Hell week....

Have you ever had a week that ended so far from where it started? Nothing went the way you expected it to? THAT was my week... Sunday and Monday were fine. Monday night stressed me out, which led to my migraine on Tuesday and my aftershock headache Wednesday. I'm still not the same from that migraine! This weekend was ALL WORK! (Ok, I had some fun in there, but even the fun was work!)

Anywho, with all of that, I didn't finish any books this week. But I did read a number of short stories, so I'd like to talk about them. Short stories, to me, some times leave me the same way as my morning coffee does, like it served it's purpose, but I'm still not entirely satisfied. I need just a little more. I've always prefered reading novels, as they hold my attention better. It seems contrary for something longer to hold my attention better, but that is how I am! This past week, I chose to reread some short stories that I highly enjoyed the first time around, and read some that I had never read, but should have.

The stories that I reread were "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. I have always loved these stories because they portray women in a different light than normal for the time they were written. In "The Yellow Wallpaper", the narrator is slowly driven mad by the wallpaper bedroom of the house her husband has rented. She has something like post-partem depression and is supposed to be resting and not worrying about anything, even the baby. Gilman wrote the story in protest to the "rest cures" doctors were prescribing to women. As a result, her doctor changed his treatments. "The Story of an Hour" could be read in about ten minutes. It is super short, but the emotions that go through the main character tell the story. Kate Chopin was a wonderful writer whose work was banned while she was alive. Her women didn't do what was expected of them from society, and for that reason, she is one of my favorites!

I also read "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe for a class that I am coteaching and saw a production of it. I have to admit that the first time I read through the story I was lost in Poe's language. Poe is a writer whose work I have to read with other people in order to enjoy it. Or maybe it's in the explaining it to my students that I can really appreciate its beauty. There is very little dialogue and a lot of description, which made for an interesting stage adaptation. Poe's description weaves a gothically beautiful picture of a house nearing it's end, both literally and figuratively, with words like phantasmagoric and miasma and phrases like an anomylous species of terror. If you enjoy the macabre, you'll enjoy this story.

I'm not sure, yet, what is on the docket for next week. Hopefully, I will finish Matched by Ally Condie and I will most likely read all of Fallout by Ellen Hopkins.