It's (not) a wonderful life.

I am not what you would call a movie buff. In fact, movies are not something I have ever really gotten into. It sounds weird, but it is just not my thing. There are many classics that I haven't seen and honestly, I'm not all that interested in seeing them.

I knew who Marilyn Monroe was, obviously. I kind of had a vague outline of the fact that she was a movie actress, had a number of high-profile relationships, and died from a drug overdose at an early age. Beyond that I knew nothing and I haven't seen any of her movies.

Reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates was a really fascinating look at Marilyn Monroe. It was difficult to read at times because her life was so difficult and sad. And some of the things that happened to her as a child were horrible. Reading about children being harmed is difficult.

The amount of work that went into writing this and the different ways Oates approached the story was just amazing. I particularly liked how it got kind of less coherent toward the middle and end and you couldn't really tell whether the things that were portrayed in the book really happened - because Monroe herself wasn't sure what was real and what was not. (I seem to like the unreliable narrator). I also liked how Oates handled the ending - you aren't sure whether Monroe was assassinated or overdosed on her own and was imagining the people conspiring to kill her.

Is this book going to make me want to watch a whole bunch of Marilyn Monroe movies? No. I did enjoy this book tremendously though. All 738 pages. I couldn't put it down.

Addendum.

So I posted last night's entry and then realized I had more to say about The Blithedale Romance.

I thought the whole idea of them all kind of getting away from the world to live in the Utopian society kind of interesting. I know it was kind of in fashion at the time (and have read that Hawthorne also did this himself for a brief period). It reminded me of The Bell, except that all the action in this book is kind of on the periphery of the society, and the book is not as concerned with the inner workings of the society itself. In The Bell the book was much more about the society and its growth, and this book was a lot more about the personal relationships between the characters.

At various periods of history this sort of Utopian society has come into vogue. Back in the 1850s, again in the 1960s with commune living and maybe also to some extent now as we build societies over the Internet and form digital friendships or renew old friendships with people who live across the world from us. (Whatever happened to Second Life, anyway? Wasn't that supposed to be the next big thing in, like, 2005?) I wonder what that says about us at those periods where we are so dissatisfied about what is going on that people feel the need to retreat and often in such an extreme fashion.

Anyway, just a ramble about something that was rattling around in my head last night.

Behind the scenes of a Utopian society.

I find Nathaniel Hawthorne's books to be very difficult. I feel like I am not getting enough from them. There is so much symbolism and things going on in the margins that is important- and I just know I'm missing a lot of it.

I liked The Blithedale Romance. I thought it was an interesting story and I liked that some of the mysteries in the book stayed unsolved. I liked how Hawthorne didn't feel the need to wrap everything up in a neat little package at the end. I liked the exploration of the relationship between Priscilla and Zenobia and how they related to Hollingsworth. I definitely liked it more than I thought I would. Not that I got everything out of it that Hawthorne intended...but I definitely am glad I read this and got a lot out of it.

A short novel about a difficult situation.

Blindness by Henry Green is one of those literary books. You know the ones. It is really well written and deals with an interesting topic - but it isn't a page turner or anything. This book is about a young man who was blinded on his way home from boarding school and how he and his family members deal with the situation. While it wasn't a gripping story, I thought it was really well written.

The book did get kind of slow, especially in the middle part, where it was kind of like, oh dear, now I am blind, whatever am I going to do? But I felt like the last third of the book or so got more interesting. I particularly liked how intricate and developed the relationships were between the family members.

Books 91-100

Here are the next 10 books on the list.

91. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (2000)
92. Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker (1984)
93. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)
94. Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille (1957)
95. The Body Artist by Don DeLillo (2001)
96. The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe (1987)
97. Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan (1954)
98. The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow (1971)
99. The Book of Evidence by John Banville (1989)
100. The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (2002)

I LOVE Bonfire of the Vanities. I've read it several times and I can't wait to read that one again! Some of these others look really good, too!

Loved the book. The main character? Not so much.

The Blind Assassin is a phenomenal book. The characters and the whole story are just so interesting, I couldn't put this book down. I really like Margaret Atwood's writing.

You know what I really didn't like, though? The main character in this book. As I was reading it, Iris mildly annoyed me. I felt like she wasn't standing up for herself and her family and allowing herself to be led along because that was what was easiest for her. However, once I saw how everything turned out at the end, I got really mad at Iris. I think she screwed her family over, both her sister as well as her daughter and granddaughter, for pretty much no reason.

I think Atwood's a fantastic writer and I am sure that she intended for her readers to feel this way about Iris. It was a really interesting experience to read a story that I was really interested in - even though the main character was making me angry!

Where's the rest of the story?

I asked myself that question as I finished Blind Man With a Pistol. This detective story had no resolution. You don't find out who the killer was. Instead, more killings take place in the last chapter.

The unresolved nature of the story is difficult for me to like. It reminded me of the game where one person starts a story, then another person picks it up from there, and so on. Fun, but not how I like my novels. This book is set in Harlem and it is one of those books where the author's goal is not necessarily to tell a story but get a message across. The message about the struggle the residents of the book face came through very clearly. I just would rather read a story, thanks.