2010's Challenge--100 books in a Year

Steve's not too much into a reading challenge this year, so I guess I'm just challenging myself.
I had three that I was interested in: 100 books challenge (read 100 books in a year), the support your library challenge, and the TBR challenged (reading books you bought but never read.) I couldn't decide, so I decided I could easily combine them.

So, I am going to read 100 books. The plan is not to buy a single book, but to instead utilize the library, or a book I already bought and never read.


It doesn't matter what kind of books they are for them to count. Might as well make it easier on myself!

With that, my first book is going to be a book my daughter just bought, The Lightning Thief. Yes, it's a YA book, but again, any book counts. I'll post back with my review.

Losers

It's sad we can't finish a reading challenge. I like to think it's because we have such incredibly rich, full lives, but really we are just lazy. We start out gung-ho, and then just stop. We got halfway through last year's challenge, and were enjoying it, so I don't really know what happened.

I don't even have the excuse of my job anymore, because I don't have it anymore!!

This year we are going to finish it. Seriously.

Steve is picking the theme, and then we will pick our books. I'm looking forward to it.

Year of Reading Dangerously

We are going to join in this challenge: http://dangerouslychallenge.blogspot.com/.


The rules are: Read 12 books you deem "dangerous." between January 1st and December 31st 2009. They may be banned or challenged books, new-to-you genres, books that seem to inhabit a permanent space on your stacks, or authors you're afraid of.

We're obviously starting a little late, but hey, that's how we do it around here.

Steve and I will come up with a list. He'll be thrilled, I can tell you that much, because I can guarantee that I will pick either (maybe both!) Faulkner or Joyce (Ulysses, anyone? I mean, seriously, has anyone actually finished it?) How much more dangerous could it get?

We could also pick Mein Kampf, and get it from the library, thus testing that old story you'd hear about if you checked it out of the library, your name went on some government list somewhere.

Oh, the possibilities are endless.

We Suck.

Well, life got the better of us. Monique had two bajillion trials over the course of a few months, and Steve started working again, and the kids, well, they were the kids. We just sort of gave up. I think Steve actually read quite a few of the other books on the list, and Monique started the Big Sleep, and was enjoying it, but we never got it together.

We'll start afresh in '09. We clearly won't do a book a month, since it's now February, but I'm sure we'll come up with something, and we'll post the list.

Better Late Than Never, Unless You Have To Read My Drivel

Let me just say that I am thrilled to be out of the literary morass of the '70s, '80s and '90s. I was excited to be reading Steinbeck, excited to be reading The Winter of Our Discontent, a legitimate classic, and double-excited that my wife didn't force some Timothy Leary/Ken Kesey Generation of Love crap down my gullett. Hurray for dodging bullets!

Anyway, like Monique wrote over a month ago (sorry to our loyal throngs), TWOD was just an outstanding book, without a doubt the best we've read in our little challenge thus far. I had a little trouble getting into it at first, possibly because the bulk of my reading is done in 10-minute increments while sitting on the pot. But by the time I got 30 pages in, I was hooked. I found myself eating a lot more fiber. Get it? Yeah, you get it.

I have a bit of a fictional man-crush on the protagonist, Ethan Hawley, the latest patriarch of a crumbled New England aristocracy. He's fallen on hard times, having lost the last of the family fortune in a failed grocery business, where he now works for the new owner, an Italian gentleman who is constanly referred to by your choice of ethnic slurs. Ethan's lovely wife and children keep asking him when they're going to be rich again; the town whore has her sights set on him; and his best friend is about 250 pages away from drinking himself to death. Basically, things are at their worst, but Ethan is still able to conjur lots of biting sarcasm and pithy quips. My hero.

The book revolves around Ethan's attempt to regain his family's prominence, and the moral depths to which he is willing to sink to do so. Ethan is a veteran of World War II, and when his convoluted plan is about to take flight, he says that he hopes he can act now as he did in the war: quick, decisive, merciless. He says that having killed men in the war didn't mean that he was a killer, only that he had done what needed to be done. And unlike Monique, I found myself saying, "Rob the bank! Rob the bank!" Because I honestly believed he could do it.

As Ethan plots his success, others around him do the same. His teenage son, Allen, wins an essay contest that he hopes to parlay into television gameshow fame. His is the easy way, which, Allen says, is the only way to do it. Why waste time with hard work if you don't have to? Ethan's daughter, Ellen, has her own nefarious plans regarding Allen's success. Ultimately, Ethan realizes that the fast way is the wrong way. Fortuitously, he doesn't get that until after he's back on the road to prosperity. Or is he? Yeah, he is.

As in all of Steinbeck's writing, the characterization is phenomenal. There wasn't a single character who I could find fault with. Everybody was believable, well-written and well-developed. But that's why Steinbeck is Steinbeck, and I write a half-assed blog about books other people wrote.

Likewise, the plot is remarkable. Again, the buildup is a bit slow for my taste, but overall the storyline is taut and crescendos wonderfully to the climax and denoument without ever wandering or releasing tension. It's really more a storycable, a strong, sleek steel storycable.

Well, that's that. Soon I'll be coming out with a review of Kon-Tiki. Or not.

April by Monique

April was The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck.

I loved this book. I devoured it. I could not stop reading until I was done and then I felt sad and let down because I wanted more.

Steve will do a wonderful summary, I'm sure. Steve's a better writer than I, and I feel kind of tarded when I read his summaries and then read mine. I think he's second guessing his choice of mate. After my embarrassing emotional vomit brought on by my review of Breathing Lessons, he's never really looked at me the same.

So, I will just say that I truly enjoyed the book. I think it's an absolute classic. The book, although written in the sixties, touches on themes relevant today (the economy, immigration, class, addiction, crime and poverty). I felt drawn in, connected to and emotionally invested in the lives of the Hawleys, especially Ethan, the main character. I found myself rooting for him in my mind and I find myself mentally shouting things out to him, "Don't rob the bank!"

What can I say, I'm a huge dork....

Northern Lights

I caught up, and finished February and March's book, and then steamrolled over Steve and finished April's book. Steve is jealous and whiny about it, but I can't help that I read faster than he does.

Soo, Northern Lights. Man, I gotta say, I was expecting so much more. Tim O'Brien is on my short list of favorite authors, and The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone are def. two of my all time favorite books. I don't even really enjoy "war" books, but they are just so beautifully written that it's hard not to fall in love with these books.

I was expecting Northern Lights to be not as great, yet somewhat great. Glimmers of greatness, at least. I was bored and I felt like I missed something. I felt like there was a chapter that I skipped that would have provided more of a back story to tie it all together. I just didn't "get" it and when Harvey died in the forest, my first thought was, "What the fuck, Cotton?" Or something like that. It just irritated me for some reason. Then when Paul gave him CPR and brought him back, I was even more irritated and was just over it at that point.

There didn't seem to be a plot. Everything was hinted at, yet never developed. I wanted to like it, really I did. Before I read this book, I would have left my husband for Tim O'Brien. Now, not so much...