying the bit that I've read so far. I'm not very far, admittedly-- I keep reading before bed and then falling asleep mid-sentence. As for book #2, The Abbot C by Georges Bataille, I did a little detective work. The Connecticut state-wide library catalog indicated that only one library had a copy. I IMd a reference librarian there to see if the book was in English as it was first published in French in 1950. Alas, their copy was in French, but she did a more comprehensive search and found some libraries in Connecticut that had the translation. It was an awesome online reference transaction and I requested the book through interlibrary loan. (My library schooling is showing-- "online reference transaction.") I'll lend it to Emily since it's tricky to track down.

While I'm enjoying these European writers, I look forward to book #3, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!. Its original publication date is 1936 and it takes place here in the States. My senior year, my English teacher recommended Absalom, Absalom! to me but I never got around to it. Well, William Faulkner, here I come!

Marissa

More About Aaron's Rod

I finished the book today!  Aaron really doesn’t like women very much, huh?  Not only did he leave his wife and little girls to go off on his adventures, he and his companions spend an inordinate amount of time discussing our ulterior motives.  Apparently, it’s our main goal in life to get men to subject themselves to us.  Who knew?

The kind of open-ended ending was pretty cool.  I was wondering how Lawrence would wrap it up.  

Next up for me: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner.  (The Abbot C is book #2, but not available at my library, so I’ll come back to that one soon.)

Hello. And Aaron's Rod.

Hello.  I am SO excited to start this project!  It is going to be a big undertaking, but I think we are up to the task!  There are so many books that I have always wanted to read, and this is going to be a great way to knock off some of the very best ones.  I can't wait.

I do feel very underqualified to talk about such great works of literature (and also to contribute to this blog created by my English-major, librarian sister).  These books have been discussed by minds much much greater than mine.  So I'm absolutely not going to be adding to the scholarship on this literature.  I don't have anything to add that someone much smarter hasn't already thought of and said!

What I can offer, though, is armchair thoughts on the books from someone who 1) hasn't read a whole lot of great books and 2) doesn't have a lot of time!

So.  I'm about 2/3 of the way done with Aaron's Rod now.  As I read, I have been asking myself whether the book is worth reading and am I glad that I am reading it.  So far Aaron's Rod is absolutely worth reading.  I think this is the first D.H. Lawrence book I have ever read and it's really good so far.  I like that his characters don't really take themselves too seriously.  When I read in the introduction (by a D.H. Lawrence scholar) that the book was about Europe's reaction to World War I, I thought to myself, "Oh no, this is going to be very sad, drawn-out, and boring."  But so far it really isn't at all.  I see how the characters are exploring what it means to live in postwar Europe.  Thankfully, they are doing so in an entertaining way.