Book Report: Olive Kitteridge
Cover of Olive Kitteridge: Fiction
Yesterday I went home from work early. I didn’t feel well, I was exhausted, and I have a big! traveling! weekend! ahead of me. So, I went home to nap.
After about two hours of sleeping, I woke up, but still wasn’t feeling great, and it sounded like my roommate had people over. So I picked up the book I’d started just the other day: Olive Kitteridge. It’s a novel, composed of vignettes of about a dozen or so people in this little town in Maine, all of whom have Olive in common, in one way or another.
It’s a sad book that made me realize how short life really is. Olive is a mean woman — quick to judge, throws things at her husband, puts her son at a distance, and then doesn’t understand why he doesn’t want her in his adult life — and I don’t want to be anything like Olive.
Sometimes it’s easier to say something cruel and cutting — sometimes it just feels good to use a verbal knife and cut someone down. But it’s not right. It’s not nice. And none of the slights — real or perceived — ever really matter in the long run.
So I’m going to be more loving, while the ones I love are around to listen. I’ll keep Olive in my mind and think what would Olive do? and I’d do the opposite.
My Office Environment
In today’s economy, it’s enough to have a job. Let alone a job you like. With people you like.
I realize that I am exceedingly lucky to have found “the right fit” for me, employment-wise.
We got a lot done today, and yet there were a few funny moments.
In an instance where I just can’t keep my mouth shut, one of my coworkers said, “I barely pay any attention to politics.” To which I replied, shouting from the other room, “I wouldn’t brag about that!”
I filled up my water bottle, and spilled a little on the ground. Then my boss came by and said, “Oh, no, did the dog pee over here?” Thinking I was explaining quite clearly the situation at hand, I said, “Oh, no. That was me.”
I brought caramel to work and my boss said, “has anyone tried them and lived to tell the tale?”
Like I said, I’m lucky.
Life Goal #1: Read all Pulitzer Prize Winning Novels
I would like to read every novel that has won the Pulitzer prize for fiction (or before that, novels). I have a Google document to help me keep track. So far, I have been exceedingly happy about this decision, and I feel like the people giving this prize know a thing or two about really good fiction.
This is in contrast to how I feel about the Nobel Prize for literature. I feel like that prize is awarded to important pieces of fiction, verses a really well-told story. I don’t have enough free time to read books I don’t like. I’m a recovering book-finisher — up until this summer, there wasn’t a book I picked up that I didn’t finish, save Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (loaned by an ex as his “favorite book of all time” — I couldn’t understand it, couldn’t see how it was “about more than motorcycle maintenance,” and generally did not like it) but this summer, I happened upon a couple of really awful books, and I was able to put them down after reading a chapter or two.
Anyway, Mr. Pulitzer has very good taste. And by “very good taste” I mean “selects things I like” — though, let’s be honest, that’s what everyone means when they say that something is good, is it not?
