i read harriet the spy about a zillion times. did you read the sequel, the long secret?

too bad about e. nesbit — the enchanted castle was one of my favorites.

one of the major characters in the corrections {which i adored} is a lesbian, if that gives you any further incentive to read it.

just last night i looked at my unused copy of “beloved” and finally admitted that it was never gonna happen. it went into the free box. i read “sula” when i was traveling alone in europe for eight months and was desperate for anything i could find in english. {however, my desperation did not extend to henry james, who remains eternally unread by me despite accompanying me on a very long train ride through former yugoslavia. i stared out the window the entire time, utterly defeated.}

one of my friends, an african american woman and a librarian to boot, absolutely refuses to read the color purple because she is so tired of people telling her she has to read it. this has been going on since the early 80’s.

i still feel sort of guilty because i have passed the half century mark but have not read anna karennina or any charles dickens. nick hornby has pointed out that the world will still turn on its axis even if i don’t, but i’m afraid i’ll be found out.

like to see THEIR latest graphic novels

hmmm.

i’m looking forward to hunting it down… and seeing if it still holds true, or if there’s been a cultural shift…

… so we’re getting to the point we not only know all sorts of quirky things ’bout the beloved AB, but can infer her presence from contextual visual clues… damn.

this is such a strange medium, intimate and distant at once.

ladiesbane, i love your take on the outsider to mainstream exposure phenom. an attitude to aspire to. i think.

being a member of different ‘outsider’ groups, though, i’d say that sometimes, the more mockery experience, and resultant / resistant pride developed in the outside / borderlands, the more mainstream exposure comes as a shock to the system. sometimes i just don’t like it, or feel very protective of my ‘other’ world.

that’s not the case in this instance, though, or only minimally. since it’s been happening for awhile, maybe. and, in fact, there’s a kind of pride in the sharing of that brilliance. like telling the world, “See?!!”