Reading

Day before yesterday I read 66 pages, and yesterday I read 29 pages, finishing off As I Lay Dying.  As I Lay Dying was a really good book, but I couldn't help but feel that Faulkner was more dense than he had any right to be.  As I Lay Dying could have been a fantastic short story with the proper character introduction and development, though it would lose a lot of the first person internal dialect and length.

I understand why people like it, I just don't really understand why people love it.  Though a lot of that could be that I'm reading it at 23 rather than in high school.

Spoiler alerts below...

I think that the latter 30-40 pages of the book were done really well, but that the rest of the book could have been written better.  As far as characters go, there was no introduction to any of them, and the first person differed per chapter, so it was difficult to get to know the characters very quickly.  Even if it was all from the same first person (as the last few chapters prove would be a mistake), it would have been easier to follow at the beginning.

Reading Faulkner is rewarding and good, but it does take a decent amount of work from the reader.  I think that's what I'm not as fond of.  It takes work on the part of the reader to actually read at the beginning, rather than to understand the implications of the plot/characters/ending like some of the other books I've read during this challenge (a la The Casual Vacancy, Brave New World).  Neither is difficult to read, but to understand takes a little bit of work.

Faulkner is more difficult to read.  I understood the book, and it really was great, I just feel that exposition could have been done in a much better way.


Finished Reading
The Star Wars Trilogy by George Lucas (720 pages)
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (503 pages)
Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery (272 pages)
The Traitor Queen by Trudi Canavan (509 pages)
Texas A&M: Traditions and Spirit by Carolyn Bible (80 pages)
Brave New World Aldous Huxley (259 pages)
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner (261 pages)

Currently Reading
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (528 pages)

To-Read
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell (1037 pages)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (190 pages)
Orientalism by Edward W. Said (395 pages)
Notes from the Underground, The Double and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (464 pages)
Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas (845 pages)
On Writing Well by William Knowlton Zinsser (336 pages)