Anne Sexton Complete Poems

 

It took me more than a year to get through this. I read it here and there. Anne Sexton was definitely one talented poet. The poetry in the beginning mostly focused on mental illness. There it was the most powerful. She dabbled in other topics like fairy tales which was just an ok attempt. Her confessional topics were the ones that struck me the most. This uneducated housewife rocked the poetry world in the twentieth century. It's proof that you don't have to be stuffy to be a successful poet. She was one of a kind.

Dangerous Liaisons

 I found out about this book through the fun but crappy movie Cruel Intentions. I probably should not admit that. I was surprised to find it was a book written through the correspondence of letters. That's not everyone's taste.For example I recommended Theodore Sturgeon's Some of your blood to my older sister only to have her tell me she refused to read a book of letters. But with Dangerous Liaisons it works. Marquise de Merteuil schemes to have a young teenager Cecile de Volanges deflowered by the dishonorable Vicotme de Valmont who used to be her lover. The girl is however in love with her tutor Danceny. Vicotme also wants to seduce the innocent married Madame de Tourvel. Eventually he gets both women but unexpectedly falls in love with de Tourvel. I hate to say it but the movie kind of runs out of steam by the end. Nevertheless it deserves to get the status of a classic. It's the only famous book by the author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos but then how many writers get a book that's remembered hundreds of years later.

The Harness Room

 

I really like the British novelist L.P. Hartley. This was his homosexual novel. It wasn't the first one to have a theme. My Sisters' Keeper had a gay character. It's a coming-of-age story about a chauffeur and his employer's son. The employer wants his sensitive son to man up, so he hires the chauffeur to teach him how to box. Eventually the two fall in love but the book ends in tragedy. This was a novella, so I finished it pretty quickly. It's not his best. I think The Go-Between is, but it was captivating. 

One-Eyed Cat

 

I remember reading this when I was a kid and liking it so I felt like revisiting the book. One-Eyed Cat is about a boy who lies about borrowing a gun and possibly accidentally shoots a cat. The cat hangs around an old man called Mr. Scully so the boy befriends him. The book mostly is about the boy's guilt over the possible kill and the adults that surround him in his life for example the stern housekeeper.  This is more like a character study than a children's book.  I recommend this because the character's real and sometimes in children's books I feel like writers condescend the adolescent experience. This one doesn't thankfully. Paula Fox also wrote a few books for adults which I'm curious about.

Still Life with Iris

 

This was an ok children's play by Steven Dietz. Apparently, there are two versions of Still Life with Iris. One is shorter. That's what the library told me, and I went with the two act edition. This play is dreamlike. It's about a girl who lives in a place where they make everything in the world by night. All of your memories are kept in a coat and the girl loses hers. She is adopted into a family without her memories present. Yet she is determined to get back home to her original family. I originally had read Becky's New Car and liked it. I was more impressed with that one.  It stayed with me longer but this one was all right. 

The Merry Wives of Windsor

 

This was a pretty effective Shakespearean comedy. It's about Falstaff who tries to seduce two married women sending them the same letter. But the joke is on him for the women scheme to bring about his downfall. It's interesting how even the minor Shakespeare plays are worth reading. I bought a complete works two years ago and I'm surprised by how many I've read. I need to be more adventurous and go about reading the works like this which aren't as famous as say Romeo and Juliet. 

Hadriana in all my dreams

 

Goodreads raved about this during their Halloween reads. This certainly sounds like it would be awesome. A Haitian book about a woman who becomes a zombie on her wedding, and it talks about Vodou as well. I thought it was ok. I just wasn't wowed by it. Maybe I came in expecting more than I should have. The love story just wasn't compelling enough for me. I also thought it was trying too hard to shock at parts.