Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?
Who's in love with Virginia Woolf?
This girl.
Who's admittedly read only "A Room of One's Own" & excerpts, interviews & the like?
Same chic.
But she is outstanding. She's a feminist, a strongly opinionated person & someone I put at the top of my "People who String Words Together in Remarkably Delightful Ways"list. I would list more quotes here, but instead I encourage you to read this book.
It's not truly a novel as much as it is an extended essay, and it's a book that I was happy to find tossed onto a pile of recycled books on the History Department basement when I worked there. The History Club was going to sell it for a quarter. I admit: I took it. Without paying. And I couldn't be happier. I read the book in three days, beginning on the Greyhound that Joe & I took to Chicago before coming to France for visiting a good friend & getting our visas.
I tend to underline, make notes & highlight in novels that I know I will read again. I found myself wanting to put brackets around every paragraph of this text, wanting to memorize it, wishing I could claim it as my own.
This is how Online Literature explains the extended essay:
Now regarded as a classic feminist work, Woolf based her extended essay A Room on lectures she had given at women’s colleges at Cambridge University. Using such female authors as Jane Austen and Emily and Charlotte Bronte, she examines women and their struggles as artists, their position in literary history and need for independence.I think about the Woolf quote & this entire text frequently, as I try to figure out how writing will fit into my life. I felt like I was on the right track when, during our trip to the Centre Pompidou (official site & pictures) I found a Woolf quote on the wall in the special women's art collection.
On a related reading/writing note, Joe & I stopped in at the American Library for the first time since I got my library card. I thought my heart would explode as I stood there trying to pick only two books to take home (& read before Jan. 12, on top of the four books I currently have started). I settled on "Middlemarch" & "A Natural History of the Senses" while talking to Ruth, the first librarian in the 1970s now turned volunteer. She invited us to her monthly lunch & to help wrap books for the collections on Tuesdays. Could be fun & a nice way to connect myself to the community here.
What books have you picked up for your holiday reading?
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