I've come to a turning point in my reading. For many years I have read to escape, reading mostly mysteries and thrillers, and avoiding the heavy literary works that bring on depression.
I had a breakthrough with "The Hours," Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel featuring Virginia Woolf, a 1940's housewife reading "Mrs. Dallowy" for emotional survival, and a modern "Clarissa Dalloway." It sounded like a landscape filled with too many depressives, but when I finally watched the movie I saw that it was above all about loving life.
I ventured to read the book, and went on to read Woolf's "Mrs. Dalloway." While I was on a roll, I read two more books I'd avoided: "The Kite Runner" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved." Loved 'em, loved 'em, loved 'em.
I feel liberated, free to read more deeply, no longer so afraid of triggering or exacerbating a depression.
Andrea, I liked this entry a lot. I just saw librarian Nancy Pearl last week and she talked about the "doorways" to reading - you were going through the Story doorway with your mysteries. Now you've entered the Language doorway with The Hours - and the Character doorway with The Kite Runner (which is also the Setting doorway). I feel that way, too. When I stumbled onto The Time Traveler's Wife (in science fiction - which I never read) I realized if you always skip genres, you're missing some great books. TTTW, however, is really through the Character doorway and a great love story to boot. The SF is minor - at least for me it was.
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