Books Aplenty
So, apparently the "Introduction to Chinese Literature" course is canceled for next semester in Beijing. So... I'm not really sure what to do there besides fret (and I'm so very good of fretting). Probably talk to the Lit department and see if I can whip together an Independent Reading Course. I'm second guessing myself over the whole thing, because I'm me, but going to China had better be totally awesome, or I'm going to be disappointed at China, which means a boycott.
In happier news: The Holocaust. Err, that came out wrong. I finished The Book Thief on the Metro back from the Airport. Most enjoyable, in fact. A few tears, a few laughs, and a somewhat ambiguously happy(?) ending. Even better: I've officially decided, going against many of the things that I stand for, that I just don't care about The Flamenco Academy and I'm...
*sigh*.
You know what? I'm actually having a hard time saying this, because God knows I'm not someone who likes to cop to failure but: I give up. Sarah Bird, you win. I cannot get through another chapter of your terrible book, whose sins include random 90s references to remind us hey, it's the 90s, in a really fake way; remarking that a love triangle is clichéd, yet writing one anyway; creating a charecter who has no actual redeeming qualities (which precludes the possibility of me caring whether she redeems all her faults); an extended and awful straw-man attack on Christians in which a man for no apparent reason tells the two female main characters that a man should not lie with another man; and rampant anorexia/bulimia which I'm fairly certain was being celebrated, or at least approved of.
Probably the most intractable of grievances, though, is her "I'm-going-to-tell-you-what-she-meant-by-that-look, -even-though-you-know-what-it-meant, -because-its-the-most-clichéd-thing-it-could-possibly-mean" storytelling. I saw this in Maise Dobbs, sort of, and anticipating a situation like this, I'd tried to figure out why I didn't mind it overly in Jacqueline Winspear. You can read what I'd said then, but now, it's simpler: Bird doesn't actually give us any sort of emotional depth to then reveal to us. Instance: at a funeral for Rae's father, the pastor chides her mother for crying. "Didi popped her eyes at me to show how strange she thought it was to be told you're not supposed to be sad at a funeral."
Oh. Is that why she did it?
So, Sara? I'm throwing your book into the wall, and for once getting some catharsis out of my life.
Was Aaron Sorkin involved in a hostage crisis/siege at some point? Because we heard this song twice on The West Wing.