I'm excited you've finished, nedlog.
I'm excited you've finished, nedlog. I kinda consumed the book and set it down; I intended to read it again to catch more of it but I haven't yet.
I'm really interested in learning how to better critique stuff I read. I feel like I have some opinions and notice some interesting things, but I always feel like I don't know what to look for while reading or why and how to critique something. I never learned literary criticism and so would love tips or resources on ways to think about critique.
I just finished Poisonwood Bible. I liked it a lot. Kingsolver seems to have done incredible research; she inhabits Leah and Adah particularly well--convincingly and nuanced--and writes the other sisters and mother effectively, if not quite as subtly. Rachel Price and Joyce Chalfen would have quite a time over drinks; one of the problems of writing white women who are fully invested in their white privilege may be that these white women in reality do not behave wholly in the world. It is hard to find their humanity and write it when they are by definition remote to themselves--they are specifically NOT human, not prone to living as real people in the world, their white female personas work so well that there is no reason to question the SUV, the matching living room furniture, the travel. The only piece of reality that might be possible in depicting white women is the accompanying alcoholism, psychotropic-ly-soothed anxiety, or children who gundown their peers in school. Just thinking.
originally posted by hcog