Admittedly, quarantine has me totally in my own head, and disparate from my academic responsibilities. I'm sure many can relate. I've been calling it "brain mush" because that's the only thing that captures it. Time is now just imaginary; everything is imaginary outside of my room. Are people not talking about it because we're still in collective shock or because we get it already and I'm just the last to adjust? Anyway....
Schoolwise, I've read Moby Dick by Herman Melville, as well as an English-professor-grade curation of Emily Dickinson poems. Moby Dick was actually really good and beautifully written, barring the slow plot and my ambivalence towards Melville.
I put in a fairly big order at Better World Books last week, since they had a sale/free shipping special and honestly, I've been long overdue for finding a way to keep my mind occupied. The novelty and panic have worn off to make room for boredom and restlessness.
Yesterday I read Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin in two sittings. It was published as part of Penguin's "Great Loves" series in the UK, so I had to adjust to the punctuation being a bit wonky. But it was really profound and sad and beautiful. Baldwin's writing isn't pretentious - he uses words twice in sentences sometimes - but the deeper meanings he conveys are immense, and I know I'm going to have to read it over again. He does a great job of depicting shame with raw honesty, and in a way I have never read before.
Last night I started Billie Holiday's autobiography (cowritten with William Dufty since she only went to school through the fifth grade), Lady Sings the Blues. She's a riot. It's not a literary gem, so to speak, and brings me back to our discussion of what gets published, but she was such a badass woman it's certainly an instance of the content being more important than the delivery. And yet! her personality is so infused in the retelling the delivery is something in itself. I love her music and there's something so special about hearing about an artist's life in their own words. I'm only on page 52 but that progress alone was made in a very sleepy state, so I'm sure I'll chug through it without much difficulty.
Next in my queue is Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, a translation by the author of another book I read and really enjoyed, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. He has a really cool way of bringing unexpected perspectives so eloquently to taboos and common occurrences alike that you can't tear yourself away from seeing how he's going to finish his thoughts. It's refreshing, if cynical at times, but then again I like cynicism more than walking in circles around banalities, especially if it's done tastefully. A breath of fresh air for someone who tends to dwell in heavy things.
More books are coming any day now! I don't even remember what else I ordered but I'm more than happy to be surprised. I hope everyone is staying safe and doing okay!
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