What I'm Loving Right Now...
My life has taken a turn for the ridiculous lately. To be more specific, it's not my life; it's the things going on around my life. Me, myself, and I, in an isolated bubble, we're doing fantastically (my mom recently said that this is a year we'd all like to have back and I realized that for me this has been a fantastic year with nothing but improvements). But around me things have gotten utterly absurd, in ways that are sometimes scary, sometimes cringeworthy, and sometimes ways that you just have to laugh to keep from crying--rarely are things just simply funny (though, thank Heavens when they are). And that's OK. That's life. I've realized that life is really just a series of absurd events and situations and that part of being an adult is finding a way to cope.
My way to cope is to try to make things lighter. Sometimes that is as simple as finding the positive spin for the situation and sometimes that's finding a joke by waving a magic wand and saying the magic words.
Crazy to say, but it's actually helped keep me sane.
I think that this is why I've gravitated so easily towards the idea of lightening up my reading, my writing, and my thinking about reading.
And I think that that's why I loved Judging a Book by Its Lover so much. I already talked a bit about the book and how it's helped changed my thinking about books by comparing book selection to dietary choices--and I must say that that is a PERFECT way of thinking about books--but it also changed the way I want to talk about books. Some books and authors just take themselves too seriously. And some readers clearly take books too seriously. Leto created a huge list of authors and succinctly summed up what your self-proclaimed favorite author it. Some of them are really funny, but also kind of true when you think about the literature the author created and the type of person who generally goes for that kind of book. Not to say that people don't defy classification--they totally do! Moving on...I also loved the chapter where Leto walks you quickly through how to pretend you've read certain authors. She gives a few facts about the author, brief summaries of their most famous 3-4 books, and talking points. For me, these summaries created some reading pathways for authors that I'm not super familiar with. Bottom line, this book was a blast.
I woke up this morning and realized that I wanted to reading something humorous, but that also had some heft to it, a nice satire. Several options went through my mind--The Code of the Woosters, David Sedaris, to name a couple--and then I hit on the perfect option:
The back cover described is as a "dark, hilarious, and brilliant satire." Perfect. It's not super long. I think it will be humorous, but I think it also has a point other than just being a good story (I am assuming that it has a good story).
So now I ask--do you have any other suggestions for books along these lines? Dark humor and intelligent--yay!
My way to cope is to try to make things lighter. Sometimes that is as simple as finding the positive spin for the situation and sometimes that's finding a joke by waving a magic wand and saying the magic words.
Crazy to say, but it's actually helped keep me sane.
I think that this is why I've gravitated so easily towards the idea of lightening up my reading, my writing, and my thinking about reading.
And I think that that's why I loved Judging a Book by Its Lover so much. I already talked a bit about the book and how it's helped changed my thinking about books by comparing book selection to dietary choices--and I must say that that is a PERFECT way of thinking about books--but it also changed the way I want to talk about books. Some books and authors just take themselves too seriously. And some readers clearly take books too seriously. Leto created a huge list of authors and succinctly summed up what your self-proclaimed favorite author it. Some of them are really funny, but also kind of true when you think about the literature the author created and the type of person who generally goes for that kind of book. Not to say that people don't defy classification--they totally do! Moving on...I also loved the chapter where Leto walks you quickly through how to pretend you've read certain authors. She gives a few facts about the author, brief summaries of their most famous 3-4 books, and talking points. For me, these summaries created some reading pathways for authors that I'm not super familiar with. Bottom line, this book was a blast.
I woke up this morning and realized that I wanted to reading something humorous, but that also had some heft to it, a nice satire. Several options went through my mind--The Code of the Woosters, David Sedaris, to name a couple--and then I hit on the perfect option:
The back cover described is as a "dark, hilarious, and brilliant satire." Perfect. It's not super long. I think it will be humorous, but I think it also has a point other than just being a good story (I am assuming that it has a good story).
So now I ask--do you have any other suggestions for books along these lines? Dark humor and intelligent--yay!
"it's not my life; it's the things going on around my life" - you have no idea how much I identify with this! This sums up my year. I've never been able to blog about it because I don't like blogging about other people, but yes, that is my year, which, I hate to say, will forever be defined by other people's actions.
ReplyDeleteHope all is improving! I love the Riddikulus idea! (Love that bit in the film, as well as the book!).