The Old Man and the Sea / Ernest Hemingway

   DID YOU KNOW that Ernest Hemingway only published seven novels in his lifetime? And that there have been three published posthumously, but one was pretty heavily edited so it barely counts? So that makes ten novels (he also wrote short stories and non-fiction) of which I have now read three and CAN I JUST SAY that it is entirely feasible for me to not only read all of his novels but also the rest of his writing? And it is entirely doable for me to get through all of his novels this year? Oh boy. Oh boy.

   When I read A Farewell to Arms several years ago, I was blown away. Same thing when I read The Sun Also Rises, and I have come to expect no less than truly stunning work from Hemingway. Oh boy: The Old Man and the Sea did not disappoint. It's tense! It's sad! It's beautiful! It's quiet! It made me feel tired! It's everything I wanted it to be! It is also very short, which I wasn't expecting.

    Here is a short list of things that I want to do because of Ernest Hemingway:

• Go to Pamplona and see the bullfights
• Go deep-sea fishing
• Drive aimlessly around Italy (but I already wanted to do that)

   Bullfights? Deep sea fishing? Why are these things attractive to me now?! I won't even go into the extremely problematic nature of bullfighting here. Driving around Italy: duh. I was already determined to go there after seeing I Am David (or after, I don't know, LIVING (I mean come on: we all want to go to Italy, don't we?)) and A Farewell to Arms made me want to go more. And now: deep sea fishing. Hemingway doesn't even glorify these things. He tells it pretty much like it is (I imagine, having never been/done) but I still consider the part in The Sun Also Rises where he talks about the man who is gored during the bull run to be one of the more perfect bits of literature that I have ever consumed. And he's talking about a man who gets gored! WITH HORNS.

   Anyways: my love for Hemingway's work only gets stronger. I intend to read it all. Also: he wrote To Have and Have Not and Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart are in the movie version and that means that three of my favorite things will be together in one film and it will be awesome when I finally read/watch it.

   Is this one of the books that often gets assigned in high school? I was homeschooled and know not of the world of normal schools. My one Google search hasn't revealed the information I want, but I did learn that Of Mice and Men is a high school English book and to that I say, "What? Would high schoolers...get it?" I have my doubts. I mean, when I was 17/18 I was convinced that I was sooooo grown up but clearly I wasn't. I'm glad I didn't read it then. (In a few years am I going to look back on my present self and say "wow, I thought I was so grown up, how much more wrong can a person be?' ONLY TIME WILL TELL.)