A cool thing would be to load the books into an old shopping trolley... No, maybe not.
Alison Flood of The Guardian, is, like myself, participating for the first time this year, but not without a qualm:
It doesn’t help that I’ve ended up with my second choice, Let the Right One In, rather than my first, I Capture the Castle. I would have been happy foisting Dodie Smith onto practically anybody – no one could possibly be offended by her charming story of growing up in a crumbling castle.
Alison envisages herself giving out John Ajvide Lindqvist’s “gruesome and disturbing” novel in a park with her daughter, which she feels might not be “quite appropriate for toddler-chasing mums.”
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From Wikipedia:
Ambrose Bierce’s book of dark definitions is witty, satirical, often bitter, and full of highly quotable aphorisms. It is of course vital to distinguish between angry satire and mocking wit. Bierce was passionate in taking up the cause of the less fortunate, both within and without recognised society. And he mercilessly pillories the oppressor. 
A tenuous reading connection, but my daughter was indeed reading and there were definitely rats. Like mother like daughter.
Despite having read very little Hemingway there was still some baggage to be dispelled first. Baggage pertaining to preconceptions regarding his writing style.
In approaching this book of essays on writing and writers it was my expectations that were at fault. Anticipating narrative theory, the actual content; an investigation of the drive to write and, to some extent, advice on how to facilitate that drive; was a little disappointing.
This Time it’s Serious
My Gravity’s Rainbow Companion has arrived today. It’s the literary equivalent of limbering up, filling me not so much with pleasure as dread. A further resource that was not available on the last attempt, Daryl is implementing a WTF? page, at Infinite Zombies, for those frequent moments of ‘huh?’ Yes, I remember those well.
Still, I think this might be considered the best of all possible beginnings. In a serendipitous moment of almost supernatural pertinence Weisenberger, in his Introduction, addresses (and perhaps exorcises) my personal GR spectre. It was “the gut-wrenching act of urolagnia and coprophagia” that wrenched my gut to such an extent that I was unable to pick the book up again without inducing a similar physical reaction each time. A phenomenon that, for entirely practical reasons, finally induced me to give up.
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February 15, 2012
Categories: 1001 Books You Must Read..., Commentary . Tags: gravity's rainbow, gravity's rainbow companion, steven c weisenburger, Thomas Pynchon . Author: Sarah . Comments: 10 Comments