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I read my first classic novel in many years, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemmingway. I liked it. It was well written. I'm not sure what to take away from it.

I haven't read a classic since I began writing myself, and it was interesting to measure up a "classic" against my own expectations. I expected it to be detail rich, and to have some very quotable lines. It was those things.

I was also expecting it to teach me something entirely new. I was expecting it to reveal something entirely new. I love expecting that, I love it when something, anything, a movie, a youtube clip, an article, actually lives up to the hype and makes me think something different. I want to do things in life that change me.

This book certainly made me feel things. I feel the exasperation, I feel the disappointment and the anger that the book intends to leave me with. But I'm not sure that it changed me.

Which is the hardest thing for me in reading this book. I want to be able to answer the question: What did I learn? I don't know if I can.

I like to believe that this book was very edgy and fresh when it came out, and it's simply been done many times since.

Any ideas for what I should read next?

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