Reading Report: Early April 2021

Posted on 04/05/2021 by chick
  • I finished The Constant Rabbit and gave it an A- grade. The high grade is based almost completely on Fforde’s cleverness. I admire cleverness. Still, I wish he’d given us an easier and happier story to go with it.
  • The next book I picked up was Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi. I ordered this book for Livia, but she turned it down. After reading a little bit of it myself, I couldn’t blame her. Nothing about it worked for me, not the writing style, the setting, the pacing, the characters, or the relationships between the characters. I took this as a sign that I wasn’t the right reader for the book and put it in the donation pile.
  • I have been pecking away at The Waste Land. People on social media are really keen right now on the juxtaposition of April (the current month) and the word “cruellest” (like the current circumstances), so over the last few weeks I’ve seen many references to the poem’s opening line, and I’m glad to be in the know. But, this poem is also one of the cruelest I’ve ever encountered in terms of playing fair with its audience. It’s every bit as hard to understand as I’d heard it was. Whatever else it may be trying to communicate, it’s seven (!) languages say something about showing off. It’s possible I’ll change my mind, but based on what I’ve read so far, plus a reread of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (included in the same book), I think that Eliot’s work represents both the best and the worst of what poetry has to offer. Some of it is so perfect that it will stop you in your tracks. And some of it, if you’ll pardon my French, is obfuscatory bullshit.
  • Two more books snuck their way onto my reading shelf: Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale and The Grace of Great Things: Creativity and Innovation by Robert Grudin. The Hale book is as light and frothy as the Grudin book is deep and challenging. I’m enjoying both of them so far.
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One Response to Reading Report: Early April 2021

  1. Pingback: How I Met My Book: Part III | Blue-Footed Musings

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