The Bell Jar

So, while I've been reading and enjoying immensely The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova, I found myself at my parents' house over the weekend without it. So, I picked up my copy of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. (Yes, I have unread books at my parents' house, too. Not all of them are on the list . . . )

This book wasn't really what I expected. I knew it was about someone who worked at a magazine and who went crazy, but I thought she worked at the magazine longer and that her career had more to do with her craziness than it actually did. Instead, Esther Greenwood is in a month-long program at a Manhattan fashion magazine the summer before her senior year of college. My friend recommended this book to me when I started talking about working in New York publishing, but really Esther is only in New York for about the first third of the book.

Then, she goes crazy. Being Sylvia Plath, there are some interesting feminist comments, but it's mostly a description of her descent into crazy. An autobiographical description, according to the note at the back of my copy. I did enjoy . . . well, enjoy isn't the right word . . . I did think the book was well-written and compelling, but it wasn't as amazing as I thought it would be considering what a classic it is. Still, I'm glad I read it.

Spooner

Well, I gave up on Spooner by Peter Dexter. I got 95 pages in and just couldn't bring myself to try to get to 100. It's not that it was bad . . . the writing was good and the setting and characters were well-conceived . . . I just couldn't get into it. It wasn't something that I looked forward to picking up, so I decided life was too short to force it!

Instead, I picked up The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. It grabbed me from the first few pages! I'm still only about 100 pages in . . . I don't know what's been keeping me so busy lately . . . but I look forward to posting about this one soon!

The Girl in Hyacinth Blue

The third and final book I read on vacation was The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. It was an ideal plane book in the sense that it was small and light weight . . . but on a 13 hour flight, it didn't have a high enough page count!! Even with a few hours of sleep and a couple of movies, it just barely lasted long enough!

The book wasn't what I expected. I thought it would be one continuous story about the creation of a Vermeer painting. Instead, it was short stories about various owners of the painting, touching on several historical periods. It was captivating enough, but didn't live up to the hype that surrounded it when it came out.

Since I've been back, I've been trying to get into Peter Dexter's Spooner, but it's not grabbing me. I give it 50 more pages before I decide if I want to ditch it. And in the meantime, there's been so much Tivo to catch up on! (Hey, I'm not that much of a book worm!)