Book #7 of my Reading Challenge was also finished a couple of weekends ago. The book is Enduring Love by Ian McEwan.
I found this book in Stefan's house and borrowed it. I think I picked it up because of the author's name - Ian. Like Ian McEwan. Except he's nothing like Ian McEwan. Sigh.
The plot is interesting - five people's lives come together because of a horrible accident. Except one of the character's becomes fixated on the narrator. For awhile you're not sure if the character is really crazy and stalking him, or if the narrator has lost it. Everything turns out for the best in the end and there's a nice clinical description in the appendex about the psychological disease of the character (Clerambault's syndrome).
However, the book seemed to be deliberately trying to be intellectual and literary. There was also entirely too much foreshadowing for my taste. Entire chapters are given to foreshadowing. I'm glad I read the book because it opened my horizons, but it's not something I'd recommend or keep.
I finished book #6 of my Reading Challenge a couple of weekends ago, but didn't have a chance to blog about it until now. The book is Pope Joan by Donna Woolfold Cross.
This book is a historical fiction account of the life of Pope Joan, the only female Pope we've had. There is evidence that she existed, however the medieval Church tried it's best to suppress or erase details of her existence. Also, records just weren't that well kept in the 9th century. In any case, I believe she existed, and this novel does a wonderful job hypothesizing how she lived and how she came to the position of Pope. I highly recommend it.
I just finished reading Shopaholic Ties the Knot, the third in the Shopaholic series - Confessions of Shopaholic, and Shopaholic taks Manhattan are the first two.
The first book annoyed me for the first 2/3'rds and then really swept me in the last 1/3. I kept plugging through it because my best friend Janine said it was funny. And the last 1/3 was!
The second book didn't annoy me as much, but still the first 1/2 wasn't so easy going. However, the second 1/2 was great! Some really laugh out loud moments. I was reading it on the Sbahn going to and from work and I startled a couple of people by laughing - and if you know my laugh, well.... :)
This book was great from the beginning. I don't know, maybe because I've recently become engaged myself (blush!), a lot of this was striking cords with me. Today I read it to and from work and to and from the gym. In fact, I took an extra 20 minutes getting home because I got on the wrong Sbahn! I was sooo engrossed in this book! The end had me giggling so bad. :)
So, I have to give a half hearted recommendation to the first two - unless you're really really fashion shopping obsessed! - and a whole hearted recommendation for the last one. It's laugh out loud funny! :)
Oh, and this is book #5 of the Reading Challenge.
I found this challenge through a man's knitting blog (yes, a man who blogs and knits). I forget the URL. Anyway, it's a good idea. So I'm going to start it.
The Rules (I'm just listing the titles, read the original challenge for the commentary):
1) Don't read to hit the target
2) No filler
3) Re-reads can count (sometimes)
4) No genre domination
5) No planning
6) Ignore the rules
I'm not going to have a list of books that I'm going to read through. And I'm still going to read my romance novels, but they're not going to count towards the total. (I'd have over a 100 if I did that!)
I can think of a few books of the top of my head that I've read this year already:
1) Metro Girl by Janet Evanovich
2) Confessions of A Shop-o-holic by Sophie Kinsella
3) Shop-o-holic Takes Manhattan by Sophie Kinsella
4) Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
5) Shopaholic Ties the Knot by Sophie Kinsella
6) Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross
7) Enduring Love by Ian McEwan
I'll blog the books as I read them. Have to see if I reach the 50 book goal or not. However, since I do read alot, I don't think it'll be much of a problem.
I was just over at amazon.com looking up funny/disgusting/interesting books for a pair of 7-10 year old boys I know. I've narrowed my choice down to Oh, Yuck, Exploding Ants, and Math Curse. The first two seem guaranteed hits, the last one may be viewed as too "scholarly" to be enjoyed, even though all the reviews are great. But then, they're all by adults, not kids. Anybody have any other suggestions or advice?
While I was surfing around, I came upon a new kind of book. Well, new to me. Books about reading lists. Book Lust looks interesting, but the others didn't seem to interesting. Or at least, not worth the effort. Anybody have experience with this kind of book?
Oh, did I tell you I finished Oracle Night? Hmm...nope, don't find an entry about it. It's an interesting book. The pace & the premise was great for the first 2/3'rds of the book, but the end felt like a rushed job. Like he wasn't sure how to finish it. And some elements just made no sense. For example, what purpose does the Asian store owner have? And the book he starts writing within the book starts off promising, but he never finishes it. Oh, and the footnotes. Half the book takes place in the foot notes. Weird. I'm glad I read it, but I can't say I enjoyed it. It definitely made me keep thinking about it.
I also finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven. That was exactly what I expected - a light hearted, feel good book. A bit like a Christmas Carol. A good entertaining weekend read.
Oh, in between I read Life of Pi. This book definitely re-inforced the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover" for me. I kept seeing it in the store & reading good things about it, but the back cover blurb & cover art just didn't scream "read me". However, Stefan's friend had it & loaned it to me. It was really quite good. A philosophical adventure that leaves you guessing a little at the end. And marveling at human nature too.
