Reading some books

[lunabee34]

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


My rating has nothing to do with the quality or significance of the novel; I just find the treatment of women and children to be very upsetting, and that greatly impacted my enjoyment. I was assigned this book to read in a lit class as an undergraduate and haven't read it since. I remembered very little about it (and possibly would have avoided reading it if I had remembered it had so much child death and harm and spousal abuse in it).

Reading this right on the heels of The Spell of the Sensuous makes for an interesting experience. I see so many of the principles Abram mentions illustrated here (an oral, indigenous people whose language and way of life is deeply connected to a sense of place and the plant and animal life in that place, etc).

The novel seems to me to be about two things: the central narrative is about a man who is trying so hard to be a better man than his father was that he performs a kind of toxic hypermasculinity to overcompensate. The other men often find Okonkwo's behavior to be over-the-top, and yet Okonkwo has trouble finding outlets for his anger and his dissatisfaction with himself that aren't beating his wife and child (or killing his foster child because he's afraid of being thought weak for not doing so). Overlaid is another narrative about the destruction of indigenous culture by white colonizers with Okonkwo as exemplar.



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Watership Down by Richard Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I first read this book as a kid; I believe I read it once more as an adult (but at least 10 years ago), making this my third read.

I absolutely love the way the story of a band of rabbits attempting to find a new warren is interwoven with stories from their rabbit mythology. These stories are about El-ahrairah, the rabbit trickster god, and his many adventures and mischiefs.

My favorite part of the book is the very end when Hazel wakes to find El-ahrairah in his burrow; I won't spoil what happens for anyone who hasn't read, but that part brings tears to my eyes.

Highly recommended for most ages; I think the prose is a little too complicated to hold Fiona's attention for long at four, so I wouldn't recommend it for reading aloud to the pre-k set, but it's just as lovely a read at 38 as it was at 10--suspenseful, magical, and heartwarming.



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Today a student told me that she bought a pet bunny when she was a kid at a flea market and didn't expect it to live long. Life expectancy for that sort of bunny indoors is about four years. This bunny lived for TWELVE FREAKING YEARS, MY FRIENDS. I am firmly convinced he ended up in El-ahrairah's Owsla.

Comments

[the_rck]

I love that bit of Watership Down. It was perfect.

I also adore the moment when Woundwort has to accept the idea that Bigwig isn't head rabbit and makes entirely wrong assumptions about why.

[zulu]

Absolutely love Watership Down. Reread it every couple of years. I hope L will enjoy reading it with me some day!

[monanotlisa]

It may be time for my reread of Watership Down...

[china_shop]

I started my university education at an agricultural college (for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture), and I still remember having re-read Watership Down and then sitting down to dinner with someone who'd just been rabbit hunting. That was pretty traumatic. ;-P

[kore]

Watership Down is so great. One of my fave books, so my parents took Tiny Moi to see the movie! WHOOPS. I still love it tho, especially all the mythology and storytelling and rabbit lifestyle stuff, which is almost like pre-Le Guin. "Underground, the story continued." //SOB

[darlingdeathbird]

Ah, so you are a teacher! What do you teach, if you don't mind me asking? :)

[chelseagirl]

I've not read Things Fall Apart, and your review does not inspire me to do so. ;-) But I have my aunt's copy of Too Late the Phalarope, by the same author, which I need to read at some point.

I read and reread Watership Down in junior high/high school and remember loving it. M and I sat down and watched the movie a few years ago, which I'd never seen and which was quite lovely.