April update of 2007 reading list
I've decided to just update my reading list monthly and keep a running update in a word document. I think it's easier this way.
I've read:
1. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
2. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
3. 1984 by George Orwell (reread)
4. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (reread)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (reread)
7. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
8. Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
9. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
10. Emma by Jane Austen
11. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (reread)
12. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
13. Candide by Voltaire (reread)
14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
15. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
16. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
17. The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs recommended by
reptiliancandy in
bookish
CAUTION! SPOILERS
I almost felt too lazy to do this part!
13. I first read Candide in a college class covering European history. I thought it was hilarious back then, ok summer of 2003. I still think it's cute but some of the humor flew right over my head without the accompanying lecture on applicable history. It I had to describe this book to the masses I'd say it's like Forrest Gump set around the 17th century. It was a great palate cleanser, so to speak, between two emotion invoking books.
14. That brings me to The Road. I picked this book up on a whim at my local Wal-Mart. They were selling it because the almighty Oprah put it in her book club. So no, I did not read it because of her or the fact that it's won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I only wished I'd enjoyed it as much as she and the members of the board did. When I first started the book I was fascinated and wanted to keep reading in hopes of answering the questions that floated around in my brain. I was disappointed in the set up of the book. The style is rather simple, the images are melodramatic is a high-schooler-writing-poetry sort of way, and all the breaks made me think that they were trying to stretch a 150-page book into the 287-pages that it is. I guess I just don't get what all the hubbub is about. I'm thinking that it got the award for political reasons overall, being about a post apocalyptic USA. I will say that I was touched deeply at parts. The father-son interactions really stirred my maternal side. I had mixed emotions on the areas surrounding the handgun. Intellectually, I understood the reasoning for making the son carry it and being instructed on the proper way to commit suicide with it, but emotionally, it tore me up. Could I have loved my kid(s) enough in that same situation to do that? That reveals who we are as parents deep down inside. I was also deeply disturbed by the cannibalism in the book. Well, who isn't disturbed by it? One particular part struck me harder than the rest. I was sitting in our over sized rocker/recliner with the baby sleeping on my right shoulder while I held the book over his back with my left hand and I read this part: "What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit." (198) I can't even really describe how I felt holding my then 9mth old son and reading that part. There was no warning to it. They had charged a campsite, scaring those that had just been there, to find that. It still turns my stomach to read that. So, it was an interesting read and a fair ending, but not the best thing I'd ever read. I'm more curious to see what Oprah thinks of it now since I'm so ambivalent about it.
15. On the third try, I finally read all of Love in the Time of Cholera. I bought the book in 2001, I think, and I've gotten as far as 90 pages into it, but I'd lost interest and not finished it before. With a little discipline, I powered through the first third of the book before I felt that natural inclination to keep going. I never felt urgency to devour the book that others gave me. I found it to be, just as some reviewers had said, a realistic and touching view of love and it's variations through the human life span. I only wonder now, what kind of love will there be for me in 50 more years?
16. I saw bits and pieces of the movie and I know the Stephen King has a fondness for Amy Tan, so I decided to give a couple of her books a read starting with The Joy Luck Club. I really enjoyed the set-up, although I had trouble with the names of the characters and their relationships and positions through time since the story wasn't in a linear time pattern. I kept having to flip back to the first few pages that lay out the mothers and daughters and the table of contents. It's probably more telling of me as a reader than of Amy Tan's layout of the story. Sometimes I get to read big chunks but more often than not I read a few paragraphs and then am pulled away to change a diaper or fetch Dominic from a precarious situation (he's pulling up on everything). I'm pleased with her as an author and will be reading more of her books.
17. I added this book after reading a review of it in an lj book community. It's a memoir of a guy that set out read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. His style is self-deprecating and sarcastic and laugh-out-loud funny in places. I also learned a bunch of facts. I will never think of crossed eyes again in the same way and I'll always remember that abalones have 5 butt holes! This was a fun read.
