The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Yesterday I started reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. It's taken me longer to get through the first 40 pages than read the whole 200 pages of The Witches. Granted, they are two very different books--Dahl's book has much bigger print, illustrations, and is, obviously much simpler reading.

I had to look up "palimpsest" just to get through the first page (I know, stupid me...what a great word). Usually I can "context clue" words enough to pass them by, but this word was too intriguing not to look up.

I've been having a bit of a depressed mood the last few days; can't say this book is helping me. And, wannabe novelist that I am, I can't even help but pick apart pieces of even Atwood's writing, whom I hear is one of the best writers of our time. I bought Janet Evanovich's first Stephanie Plum book today, One For the Money, to see if it will interest me. ...Maybe I should try to write a series. Nah, I'll write a few crappy stand-alones first, thankyouverymuch. Anyway I'm always looking forward to the next book after my visit to the Community Budget Center and my visit a few days later to another thrift store (I've got one more to hit in our small town)

I'm normally a 'literary' girl; mostly because I've been trained this way. Hours of poring over Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse, Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Tripmaster Monkey by Maxine Hong Kingston. But I guess it's just taking me a bit to "get" with Atwood's style. I know to look for symbolism, I know to read much more into the prose than other types of books... I'm sure I'll be totally into the book in a few days, maybe tomorrow, but for now I'm still stuck reading and going, "Okay, enough of the descriptions of the bricks and the rose petals. I know you have a point, but just get to some dialogue!"