2011: The Year in Books
I did it. I read fifty books this year. After 2010’s embarrassing performance, I’m rather proud of myself, especially since that fifty includes some really long ones like Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and 1Q84 and some really hard ones like The Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children. I enjoyed the vast majority of them, and […]
2011 Book #50(!): The Loved One
I arrived at The Loved One because I was looking for a very short novel (I had two days to read it!), and I read a random article about how prolific Evelyn Waugh was. I was first introduced to him earlier this year with Brideshead Revisited, which is now one of my favorite novels. Then […]
2011 Book #49: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
If I had read The Perks of Being a Wallflower when I was 15 or 16, it would have blown my mind. I really wish I had read it then: it might have made the melodrama that was my adolescence a bit more manageable. Or, at least, I might have realized that other kids had […]
2011 Book #48: The Sense of an Ending
The Christmas Crunch continues, in which I readandreadandread to reach my fifty-book goal before the year is out. Which means I’m limited to short novels for the moment. At a lean 163 pages, The Sense of an Ending definitely qualifies. It’s actually been on my to-read pile since it came out earlier this year. I […]
2011 Book #47: Slaughterhouse-Five
I first read Slaughterhouse-Five many years ago. So long ago, in fact, that I have no idea when it was. I might have been in high school, or I might have been in college. I only remembered a vague outline involving Dresden and time travel – and that I really didn’t like it. Not one […]
2011 Book #46: Midnight’s Children
I’m not quite sure what to say about Midnight’s Children except that it’s fantastic. Really. If you haven’t read it, head over to your local library and pick it up right now. Disregard your Christmas planning, ignore the hurt faces of your family, and hole yourself up for a week, book in one hand, cup […]
2011 Book #45: Wise Blood
I have almost nothing to say about Wise Blood, though I enjoyed it immensely. Fresh off 1Q84, I wanted something a bit shorter and not on the Kindle. I was limited to my own library since it was Black Friday, and I wasn’t in the mood to change out of my pajamas. After reading Everything that […]
2011 Book #44: 1Q84
1Q84 finally made it into English. I’d been waiting to read this novel since the Japanese version was announced a couple of years ago. I even pre-ordered it on my Kindle (who wants to lug around a thousand-page hardback?) and got it at midnight on October 25th, the very second it was released. And I […]
2011 Book # 43: The Mysterious Benedict Society
I generally like kids’ novels – Harry Potter, for instance, or The Hunger Games, or The Golden Compass, or The Blue Sword, etc, etc, etc. I think it’s because I can usually identify with the characters, and an adult having written them probably helps. That said, The Mysterious Benedict Society didn’t work for me. It might be […]
2011 Book #42: The Castle
I had forgotten that Kafka died before finishing The Castle , or I probably wouldn’t have picked it up. Few things annoy me more than not knowing how a novel is supposed to end, though, I guess, good ol’ Wikipedia gives us a clue, but that’s only a bit of a consolation because, of course, […]