Skip to main content

You Go, Glen Coco

Awwwwww damn, look what today is:


LOOK AT HOW SAD SHE IS. WE CANNOT HAVE THAT. Not from the author of Ethan Frome. Good Lord I love that book. We have to RECOGNIZE.

OKAY. Thanks to Anne, occasional-commenter-but-not-a-book-blogger, I was made aware that today is Edith Wharton's 150th birthday. ONE-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY. A similar occasion will not come around again until we are all Very Very Old, so let us celebrate!


Do you have any favorite Wharton books? What are they? And if anyone flames her, so help me...IT IS HER BIRTHDAY. No mean comments today. NONE. I don't care if they made you read Ethan Frome in high school and thusly you hate it. We are looking for edifying experiences today.

Personally, my first book of hers was House of Mirth, which I liked but did not love until I re-read it in college. The first time I read it I was 14, it went completely over my head, and I just kept re-reading the parts where she and Selden kissed, because that was all I cared about at 14. When I read it in college, I wanted to squish Lily Bart and tell her everything was all right.

My experience with Ethan Frome was one of my favorite Book Reading experiences ever. I was 19, living in Chicago on my own while I took a year off college to do an internship, and I knew no one up here, so I just read a lot. And watched a lot of Futurama. I got Ethan Frome, stayed up until 2 a.m. reading it, and when the ending happened, I cried like nobody's business. Crying over a book at 2 a.m.? Excellent. The only other book that's made me do that is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. And no, it wasn't for Dumbledore. It was for Amelia Bones. AMELIAAAAAAA!

I'm glad she was born, and it's awesome that she can inspire that feeling 150 years after the day. EDITH WE LOVE YOU.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Harry Potter 2013 Readalong Signup Post of Amazingness and Jollity

Okay, people. Here it is. Where you sign up to read the entire Harry Potter series (or to reminisce fondly), starting January 2013, assuming we all survive the Mayan apocalypse. I don't think I'm even going to get to Tina and Bette's reunion on The L Word until after Christmas, so here's hopin'. You guys know how this works. Sign up if you want to. If you're new to the blog, know that we are mostly not going to take this seriously. And when we do take it seriously, it's going to be all Monty Python quotes when we disagree on something like the other person's opinion on Draco Malfoy. So be prepared for your parents being likened to hamsters. If you want to write lengthy, heartfelt essays, that is SWELL. But this is maybe not the readalong for you. It's gonna be more posts with this sort of thing: We're starting Sorceror's/Philosopher's Stone January 4th. Posts will be on Fridays. The first post will be some sort of hilar
1 comment
Read more

Minithon: The Mini Readathon, January 11th, 2020

The minithon is upon us once more! Minithons are for the lazy. Minithons are for the uncommitted. Minithons are for us. The minithon lasts 6 hours (10 AM to 4 PM CST), therefore making it a mini readathon, as opposed to the lovely Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon and 24in48, both of which you should participate in, but both of which are a longer commitment than this, the Busy Watching Netflix person's readathon. By 'read for six hours' what's really meant in the minithon is "read a little bit and eat a lot of snacks and post pictures of your books and your snacks, but mostly your snacks." We like to keep it a mini theme here, which mainly means justifying your books and your snacks to fit that theme. Does your book have children in it? Mini people! Does it have a dog! Mini wolf! Does it have pencils? Mini versions of graphite mines! or however you get graphite, I don't really know. I just picture toiling miners. The point is, justify it or don't
3 comments
Read more

How to Build a Girl Introductory Post, which is full of wonderful things you probably want to read

Acclaimed (in England mostly) lady Caitlin Moran has a novel coming out. A NOVEL. Where before she has primarily stuck to essays. Curious as we obviously were about this, I and a group of bloggers are having a READALONG of said novel, probably rife with spoilers (maybe they don't really matter for this book, though, so you should totally still read my posts). This is all hosted/cared for/lovingly nursed to health by Emily at As the Crowe Flies (and Reads) because she has a lovely fancy job at an actual bookshop ( Odyssey Books , where you can in fact pre-order this book and then feel delightful about yourself for helping an independent store). Emily and I have negotiated the wonders of Sri Lankan cuisine and wandered the Javits Center together. Would that I could drink with her more often than I have. I feel like we could get to this point, Emily INTRODUCTION-wise (I might've tipped back a little something this evening, thus the constant asides), I am Alice. I enjoy
Post a Comment
Read more