Lit

I am fairly easy to please in general.  Even the cheesiest of jokes will have me crying tears of joy.  I've loved almost every movie I've seen and will eat just about anything with pleasure.  The same concept applies to books.  However, my patience was severely tested while reading A Passage To India by E.M. Forster over the past couple weeks.  I picked it up again and again but could not get into it.  Le sigh.  Written in 1924, A Passage To India is considered one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.  I just wasn't feeling it.  Reading shouldn't feel like 11th grade English class.  Listen up:  Don't rid yourself of pleasure by forcing yourself to read a few hundred pages of blah.  Maybe I'll return to it later but until then, I will be reading Lit, a memoir by Mary Karr.  Memoirs never disappoint.  In fact, when I knew that I had to abort A Passage To India, I speedily drove to Barnes and Nobles and raced straight to the Biography section.  I thumbed through book after book, searching for the most dysfunctional memoir I could find.  I thoroughly enjoy reading about people who have overcome incredible obstacles, troubling as they may be.  I've read about rape, foster care, divorce, alcoholism, murder, eating disorders, abortion, you name it.  Non-memoirs such as Requiem For A Dream get me too.  [I also read comedies and romance novels.  Calm down.]  What can I say?  I am intrigued by the relentless honesty of writers such as Augusten Burroughs, Alice Sebold, David Sedaris, and James Frey.  If only everyone could be that real, raw, and open.

xx,

E