These have been my life this last week as I raced to find the perfect ideas and quotations to work into my capstone thesis work for my 400-level English class, Terrific Liars (about unreliable narrators, very interesting!). It was a 20-page beast of a paper, and I'm so proud of what I managed! However, this week was nuts and after reading hundred of pages of criticism, I wasn't exactly feeling up to reading when I got home from a flurry of goodbyes and packing and unpacking. BUSY BUSY BUSY! But I have a whole long list of books to read and a few to get back to that had to be interrupted (Hello, Wicked and A Handmaid's Tale!).
UPDATE: I actually managed to get in a little bit of reading for FUN this week!! :D
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua
So I was at the used bookstore today, and I saw this sitting on a shelf. I have to admit, the cover of it is quite beautiful and eye-catching. It was only $7 and for a used copy, it was in really great condition. I've been interested in reading this one for a while now, because I've heard so much about it and the author. For any who don't know, Amy Chua has been accused of many things, and basically she totes a kind of screaming yet affectionate yet focused parental method and puts down the gentle individual-based method that she describes many Americans and Western families as having. I'm not too far and yet, but there has already been a moment that caught me off guard, and made me kind of cringe and cool towards her. She described early on a moment with her 3 year old daughter who refuses to play a simple tune on the piano. Amy decides a pro priate course of action is to put her three-year-old outside into a snowstorm until she will apologize promise to play what her mother wants. The three year old is stubborn, and refuses, staying outside and slowly freezing. It's a really uncomfortable moment for me, because I can't imagine ever being able to validate doing that to a child. Or anyone, really. So after reading that, I kind of knew what sort of person I would be reading about, and adjusted my expectations accordingly. We'll see how this goes. I am intrigued.
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