On Not Finishing Books (and sometimes finishing them when I know I shouldn’t). Also: 2014 Book #24: The Shadow of the Wind and Fail Pile #3: Noggin
I knew what I was getting into when I finally picked up The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, but Goodreads had it lingering on my recommendations page, and I was seeing it everywhere. Tumblr, mostly, which is usually bad news because quotes usually come from books I abhor like The Unbearable Lightness of Being […]
2013 Book #45: Damned
Damned isn’t my first brush with Palahniuk: I tried to read Haunted a few years ago, and I read Lullaby and blogged about it in 2011. He’s most famous for Fight Club, but that’s Not My Kind of Thing. I’ve seen snippets of the movie. I didn’t remember much about Lullaby, except that I generally liked it, but on […]
2013 Book #39: The Book Thief
I read The Book Thief because I felt like I had to: there’s a movie coming out that I thought I might like to see, and it’s all over Tumblr. I was convinced that I’d hate it for being sappy and preachy, but I started reading it, and my opinion slowly changed. I decided to give it […]
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 #35: Lullaby
Lullaby is the second Chuck Palahniuk novel I’ve attempted and the first I’ve finished. I picked up Haunted a couple of years ago, and, though I remember liking it well enough, I didn’t finish it. It either freaked me out or bored me. I’m not sure which. I read Lullaby because Jacob told me about […]
2011 Book #21: The Year of the Flood
The Year of the Flood isn’t really a sequel to Oryx and Crake like I expected it to be. The two novels’ events happen at the same time: the plots and characters are interwoven. The Year of the Flood is narrated by two of these characters, Toby and Ren. They’re both part of an environmentalist […]
2011 Book #3: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
I didn’t like this one. I should qualify that: I didn’t like this one except for the last thirty pages. The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a novel about love and sex. I could only identify with one character and the dog because everyone else was busy sleeping with people who weren’t their spouses. There […]