Books

Book 790: The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy

Book cover of "The God of Small Things" with Amazon Affiliate linkOMG ya’ll, clearly, I should be judging the next Booker Prize. First Wolf Hall and now this, I get why they choose these beautiful books as winners. I’m only partially serious. I still think so many of the books are boring old stuffy books that are specifically chosen because of the inability of large swaths of the population to comprehend or appreciate them. So, boo on that.

All kidding aside, this was an incredibly beautifully written DEBUT novel. I was floored when I found that out. The way she wrote and the way time flowed eerily (and seamlessly) backward and forward in this novel it truly felt like a master class in novels. No wonder she won the prize—I’m definitely going to have to read her only other fictional work, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, at some point because everything else she’s written is nonfiction (what?!).

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Books

Book 788: Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell #1) – Hilary Mantel

Book cover of "Wolf Hall" with Amazon Affiliate linkI clearly was not in a hurry to read this one. It has been on my Kindle since I purchased it in December of 2011 and that was TWO years after it won the Booker Prize! I avoided it for some time because I was waiting for the remaining two books: Bring Up the Bodies (2012) and The Mirror and the Light (2020), but I also avoided it because it’s a freakin’ tome. It comes it at just under 560 pages.* Thankfully the next one is shorter (436), but the last is 200 pages more coming in at 764 pages! OOF that is going to be a commitment when I get around to it.

I also actively avoided it because that was around the time that I came to realize that in general I find myself enjoying the runners up to the Booker Prize more often than the actual winner. There’s like a mental hurdle I don’t think I can quite make the leap over to fully appreciate and see the beauty in most of the winners. I knew this was long and I knew that it had A LOT of description and the formatting was weird (minimal quotation marks, the point of view), so I knew it would be a big challenge for me.

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Books

Book 569: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter #5) – J.K. Rowling

This book more than the first four has changed more than any of the others re-reading it this time. I’m not sure what it is that clicked for me, but it wasn’t as much of a slog and I wasn’t as annoyed with Harry as I was every other time I read this book. I did find that the books have merged more and more into one continuous story now and as I re-read them it jogs my memory back into place but everything after the book I’m reading is a bit mixed up.

For some reason it took just until this re-read that I realized that a good portion of why Harry is so angry is not just his teenage angst, but also probably Voldemort’s anger coming through Harry. I mean Harry thwarted Voldermort’s plans of returning completely in secret and there wasn’t a lot going right for Voldemort in the four years prior to this. So Harry’s teenage angst plus Voldemort’s anger equals whiny little git.

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Books

Book 568: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter #4) – J.K. Rowling

The primary reason I will always advocate this book series over the films is the amount of detail Rowling includes to flesh out her characters and her stories. From the minor characters that aren’t even mentioned in the films to the side adventures Harry, Ron and Hermione take somewhat regularly you’re missing out on so much if you’ve never read the books.

And the text books and books Hermione reads! OMG, so many are just throw away lines and titles but what I wouldn’t give to read An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe or Hogwarts: A History or any of the others that are mentioned! I actually got super excited that she’d released Hogwarts: A History, but it’s actually Harry Potter: A History of Magic (Pottermore link). I guess I can’t really be mad, but fingers crossed it’s next!

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Books

Book 566: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter #3) – J.K. Rowling

This re-read, like each one before it, is about what I noticed more this time than I did the other times I’ve read the books. The older I get the more my perspective changes and the more I’m like oh yeah that makes sense from an adult perspective but then I’m also like OMG WHY IS NO ONE PROTECTING THESE CHILDREN? That and of course how young Harry, Ron, and Hermione (who are 13ish in this book, and all the other teenagers that end up fighting Voldemort)! It’s crazy.

Even more than those two things above, the thing that got me reading this book was how lackadaisical the wizarding parents seemed in this book. Sure it gets worse in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

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