Granted you've violated my sensibilities but i seem to be surrounded by peekers and cheaters! Though i tend not to read books that are overly sentimental puddles of goo and usually do not need to be wary of being tricked into a meltdown. I avoid pink covers and anything called chicklit also and cannot get too close to most of any Obookclub stuff due to forced popularity. For instance the audio book i just finished (totally need more by the way) had something like 5 or 6 deaths with varying degrees of skeletons, murder and old age but none really induced upset. Except for one, which just seemed unfair but it was just one thing among many. Thats the trick i think. You do have to know what you're in for or be willing to let the book take you where it wants and read as little about it as possible so that it can do just that. Part of the fun of reading is the surprise. I don't want to anticipate a word or sentence or plot twist. I want it to just be. You're robbing the author of what they're suppose to be good at. Leading you out into nothing and creating something wonderful. I cannot agree that its good in anyway to peek at the end of the book. It shows a profound lack of trust but then apparently with good reason it sounds like. So i don't know. I mean especially if one is looking at a romantic comedy and one of the main characters goes and dies on you. That sounds especially ridiculous and would only be valid if it was a cut to old age scenario. The end of SixFtUnder had me weeping- expressing a profound grief for aging, mortality and life and love and all the rest. I can't say I've found much else that upsetting except when Phil that crabfisherman dies. I was a mess. But in both scenarios I knew I was going into something with that express end. Certainly they weren't billed as anything other than what I got- though in both I thought much better delivered than I could've imagined. A letter writing campaign to the marketing dept of said book could be an outlet. I mean I would be enraged. well or eyetwitching. you know- something.
One of my favorite psalms- well its a standard really. Is Psalms 23. And there's a part where it says, "And yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..." It occurred to me recently that its not just in a specific moment of being in a valley or trial, but its everyday the Lord is with you... and everyday you may face the inevitable curse of man. It's the tragedy of life. But do we need to address it everyday? I don't know. Definitely not in romantic comedies where only pratfalls and silly but blissful encounters occur, with witty banter I hope and exotic travel. Though in avoiding it does it stigmatize it more- should we let ourselves be carried away to tears and sadness oncenawhile. Is it healthy to sidestep when catharsis might be better? Death DOES come for us all. Such meditations don't really cause me to relinquish my life or spend it regretting, or in a grey wearing daze filled with ennui- as the LORD is with me. Maybe addressing pain and the inevitable would be a better measure then suddenly and without warning? But just as a meditation, not as a morbid obsession or a shutting out of it but just a, ah, yes- i see that and in light of it, must walk in a different way-- those shining days of wonder and magic kind of ways...
Well anyway there's also just enough emotional investment in a day to not have it elsewhere, especially in what you're watching. I've been anti-dramas for a while now, just because I don't want to go there. I don't need to. But I let one sneak up on me everynow and then.
Allright, enough ruminating really. My lips are chapped. Its freezing in here. And its uppose to be 105+ in the valley today. Oh excessive heatwarnings shmornings. I've logged some eerchay leading videos, am 1/2 way thru james/peach, currently hungry and craving... a fruit smoothie. Appropriately. Have not dealt w/ the edd or juryduty summons yet and am about to do research on this watchmaker guy for the thing i'm doing now/farmtown/burndvds.
If i die after having sent the fed ex and before dinner i can't say it will make a good end to my story. But maybe, if spun correctly, as life had just been upon my lips, it will be better read.
m.
8 comments:
eyeroll
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sigh...
what do you read for an escape, then, my dear scholar friend? if you say PROUST i might die on the spot, and how that would be for ending. just think about that first.
also, where is your chapstick?
I have to TOTALLY (or at least mostly) agree with M here, Pen. I think we've had this discussion before, too. I do NOT condone looking ahead. M wrote it much more poetically, but I've always just been an order kind of gal. People that start from the back of the magazine - gah! I like the ride the story takes me on; no wonder you don't know if it's worth taking the time to read if you don't let the emotions and story lines ebb and flow and carry you along as they should. If you jump straight to the end, it feels silly to back up and fill in the space (just like seeing mention of the winners of a show before getting to watch the build up and drama of the finale for yourself! total buzzkill.) It's like ruining the connect the dots by shouting out what the final picture is to everyone before they'd had the chance to work through connecting 1to2to3. Similarly, I'm appalled you would ruin the ride for M by telling her this fact about the book you are reading together! ;) Enough berating, but clearly I do not like spoilers!!
As for the death issue. . I find that maybe I talk about it too freely - to my 4 year old daughter for example. I just explain things to her and then realize, hmm, perhaps a good parent would have candy coated that a little better. oops. Like telling her about the oil rig that exploded and killed 11 people. I could have just said, "fire" and maybe "hurt" but she asks me, "was anyone hurt?" and "how many" and. .
and today, talking about what a pound was for animals..I probably definitely cross the TMI boundaries, I'm sure.
Andria, I don't think you should sugar coat, but say no more than the question asked. I think it is best if children don't watch any tv news, but if they have heard / seen and have questions, answer them. I think that children who grow up afraid are those who don't get honest (age appropriate) answers to their questions and don't trust that they are being told the truth. I often start at the back of the magazine because it is so easy to hold the magazine rolled open wiht my left hand and flip the pages one by one. The best is often at the beginning of the mag and then I am saving the best for last. =)
Pen, I have seen M read a Murder She Wrote novel and a Mary Higgens Clark! (I know I was shocked by the latter) M, do tell us, what do you read for an escape?
I don't read those things either... The book I'm currently reading had a main character die in the middle of the book. It was quite shocking and sad as I genuinely liked him. But no peeking would have revealed this death to me. I generally don't peek. I like to figure it out for myself. : )
I have sooo much to say re: HSPs and their discerning, intuitive powers, how we can sense so very well what is to come that it's not about trusting or not trusting the author, it's that we sense every little nuance of what we're in for and have to decide whether we want to go there, really. AA is gonna back me up. :)
I don't think sugarcoating is so great, either. Dellaina's going to appreciate her honest mama, and I think you can sense her threshold for truth and your answers are intuitively tailored toward her sharp little mind.
That is so funny about reading magazines backward - me too! Especially EW. Always have.
mom is right, i am caught watching things like murder she wrote- nay, even reading them. i usually don't read as an escape though but if i did i would read fantasy/ occasional sci-fi, mystery/thriller- i think my tv addiction is more a means of escape and becomes completely that. we'll have to discuss pro-run in a minute. so that tv is so much more unweildy in getting brilliance that i usually more easily accept mediocre... or er, uh, just entertainment for entertainments sake... psych for instance... but yah if given time to let the addiction flourish i could be back reading all those good paperback page turners for sure.
I support you, Pen. :) I like to know what I'm committing to, perhaps.
I'm having a hard time remembering if or when I've been disappointed that I peeked. And I don't do it with every book. But if it's supposed to be a fluff read, you may as well figure out if you're along for the ride.
Here's to the HSPs! I can't read certain things and just let it go. Like Sophie's Choice (the mention of which will inevitably lead to a tangential discussion by Pen on how our professor exposed the crucial moment before we had all read it) left me so depressed and downcast and mean-spirited for days and it didn't even *really* happen.
When your sensibilities can be affected like that, you must take care with them. If one were, say, especially sensitive to the sun, wouldn't it be advisable to check the weather, take precautions with sunscreen, carry a parasol? We're not cheaters and peekers. We just need an emotional parasol.
And Pen, *some* of us had to be sage advisors and not conquering warriors, am I right?
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