Six months of working from home and I’m more than ready to
return to the workforce. No deadlines, no schedule, no structure make Buttercup
a very slow girl. The work ethic is there, just not the diligence when I could
be watching Adventure Time or reading books. Gobs and gobs of books.
And what have I been reading? The only legitimate book is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Began it in
November, and have steadily made progress so that I’m in the middle of the
story. Unlike the other books I’ve been reading (we’ll get to my silliness soon
enough), Tolstoy cannot be read in a single day…or night, as the case is more
likely to be. Like all Russian literature of that time, Anna Karenina is encumbered with too many points of view and
sprawling explanations of characters’ personal philosophies and the events that
change those philosophies. The character develops not by overcoming some heroic
flaw, but by showing a progression of social and religious beliefs. Raskolnikov
in Crime and Punishment “overcame”
his belief in Nietzsche's superman to Christianity’s Christ. Levin in AK has an evolving social-eco-political
understanding of muzhiks and how they
fit into his life as workers on his farm. As his understanding evolves and
changes, so do his actions rationally align themselves to reflect those
changes, and so we see the character develop as his relationship with the
Russians peasantry develops.
It makes for slow reading. A few things have lodged with me,
and eventually I might get around to exploring them in a blog. I have always
sympathized with Russian internalization. The characters are forever analyzing
themselves, their actions, and others. In that way, I feel very Russian.
However, this rational alignment of actions to beliefs I do not find to be true
in life. People just don’t behave in accordance to their personal philosophies most
of the time. But more of that in some future Russian post. (I know, what fun!)
So Anna Karenina is
my legitimate reading, but I’ve had quite a few illegitimate page turners as
well. Young Adult fantasy fiction. Shiver me timbers, is it addicting! I didn’t
always love YA. In fact, when I was a young adult myself, I read adult books
such as Murakami, George R. R. Martin, classics (of course!), C. S. Lewis, Neil
Gaiman, and loads of historical fiction about Queen Maud, Mary Queen of Scotts,
and other primarily United Kingdom-centric personalities. Now that I’m in my
middling twenties, I’m reading YA like a teenager. What’s that all about?
It began with Harry
Potter—that seemingly innocent series of J. K. Rowling that makes the magic
world seem so fantastically and ridiculously opulent and somehow plausible. It
took me a year to finish the series because I just couldn’t bring myself to
read of the death of beloved characters, but by then I had the YA bug. The next
book club I was in was Looking for Alaska
by John Green. Mister Green, I believe, has more to with my unnatural
obsession than any other author (even J. K., though she got the ball rolling).
Hello. My name is Buttercup Harding, and I am a female whose
favorite genre is male coming-of-age novels.
John Green is a master. Hilarious. Each character is quirky
but believable and identifiable and endearing to the nth degree. After reading Looking
for Alaska, An Abundance of
Katherines, and Will Grayson, Will
Grayson (not his best), he landed on my list of literary loves. His talent
totally deserves to be on my list, but the fact that I a) identify with high
school-aged male protagonists, and b) identify with the themes/messages of the
books worries me about myself.
For instance, An
Abundance of Katherines ends with three different epiphanies by the three
main characters: 1) I’m not a doer, 2) I’m self-centered, and 3) I want to
matter. All three of these I identify with, and that worries me that at
twenty-whatever I am still struggling with the same issues of high school students?
What book genres do you read and why? What’s the appeal? Do
you think that your late twenties is an appropriate time to be coming to terms
with such issues as selfishness and wanting to matter? What literary character
do you most identify with?
Wow, I was just thinking I wanted to read Anna Karenina before I see the movie (not thinking I'll be done in time to see it in theaters but maybe by the time it comes out on Netflix IP). But now you've made me not even want to try. Of course, I've never made it past 50 pages of Crime & Punishment either, so...
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I stick to a set genre when reading. I try to mix it up. I do seem to enjoy thrillers but have a hard time consistently finding good ones.
As for the things you're learning about yourself, I think you're at a perfectly natural age for introspection and self-examination. I think the teenage years contain less of that than the best literature would have us believe. After all, we are still not making too many of our own decisions at that age. And in our early twenties, we are SO absorbed in making our own decisions that we forget to think about others in the process.
I think mid- to late twenties is a natural age to begin pushing our thoughts out from self, as we sorta have the hang of this living-on-our-own thing, we have pretty much figured out what it takes to survive in this life, and we have not yet had all our dreams crushed by the cruel world. So we begin to wonder how we can use our unique talents, gifts, and positions in life to influence and help others. At least, that's been MY experience with my twenties.
But maybe you and I are just late bloomers.
-A
If you can't read C&P, then I'd leave AK alone. But it is much easier to read than Brothers Karamazov. Or get into, anyway. Less back story. I will give that to Tolstoy, he gets to the action faster than Dostoevsky, but, boy, do they like to linger on the internal man throughout the book.
DeleteI think any genre is tough to consistently read good books. Any author isn't consistently good. And of course reading within a genre in and of itself limits the number of books contained therein. Also, since becoming an editor, I'm way more pissy about authorial peccadilloes, and that can ruin an entire book for me because I just can't get past their dialogue tags or chapter endings or whatever.
Thanks, Audra. We late bloomers have to stick together. I think I agree on the whole slow to move beyond ourselves and toward how we fit in the larger world. As a teenager, every micro-decision was universe-shakingly important (college, major, boyfriend, friends, work, etc). Now, I'm much more worried about who I am than what I am...if that makes sense.
Well, you asked a lot of questions in this post, and I'm not sure which one to tackle first. I read Abundance of Katherines (if that was the one with all the math stuff and footnoes) and found it entertaining. I personally didn't enjoy Looking For Alaska all that much, but overall I liked John Green as an author. I'm currently working my way through George RR, as you know. Finally was able to dig into book 4, so that's going well.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily feel like I will ever get over the issues that plague high school/coming-of-age novels, but I guess maybe I will at some point. I wouldn't feel lame about liking those books, though, unless you're obsessed with Twilight, in which case I might be concerned.
The "coming of age" is getting started in later and later years these days. Thanks needed graduate degrees to stand out in the workforce and matter! That's why we're still "finding ourselves" at mid-twenty+ years old!
ReplyDeleteIn my case I'll be graduating with my grad degree in early 30's. Hope I'm not still finding myself at that age. There is something adventuresome about not knowing what comes next--it's the not knowing who I am that I grapple with!
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