"This town's unforgiving, they cannot keep secrets
They see his hand on my waist like a brand
But there's a bar in Bucks Country where they don't know his name
And a cowboy who might understand."

Love Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek

Oh dear. From all the Annie Dillard (and I had to try SO hard not to type Dullard) love around here, I guess this is the wrong place to say that after having to read that book for school, not only did I want to hunt her down, gut her, skin her, and leave her carcass for the animals, but would have liked to have gone back in time to do the same to Thoreau for giving her the idea in the first place?

Oh well, the guac is a lovely shade of green.

Your opinion is as valid as anyone else's, Frank, and you express it with humor and politeness, so no guac. Unless you're hungry, that is.

I just finished The Life of Pi. I thought it was interesting, but I'm still sort of puzzling over what I thought of the ending.

Hil, I read Life of Pi last Fall and am still mulling over the ending. Both scenarios seem plausible but I find that I really want to believe the tiger story; however, the part about the toxic island is what puts that story into question for me. The other, more mundane story is much less satisfying to me, but seems more believeable.

Granted, I don't think it's a very good high school book (or it certainly wasn't for me). I get what the teacher was trying to do by pairing it with Walden, but it just struck me as so twee and smug (and hippy dippy).

And yet, still liked it better than ETHAN FROME.

I liked having my wisdom teeth pulled better than Ethan Frome.

I liked back surgery more than Ethan Frome.

Megan, that's it exactly. I want to believe the tiger story. And I'm thinking maybe that was the point.

I liked breaking a bone in my hand better than Ethan Frome. In fact, the only experiences in my life that I liked less than Ethan Frome were a ruptured ovarian cyst, moving and chemotherapy.

So the question is, why do all the schools make us read it??

Also, I want to have a talk with the first person who put Bartleby the Scrivener into the curriculum.

I'm currently reading Hard Times, and sometimes I forget in Dickens's customary frothiness and overdone-ness that he can sometimes luck himself into great hushed pointful prose. The introduction would have me believe that because Hard Times is so short, it's got a lot more of said pointful prose; unfortunately so far this means there are also no characters I particularly like. Maybe Louisa Bounderby, except she desperately needs to murder her husband (or run away with some factory worker) and I don't think Dickens will allow her a happy ending if she does.

Then again, book called Hard Times.