On my pile to read right now are: Die 13 1/2 Leben des Käpt'n Blaubär (on loan from Stefan), Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, Enduring Love by Ian McEwan (also on loan from Stefan), and Taltos by Anne Rice.
Anybody have any good recommendations for original auf Deutsch German books?
Okay, I'm feeling very behind in my reading now. Good night. :)
The FAZ apparently surveyed German CEOs (sorry, can't find the article) about their favorite books yesterday. They got some dosey's for answers. For example, at least two said Bill Clinton's "My Life" was their favorite book. Come on.
So, it got me to thinking about my own favorite books. Far and above my favorite of the last couple of years is Dan Simmons Hyperion. In the end, it's a four book set, but that first one is the best. It's an interesting story, one you learn bit by bit and backwards, which is okay since the antagonist in the book is a monster that shifts through time and dimensions. The best part of the book though is how it's told. It's told through the narration of four central characters, each with their own part of the book. And each narration is in a different literary style. I highly recommend it.
Another favorite, one I've read at least three times since age 10, is Louis L'amours Walking Drum. It's one of his few non-Westerns and set in the 11th/12th century. The reader follows the narrator from his boyhood home in Wales(?) where the local robber baron has just killed his mother and robbed his house, to being enslaved on a galley ship, to apprenticing to a Mid-Eastern scholar in Constantinople (or is Istanbul?). A great adventure with little nuggets of wisdom thrown in for good measure.
Finally, a book I ran across last year and love for it's sheer wackiness of plot, is Jasper Fforde's Lost in a Good Book. This is actually the second novel of the series, but it's the one I found first and like the best. Obviously the title caught my eye. But the plot captured me. Thursday Next is a Literary Detective and can jump into books by will. Her father is a rogue Time Cop and an evil mega-corporation is trying to eradicate her husband's very existance. While trying to find her lost husband, Thursday leaps into and out of several great literary works - Poe's The Raven, Austen's Pride and Prejudice, just to name two. It's great fun.
So, what is your favorite book or books? Why do you like them so?
Remember those "Choose your own adventure " books? I read a couple as a child, but I could never seem to find the combination to the really interesting parts, so I ended up giving up the genre after a couple of books. Now, there's a grown up version! As Bookslut's columnist Julie Boulanger so delightfully explains in Choose Your Own Sex Adventure. Hmmm....that first one sounds like it's worth a look.
I wandered into the international press store at the airport after leaving Bill. They had a wonderful selection of the latest English novels. I picked up Oracle Night by Paul Auster. So far it's intriguing enough, mostly because half of the story is occuring in page long parenthetical footnotes. That's a device I've not seen in an actual fiction story before. Another book that looked interesting, but I didn't pick up was The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. It's essentially a Christmas Carol/Wonderful Life kind of story. Finally, in the mass-market-formulaic-thriller category, there was Split Second by David Baldacci.
I couldn't justify spending 34Euro on three books (at once) today though, esp. since I'm in the middle of reading Round Ireland with a Fridge by Tony Hawks, a German children's book, and I just borrowed an audio book from Stefan (auf Deutsch). So I just bought the one. I'll get around to the others, or not, later.
P.S. I've linked to both Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com above for one simple reason - the cover of the book. The cover of the book shown on the respective website is what I saw in the bookstore and, imho, the cover I link to is better than the cover of the same book on the other side of the pond.
I received a HUGE bag full of historical romance novels last Thursday from my parents. Mixed in with them are a couple of classic childrens novels, self help books, and other oddities, but 99% of it is historical romance novels. I devour these things. Which precludes things like updating blogs, doing dishes, sleeping, etc. I've waded through five or six of the 40+ (just guessing, it's a LOT) I received.
Just so you know. Yes, I read trash, and yes, it's taken a priority right now. As a defense, I have to say I haven't read historical romances in many years (I focus on the more erotic novels now), so it's like re-visiting my youth. :D
Anyway, take this entry with a grain of salt. Several Raedlers (beer & sprites), smoky atmosphere, and plain tiredness combined make me try writing a somewhat witty excuse for not blogging all weekend. :P
I'm feeling very "Left Behind". Apparently there is this whole series of novels out - the Left Behind series. About the coming of Christ or something similar. It's not like it's a new novel that I've never heard of - there are several in a series! Which means they've been out for a few years. I first read something cryptic about them on the Bookslut blog, but I didn't worry. She writes about a lot of stuff I've never heard. Then I actually saw a whole stack of the latest hard cover from this series in the Aafes Bookstore last night.
I told my father a couple of weeks ago that sometimes I feel like I've been out of the US for ten years instead of two. This is one of those instances. Sigh. Not that I WANT to know about these books, or even read them (I'm not into that whole Rapture thing), but it's just another instance of how out of touch I feel sometimes.