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Reading Wednesday
Jan. 8th, 2020 07:51 amRecently read
How else to kick off the 2020s but to read The Great Gatsby? I'd read this book in three different English classes in high school, and it grew on me a little more each time, largely because the teachers of said classes were increasingly better at explaining it and the analysis dug a little deeper each year. In some ways, reading it this time felt like stumbling across an excavation site half grown back into a meadow; at first it was hard to just read it, without being hyperaware of the sense memory of having read it for school, but once I got swept away by the story itself, I was delighted to occasionally trip over a bit of stray symbolism or metonymy.
The forward of this edition, by author Jesmyn Ward, made the very good argument that although Gatsby's love for (obsession with?) Daisy drove pretty much every life choice he made since he met her, it kept him from ever truly seeking opportunities to change for himself, and likewise kept him from being able to recognize change in others, i.e. Daisy. In other words, wanting the thing - a future with Daisy, as imagined when they were teenagers - fundamentally prevented him from ever achieving it? "Daisy is Gatsby's fatal flaw" is an idea I've encountered before, but I like how Ward explained it.
I also read Chase Darkness With Me, by Billy Jensen, a true crime journalist turned victim's advocate and investigator, about his experiences doing all of those things. He was also one of the people who helped finish Michelle McNamara's posthumously-published I'll Be Gone in the Dark; he writes a lot about their friendship - apparently, before her death in 2016, they'd been planning to put together a sort of L.A.-based, civilians' Vidocq Society, and John Mulaney was on their shortlist of invitees?! - and how her investigation into the Golden State Killer case inspired him to start trying to solve crimes instead of just writing about them.
Just finished Reader, I Married Him, an anthology of short stories inspired by the iconic line from Jane Eyre. Most of the stories were original fiction, largely but not exclusively focused on relationships and/or weddings, but there were a few stories that reworked, continued, or directly referenced Jane Eyre, including rewrites from Grace Poole's and Mr. Rochester's points of view (both, interestingly, far more sympathetic to Bertha than Jane.) Overall, really interesting! I had only read two of the ~20 contributing authors before - Emma Donoghue and Elizabeth McCracken - although I'd heard of a couple of the others, so it was like getting one of those sampler dessert plates at a restaurant and being able to taste-test the works of different authors.
Currently reading
Started (re-)reading The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I had originally read this when I was in high school and adored it, so I'm curious to see if it holds up!
To read next
I got a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas and immediately ordered Elizabeth Foyster's The Trials of the King of Hampshire: Madness, Secrecy, and Betrayal in Georgian England, which has been on my list for a while.
How else to kick off the 2020s but to read The Great Gatsby? I'd read this book in three different English classes in high school, and it grew on me a little more each time, largely because the teachers of said classes were increasingly better at explaining it and the analysis dug a little deeper each year. In some ways, reading it this time felt like stumbling across an excavation site half grown back into a meadow; at first it was hard to just read it, without being hyperaware of the sense memory of having read it for school, but once I got swept away by the story itself, I was delighted to occasionally trip over a bit of stray symbolism or metonymy.
The forward of this edition, by author Jesmyn Ward, made the very good argument that although Gatsby's love for (obsession with?) Daisy drove pretty much every life choice he made since he met her, it kept him from ever truly seeking opportunities to change for himself, and likewise kept him from being able to recognize change in others, i.e. Daisy. In other words, wanting the thing - a future with Daisy, as imagined when they were teenagers - fundamentally prevented him from ever achieving it? "Daisy is Gatsby's fatal flaw" is an idea I've encountered before, but I like how Ward explained it.
I also read Chase Darkness With Me, by Billy Jensen, a true crime journalist turned victim's advocate and investigator, about his experiences doing all of those things. He was also one of the people who helped finish Michelle McNamara's posthumously-published I'll Be Gone in the Dark; he writes a lot about their friendship - apparently, before her death in 2016, they'd been planning to put together a sort of L.A.-based, civilians' Vidocq Society, and John Mulaney was on their shortlist of invitees?! - and how her investigation into the Golden State Killer case inspired him to start trying to solve crimes instead of just writing about them.
Just finished Reader, I Married Him, an anthology of short stories inspired by the iconic line from Jane Eyre. Most of the stories were original fiction, largely but not exclusively focused on relationships and/or weddings, but there were a few stories that reworked, continued, or directly referenced Jane Eyre, including rewrites from Grace Poole's and Mr. Rochester's points of view (both, interestingly, far more sympathetic to Bertha than Jane.) Overall, really interesting! I had only read two of the ~20 contributing authors before - Emma Donoghue and Elizabeth McCracken - although I'd heard of a couple of the others, so it was like getting one of those sampler dessert plates at a restaurant and being able to taste-test the works of different authors.
Currently reading
Started (re-)reading The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I had originally read this when I was in high school and adored it, so I'm curious to see if it holds up!
To read next
I got a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas and immediately ordered Elizabeth Foyster's The Trials of the King of Hampshire: Madness, Secrecy, and Betrayal in Georgian England, which has been on my list for a while.
