take what's left of this heart

started reading one hundred says of solitude. haaaaaaated it. it jumped around in time, all of the characters names sounded the same in my head/the family tree diagram wasn't helping, and you constantly had to reread sentences and paragraphs to try to figure out what was going on. i'm an english major, i appreciate figuring stuff out, but not when you have to stop every other page to decipher. that just takes away from the book.

but nowww i'm on the poisonwood bible and it is fantastic. kind of toni morrison-esque. each chapter is from a different point of view. the daughter who everyone thinks is mute actually just chooses not to speak and is actually very worldly/articulate. easy to picture the scene, to the point where you feel the grittiness of the dirt under your feet.

when i was in middle school i remember sitting in english class and thinking about how the candy they unwrap in books must be some kind of special candy with really complicated wrappers. the way it was described in such detail made it not even seem real at that point. sometimes when i read back over some of my blonde in taiwan posts, i wish i had described things in better detail. but what can you do!