Hello fellow readers, it's Christine! I felt it was time for a blog contribution, and wanted to say thank you for all coming over on Monday night. It truly made me feel incredible to have good friends, old and new, over to the apartment to share some wonderful times and intelligent discussion. I only wish Jenna could have been there of course!
An interesting point to share: I worked today at the American Choral Directors Association convention in Minneapolis (at the booth for St. Olaf) and chatted quite a bit with some other Oles (Jocelyn Hagen and Tim Takach, who run Graphite Publishing and had a booth right next to ours). Somehow our book club came up (...okay, so I brag about it to people, sue me...) and I mentioned the books we've read so far. Tim got really animated when I said we read House of Leaves, and apparently he's read it twice! He said he heard somewhere that there's actually some kind of code to those long, seemingly-random lists in the book. He didn't know what it was for sure, but for example, on the pages with smaller boxes of words - some forwards, some backwards - there's actually some meaning to it! But what? I have no idea...
Well, until next time then, into the world of James Joyce. I, too, had a little trouble getting started with it, largely because of the grammar (or lack thereof). I just get bothered by the absence of quotation marks/periods/etc. Also, the character detail is very limited. Anyone else have thoughts so far?
~Christine
Agreed -- hard to get into. But I am still enjoying trying to figure out his character. It is kind of like a puzzle... you have to read in a different way. It helps if I try and picture it like a movie where I can picture what is actually going on around his perception of things. Honestly, I really forgot it started out this way, so it must open up as you get into it, otherwise I can't imagine any high schooler enjoying it (and if memory serves me correctly, this was one of the class favorites).
ReplyDeleteCarolyn
I LOVE that you brag about book club too, Christine! And thanks to you both for your thoughts on the forward- let's stay connected as we read!
ReplyDeleteHappy reading. -Marit