Sigh, ok Margaret Atwood

I am nothing if not predictable.

But if you asked me, would you like a 140 page collection of clever character sketches and thought problems in the form of stories, would you?

I think I would say, umm no, I have always always always hated stuff like that. And then if you said, but what it was Margaret Atwood writing them?

I would be even more annoyed because I like her long novels a lot.

So here we are.

I just feel like my time is wasted when I read 25 short stories in an hour. I know that while a few of them might be clever or interesting or even good…..there’s just never any there there.

And I was right.

Here’s what kept me reading: I kept thinking to myself Oh, this must be the book where she says that thing that people always post when someone starts talking about violence. But it’s not. It’s like I was waiting for a celebrity sighting, but not even a big celebrity, or at least not one that I hadn’t seen a million times before. Plus they didn’t even show up.

Instead what I got from this is that maybe maybe maybe I will have my students who are currently reading Hamlet to read about Getrude talking back to Hamlet and have them do some kind of assignment with it. But maybe not.

Otherwise I kept thinking about how mad I would have been if I had bought this book for the cover price of $20 and not have just gotten it from the library.