Post #6 – I can’t choose this week!

I’m not very thrilled about the reading I did for class today.  

In this small book, I had assumed each piece had a limit to how long it could be, but “Bird Feed” by Ashlee Adams is twenty pages long…not that I am unable to read twenty pages, but if I were looking for a short piece of fiction to read, I would not choose a piece that was this long. I am afraid that would be too much of an investment in a writer I do not yet know.

“Stolpestad” by WIlliam Lychack was a longer piece, almost 7 pages long. I really enjoyed bits of this story, but was left feeling very depressed and helpless. Perhaps that was the goal?

I understand the significance of a child’s first experience with death and loss, and we get an awesome portrait of a young boy who has to say goodbye to his dog, but I don’t know that the added details of the dog not dead, just suffering and clinging to the last thread of life, added any strength to this piece, or merely weakened it. After reading, I had to ask myself, “Why is this so tragic?”

I will read “Bird Feed” before class, if only to understand the arguments of my classmates, and if I fall madly in love with it, I will forget my annoyance with the twenty-pages, and defend my opinion to the entire classroom if necessary!