Books 11/30/04

I FINALLY finished The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. It only took me a month, but seeing as I wrote my own novel in that time, I think I can be excused. The letters themselves are compelling and extremely readable, some for the sweet affection enclosed, and others for the incredibly detailed descriptions of Persia and other spots. Virginia and Vita’s relationship was difficult to decipher from them, but I guess they knew what they were talking about, and weren’t planning on other people reading them to sort it out.

The only weakness I noticed was the misproportion of Vita letters to Virginia letters. This is explained in the introduction- apparently the original intent of the editors was to ONLY have Vita’s letters, an idea which I think is silly- if you’re going to have a collection of someone’s letters to one other person, why wouldn’t you include the responses? The point of letters is correspondance, and that includes replies. But anyway. They only included some of Virginia’s letters so that Vita’s would make sense, but in my opinion they didn’t include enough. They do include references to letters from the massive collection of Virginia Woolf’s letters, but I don’t have that collection, and even if I did, I’m lazy and want them all in order in front of me.

I just finished Stephen King’s On Writing, which was as good the second time as the first. I will definitly be taking his suggestions into my rewrite.

Current Total:110
Just Finished: On Writing by Stephen King
Next Up: Daddy Long-Legs and Dear Enemy by Jean Webster

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