Tuesday, May 13, 2008

My Two Books for the Week

New: Escaping the Delta , Elijah Wald
Old: The Rise of Silas Lapham, Williams Deane Howells

Thoroughly enjoyed both of last week's books. Surprisingly, I fell in love with Gaskell's short stories, which I first eyed with "if I make it to page 20 it'll be a miracle." It's now become one of those books that I'm sad I'm done with. Added bonus: every word of dialogue for some reason reminded me of Desire Under the Elms (sliiiiice.)

What's funny is every Gaskell short story is like a season of The Real World to me. As I start each story, at page one I'm like "oh, this one's gonna suck, I'm not gonna care about these people" etc. By page three I'm pissed re: "what the fuck is going on, nothing's happening, I'm completely confused, this is stupid fuck this..." and then of course by page 5 I'm completely hooked on the characters, I think they're my real friends and by the end I'm heartbroken it's over and already insisting there's no way I'll care about the next story as much as this one. Kicking off the cycle again, of course.

A happy find!

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