Book Meme, Day 7* – Most underrated book

Day 7 – Most underrated book

Seconding awomanthatsblue's complaint about the superlatives. Jeez. Like, how do you even choose? I thought I'd be clever and try to find something on Goodreads that had a crazy low rating compared to what I gave it, but there are several of those, too. So I'm gonna take the same tack, and just go with an underrated book: The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood.

This may seem like an odd choice, given how ultra-famous Margaret Atwood is and all, but she's mostly famous for her later stuff, like A Handmaid's Tale or The Blind Assassin. Now, the latter also happens to be among my Favourite Books Ever (will it make another appearance in the meme? I haven't thought that far ahead! Stay tuned to find out!), but The Edible Woman was Atwood's first novel, and also happened to be the first of hers that I ever read. And it floored me.

It was written in the early/mid-'60s, some years before it was actually published (1969), and Atwood describes it in her preface as 'more pre-feminist than feminist', saying that she hadn't had so much of a feminist awakening yet when writing it, and noting that the main character's options in life remain very much the same at the end of the book as at the beginning: trapped in a dull loveless job or a dull loveless marriage.

In an odd sort of way, I feel like its more-proto-feminst-than-feminist qualities are the perfect mirror for reading it now. That is, it is rich with metaphor and all the tools and ingredients for feminist analysis laid out bare, but without having any actual analysis in it, because it doesn't quite know how -- which is kind of precisely the point I feel we're at with feminism today. Sure, it's recognized, but it's also stagnated. Things have gotten a lot better than they were, but we're told that now that we can dress like men and own property like men and have jobs like men and keep our names &c. &c. that we should be satisfied and please just be quiet already, MEN are talking, I think I heard the doorbell, ooh I think the baby's poopy, yes of course I'll help you with the housework, darling, we are a team...

There's not much you can say to people who claim to agree with you and then refuse to acknowledge how their actions belie their words.

( Upcoming Days )

*So, I guess I missed a day there -- and am right under the wire for missing a second. I wasn't even sure I had until I looked at the date on the last entry to get the list for this one, because that is how hectic my yesterday was. Really nice, but hectic. Anyway, nobody said these thirty days had to be consecutive! Right? Right?

Book Meme, Day 8* – Most overrated book

Day 8 – Most overrated book

I tried the same trick for this one as for the last: comparing my ratings to others' ratings on Goodreads. This time, though, there was a clear winner. The most overrated book is definitely Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein -- although I would extend this to all of his childrens' poetry collections; this one just happens to be the most famous of them. I wouldn't quite say I hate everything he's ever written, because I thought The Giving Tree was quite sweet, and I'm sure there must be a handful of poems somewhere in his many collections that I don't totally detest ... I've just yet to come across them. Shel Silverstein does awful things to children; he has ruined poetry for most of my generation, and I hear continues to ruin it for younger kids as well. But rather than raise my blood pressure further by talking about it, I'm just gonna copy+paste my Goodreads review:

Is there a way to give less than one star? I fucking HATED this book. I especially hated the way I was made to read it all through grade school; that I was taught that this is what 'poetry' is. It isn't poetry. This is easy, meaningless, chime-rhyming nonsense -- and not even nonsense with interesting language or ideas, like Lewis Carrol or (some of) Edward Lear. No, this is nursery rhymes but without the moral message. The wan, sugary pop-songs of poetry. Do not give this to your child.

( Upcoming Days )

*I see from looking back at my last entry that I actually ended up just over the wire, rather than just under it, so it was technically posted 'today'. Still, it was cognitively yesterday, and more importantly, who really cares?