What are you reading?

[bgalbraith]

Enjoying it so far.

[tireless.mind]

kind of like Perks of Being a Wallflower, only the author is trigger happy on name-dropping books on literary criticism, not albums.

BUT dude does an amazing job capturing what it's like to be in fall in love (hard and irresponsibly), love academic work (or be a pretentious twit) and not know what the fuck you're doing with your life (yeah, that).

[allegro]

kind of like Perks of Being a Wallflower, only the author is trigger happy on name-dropping books on literary criticism, not albums.

BUT dude does an amazing job capturing what it's like to be in fall in love (hard and irresponsibly), love academic work (or be a pretentious twit) and not know what the fuck you're doing with your life (yeah, that).

I just finished that one. I had a hard time with the characters in this book, very much like I did with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (wait, is it okay that I hate Vronsky? and I don't really like Anna, either?). I loved Mitchell, but then he'd disappear from the plot and I'd wonder when he'd be back or wtf he had to do with the plot, at all. Sometimes I hated Bankhead and other times I felt really sorry for him, struggling so hard with his illness. And the "marriage plot" that Madeleine was using as her thesis gave way to Victorian literature (but her article gets published in an Austen journal, even though - as Madeleine admits - Austen was Regency and not Victorian). It wasn't until the very end (no spoilers) where I went, "Oh, okay."

The Lit Crit name-dropping is true (I had to run to Google a few times and I was a Lit major undergrad) but I think he captures Lit nerds very well. Science nerds, too. And I sure learned a lot about manic depression.

I'm having the same trouble with the characters in this Franzen book (Freedom). Do I like Patty? Am I supposed to like Patty? It's a real page-turner so far, though.

[tireless.mind]

...I loved Mitchell, but then he'd disappear from the plot and I'd wonder when he'd be back or wtf he had to do with the plot, at all. Sometimes I hated Bankhead and other times I felt really sorry for him, struggling so hard with his illness. And the "marriage plot" that Madeleine was using as her thesis gave way to Victorian literature (but her article gets published in an Austen journal, even though - as Madeleine admits - Austen was Regency and not Victorian). It wasn't until the very end (no spoilers) where I went, "Oh, okay."

The Lit Crit name-dropping is true (I had to run to Google a few times and I was a Lit major undergrad) but I think he captures Lit nerds very well. Science nerds, too. And I sure learned a lot about manic depression.

i get the feeling - based on you identifying literary misidentification - that, as a science grad that alot of the subtle literary flourishes flew way, way past my head. but for sure - i think he generally captured what it's like to be a nerd in the finest academic sense.

it's neat how people respond to characters. i had no problem whatsoever with mitchell or leonard - probably because i've been mitch for years over one woman, and i was a terrible leo to another. mitchell's sporadic/flaky nature is totally plausible - take it from a dude who also was interested in Quakers at some point. and while i do not have manic depression, leo's insecurities hit so uncomfortably close to home. but i guess that's why i wanted to compare it to Perks. it's been that long since a book explained parts of me to myself, in my opinion the best achievement of anything written.

[allegro]

it's neat how people respond to characters. i had no problem whatsoever with mitchell or leonard - probably because i've been mitch for years over one woman, and i was a terrible leo to another. mitchell's sporadic/flaky nature is totally plausible - take it from a dude who also was interested in Quakers at some point. and while i do not have manic depression, leo's insecurities hit so uncomfortably close to home. but i guess that's why i wanted to compare it to Perks. it's been that long since a book explained parts of me to myself, in my opinion the best achievement of anything written.

Eugenides did that for me in Middlesex: what it was like to live in Detroit at the very same time as the protagonist (actually, the protagonist was born on the same day as me, weird) and the Detroit race riots, all perfectly described, but also how Eugenides described what it was like to be "a girl" back then, even though Eugenides, himself, is a guy. He obviously did some extensive research, down to the little stuff like Jean Nate and Love's Baby Soft.

Re Leonard Bankhead, this reminded me of him today:

http://m.gizmodo.com/5886762/

It's fun reading Franzen's "Freedom" right after finishing Eugenides' "The Marriage Plot" because both have female characters with East Coast upper-class families, and various forms of dysfunctional American families in and around the same time period (80s). If I was still in school, I'm sure I could milk a comparative essay out of the two.

[Bokononist]

I just finished that one...The Lit Crit name-dropping is true (I had to run to Google a few times and I was a Lit major undergrad) but I think he captures Lit nerds very well. Science nerds, too. And I sure learned a lot about manic depression.

It looks like a crappy summarization isn't necessary on this one. I'll add that the psych ward experience was also well researched, that so far I'm far more sympathetic to Leonard than Mitchell and finally, I had no idea there was an album of Led Zeppelin's Greatest Hits in 1982.

Edit:I guess the board doesn't do compounded quotes or images so I'll spare everybody the trouble of looking it up and say that I'm on The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.