An Old Favorite: The Sun Also Rises

I have been toying with this idea for awhile now: featuring some of my favorite reads from my pre-blogging or early blogging days. I want to do this, not just to highlight some awesome books but also to explore how my memory stands up to the original review. One of my complaints regarding my reading is the serious lack of retention. Sometimes I read books, and within days, I have forgotten entire pieces of the literary puzzle.

Way back in early 2009, I read and reviewed Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Here is the review:

Title: The Sun Also Rises
Author: Ernest Hemingway
Published: 1926 Pages: 251
Rating: 5/5

Buy  |  Borrow  |  Accept  |  Avoid

It is amazing how one such as myself, a constant reader, can still find herself reading long-known, but never-read books. I have a distant memory of The Sun Also Rises; perhaps I read it a long time ago. There are many books, particularly novels considered literary in nature, that I read at too young an age to truly remember. So for me, despite this distant memory, this was my first reading of this novel.

I picked it up for two reasons: 1) Brandon said it was his favorite book and I trust his judgment; and 2) Deb said she was going to read it, and I thought it would be nice to read a book along with her and discuss. So around nine o'clock tonight I started reading. It is now midnight and I have finished. I should have read slower, taken more in, but I was fascinated and hence absorbed the novel a paragraph at a time. Maybe tomorrow I will re-read with a more analytical perspective, but for now it was enough to experience.

Two words come to mind after reading this novel: broken and bittersweet. The people in this novel are broken, leading superficially frivolous lives. But the tone, to me, is not one of judgment or condemnation, but rather bittersweet in its treatment of this group who have been made empty. Even the character who could be most despised because of her treatment of men and refusal to forgo sex for love is made pitiful to the reader.

I will definitely be re-reading this novel with a clearer head soon.
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Current Thoughts:

I started with this book for two reasons: First, Allie from A Literary Odyssey wrote a fantastic review of it on March 21. Allie wrote: "He is not a flowery writer, preferring to get across his message in short, declarative sentences, but he doesn't need to beef things up to get across the sparse, bare feeling of being lost. He does that well by being straight forward. I love that kind of writing." I love that kind of writing too, and honestly that is my strongest memory of reading the book: the sparse prose, and its direct relationship to the thematic elements of the text. An instance of form mirroring content.

Regarding the plot, I remember very little, only bits and pieces of the more extreme activities which take place, flashes of scenes from my imagination. In my review, I wrote that the words broken and bittersweet were part of my immediate reaction. Those two words still describe my feelings two years after reading. While the details escape me, the feeling remains.

Despite my promise to myself on the night I finished this one, I still haven't picked it up for a re-read. Now I am wondering if I should. Will my pleasure in this book be increased by a re-read?