I'm currently reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
I have a few books on deck after that but I'm going to keep them to myself. They will be a surprise at the end of May. lol
I've read:
1. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
2. The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
3. 1984 by George Orwell (reread)
4. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (reread)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (reread)
7. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
8. Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
9. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
10. Emma by Jane Austen
11. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (reread)
12. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
13. Candide by Voltaire (reread)
14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
15. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
16. The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
17. The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs recommended by
reptiliancandy in
bookish
CAUTION! SPOILERS
I almost felt too lazy to do this part!
13. I first read Candide in a college class covering European history. I thought it was hilarious back then, ok summer of 2003. I still think it's cute but some of the humor flew right over my head without the accompanying lecture on applicable history. It I had to describe this book to the masses I'd say it's like Forrest Gump set around the 17th century. It was a great palate cleanser, so to speak, between two emotion invoking books.
14. That brings me to The Road. I picked this book up on a whim at my local Wal-Mart. They were selling it because the almighty Oprah put it in her book club. So no, I did not read it because of her or the fact that it's won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, I only wished I'd enjoyed it as much as she and the members of the board did. When I first started the book I was fascinated and wanted to keep reading in hopes of answering the questions that floated around in my brain. I was disappointed in the set up of the book. The style is rather simple, the images are melodramatic is a high-schooler-writing-poetry sort of way, and all the breaks made me think that they were trying to stretch a 150-page book into the 287-pages that it is. I guess I just don't get what all the hubbub is about. I'm thinking that it got the award for political reasons overall, being about a post apocalyptic USA. I will say that I was touched deeply at parts. The father-son interactions really stirred my maternal side. I had mixed emotions on the areas surrounding the handgun. Intellectually, I understood the reasoning for making the son carry it and being instructed on the proper way to commit suicide with it, but emotionally, it tore me up. Could I have loved my kid(s) enough in that same situation to do that? That reveals who we are as parents deep down inside. I was also deeply disturbed by the cannibalism in the book. Well, who isn't disturbed by it? One particular part struck me harder than the rest. I was sitting in our over sized rocker/recliner with the baby sleeping on my right shoulder while I held the book over his back with my left hand and I read this part: "What the boy had seen was a charred human infant headless and gutted and blackening on the spit." (198) I can't even really describe how I felt holding my then 9mth old son and reading that part. There was no warning to it. They had charged a campsite, scaring those that had just been there, to find that. It still turns my stomach to read that. So, it was an interesting read and a fair ending, but not the best thing I'd ever read. I'm more curious to see what Oprah thinks of it now since I'm so ambivalent about it.
15. On the third try, I finally read all of Love in the Time of Cholera. I bought the book in 2001, I think, and I've gotten as far as 90 pages into it, but I'd lost interest and not finished it before. With a little discipline, I powered through the first third of the book before I felt that natural inclination to keep going. I never felt urgency to devour the book that others gave me. I found it to be, just as some reviewers had said, a realistic and touching view of love and it's variations through the human life span. I only wonder now, what kind of love will there be for me in 50 more years?
16. I saw bits and pieces of the movie and I know the Stephen King has a fondness for Amy Tan, so I decided to give a couple of her books a read starting with The Joy Luck Club. I really enjoyed the set-up, although I had trouble with the names of the characters and their relationships and positions through time since the story wasn't in a linear time pattern. I kept having to flip back to the first few pages that lay out the mothers and daughters and the table of contents. It's probably more telling of me as a reader than of Amy Tan's layout of the story. Sometimes I get to read big chunks but more often than not I read a few paragraphs and then am pulled away to change a diaper or fetch Dominic from a precarious situation (he's pulling up on everything). I'm pleased with her as an author and will be reading more of her books.
17. I added this book after reading a review of it in an lj book community. It's a memoir of a guy that set out read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. His style is self-deprecating and sarcastic and laugh-out-loud funny in places. I also learned a bunch of facts. I will never think of crossed eyes again in the same way and I'll always remember that abalones have 5 butt holes! This was a fun read.
I'm currently reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
I have a few books on deck after that but I'm going to keep them to myself. They will be a surprise at the end of May. lol