Books Left: 94
Current Book: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

I’m behind again. This time it’s not because I left Wide Sargasso Sea in a plane heading to Michigan. This time I left it on a car heading to Michigan, and I was not in the car. Luckily, my parents own the car and were able to mail me back the book. I have it. I’m reading it. I don’t really have much to say about it right now. I’m still conflicted. I feel like it’s pushing a bit towards, “Rochester’s not the victim here, Bertha/Antionette is.” However, given what’s in the book itself, not just what I’ve read from Jane Eyre, I don’t completely see her as being victimized. I think that “who is the victim?” is the wrong question. I hope to have more on this once I actually finish the book.

In the meantime, I’ve gathered some interesting and hopefully amusing links over the past week:

The Brainstormer – A fun little do-dad that provides you with a plot archtype, a genre/time period, and a setting for stories, poems, pictures, comics–any creative outlet, really. It’s a lot of fun! Here are 5 random scenarios from the brainstormer (some of them make more sense than others):
“Letting Go” on a stuffy British pier.
“Rescuing a Loved One” on Al Capone’s oasis.
“Daring Enterprise” in an Eskimo hospital.
“Miracle” on a nuclear tree.
“Slaying of a Loved One” on a hippie expedition.

The Sketchbook Project – I’m hoping the brianstormer might help me with the sketchbook  project, which I recently signed up for. You sign up, get a sketchbook, fill it up by January, and then it goes on a “tour” of a few different US cities. You also get to pick a topic: mine is “…you’d be home by now.” So far I only have a few pages filled, but I’m hoping to share a few creations when I have more.

Will Independent Bookstores be the Last Bookstores Standing – This is a fascinating article about how bookstores are fairing against Amazon. While I love Amazon, it’s not quite the same as shopping in an actual physical bookstore, and I was sad when one of my local Borders closed (although quite happy about the sale, if you remember). I love independent bookstores, too. My favorite is Kramerbooks in DC.

Personal Library Kit – I need this. I’ve been loaning out books for years. I love sharing favorites with friends, and while I’ve always managed to get my books back without a fuss (I have good friends) it might be nice to make things a little more official.

Books Left: 94
Current Book: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

This entry contains spoilers for the novel Jane Eyre.

Here’s the thing about Wide Sargasso Sea. I read it for school, for this odd class called “Fiction” in which our professor had us read four sets of two novels: one older novel, and one more recent work. Each pair related to each other in some way. One of the pairs was Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea.

I didn’t want to like Wide Sargasso Sea because I loved Jane Eyre and I knew what Wide Sargasso Sea was about before reading it. I wanted to believe that Rochester was truly tricked into marrying some certifiably crazy lady. When I read Wide Sargasso Sea I had to make myself believe that Antoinette was in no way actually the same person as the woman in the attic. I read it as though the two books were just coincidentally similar. I refused to let Jean Rhys’s more-politically-correct-than-thou post-colonial attitude destroy my enjoyment of the 19th century classic.

Approaching this book for the second time, I realized I didn’t remember anything about it except that the existence of it bothered me. It’s place in the literary canon bothered me, because it was based on something else and it’s not like all those Pride and Prejudice “sequels” are going to be taught in school anytime soon. I didn’t want to read it again. I just wanted to write it off the top 100 list and be done with it.

I’m reading it again, and I’ve discovered two things:

1. Antoinette/Bertha really is kind of crazy. She’s kind of hard to relate to in the book because the parts that are written from her perspective are very muddled. This could also be because she’s young, but I like to think that when I was her age I had a clearer head than that.
2. This book is incredibly well written.