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Just finished reading a Christmas present, "The Good Earth" by Pearl S. Buck.
Yes, it's a classic. Yes, it deals with issues common to people everywhere. Yes, it's well written.
But... I'm left with the same question I am always left with after reading a book like that [following one person through their lifetime or one family through the generations]: Why? Why should I care what this guy did? He farmed. He felt bad about the things he did, but he did them anyway so he'd look good. He got old and died.
And yet, I am unmoved. It was just "The Master Butcher's Singing Club" or whatever that book was called, all over again. Or that one book about the Southern family through the generations, that was ENTIRELY stream-of-consciousness [stream-of-consciousness writers should all be shot], whose title escapes me... wait, right, "The Sound and the Fury."
I don't know what it is that I want... maybe resolution, maybe something I can take away from it... I don't know. All I can say is that the best book I've read in the last three months was Stephen King's "On Writing." What does it mean? I don't know. But I know what I am going to do: go watch a movie and escape for a while. Wimbledon! Paul Bettany! Here I come!
Yes, it's a classic. Yes, it deals with issues common to people everywhere. Yes, it's well written.
But... I'm left with the same question I am always left with after reading a book like that [following one person through their lifetime or one family through the generations]: Why? Why should I care what this guy did? He farmed. He felt bad about the things he did, but he did them anyway so he'd look good. He got old and died.
And yet, I am unmoved. It was just "The Master Butcher's Singing Club" or whatever that book was called, all over again. Or that one book about the Southern family through the generations, that was ENTIRELY stream-of-consciousness [stream-of-consciousness writers should all be shot], whose title escapes me... wait, right, "The Sound and the Fury."
I don't know what it is that I want... maybe resolution, maybe something I can take away from it... I don't know. All I can say is that the best book I've read in the last three months was Stephen King's "On Writing." What does it mean? I don't know. But I know what I am going to do: go watch a movie and escape for a while. Wimbledon! Paul Bettany! Here I come!
