My Lost City: Personal Essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Well, this book certainly took me long enough to finish. It wasn't boring, dense, or difficult; it just needed to be taken slowly, for me at least.

This book offered a nicely wide range of varieties of essays from dear Fitzgerald. Some were hilarious, some were a little more musing, but all of them gave the sense that Fitzgerald didn't take himself too seriously. That's really a great quality in a writer, in my opinion. So many of the great writers seemed to believe that, since they had great success, they now know All There Is To Know About Writing And Life. Fitzgerald definitely didn't come across that way; he made fun of himself in several essays. "How to Live on $36,000 a Year" was a funny one.

There were a few essays that I considered snooze-worthy, but in most cases it was just because I knew very little about the subject of the essay ("Princeton" is a prime example). There were a few interesting essays about his time period and his generation, which was also what Fitzgerald was so great at portraying in his fiction, but the ones that I loved the most were about himself.

Fitzgerald has such a great sarcasm, which is a quality I always love in a writer. I wish I could own this book, so that I could read an essay here and there, rather than trying to read through it like a novel (it was definitely a similar experience to what I had with his On Writing). But alas, it's a library book and I didn't have much other choice.

One little detail I loved about the book was that it had pictures of the original typewritten manuscripts, complete with Fitzgerald's handwritten edits, in the back of the book. I love how ruthless he was with his own writing, cutting out whole paragraphs, making edits to at least every other sentence. It's definitely something I'm still learning with my own writing.

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

In the past, this play has not been my favorite Shakespeare. In fact, barring Titus Andronicus, it may very well have been my least favorite Shakespeare play.

But this time, I was enthralled from the beginning. It's been a few years since I'd read it, so I didn't remember all the details of Portia's caskets and, as my professor put it, the "marriage lottery." It was so much fun to read. Portia's conversations with Nerissa were delightful. And I thoroughly enjoyed the development of Shylock's character and his relationship to Antonio. Not only did I love trying to figure out if Shylock was a villain, I enjoyed trying to dissect Antonio as well. Is he really as good as everyone else makes him out to be?

And then there was Shylock's daughter, Jessica. Why did she run off with Lorenzo? Was it right of her to steal from her father? Does Shylock care more about the loss of his daughter, or his ducats? Or is it less of an "either/or" situation than the other characters perceive it to be.

Of course, this was all delightfully fascinating. And then we come to the court scene.

Has the first half of the year been worth it?!

I've been reviewing the books I've read so far this year recently, and I saw this meme over at She Is Too Fond of Books (meme was created elsewhere, but I was unable to find the specific meme) and I thought I'd give it a shot, just for fun. 

Number of Books Read: 25 (seems like hardly any, but it's right on track with my goal to read 50 books this year, so I'm going to try to stop comparing myself to all the other incredible bloggers and consider myself accomplished.) 


Number of Books Bought: I've bought 8 of my own free will, plus others that I was compelled to buy for my classes that I don't care to add up at this moment. :) 

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

I've been familiar with this play for quite some time, and to be honest, it's kind of hard to muster up something to say about it. (That's really quite shocking when it comes to Shakespeare, I know...)

As always, Shakespeare is a master of comedy, and this play is no exception. I really enjoyed reading it again, since I haven't actually sat down to read it (rather than watch it on screen or stage) in at least a few years. This time, I found myself more interested in the relationship between Oberon and Titania. It always bothered me that Oberon got the boy (the changeling) in the end, and that Titania appeared to care so very little about the fact that he made her fall in love with an ass. (Pardon my language.) It seemed to me, if I were in a fight with my husband over something and he responded by mocking me in the cruelest possible way, I would be a lot MORE angry at him, not less. And yet, I find it funny...is there something wrong with me?

A lot of aspects of the play are really, if you think about them, not funny at all. Helena has so little self-confidence that she begs Demetrius to treat her like a dog. Hermia seems to be a little better, but the second she runs off with Lysander, all he wants is to get it on whether they're married or not, and she has a hard time keeping him off her. Demetrius is a fickle pig (did you know he was actually in love with Helena before chasing after Hermia? I never noticed that little detail before). Hermia and her father, Egeus, don't have a particularly good father-daughter relationship. Most of the characters have big problems, but Shakespeare manages to brush them off. And we actually go along with it.

I don't really know what to think about it. I guess this reading has raised a lot more questions for me than I've ever thought about in the past.

The next play we're reading is The Merchant of Venice, and I'm going to be honest: This is one of my least favorite of the Shakespeare plays I've read/seen. Why? I don't know. Most people love it (well, most people who love Shakespeare, that is). Maybe I just have a hard time getting around the whole anti-Semitic thing the entire play revolves around. Hah. I need some help getting motivated to read it--have you read it? What do you like about it?

Library Books Readathon Wrap-up

Well, this readathon has been fun. I approached it in a very relaxed way, because I was also starting a new term, but it did help me get reading done that I've wanted to do.

Books finished:
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
On Writing by F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare

Books read (but not finished):
My Lost City: Personal Essays by F. Scott Fitzgerald

It's been fun!

Readathon Update and F. Scott Fitzgerald's On Writing

The Library Books Readathon has been going great so far!

I made some good headway on Friday, then on Saturday morning I finished The Happiness Project. I spent the rest of the day generally avoiding the Fitzgerald books, since prior to that I had only been reading snippets at a time, and after The Happiness Project (a very quick and easy read), I wasn't sure I could handle that much wit, sarcasm, and irony all in one sitting.

But on Sunday, I finally got into them. I'm still working on the book of essays, but I easily finished On Writing, a slim little volume of collected quotes. Some were taken from essays I'd already read, so I had an opportunity to see them in and out of context.

On Writing, to be honest, was not quite as delightful as I expected it to be, and I think it's because Fitzgerald is just better in context. When I read the quotes as part of the essays, they were much funnier and more sarcastic; when taken apart, it seems like Fitzgerald is more serious than maybe he would have wanted to be. But then again, this is really a book I should have just kept by my bedside for a while, to pick up and read a few quotes every night; instead, I read it straight through like a novel. (Since it was a library book, I didn't have much other choice.) But there were some gems in it.

I'm still working on Fitzgerald's essays and I've made good progress, but I'm not sure I'll be able to finish them this week, since I also have a ton of school reading to do. I've been reading sonnets for my Shakespeare class, and I need to finish A Midsummer Night's Dream by Friday. Yikes! But thankfully I already know that play pretty well, so it shouldn't be too hard.

Top Ten Books Read in 2013

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

So far in 2013, I've read a whopping...24 books!! ...Okay, that's not very many, but may I add that I've also read at least 200 pages of anthologized, tiny-print short stories, poetry, and non-fiction for school? Not to mention I've been spending a lot of time on various other school reading. That should add at least five books worth of material. 

Anyway, here are my top ten out of those 24, from least favorite to most favorite (does that count as redundant?): 

10. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto. This was a very interesting and refreshing non-fiction book looking at nutrition in a basic, fundamental way. 

9. The Paris Wife. This was such an interesting take on Ernest Hemingway's first wife. 

8. Great Expectations. I'm glad I finally read another Dickens! It was a good, thought-provoking classic.