I LOVED Sylvia Plath as a teen, I tried to re-read the Bell Jar at the grand old age of 29 and it no longer resonated with me; I cringed my way through it and then noped right out at the middle.

I also live in Portland! Crazy diets abound, which is REALLY a shame given how much amazing, delicious, relatively inexpensive food there is to be had here.

In my personal experience, people who spend too much time focusing on what they can’t eat rarely seem to educate themselves on what they need to eat to make up for what they’ve excluded from their diet. My best friends wife is nearly perma sick because she spends a lot of time cutting things out of her diet without…

I live in Portland too and the amount of time i have spent listening to people talk about ridiculous, clearly made up, scientifically bullshit diets is frightening. It wouldn’t be so frustrating if they didn’t at the same time feel the need to slander actual science and medicine...

I can’t see Burt Reynolds’ name without missing Rebecca Rose.

yass

I’m sorta with you, though for (maybe) different reasons. Surfacing had practically no plot, and it touched me so deeply it felt like a religious experience. Life Before Man had the same qualities and it bored me so hard it actually made me kind of angry. Oryx and Crake was interesting, sure, but not enough to make me…

You’re not alone. I loved The Handmaid’s Tale but I also read it in middle school when it was easier for me to plow through books. Every book since then that I’ve tried, I just can’t give a fig about her characters.

I’m right there with you. I just don’t like Margaret Atwood. There I said it! and i hated Handmaids Tale. I read it as part of a feminist book club, and was like pfft!? this fucking book, amma right ladies?! but everyone LOVED it and I felt like a bad feminist haha!

I remember my mom having to read her in college, and she hated her. I’m still on the fence. I think my mom may have biased me somewhat

Check out her poetry, it’s pretty good.

I like Margaret Atwood, but hereby use my authority as an complete stranger from the Internet to give you the right to not like her :P ETA oh and I second the recommendation of her poetry, not because You Must Love Margaret Atwood but just because it’s good poetry.

I feel for you, Ananda. I sometimes have strong reactions to authors that are ... not universally shared. For example, with the exception of some major black writers of the mid and late 20th centuries, I feel that the art of the novel was almost burnt down and buried by the likes of Earnest Hemingway and Philip Roth…

Have you read her poetry? I like her poetry more than her prose fiction.

FINE. But I will keep hoping you have a deathbed change of mind

If you mean every line is a gift that you should let wrap you in a warm embrace of brilliance THEN SURE ITS HEAVY HANDED.

Remember that time that Diane Rehm accused the only Jewish-American presidential candidate of not only dual citizenship, but dual loyalties to the United States and Israel? And remember how she then blamed it on a random Facebook comment?

Maybe unpopular opinion (?): Marty Moss-Coane >> Terri Gross