5 - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Date completed: August 31, 2009

Places I read it: the theatre, the campus center

I had downloaded this precious story onto my iPod (for free!) awhile ago, and it's the first iPod book I completed! So that's cool. I really like that older books are available on iTunes for free...I guess their copyrights are expired or something? But basically all of the older classics are available. Although I will never make the switch from real books to electronic books, it was cool to dabble in electronics for awhile.

So The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a little gem! I was really impressed with it!

Ok. I started this post in August and it's now November, so obviously I won't have time to finish it anytime soon. So here is what I started. From what I remember, this was an insightful story that toyed with norms for both age and gender. Hopefully I'll get around to elaborating at some point.

Preliminary school year plans!

On the 30th of August, I'll be shipping out and heading back to school for my senior year. I don't want to turn this project into a rigid regimen or anything (which would probably take the fun out of it), but at the same time, I need some sort of structure in order to get myself out of this mess of unread books.

So after some quick deliberating, I came up with a tentative goal :

I'm going to read at least one book per week throughout the school year.

Since I start quivering in my boots at the thought of reading so much during a time overflowing with homework, I also added a few clauses (let's call them pansy clauses):

1. This rule does not apply to midterm week or finals week and/or the week preceding finals week.
2. It is okay to miss a week or two because things come up.
3. I am not to beat myself up if I miss a week.

Accomplishing this goal will require me to read about 17-20 books between now and December 31 (yay!), and I'm itching to choose which books to bring to school with me. I just have to make myself pick books I can actually read in about 7 hours, which is probably all I'll have per week! Thaaat should be interesting.

I'm having a hard time reading at the moment. I feel like an utter failure. The books I have left at Jon's are all either too long to read at the moment (the likes of Anna Karenina and Atlas Shrugged) or they require too much thought to be able to get through them quickly. Since today is my last day of work, and tomorrow is Jon's, we're about to start 10ish days of relaxing and fun and road trips, not to mention that his 21st birthday is Wednesday. Needless to say, I will not be having a lot of reading time until I get to school.

The book I really have been wanting to read is The Jane Austen Book Club, but when I bought it (for $1!) I wanted to wait to read it until I'd read all of Austen's novels. Well...after a summer of almost solely Austen, I'm pretty sick of her (don't shoot me!), so I'm saving her remaining novels until later. But I still want to read a fluffy, comfortable, feel-good book about her books! Maybe I'll just read it anyway. Who knows.

Also, Le Morte is being chipped away at. The Slaugherhouse and Emma posts will be updated. That is all.

4 - Slaughterhouse-Five

Date Completed: August 15, 2009

Places Read: the living room, Jonny's room

I was supposed to read this for class sophomore year. I read about half to 3/4 of it before I stopped. So last night I picked it up after dinner, read 180 pages, and read the remaining 30ish this morning when I got up. :)

There are SO many things I love about this book. I'll edit this post later with details, commentary, analysis, etc. I just wanted to mark down that I did finish it, in basically one night.

3 - Emma

Date completed: August 13, 2009

Places I read it: my perfect bench at BCCC, my room in Doylestown, all over the house in Doylestown, in the car on the way to Philadelphia

Jane Austen wrote Emma knowing that no one would really like her; however, I actually do like the character of Emma. She is sometimes very blind and naive, but she is always willing to self-reflect and is always ashamed by the more horrible things she does. I enjoyed watching her grow into a more experienced individual.

Her union with Mr. Knightley is one of those Austen couples that a lot of people seem to object to. I thought it was much more plausible than Marianne's marriage to Colonel Brandon in S&S though-- despite Emma's constant protestations that she wouldn't ever marry, I knew from the beginning that she'd end up with Knightley, merely because he is literally the only person in the novel who ever sees anything imperfect about Emma. He alone is willing to criticize her behaviors (to her face) and to see some sort of fault in her. Well, I mean, Mrs. Elton is often critical too, but her motivation is spite. Mr. Knightley makes Emma a better person, and I really grew to love him toward the end of the book.

I thought Emma's situation in life was really interesting, especially for an Austen novel. Normally, Austen writes about poor girls, often with siblings, who are desperately trying to get married. Emma doesn't need that; she's financially secure by herself. She makes declarations all throughout the novel about being unwilling to marry, and even believes that love cannot touch her. So this novel presented a really unique plot-- instead of the women whose main purpose is to marry, Emma is quite independent already.

The characters of Mrs. Elton and Harriet Smith really bothered me. Mrs. Elton is obviously written to be really annoying, and Harriet is only annoying because Emma made her that way. But she (H) is so impressionable! She denies a proposal from the man she loves merely because Emma believes him to be inferior! Yeah, she wants to impress Emma. Yeah, she's really happy that Emma is paying attention to her. I know she's supposed to be really simple and moldable. It just bugged me.

