Amy’s Books

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.

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.

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.

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.