Saturday, August 15, 2009

An Arsonist's Guide to Guide to Writers' Homes in New England

Now with a title like this your imagination can go to all sorts of places. But essentially this is the story of a family and a boy/man and his two families, the one in which he is the son and the other in which he is the husband and secondarily the father.

Nevertheless the author also explores our relationship with books and authors, both living and dead and how they affect those of us who read. Like several characters in the novel, several times this week I didn't enjoy a book because I was afraid I was becoming the character I was reading. It raises the interesting and personal question, do we read to escape, to identify, or something else, or all of the above?

3 comments:

Capcom said...

Interesting question. I suppose that it depends on what kind of genre one reads. Lately I hardly ever read fiction, but mostly historic, biographic, art, and reference books. So with the exception of the art and biography books that I utilize for inspiration, I guess that I'm just a dry, boring, seeker of facts, heheh. In the case of history, I mostly read that to see what I missed out on that happened before I was in the world.

BTW, are you the TLCer who read "The Lovely Bones"? I saw the preveiw for the movie recently and thought I remembered someone relating it to Lost in the comments last year.

memphish said...

No I haven't recommended or read The Lovely Bones. Sounds a little creepy.

Capcom said...

It's a book/movie about a girl who gets murdered, and her dead self can't rest while the killer is loose, and she seems to be giving her family clues about how to solve her murder. At least that's what I got out of the preview. There's a fantasy element in it as well, at least in the movie, where they show her on the "other side". Things start out well for her over there, but then go downhill. It looks pretty good if they do it well and it's not just another movie that looks great in the previews, but in total it's not. I'll probably go see it.