Archive for January, 2008

At-Swim-Two-Birds and Beloved

{ January 30, 2008 @ 6:16 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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At-Swim-Two-Birds was among the more unenjoyable books I’ve read.  I couldn’t tell you what the first half of the book is about.  I tried to look up Cliff’s notes and Spark notes but unfortunately they don’t have any for this one.  I looked up a brief synopsis and basically it’s a fictional autobiographical work about a student who is writing a story about an author who is writing a story about an author whose characters start to write a story about him because they feel they are being mistreated by him in his story.  Yeah.  So add to that the fact that this is written by an Irish guy who uses Irish lingo so there is at least one word per sentence that I don’t understand.  And the book has no quotation marks in it.  I finally started to catch on at the end but it totally wasn’t worth the effort.

Beloved was pretty good.  I didn’t really know what to expect with this one.  I knew it was about black people, that it won a Nobel prize and that a lot of kids have to read it in school.  Of course I went to a private school so we didn’t really read about black people so much.  Anyway, the story was a little hard to follow in places because it would jump back and forth quite a bit in flash backs that weren’t in chronological order, but apparently that is one of the major criteria for being on this list because it seems that most of the books I’ve read so far have that characteristic.  It was kind of hard to get into the mysticism and superstition but once I did, the story was quite enjoyable.  It has come to my attention in reading these last couple of books that I’m not getting near what I should out of these books.  What I mean by that is, if I were taking a class or even really taking time to think about symbolism, themes, etc.  I’m sure I’d get a lot more out of my reading.  But I think I like it this way.  Then if I want to I can go back and really study the books I enjoyed the most and I can at least have a semi-intelligent conversation about the rest of them.

Next on the list is the Berlin Stories.  I haven’t started it yet so I’m not really sure what to expect.

Atonement, The Assistant, and Animal Farm

{ January 23, 2008 @ 7:09 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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I finished Atonement and The Assistant so here are my opinions.

I thought Atonement was excellent!  I really enjoyed the story and was drawn in the entire time.  I’m going to try to even better than normal not to give anything away in case you want to go see the movie.  David and I went to see it and I thoroughly enjoyed it as well.  I thought they did a really good job staying true to the book.  And that’s really all I can say without giving anything away.  But it has been one of my favorites so far.

The Assistant took a little more getting into.  It’s a plight of the immigrant story and I usually don’t care for that type as much.  But it ended up being quite good.  The major theme in it was the things people hide from the other people in their lives.  I thought the ending was a little weak, but overall a pretty good book.

And finally, Animal Farm.  I actually read this one a few years back, but I figured since I am doing this blog I should write about all 100 books on the list.  This is a book that many more people are familiar with compared to a lot of the other books on the list.  It kind of has emotional significance to me that has nothing to do with the book itself.  I remember reading it at home in Little Rock the first time I stayed in my room after it had been converted into a nursery.  It kind of marked a change in the way home is for me I suppose.  But anyway, as far as the book itself, I thought it was really interesting how Orwell could fit so much significance into such a short book.  It is one of those that can be really entertaining and insightful through several different stages of development.

I’ve started At-Swim-Two-Birds and I must admit, I’m having a really hard time getting into it.  First off, it’s an Irish writer and I don’t understand a lot of the terminology he uses and secondly it’s written from the point of view of this college student who is always in and out of a story he is developing in his head.  So I haven’t caught on to figuring out what is actually happening to him and what is part of his story.  But it’s supposed to be really funny so we’ll see if I can make it through.

I just went through Half-Price Books and bought a bunch of books off of my list, so if anyone is planning to buy me one, let me know and I’ll send you a new list of the books I have.

That’s all for now.  I will update again if I ever get through At-Swim-Two-Birds

Appointment in Samara and Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret

{ January 15, 2008 @ 6:27 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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Well, I finished Appointment in Samara and Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret. Two completely different books, but I really enjoyed them both.

Appointment in Samara is a book set during prohibition and I really felt like it was written for men. In fact, when I was reading it, I could just picture myself eavesdropping on a smoking room full of men with one telling this story. It’s not that it was particularly graphic or profane, just kinda like guy gossip. The main problem I have come across with this list of books is that so many of them are sad. I guess that how a lot of critics define good literature. Which is one of the reasons it was so nice to get something different like Are You There.

Are You There is a book written for pre-teens about coming of age and starting to make your own decisions, becoming independent, etc. It was fun to look back on that time in my life and see how many similarities and differences I could identify. It also reminded me of a lot of the struggles that my youth girls are going through. (And it’s always nice to get finished with one of my books in a couple of hours.)

Next up I am going to skip down to Atonement so I can go see the movie this weekend. I ordered The Assistant and At-Swim-Two-Birds as well. None of them are particularly long so hopefully I can finish them all in the next couple of weeks. To be honest, my favorite part is going to buy new books and anticipating what I will be reading in the future.