So this novel didn't really pull me in until I was about halfway through...it dragged at times...but the end redeemed itself for me, I guess. Infallible Emma becomes more human, succumbs to love, is more self-aware, and yet remains caring and happy. It all ends too perfectly, of course (what was with the chicken robberies on the last page?! I find it hard to believe that Mr. Woodhouse would suddenly change his mind about the marriage just because of that! I don't care how ornery and silly he is!), but what else is there to expect from an Austen novel? I just really liked her character constructions in this one. So, so good.

The curse of coupons

I have an email address that I give out to stores when I purchase things online; I also use it when I join a website or fill out a form for a store member card. It's a bit like an email address that generates purely junk. It has become the bane of my existence.

If one were to peer into the inbox for this email address at exactly this moment (43 unread messages), one would find the following:

MARIO BADESCU wants me to try new skin products!
GAP.COM wishes to inform me that 1969 Premium Jeans have been introduced!
BORDERS REWARDS has generously awarded me a 40% off coupon!
VICTORIA'S SECRET has just received a whole new shipment of sweaters!
AERIE bras are all 30% off, whoopee! (ahem)
URBAN OUTFITTERS really, really wants the honor of decorating my apartment!
JCREW has added new items to its final sale!
AMAZON.COM has --shocker-- new bestsellers in fiction!
OLD NAVY is offering deals for $5, $10, and $15!
AMERICAN EAGLE wants me to buy something ASAP so I can get $10 cash back!
BARNES AND NOBLE realized that my life would be incomplete without a 15% coupon (and that's ON TOP of my regular member discount)!

Are you getting the picture?

It's particularly difficult for a recovering book-buyingaholic to receive these emails from Borders, B&N, and Amazon without drooling a bit and beginning to froth at the mouth. 40% off?! How can I let it go to waste?? A month ago I would have been perusing the websites for bargain books that just "needed" to be included in my future library, regardless of whether I planned on actually reading these books anytime soon.

This is going to be a long, hard road, my friends.

Why, you ask, don't I just unsubscribe to all of these emails? Well, for starters, sometimes I really do want that Badescu Enzyme Cleansing Gel. Sometimes I am actually in need of a 30% off bra. In reference to unsubscribing to the book emails...I just can't do it. It's comforting to know that while I am shunning bookstores, they haven't forgotten me.

Luckily, I do get to put that 40% off Borders coupon to good use tomorrow. I've been waiting for such a coupon to appear, because I'm sorely in need of a GRE prep book, and am unwilling to purchase one full-price. I feel bad enough as it is buying the book, so I feel like I should at least purchase it for 60% of what it's worth. Textbooks don't even count toward my nonbookbuying vow, yet I still feel guilty. (Do you like all the new words I'm coming up with today?)

On another note, August 10th marked one month of me not buying books! I'm really happy with how I'm doing so far. Yeah, I caved and bought a book for my lunch break at News Channel 9, but I also returned it ASAP and mentally flogged myself, haha. I've only read 3 books in a month, but like I said...I've been really busy. There's suddenly a lot more to do when you're living with your boyfriend. :-)

I have about 30 pages left of Emma. I'm taking a lunch break today and will finish it then, so hopefully when I get back to work afterward I'll have time for another update. If not, count on one tomorrow (my day off)!

Still kicking

I have many excuses for why I have not yet finished Emma.

1. Trips to Vermont
2. Working daily
3. Using my spare time for other things, i.e. running/writing/washing the car/going to the movies/cooking
4. I've been knitting the ginormous and amazing baby blanket (beautiful basketweave squares of yellow, blue, and green)
5. I have a life
6. I don't often take lunch breaks at work anymore

I know this is disappointing! But I thought I'd update with a bit of what will be coming up after Austen.

Provided that nothing else occurs in the form of alien invasions, meteor strikes, hurricanes, nuclear war, etc, I'll be finishing Emma at my usual lightning speed. Then comes... TEXTBOOKS!!!

Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, there were exclamation points and capitalization involved. That's because these textbooks aren't just any boring old textbooks. Oh no. These are multiple versions of Malory's Le Morte Darthur!!!



I read a lot of the Norton Critical edition of Le Morte during my freshman year for a different class. However, this fall, I'm taking a class solely devoted to my beloved Sir Thomas Malory, and that involves new versions of Le Morte (Oxford and Signet) and a looooot of reading. The Oxford is written in Middle English (as in, nothing is spelled correctly or consistently and there are all sorts of weird phrases), while the Signet is in modern English. As soon as I get a notebook (to jot down family trees, character explanations--there are TOO MANY KNIGHTS to keep track of, and other thoughts as I read) and finish Emma, I'll be a scholar once again. I can't wait to dive back into Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Tristan and Iseult, Merlin, etc.

Once I go back to school, I'll be doing something I've been eagerly anticipating ALL summer-- rereading the Harry Potter series!!! I like reading easier things during the school year, since the books I read for class are usually pretty difficult. So while I couldn't justify a complete series rereading this summer, it'll be happening come September 7th.

And you'll be hearing from me again in a few days when I finish Emma.