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I Am Currently Reading This Book

The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver. I have to read it over the summer for school, and being such a procrastinator, I just finished chapter 2.

I hate this book. Everything and nothing is going on at the same time. In the first chapter, she went to school, three people almost died, one of those three ended up dying (I think), she went to 5 different states, got a job, she changed her name, and she got a baby from a stranger in Oklahoma. In the second, she talked about some random couple in Arizona who kept seemingly getting divorced but also seem like they're still together.

This is almost as bad as Oliver Twist, and that's saying something. At least with this one, I get the gist of what's going on, but it's very annoying and makes no sense at all. I just hope I don't have to do more on this book during the school year, and it's just this easy project I could probably do without reading, and just doing a little research online.

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SW-User

What?? Oliver Twist wasn't that bad. Lmao in 10th grade summer I got a bunch of books from the library that were kinda well known or should be read, and forced myself to binge read them all. Oliver Twist was one of them.

Point is, if Oliver Twist made plenty of sense to me, but none to you, you must be doing something wrong. Don't read them a chapter at a time. I know when I did that I got sick of the book. Read it all together, like three chapters at a time.

lol your book so far doesn't sound that bad. It sounds interesting. Try to make it more interesting by attempting to understand her mindset. Understand how the school deaths affected her and why she felt like getting an identity change. Did her old identity die as the kids died? Also, you should question the seemingly "random" mention of the divorced couple. Authors don't really "randomly" throw stuff in. They typically have it in there to convey something meaningful or symbolic.

Books are more fun to read if you try to understand why and analyze. Perhaps your school is teaching you to make sense of this story, make connections, and understand instead of brainlessly googling the summaries. Making these connections and developing an understanding of these books and characters will help you in the real world. The fact that you're not understanding the story speaks something for yourself. They assigned this book for a reason.

madbroom · 22-25, T

@SW-User I just have trouble understanding stuff. Even this post was hard for me to understand.

Also, symbolism is pretty much impossible for me. Everything has to be literal, or at least explained to me, for me to understand.

SW-User

You can do it. You can understand. I believe in you! :)

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