Have you read something where at the end you thought, “what did I just read?”

One of my 2020 goals was to read a book a month and write book reviews about them. But, like most of new year goals, it didn’t go as planned. As I finished my January book this morning, February 1st, I realized I didn’t really read it. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath was on my Christmas wishlist and while I was extremely excited to read it, I was also immensely confused.

I thought I was making myself sit down and read it thoughtfully but when the book took a major turn I felt lost. Did I miss something? I guess I did.

It was about the middle of the book where I started to realize I had. Knowing that I wasn’t going to get it even if I just read a few chapters back, I continued on. As I started to pay closer attention I noticed a few weird details about the writing.

The writing wasn’t really like a normal chapter book. The story wasn’t a normal story. I couldn’t read the book as a separate entity. Separate from the author. Then I decided to read the book over again.

Not for the blog but for my sake. There is something quite different about it that I really want to dig into. Not just because I wasn’t paying attention, because I’m an idiot, but because the book deserves to be seen as something more than just paper. For the author’s sake I want to underline and highlight until I can’t any more.

Because despite being confused, I know the book and the author have so much to tell me.