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Oct. 24th, 2006 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
decemberthirtyI didn't finish The World According to Garp in time for my book club meeting on Sunday. I was ready to, I could have done it, but I woke up on Friday morning and suddenly realized that it was not the book I needed to be reading. I needed something with a more positive view of human relationships, a book that believes that goodness and redemption are possible. I needed Updike, the great absolver, who holds all of human frailty and weakness in his hands, cradling it like a baby bird and sheltering it from judgment for a brief moment. But instead I was faced with The World According to Garp, which is apparently a miserable and brutal place. The book is a catalog of horrors: violent death, disfigurement, rape, senseless murder, and self-mutilation, one after the other in an endless parade. I simply couldn't face it.
I did eventually force myself to slog through and finish it, but I don't think I should have. I should have left it alone and come back at another time, when perhaps all the ugliness wouldn't have bothered me so much--after all, it didn't bother me for the first 450 pages, so perhaps if I had waited until I was back to the mindset in which I read the beginning of the book I would like it better now. But I didn't wait, and now I feel sort of like I hate the book to a disproportionate degree. Ah well. Simply a case of the wrong book at the wrong time, and there's not much I can do about it now.
After my experience with The World According to Garp, I felt that I needed to recover, so I started reading Ruth Reichl's Tender At the Bone. A light and pleasant food memoir seemed like a good way to give myself a bit of a breather, and this has proved true thus far. I like it well enough at this point, although at times it does get a bit too cutesy for my taste. Great title, though.
I did eventually force myself to slog through and finish it, but I don't think I should have. I should have left it alone and come back at another time, when perhaps all the ugliness wouldn't have bothered me so much--after all, it didn't bother me for the first 450 pages, so perhaps if I had waited until I was back to the mindset in which I read the beginning of the book I would like it better now. But I didn't wait, and now I feel sort of like I hate the book to a disproportionate degree. Ah well. Simply a case of the wrong book at the wrong time, and there's not much I can do about it now.
After my experience with The World According to Garp, I felt that I needed to recover, so I started reading Ruth Reichl's Tender At the Bone. A light and pleasant food memoir seemed like a good way to give myself a bit of a breather, and this has proved true thus far. I like it well enough at this point, although at times it does get a bit too cutesy for my taste. Great title, though.
