“The Complete Stories,” Flannery O’Connor
I first heard about Flannery O’Connor while at university, but hadn’t read anything by her until now, motivated by the fact that I will have the chance to visit her childhood home in Savannah in the coming month. This tome is the first book to publish all of her short stories together, and gathered from reading the introduction that O’Connor’s work is considered “Southern gothic”. Without giving too much away, I would have to say that that is an extremely accurate description, as in the majority of her stories, the last line is the one which changes the story completely, and is the one in which a character often meets a tragic end.
“What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding,” Kristin Newman
After reading about this book in a travel group, I was so excited that I immediately ordered it from Spanish amazon (and paid more)! I love traveling and feel fulfilled when I go somewhere new, and I was hyped to read this book. However, after finishing it, I am beginning to think that travel memoirs maybe just aren’t for me…I loved Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild”, but this book just felt like a constant narration of her sexcapades, with little or no descriptions of where she went and what those places taught her. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for fucking around and having a good time (I’ve done it on many an occasion) but to write a book about it seems to trivialize travel and all that it stands for. Some of us–most of, I would say–work very hard for the trips we are able to take and reading this book filled with stories of a very privileged white lady with such a cavalier attitude towards experiences that other people value much more than her, was to say the least, frustrating. I guess from the title I was hoping for a more forward-thinking social narrative about the other options women have, and frequently take, besides marriage and having children, but this was just a different version of “Eat, Pray, Love”–which I also despised for it’s privilege and for it’s I-found-a-man-and-now-I’m-happy ending.