A start to the reading year
Jan. 2nd, 2004 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousme(cross-posted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50bookchallenge)
Here I am, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and all enthusiastic about starting a whole new year of reading! Last year my annoying job (*pauses to spit derisively in direction of company*) prevented me from reading as much as I would've liked, but now that I no longer work there, I'm hoping to get a lot more reading done.
So far, I've got two books under my belt, and they were pretty good. Without further ado:
1- Girl, Interrupted (Susanna Kaysen); a very compelling read, although I'm ashamed to say I saw it after the movie and thus was "tainted" by the movie version of the characters. I was told to see the movie first because the book jumps around in time a lot, but when I read the book I didn't find the time jumps all that disorienting. Perhaps it's just a matter of perception. If you've seen the movie and plan on reading the book because of it, be prepared to find something completely different: the story in the movie has very little to do with the narrative in the book. However, I found the author's meditations on mental illness particularly vivid and compelling (I've already used that word once in this review, oops), and the wry, ironic tone of the book is laced with compassion and understanding of the subject that can only be obtained from the inside. The book itself is only about 150 pages, and reads very fluidly.
2- Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (William Styron); best known for Sophie's Choice and his Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron suffered from a severe depression shortly after the publication of his first book, Lie Down in Darkness in 1952, and very nearly committed suicide. He discovered to his astonishment that most people either don't know or don't talk about depression, let alone suicide, and one letter of his concerning depression to a newspaper sparked an outpouring of further letters. This is what prompted him to write his own story in book form, and it is a very particular, very moving account of one man's struggle against the darkness.
50bookchallenge)Here I am, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and all enthusiastic about starting a whole new year of reading! Last year my annoying job (*pauses to spit derisively in direction of company*) prevented me from reading as much as I would've liked, but now that I no longer work there, I'm hoping to get a lot more reading done.
So far, I've got two books under my belt, and they were pretty good. Without further ado:
1- Girl, Interrupted (Susanna Kaysen); a very compelling read, although I'm ashamed to say I saw it after the movie and thus was "tainted" by the movie version of the characters. I was told to see the movie first because the book jumps around in time a lot, but when I read the book I didn't find the time jumps all that disorienting. Perhaps it's just a matter of perception. If you've seen the movie and plan on reading the book because of it, be prepared to find something completely different: the story in the movie has very little to do with the narrative in the book. However, I found the author's meditations on mental illness particularly vivid and compelling (I've already used that word once in this review, oops), and the wry, ironic tone of the book is laced with compassion and understanding of the subject that can only be obtained from the inside. The book itself is only about 150 pages, and reads very fluidly.
2- Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (William Styron); best known for Sophie's Choice and his Confessions of Nat Turner, Styron suffered from a severe depression shortly after the publication of his first book, Lie Down in Darkness in 1952, and very nearly committed suicide. He discovered to his astonishment that most people either don't know or don't talk about depression, let alone suicide, and one letter of his concerning depression to a newspaper sparked an outpouring of further letters. This is what prompted him to write his own story in book form, and it is a very particular, very moving account of one man's struggle against the darkness.