Previous book posts

{ January 13, 2008 @ 1:59 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Saturday, January 12, 2008

American Pastoral and American Tragedy

So it’s been a while since I’ve read a new book, but I finished two of them this week. When I found out I was pregnant, I gave up the coffee and it became incredibly difficult to read throughout the day without the caffeine. But now that I’ve made it to my third trimester, I have decided that a cup of coffee a day isn’t going to hurt anything. So now that I’m back on track, I’m making progress again.
I started An American Tragedy back before I gave up the coffee. It was a good story and interesting throughout it. The problem was that it was about 1000 pages so it was a little daunting. Since I’m reading about 7 hours a day, if a book takes me more than a week, it’s a little frustrating. But I made it through and I’m really glad I did. It was in fact quite a tragic story. The interesting thing about reading these two books back to back was that they both focused on the nature vs. nurture idea of behavior. American Tragedy took a much more nurture stance, which coincidentally is where I fall on the argument as well. It’s really about a guy who makes some mistakes in his life and it kind of correlates his actions back to his upbringing, implying that if he had had a different childhood, things would have turned out very differently.
The next book on the list was American Pastoral. I really liked the idea of this book and it focused more on the nature side of the argument. It’s about a family who is torn apart by the actions of a child, and implies that even though they gave their daughter the perfect life, there was no controlling what she would become. The actual reading of the story wasn’t nearly as interesting as it could have been. It was a little too technical when talking about the dad’s glove making business and it was hard to follow in places because it wasn’t always chronological. But I liked they idea of it.
I’m currently working on Appointment in Samara. I suppose I will be updating on it in the next few days. It’s pretty short and easy. So I’m guessing I’ll be finished with it by Monday. Then I’ll work on finishing up the A’s with Are You There God It’s Me Margaret, The Assistant, At-Swim-Two-Birds and Atonement. I think I’m going to go ahead and read Atonement first so I can go see the new movie with Keira Knightingly.
It’s nice to be back to my reading. I imagine I should get as much of it finished before the baby comes as possible. I think this is probably the last time in my life I will be able to read 7 hours a day without any consequences.
 

Thursday, August 16, 2007

All the King’s Men

So it’s actually been a while since I read this one but I hadn’t blogged about it yet, so here goes. I found it surprisingly good. I was worried that it was going to be boring because I couldn’t get through the movie. But it was one of those books that is much better when you know what the characters are thinking and what not. It depicts what we see often of politicians who start out with good motives but get corrupted by the power and politics of it all. Actually it happens regularly in everyday life as well as it seems to me. I give it a B. I haven’t felt like reading much lately, but I started on An American Tragedy and it seems good in the first 50 pages or so but there are about 800 more so it’s hard to tell.
 

Monday, July 23, 2007

Augie March

I just finished “The Adventures of Augie March,” book 1 on my top 100 list, and I must say that if they are all like that one, I’m not going to make it. I will concede that the idea of the book was good, but I could never manage to become invested in the lives of the characters. And given that this is a book about one guy and his “adventures” you kind of have to care about what he’s doing. The idea of this book was that this guy is always following others and eventually comes to this realization but never really changes his ways. Anway, I basically spent the whole time bored and thinking about how stupid this guy is. I give it a 2 out of 10, simply because it wasn’t in a foreign language.

I’m taking a short break to read the last Harry Potter book, which I just borrowed from my boss. I’m about 100 pages in and it’s looking like a great change in my reading. After that, I will resume my reading of “All the King’s Men” I’m about 100 pages into that one too and it’s looking much better than the movie so I have some hope. I’ll let you know how it goes.
 

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Books (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

So I’ve started this new goal for my life to read all top 100 novels since 1923 as listed by Time Magazine. My mom and sister want me to keep them updated about my status so I figured since I never use this blog area for anything else, I would use it for that. So here you go mom and Mindy…
I finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance last week. It was my last book not on the list for a while. It ended up being pretty good. The way I see it, there were basically 3 different story lines going on in the book…the journey, the past and the philosophy. I found the journey and the history very interesting, but unfortunately, the philosophy pretty much sucked. It had some good points, but the author is a rhetorician and not a philosopher, so he didn’t really do philosophy very well. But overall, there are people I would recommend it to.
Over the 4th of July holiday I bought The Adventures of Augie March and All the King’s Men. I just started The Adventures of Augie March. I think it’s going to be pretty good. It’s started out pretty slow, but all of those fictional autobiographies do. You have to get involved in the lives of the characters before you start to care.
All the King’s Men seems kind of intimidating. I tried to watch the movie a few months ago and was not entertained. I’m not super into politics so I’m not sure. I’m hoping it will be at least better than the movie. The story line seems to make it possible, but we’ll see.