Booky booky book book(s)

Lately my book reading has consisted of two categories: books I read for me, and books I read to prepare for teaching. This week it was The Group and Brave New World, respectively.

Mary McCarthy's The Group
A novel about a group of Vassar women? Sign me up. After reading The Group, I am officially a Mary McCarthy fan. This novel reads like an instruction manual for being a woman. It discusses everything from contraception, breastfeeding and family relations to marriage, abuse, lesbianism and the paradox of being highly educated and at the same time expected to fit a subservient role. Whew! And yet, it is also a well arcing story of a group of women who meander back and forth to each other while trying to forge their own way in the world. Not to mention the ending, oh the ending! Bittersweet indeed.

And now, for my favorite quote:

"She had discovered a sad little law: a man never called when you needed him but only when you didn't. If you really got absorbed in your ironing or in doing your bureau drawers, to the point where you did not want to be interrupted, that was the moment the phone decided to ring. You had to mean it: you had to forget about him honestly and enjoy your own society before it worked. You got what you wanted, in other words, as soon as you saw you could do without it, which meant, if Polly reasoned right, that you never got what you wanted."

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World
Well well well. In all my English class time I somehow have missed reading Brave New World. Last year I read 1984 for the first time. Apparently I put off reading dystopian literature. I decided to finally undergo Brave New World because at some point I will teach it and OMG there is s-e-x in it. The uncomfortableness created at the extensive talk of the genetic and chemical conditioning and accepted social strata thoroughly pleased me. It made me think, about how we are conditioned now...dun dun dunnn. Huxley surprised me in going the whole savage in a civilized world route with heavy religious overtones. And I must say, this week's reading is 2 for 2 on legit endings.

"The most efficient way of rendering the poor harmless is to teach them to want to imitate the rich."
Carlos Ruiz Zafon