A bad case of "I'm gonna have to let you go..."

It's official that I've abandoned Revolutionary Road. I tried long and hard, but I just couldn't get through it. I couldn't get through a second round of misery, with more details, no less. I finally decided to pull out the fancy bookmark where I had left it a week before and placed it in another book.

Though I feel awful that in this blog's infancy I've already managed to abandon two books, sometimes you have to abandon the book that's stalling your reading list's progress. There's just no other way around it sometimes.

I mentioned in one of my posts that I had read D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and found it to be wonderful. As a result I decided to read another one of his books, and I settled on Women in Love.

I've already made it through two chapters of Women in Love, and although it starts off a little awkward by just diving into a scene between Gudrun and Ursula, the two heroines of the novel, I am really enjoying it. I especially can't wait for the story to develop further so that the sisters begin their relationships with the two men we've already been introduced to through Gudrun's and Ursula's eyes. It seems that there will be dramatic, romantic events that only Lawrence can create with raw beauty.

It's amazing to me how a man could write what and how a woman feels as well as Lawrence. Maybe it was just luck on Lawrence's part, or maybe it was knowledge that was passed down to him, or maybe he's just one of those people who understand what other people are feeling, whether he has walked a mile in their shoes or not; whatever is behind this enviable artistic ability, I feel that there is in me a little bit of every woman that Lawrence describes in his novels. It's almost eerie, but definitely refreshing.

On another note, and in honor of Read Across America day I wanted to spread the word that I am very much into keeping a virtual bookshelf to share my reading activity with anyone who's interested. So far, I've found two services to do this through. One is weRead, and although I've kept it for over a year now, and it's where you will find the most up-to-date information and reviews for a huge chunk of the books I've read throughout my life, I only know how to access it through Facebook. The other virtual bookshelf I keep is through goodreads.com, which I downloaded as an app for my iPod Touch.

I just started using goodreads the other day, so it's a little sparse at the moment, but I am going to try to at least copy and paste my reviews from weRead when I have time, so that both bookshelves are up-to-date. You can find me at Goodreads under the username Reemawi, in the meantime.

I guess that's it for now. Until next time...

A task

Still trudging through Revolutionary Road. What's taking so long isn't so much that it's a bad book, on the contrary. It's a very well-written book with very vivid characters and a very subtle, yet powerful conflict at the center of their lives.

The problem that's keeping me reading at a very slow pace, I think, is the fact that my imagination is not being worked at all. I mentioned before that I actually saw the movie before I read the book. This is something I try to avoid, seeing as how I had a bad experience with that when I read Interview with the Vampire after seeing the movie, and found that I was so blinded by images of Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Antonio Banderas that I missed a lot of major differences as obvious as hair color and age. It was ridiculous.

Ever since my experience with IWTV, I pretty much made it a point to try to read the book before I venture into the land of movies. Every once in a while I break that rule. One instance where I broke that rule was very interesting, because I saw the movie, loved it, then read the book and hated it... even though the author of it is one of my absolute favorites. By the way, skip The Painted Veil in bound form and believe that Walter Fane is, indeed, none other than Edward Norton and that Kitty Fane is none other than Naomi Watts.

So, with Revolutionary Road, the thing that is making it a task to read at a reasonable pace is the very thing that makes the movie adaptation so excellent and Oscar-worthy-- it's too damn close, near identical to what you see in the movie!

All I see Frank Wheeler being is Leonardo DiCaprio. All I see April Wheeler being is Kate Winslet. I can hear those actors' voices shouting at each other during dramatic scenes. I can see Leonardo DiCaprio's vulnerable face so clearly, it's like I'm running a movie reel in my head, and the same with Kate Winslet's mature, troubled face. It's like I'm reading the screenplay, and that bores me.

I feel like I'm being robbed of my ability to escape and use my imagination by casting anyone I feel like casting into each of those roles, even if they're not actors to begin with. I like this freedom that a book offers, as opposed to a movie.

Back to reading...

Revolutionary Road, 150 pages in, and I already have something to say...

As you can see, I am still in the process of reading Revolutionary Road, but I do want to talk about it a bit.

At 150 pages in, the book has proven to me what a great movie adaptation Hollywood produced. I watched the movie first, which is something I try not to do very often, and it is clear that the movie follows the book almost to the T, only leaving out ignorable or insignificant details.

Most of the dialogue I remember from the movie is word-for-word in the book, and I feel that the actors chosen for each part match the descriptions I am reading now, save for the character of Frank Wheeler, played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie. The only problem with Frank being played by Leo, and it is an insignificant one, is that Frank is described as having black hair, while Leo is clearly not of this coloring. Other than that, I'm happy with both forms of this deep story.

There is one thing April Wheeler says in the book, and I can't remember whether it was in the movie or not, but I really liked it. She says: "... certainly it's not going to be easy. Do you know anything worth doing that is?"

What a great quote! Liking the book, a lot and will write more about it later.