This room could be a hidden gem, I'm trying to uncover the grim and create a very pretty little guest room, perfect for a Utah-living sister who might come to visit me again. We'll see
In the meantime, I have two shelves that worked well in the room before so I'm repurposing for the pretty part. In my cleverness, I decided to pull out all my books by female authors.
Wow. When I was done, there were about six books left, all by Stephen King. Can you say "feminist tendencies?" I never realized how one-sided my collection has become.
I know I read male authors, but apparently I only keep the books by women writers. Very interesting. Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath, J.K. Rowling, Ann Rice, Diana Gabaldon, Alice Walker,... all excellent selections. I actually have an autographed copy of The Color Purple among my prized possessions.
I trashed that idea and went with a shelf dedicated to two of my favorites: Margaret Atwood and Anita Shreve. The Time Traveler's Wife was thrown in for good measure as it is one of my all-time favorites.
Speaking of Ms. Atwood, I made another less-tumultuous trip to my local romance-lover's library. I actually found a book by her that I'd never read before, The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus. It's a clever little retelling of the Odyssey from Penelope's point of view, which was adapted for the stage last summer.
Of course, through Margaret Atwood's eyes, the story is less about the magnanimous and heroic Odysseus, which is what makes it so clever and delicious.
I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischevieous as a pack of 10-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands.
"Which prayer shall we answer today?" they ask one another. "Let's cast dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we're at it, let's destory the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!"
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