Perhaps one of the best illustrations of just how poorly I read lately is to say that I have just ow finished the Fitzgerald, which went to France with me and was supposed to be finished for the book group I get emails for but do not attend in mid November.
Another sad commentary, and a good reason for this blog, is that I've read this novel before, in fact, I've read this particular book before, and there in the final pages are a few of my notes.
I don't remember it.
And having read it again, I can't really say it was something I managed to get a lot out of. Too much was too obscure. Too much required that one have sympathy for the independent rich. I don't.
The idea of suffering so much on the Riviera has always seemed to me absurd.
Perhaps I'll see what they did with it in a movie or read some crtical analysis to see what it is that I've missed.
I could not quite get Dick's inner struggles. They all seemed too melodramatic.
I did chuckle that the last bit of his life was spent in small towns of the finger lake area. It is these places that are presented as certainly the dullest places to live and work. So hard for me to get that as I think of them as certainly as delightful as the riviera, perhaps more so.
Well, I enjoyed the book, nonetheless. It did hold my attention. The young girl traveling with her mother hit home when we were on the Viking cruise because we met a young girl traveling with her mother. And there we were in France and having some of the kind of social interactions with people that are experienced on the Riviera. A Viking cruise is a bit like the Riviera for modern travelers indulging themselves with a bit of Europe.
Best is that I am done with the novel. I've finished one of the dozens of books that sit on shelves here and at home with book markers in them.
I intended to just toss this volume away in France, but it came home with me, and I guess I'll just keep it. The last page is not attached but folded in half and kept in the book almost as a bookmark. The cover is detached. The back cover is gone. The book is really functionally useless. But now that it has these personal struggles of these characters in it, I guess I'll keep it.
Another sad commentary, and a good reason for this blog, is that I've read this novel before, in fact, I've read this particular book before, and there in the final pages are a few of my notes.
I don't remember it.
And having read it again, I can't really say it was something I managed to get a lot out of. Too much was too obscure. Too much required that one have sympathy for the independent rich. I don't.
The idea of suffering so much on the Riviera has always seemed to me absurd.
Perhaps I'll see what they did with it in a movie or read some crtical analysis to see what it is that I've missed.
I could not quite get Dick's inner struggles. They all seemed too melodramatic.
I did chuckle that the last bit of his life was spent in small towns of the finger lake area. It is these places that are presented as certainly the dullest places to live and work. So hard for me to get that as I think of them as certainly as delightful as the riviera, perhaps more so.
Well, I enjoyed the book, nonetheless. It did hold my attention. The young girl traveling with her mother hit home when we were on the Viking cruise because we met a young girl traveling with her mother. And there we were in France and having some of the kind of social interactions with people that are experienced on the Riviera. A Viking cruise is a bit like the Riviera for modern travelers indulging themselves with a bit of Europe.
Best is that I am done with the novel. I've finished one of the dozens of books that sit on shelves here and at home with book markers in them.
I intended to just toss this volume away in France, but it came home with me, and I guess I'll just keep it. The last page is not attached but folded in half and kept in the book almost as a bookmark. The cover is detached. The back cover is gone. The book is really functionally useless. But now that it has these personal struggles of these characters in it, I guess I'll keep it.
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