yes I did only read this because it became available for free on audible after having been on my 'currently reading' shelf since summer of 2016 when i read the first 180 pages from the bookshelf in my sublet room in Vienna during an internship, but nobody can tell me i don't finish things ever again.

Like many girls of my day, I was obsessed with Sylvia Plath back in my high school years-- I read everything I could get my hands on by her, as well as the Ted Hughes edit of her journals (in which her talented, scoundrel of a husband left out pretty much anything critical of himself.)

I've long wanted to read the "unabridged version" which still seems to be missing a lot. Hughes burned Plath's final journal after his estranged wife's suicide... there are also big gaps in this book, which seems odd for such a meticulous note taker.

Plath's journals are an interesting read-- she struggled so much with wanting and despairing of the conventional role for women of her time. She reminded me so much of Virginia Woolf-- I wondered how both of these ladies would have fared in a times where a woman's sexuality does not need to be repressed.

I found the journals reminded me how brilliant Plath was, even as an 18-year-old college freshman. She write a lot about the process of writing in them, which drags a bit after a while, but overall, these journals were an interesting read.

Did I feel guilty reading Sylvia's private journals? Yes. Did I enjoy reading them? Yes.

The richness of Sylvia Plath's journals is really unparalleled. Each page is like a sumptuous feast of beauty, pain and joy. Even her day-to-day descriptions of her "mundane" life are powerfully and viscerally described. I'm so grateful we now have the unabridged collection and not the highly edited version her husband published in the 80's. And sadly, we will never know what was in the journal he burned when she died.