Disclaimers

It's time for disclaimers! I consider myself to be fairly well-read, but I wouldn't hold myself out as an expert in literature. I'm not a deconstructionist, and I often scoffed at my teachers and professors who forced us to spend months analyzing a novel, searching for symbolism and hidden meanings. (I've only read two books in recent memory that merit that level of scrutiny: one is on "The List," and the other is not.)

For me, at least, novels are meant to make us step outside of our lives and share the author's view of the world for a while; a truly great novel may make us question or examine our fundamental beliefs about the world around us, but if we try to strip it down, something is lost. I love reading a novel for the story, the characters, and (hopefully) the beautiful language. Relatedly, I'm a gluttonous reader; I devour books by the paragraph. I read quickly, but I often read a book two or three times back-to-back, because I'm disappointed that it's over and go back to the beginning hoping for more the second time.

Luckily, I've chosen a great partner in my quest; as a literature professor, Amy throws around words like "phenomenology" and is a true expert on deconstruction and scholarly appreciation of a work. She says she's not going to do that for our Novel Throw-Down, but I assure you, she's much more likely to do it than I am. My goal for this blog is to stick to an analysis of major themes, characters and plots, and the author's use of language. That's it. Now that you've been warned, in the next week or so I hope to start posting about the books I've already read.