Tuesday, January 08, 2013
Deja Vu
I'm reading "The Age of Innocence," which I'm really enjoying, but it's leaving me with a bit of a problem. You see, it all seems rather familiar and I'm starting to suspect that I've read it before. At first I thought that maybe just the overall tone and the characterizations were familiar because I read "The House of Mirth" a few years back, but now the plot points are vaguely ringing a bell as well. And no, it's not because I've seen the movie; I would remember if I'd watched Winona Ryder interpret Edith Wharton.
But anyway, I'm seriously questioning whether I should keep going. On the one hand, there are plenty of books I could read that I'm 100% sure I haven't read before, including two on my beside table. (Although one of those is Ulysses, which I have been avoiding for ages, largely because I don't think I can handle that much extra weight on the train.) And it's a pretty unnerving feeling. On the other hand, I am enjoying it, and I'm already about a sixth of the way through it. We're talking a couple more weeks of train reading max here.
The weirdest thing is that this has actually happened to me once before. With "A Passage to India" by E.M. Forster. I was halfway through that one before I realized. I'm not sure if I should feel really smart that I've already read so many books or really stupid that I can't even seem to keep track of them.
I'm reading "The Age of Innocence," which I'm really enjoying, but it's leaving me with a bit of a problem. You see, it all seems rather familiar and I'm starting to suspect that I've read it before. At first I thought that maybe just the overall tone and the characterizations were familiar because I read "The House of Mirth" a few years back, but now the plot points are vaguely ringing a bell as well. And no, it's not because I've seen the movie; I would remember if I'd watched Winona Ryder interpret Edith Wharton.
But anyway, I'm seriously questioning whether I should keep going. On the one hand, there are plenty of books I could read that I'm 100% sure I haven't read before, including two on my beside table. (Although one of those is Ulysses, which I have been avoiding for ages, largely because I don't think I can handle that much extra weight on the train.) And it's a pretty unnerving feeling. On the other hand, I am enjoying it, and I'm already about a sixth of the way through it. We're talking a couple more weeks of train reading max here.
The weirdest thing is that this has actually happened to me once before. With "A Passage to India" by E.M. Forster. I was halfway through that one before I realized. I'm not sure if I should feel really smart that I've already read so many books or really stupid that I can't even seem to keep track of them.
