TO BUZFEED OR TO LIBRARY

At the beginning of 2014 I set out to accomplish various new year's resolutions. By the writing of this post, several had already been broken: Drink 100 oz of water each day, produce less than one grocery bag of garbage a week, meditate everyday, etc. etc. I have failed at these, but still try to abide by the spirit of the resolution.

There are two other resolutions that I haven't even started working on yet. One is to read ten Latin American novels and the other is to read all of Hemingway's novels. I was really excited about these two and being able to successfully accomplish them, but then something happened...BuzzFeed. All of sudden I found myself wanting to learn important things about myself, like what kind of food I am, or what dead person I am, or what kind of scientist I would make. Before I knew it, I was spending hours on these quizzes (which probably speaks to some narcissism on my part) and it was March.

So today, I decided to go grab my first novel and start to read it. The librarian was amused because I could not find my library card and I just asked for a Hemingway novel. She said "you know he wrote many" I said, yes, but I have a deadline to meet, so just give me the first one you find. Today I start reading For Whom The Bell Tolls and I am praying my heart out that I don't come across a BuzzFeed quiz.

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I CAN'T PASS JUDGMENT ANYMORE

I know all of my friends are loving the ease and convenience of carrying books around on a Kindle, or whatever the gadget of the day is, but this move to electronic reading is really affecting my ability to judge others, yes, you heard me right-judging others is now difficult. It used to be that I could sit on the train and just by watching book covers, and their respective readers, I would get an idea of what books I might like. Now, everyone has a kindle and I can't really derive reading recommendations without appearing to be a stalker. But worse than that, new friendships are severely affected. I used to be able to walk into someone's house and look at their bookcase and know whether I should run the other way-now, the non-visibility of books makes identifying incompatibility so much more difficult. For example, if someone were to walk into my house, this is what they might see: You would be correct in making quite a few assumptions about me based on this ...

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THE TYRANNY OF THE GOOD MAN: UNSOLICITED ADVICE TO YOUNG WOMEN ON CHOOSING A PARTNER

I have been hesitant to share this thought. In some ways it reveals my naivete about past relationships, fears I have of future ones and weakness in relationships all around, However, I have had so many similar conversations with women of all ages, that I thought I would just publicize the idea however underdeveloped, because there is a young woman out there making a life decision right now and may be making the same mistake women have been making for millenia. The idea first came when I told my aunt that I felt weird not being angry at my ex-husband. Everyone wanted me to hate him, but to me he was a "good man" and I couldn't hate him, to which she quickly replied that was the problem. I asked her to explain further. She said something to the effect of: "Look around, we are surrounded by bad men, now I know you love your uncles and cousins, but would you want to date any of them?" I briefly thought about it-the uncle who chased his wife with a machete for...

MODERN IFIGENIA

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