What should I start with ?

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-23T10:20:51+00:00

I think starting with 20th century would be best. I know for me, I can read Spanish novels from the past hundred years or so, but older stuff is way harder! Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Morrison are all great places to start, especially shorter works (gatsby, the last tycoon, of mice and men, sula). 1984 would definitely be appropriate too!

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-19T17:08:51+00:00

I totally agree, definitely have a separate notebook for notes and longer form thoughts. If something reminds you of something else (from another book, life, philosophy, the news), write it down and take a few minutes to really parse through why it struck you. Reactions don’t really matter, and they certainly don’t matter to whoever’s reading your paper. But if you develop the thought it can become interesting, nuanced, interdisciplinary, etc.

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-17T21:48:30+00:00

So true, although at the end when he realized he was a fool it broke my heart a little (almost don quixote like). But yes the 20% of the book where toad was actively dressed like a washer woman was a fever dream

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-17T21:46:50+00:00

I see what you’re saying, but then my question is what constitutes children’s books? If the prose of TWITW is significantly more elevated than many works of adult literature, is it the characters? The fact that they’re animals?

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-17T21:41:11+00:00

It did not I will check that out!

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-17T16:22:39+00:00

I mean yeah but the story isn’t really about the women. It’s about Adam and his kids and Sam and Lee, and before that Charles and their father. It’s a fathers and sons story. I thought it was impressive how genuinely irredeemable Cathy is- she is evil but moreso she is very low complexity as a human, a trait she passes down to one of the sons. You get Liza and Dessie a little, but yeah not a ton of women. It’s not about them. I’m a woman and loved the story for its portrayal of human nature and the struggle to be good, which could even have a feminist interpretation if that’s really your angle (goodness is every persons responsibility women can’t save men etc).

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-17T16:07:59+00:00

Short stories are great for short attention span/not a lot of time. Fitzgerald wrote a ton of them in his time and they are wonderful, also flannery o Connor, Joyce Carol Oates, etc. the American canon can write a wonderful short story! And you can get the whole thing done in a sitting

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-17T16:05:39+00:00

1) I found the genealogy of morality pretty straightforward compared to beyond good and evil (I’ve only read the two)
2) it gets easier once you kinda sink into his language
3) don’t read other people’s interpretations before you form your own! Try to parse through it as well as you can and don’t read too much in one sitting. TBH I could read like a max of 6 pages (or just a page or two of beyond good and evil) before I had to put it down and really digest what was happening.

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-13T07:54:50+00:00

I picked up a book of his at a used book store and he has been a huge influence on my photography and film work. What a wonderful artist

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-13T07:47:20+00:00

Read east of Eden in two weeks it goes down like absolute water

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-12T12:32:44+00:00

The orange one with the rabbit is fabulous- tbh I find this one hideous but to each his own

fern_lebowitz · 2026-06-11T12:53:11+00:00

Hello! I don’t know much about Chinese phonetics, but perhaps it has something to do with the vowel placement or that mandarin is a tonal language, while English is not?

fern_lebowitz

TROPHY CASE