Time to Kill

That is, I now have some time on my hands, rather than suggesting that I am about to go and murder someone, or refering to the movie "A Time to Kill", which I never saw the end of.
I was thinking the other day about books with sad endings, and their good and bad qualities. Which led me to compare 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and 'My Brilliant Career'. Maybe this is an unfair comparison, because they are very different, but there you go.
I will just warn you now that there will be spoilers for 'My Brilliant Career', because I hated it, do not recommend anyone to read it, and have so little respect for the book that I don't care whether you know what happens or not. So there :p This ended sadly, and, in fact, didn't seem to get anywhere at all. The main character gets opportunities to leave home, meet people and do new things, and just acts in an irritating way throughout all this. She meets a man who falls in love with her, and she loves him, and he asks to marry her, she says no because she wants to write. O.k., fair enough there. But she then goes home, writes one thing, which ges rejected, stops writing and is completely miserable. Rejects the guy again and just continues her life like a zombie, clinging only to thoughts something along the lines of "I'm too good for this sort of work, and my family, this existence is slowly killing me". So she does nothing else and is stuck in drudgery. The end. Wow. That was an extremely pointless exercise, if you read the book you have to put up with an annoying main character for however many pages, just to find that nothing happens. There might be a sequel, I don't know, and am not that bothered to find out. Miles Franklin wrote it when she was about 22, it reads as though she were about 5 years younger. It really exemplifies the feeling of pointlessness you can get after reading a book with a sad ending.
Contrast this with 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', a book which I put off reading for years because I heard it was sad (I was about 8 or 9 at the time, o.k.) but which I have nothing but respect for now, having read it. It made me angry, the events seemed so pointless and unjust. It made me so angry that I cried, because I felt for the characters, and the events had purpose, and the main character was not a whiny 17 year old but a respected man. The book had purpose, it illustrated injustice, and the problems of slavery, and ended with some kind of hope for future generations. It was so long ago that I don't remember many details now, but I remember feeling that it was worthwhile. So if you want to read something that doesn't end happily and will make you angry, read 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', because it is a whole lot better. Otherwise I think it is most effective when a thing mixes hapy and sad endings. Or makes you laugh while making you cry. That's the best kind of sad book, or so it seems to me. Apart from that books that make you angry, or contain something worthwhile, or are just really well written.
I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I think 'My Brilliant Career' is a waste of time. Much like this blog post. On that note, good night.