Lady Lazarus

It’s my second day back at work from maternity leave and now it’s time to raise the blog back from the dead. As you can imagine, I didn’t find a whole lot of time during the baby’s first three months to sit and philosophise about books. The kid is cute as a button, especially now that he’s starting to smile and babble, but he sure wants every bit of my attention when I’m at home. So now, here I am at work, at loose ends if I don’t have something to do every minute. And I’m trying desperately not to feel guilty that I’m not home with the kid. But there are these two pesky things called money and health insurance that have brought me back to the library.

And I am finding the library a welcoming place to come back to. Surrounded by books once again, I feel inspired to read ALL of them and to write a few of my own. The irony of this, as anyone who’s ever worked in a library can tell you, is that you don’t generally have any time to read all the great books around you, let alone write one yourself. Bummer.

But I will soldier on and do my best to both read and write every day. Because if I don’t do these things I don’t feel like a complete human being. Even on my leave, I found time to read while the baby was sleeping. But I’m afraid I don’t have many inspirational words to share about what I read on maternity leave. Pregnancy and parenting books kind of say the same things over and over again, and most of it is common sense stuff that you can figure out on your own. I would warn moms-to-be not to dwell in the depths of What to Expect… or any similar titles for too long. I guess it’s considered a classic of its genre, but really it will just scare the crap out of you. It will convince you that you or your baby will contract a horrible disorder or disease when the reality is that in 99% of cases both of you will be just fine. We live in a lovely American culture of paranoia. Don’t go there. Take a deep breath and try to enjoy the ride.

When not reading about what’s normal behavior for a two-month-old, I did listen to an audiobook of one classic while I was home. I have always wondered what the big deal about Proust was, so I downloaded Swann’s Way from the library and listened to it on my long meandering winter walks with the baby stroller. Dude. DUDE! This is the most BORING book I have ever read, or listened to, or whatever. I can’t even write a whole blog post about it, because I listened to the whole thing and I’m not even sure if anything happened. I know I was sleep-deprived at the time, but there was barely a plot. Some snooty rich French people disliked the one guy’s (that would be Swann’s) mistress because she was kind of a ho bag. And the main character really missed his mom when she wasn’t in the room with him when we was a child. So yeah, he was a total puss. And he really liked Madeline cookies, which brought back a lot of childhood memories for him. Um, that’s about it. I totally am not getting why this is considered a masterpiece of literature. Supposedly Proust was trying to imitate the Impressionist painting style. And well, the book did seem…blurry…but not as pretty as a Monet. And remember, according to the main character in Clueless, being a Monet is not a good thing.

So, I’m hoping my sister can help breathe some life back into this blog. She recently reread The Bell Jar, which I haven’t read since I was an angsty senior in high school. I would love to hear her adult opinion, and she’s agreed to write a guest entry for me. So I will hold her to that. Until then, here’s an article about the ridiculous new cover that’s been chosen for the 50th anniversary of Plath’s novel. Maybe they were trying to make it look like a Mad Men episode? Chick lit it is not, folks! The original cover  accurately reflected the book’s content. Let’s stick with that one. Or read the ebook, I guess?