The Yellow Wallpaper, A Recent Obsession

http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html

This is my favorite short story of all time. You must read it. Now.

-Hannah

review in a flash: the awakening

For only being 150 pages, this one was really tough to get through. Edna is having the emotional, spiritual, philosophical 'what-does-it-all-really-mean' journey at age 28 that I think more women today have in their teens or twenties, so it was a little difficult to relate to the fact that she is going through that after getting married and having two kids. And yes, I understand that times were different, but I just didn't connect with the character so much, that's all. She became very emotionally flighty, and Chopin as author created a leading lady whom I couldn't decide if I felt sorry for or hated. I have to admit that the ending shocked me a little bit, but in retrospect it was the most honest way to conclude Edna's coming of age. Bird and flight imagery have been really interesting to me lately, so I'll end with an appropriate passage from the book. Edna is describing a visit she had with an elderly, eccentric lady friend.

"Well, for instance, when I left her to-day, she put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades, to see if my wings were strong, she said. 'The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.'"

The End of the Affair.

I like to keep my book reports short and sweet so soak up each word. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene was truly an inspiring book. Greene is considered a "catholic writer", though he preferred to be known as a writer who happened to be Catholic, so his books are saturated with religious themes. Our tragic lovers are Sarah Miles and the man she is having an affair with Maurice Bendrix. The book is written from Maurice's perspective and begins two years after the affair has ended. The book often trails back to episodes of when the two lovers were together in an attempt to show us what the relationship was built upon. I think the most important thing that a person can take from this book is the idea of loyalty and trust, and how we are never fully honest with ourselves enough to bring that honesty into something as intimate and fragile as a lovers relationship. So, I highly recommend this book to you ladies and world, it is a beautiful portrayal of heartbreak and self-deprecation that will have you aware and depressed for days.

I'll leave you with a quote from the book that I think relates to us well. This is an account of how Maurice felt when he first met Sarah.

"I had no idea whatever of falling in love with her. For one thing, she was beautiful, and beautiful women, especially if they are intelligent also, stir some deep feeling of inferiority in me. I don't know whether psychologists have yet named the Cophetua complex, but I have always found it hard to feel sexual desire without some sense of superiority, mental or physical."

So to answers Hannah's question the other day about why were all single, I think that's why. :)

Love, Ellen Review

I just finished Love, Ellen by Betty DeGeneres a few minutes ago and thought I would review it while it's still very fresh on the brain.

Betty is the mother of Ellen DeGeneres, comedic badass who also happens to be one of America's most iconic lesbians. Betty DeGeneres wrote Love, Ellen about Ellen coming out to her when she was twenty. She describes their journey together of acceptance and also gives a lot of backstory of Ellen's life. This was great for me to read because I am an enormous Ellen fan.

She also includes stories of her work as the spokesperson of the Human Rights Campaign's National Coming Out Project. Some of the stories give hope for the future of homosexuals of this country finding equality and acceptance in our society. Some of the stories break your heart. All are worthwhile.

However, along the way you get a lot of writing aimed toward family and friends having trouble accepting a gay loved one. There's also a lot of support for people struggling with their sexuality or coming out. As I am "hopelessly heterosexual" (as Betty puts it) and have been completely supportive of gay friends since before I could speak, I don't really fit in either of these categories. This book is clearly aimed toward a particular audience. At times, her writing can get a little preachy. In my case, she's preaching to the choir, so although it was a little more than she needed to convince me, I wonder if it would hurt her if someone more closed-minded than I were reading it. I worry that in the first chapter alone, a mom struggling with her son or daughter's coming out would set it down due to Betty's forwardness with her views.

Although I am not Betty's intended audience, I enjoyed the book overall. I probably would have been fine skipping the first and last chapters that were particularly aimed toward her percieved readers, but they were enlightening all the same.

Keep reading, friends!
Susie

review in a flash: always looking up, the adventures of an incurable optimist

Here's my quick review of Michael J. Fox's second book. (A second memoir? What do others think about the concept--pretentious or not? Why not wait or keep a running manuscript and save the paper of multiple books?) Michael J. Fox has had an impressive life, even before his Parkinson's diagnosis. He didn't go to college, and his family life wasn't exactly ideal, but he's turned out okay. The book is divided into sections on Family, Faith, Work, and Politics. Of course, the unspecified section on Parkinson's is interwoven throughout the book. Having had a grandparent with Parkinson's, his descriptions of his illness and his coping mechanisms were probably my favorite part. I also love when people love and appreciate their children, and Fox writes with great tenderness and openness about his four kids. As a writer, he is a tad self-indulgent and verbose; I just wish when non-writers write, that they would not try to sound like professional writers. However, all in all, it's a great (and quick) casual read.

Welcome!

So the first rule of the club is, "Don't talk about book club."

But for this blog, we're throwing that out the window. This is the one place where you can read about the super-secret happenings of our book club. There, I said it.

Now, our book club isn't like most book clubs in two ways. Firstly, we aren't middle aged soccer moms that read smut novels. We're awesome college aged girls that read a huge variety of books on just about any topic from Economics to Serial Killer Psychology to Victorian novels to ok, the occasional smut novel. Secondly, we don't all agree on one book to read at the same pace. We all read whatever books we want at whatever speed we want, and then once a week we get together to discuss what we're reading, how we feel about it, and whether or not others should read it too.

But we realized that we shouldn't keep all of this information to ourselves. Having a secret book club is awesome and all, but there are lots of other intelligent, awesome people out there that would like to hear what we have to say about the books we read, right? ...Right?

Anyway, I would like to introduce you to the club. In alphabetical order, we have:

Meagan Abner

Currently reading: Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist by Michael J. Fox

Susie Dumond

Currently reading: Love, Ellen by Betty Degeneres

Hannah Eakin

Currently reading: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook by Bruce Perry

Geneva Galloway

Currently reading: The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

Molly Keith

Currently reading: The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Sinovia Mayfield

Currently reading: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Libby Nye

Currently reading: The Once and Future King by T. H. White

Shannon Plumlee

Currently reading: The Magicians by Lev Grossman

So there you have it: The eight coolest girls you will ever know. Many updates will follow with book reviews and other goings-on of the book club.

Love,

The Sexy Librarians