I learned another of my limitations recently.
Ages ago, I signed up for Sycorax Pine’s Unread Authors Reading Challenge. The idea was to read six authors we’ve never read before, but had always meant to. The goal was to read and post about the books by the end of February.
I came up with a list and decided, among other things, to tackle John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, a seventeenth century Jacobean drama.
I had always been curious about it because it is quoted in mystery novels by both PD James and Agatha Christie. I knew it was a little difficult, but, I thought to myself, I am perfectly capable of reading Jacobean drama while caring for three small children.
Uh-huh. It’s okay. I’ll wait till you’re done laughing.
It turns out that trying to comprehend Jacobean drama in the short intervals between the demands of three children under five is impossible. No one could do it. I don’t care how much Oprah you-can-do-anything-you-set-your-mind-to ideology you have swallowed. Not possible.
So the Duchess of Malfi went back to the library, and I learned a more realistic appreciation of my ability to focus on a book.
I still won’t read chick lit.
I have two words for you- short stories.
I agree about chick lit. If the cover includes pictures of shoes or shopping bags - not reading it.
I tried to read War and Peace a few months ago. Ha! Ha ha! Yeah. That didn’t happen.
Yeah, I think this is why my ridiculous plan of reading all the Penguin Classics fell through. And two of my three children are well over five.
I think I remember that Agatha Christie, though. Is it the one where the woman buys what turns out to be the home she’d lived in as a small child?
Recently I decided I needed to read “Les Liaisons Dangereux”. I didn’t realize that it was epistolic. And boring. Same with “Fountainhead”.
Just to reward myself for even trying, I bought “Beach Music” and “The Great Santini” by Pat Conroy.
I refuse to read most Chick Lit as well.
Interesting what you said about Oprah. Not so many fans of hers out there as the media leads you to believe. Or maybe just that there are actually people who aren’t big fans, despite her raging popularity.
I was in the middle of a trilogy of books set in the baroque period with four interweaving story lines on 4 continents when my daughter was born. Still not done.
I did, however, recently complete the entire Sherlock Holmes collection because I could read an entire mystery in the time it takes her to nurse and fall asleep.
The book where Christie used “The Duchess of Malfi” is “Sleeping Murder”(the last Miss Marple)…”mine eyes dazzle me, she died young!”
…in case anyone was wondering!
I’m working my way through Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan), and I already had to return it to and re-request it from the library once, because the renewal limit was up. It’s not a “read it while the kids are running around the house screaming” kind of read–and it’s probably not even much of a challenge compared to your Jacobean drama.
But I agree, chick lit is NOT the answer.
Oh come on, books about shoes and shopping, solving a murder over a martini, what’s not to love?
Unless of course you are interested in plot and meaning and maybe a theme or two.
Not to mention that pregnancy sucks most of our brain cells out. When I was pregnant all I could read was science fiction/fantasy.
I have no idea what my excuse is now.
What about Jacobean chick lit?
I think the Mitford series probably qualifies as chick lit. I loved it. But I avoid the sassy girl-club-mcsassy-pants books like the plague. I got enough of that genre in Jr. High to last me a lifetime.
Have you read anything by David Liss? For some reason I think you might like him. And he’s not Jacobean.
I was going to try to read some of the classics that I hadn’t gotten to in college when Miss Pink was a toddler. I tried to read Plato’s dialogues while pushing her in a swing in the back yard. I don’t remember anything about them (and I don’t know why I wanted to read them, either, now that I think about it).
And that was when I only had one child!
Don’t let “The Duchess” get you down; my experience with Jacobean drama is that it is (to say the least) considerably more entertaining on stage than on page. Meanwhile, my life also got in the way of completing (or really making any progress at all in) this challenge in a BIG way, which is why I am hoping to hold it again in the second half of 2008. So I am filled with empathy!
So that explains why I can’t get through Paradise Lost?
I once enrolled in a class called “Shakespeare and the Jacobean Drama.” It somehow seemed like a good idea at the time. Don’t ask me why.