I spent yesterday afternoon reading the last couple hundred pages of Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Uhm, yeah. Excellent book. Rather, ah, emotionally draining, though, you might say. I spent much of last night looking at the TBR pile thinking that none of these books are really going to work for me right now. I mean, how do you follow that up?
The last three books I've read have been a real trip, on the whole. There was The End of Mr. Y which was fantastic and then there was The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson which, on the one hand I was slightly underwhelmed by for fairly lame reasons (generally speaking, most things classified as "horror" leave me feeling underwhelmed--even House of Leaves I was sort of "Eh" about the first time I read it), but then on the other hand the book had so much good stuff going on in it that the first hand complaint rings sort of false to my own ears, and then I followed that up with Half of a Yellow Sun and, well.
Well. It's times like this I wish I had some real underhand softballs on the TBR pile. A couple books I could just read without having to worry about whether the books might accidentally make me think or feel anything. Like as I was starting Sun I was thinking maybe I'd follow it up with some Orhan Pamuk or maybe I'd revive my Summer of Dostoevsky project next and now I'm thinking, yeah, worst idea ever, right now. No, what I really want is something comfortable and mindless, some good honest dumb pleasure. Books that won't care about my performance during my time with them. Or maybe something French. Because, well, with Camus and the gang, the lit might be challenging, but at least there's that existential cloud of non-existence hovering over everything. Eh! Bon soir! Have some wine, monsieur! The plague does not exist, but neither do you!
We'll see where I land.
6 comments:
Have you read Black Swan Green by David Mitchell? I read that after HoaYS.
Not yet. I had it out from the library for a long time and never got around to it. I do have his first two books here, which I'm sure I'll tackle someday. (Some part of me tells me I should do his "tight rope" books before his, uh, "normal" book.)
Isn't that odd. I bought End of Mr. Y only a couple of weeks ago, am inclined to start Open Curtain tomorrow and have the Adichie in my "Most Likely To Be Read" book pile. I should probably space 'em out...
My suggestions: Aimee Bender (intense but in short bursts); Raymond Chandler (fantastic, classic, but not intense); Joan Didion's essays (brilliant with language, but very nonfiction-grounded). BTW, I loved Mr. Y and Open Curtain. And on my to-be-finished pile? Against the Day.
Eh, yeah, I guess. I read Ghostwritten. That was good. I tried to read Cloud Atlas, but it wasn't the right time. My eyes kept falling off the page. It seems like his books are pretty disparate. I don't think one will distract you from the other.
Imani: If my experience is anything to go by, spacing them out might not be a bad idea!
Carolyn: Oddly, I didn't much care for the one Aimee Bender collection I read (Flammable Skirt, I think?). And oddly I was just the other day thinking of soon renewing my vow to read Pynchon's last three books this year by picking up Vineland, but, ah, maybe later.
Fusis: See, I loved Cloud Atlas. So it really baffles me that I haven't attacked his other stuff yet. (I think I did start BSG and was like "Uh, no, not right now" after two pages.)
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