Tag: Award Winner

2013 Challenges, Books

Book 167: Vernon God Little – DBC Pierre

Geoff W

Although the year has changed, reading must continue 😀 For my first book of 2013 I used random.org to pull one from my shelves and it was definitely an experience.

As usual after I purchased the book I put it out of my mind and then when I go to read it I just start without reading anything about the book and thus begin without preconceived notions. This works for and against me all the time, for this book it definitely worked for me because if I had read a synopsis I probably would not have read the book at this time (see paragraph 5).

For a Man Booker Prize winning novel it was relatively easy to read. (It also won the Whitbread Award for First Novel.) I haven’t read any others from the year, but Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (read 09/13) is of course on my list. Overall I think this book serves as a great conversation starter, but as I read it I had to wonder why it won the award.

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Books, Quotes

Book 163: Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

Geoff W

What a wonderful novel AND a beautiful film! The day I bought this book my roommate asked if I wanted to go see the film and after a lot of internal dialogue made external I decided to see the film before reading the book and it was well worth it. The score of the film was one of the most beautiful I’ve heard in ages and it was also visually stunning.

I knew this would be a good novel because it was only short listed for the Man Booker Prize! It was nominated for and won a few other awards. I’m still convinced, in general, the runners-up on the shortlist are often better than the winners. I have read the winner that year, Alan Hollinghurt’s The Line of Beauty, and although I really enjoyed Hollinghurst’s novel it was a tome and I struggled, so this book was easier to read and I would say more enjoyable for it’s set up and it’s approachability.

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Books, Quotes, Reading Events

Book 151: Annabel – Kathleen Winter

Geoff W

This is definitely one of the top three most beautiful books I have read this year. Not only is it well written, but it is well researched and really makes you think without making you struggle to do so. As I haven’t read any of the award winners for which this book was nominated, I can’t say my theory holds that the nominees are generally better than the winners, but that’s still my gut response.

Not that you would want to, because the book is fairly deceptively complicated, but if you had to sum it up in one line it would be the following:

“Sometimes you had to be who you were and endure what happened to you, and to you alone, before you could understand the first thing about it.” (67)

This is definitely one of the themes of the book, along with acceptance and surviving and any other number of things. And it doesn’t just have to do with Wayne/Annabel, but with Thomasina, Wally, Jacinta, and Treadway. And any of the other countless people who lived in Croydon Harbor and are survivors.

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Books, Quotes, The Classics Club

Book 138: Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

Geoff W

Doctor Zhivago counts for three challenges, and actually wraps up one of my 2012 Challenges! It counts for the Back to the Classics Challenge (6 of 9), The Classics Club (12 of 100), and is my final book for the Tea and Books (8 of 8) challenge! I will do a wrap up post for the Tea and Books challenge early next week. For the Back to the Classics Challenge, this book was the novel from a place I realistically wouldn’t visit. After reading Doctor Zhivago and Anna Karenina I can say my aversion to visiting Russia is less, but I still would list it as not likely to travel to.

One thing I’ve learned that is vitally important when reading a classic novel is that you have to read the introduction. Sure it might tack on 20-30 extra pages, but they are there for a reason and they reveal so much information that is incredibly useful when reading a book, not to mention they give you a head’s up of what to look for as you read. For example, in the introduction to Doctor Zhivago, the following quote points out how the novel is written.

“Pasternak’s vision is defined by real presence, by an intensity of physical sensation rendered in the abundance of natural description or translated into the voices of his many characters.” (loc. 146)

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Books, Quotes

Book 136: Flesh and Blood – Michael Cunningham

Geoff W

I knew Michael Cunningham could write a great novel, especially one that could be adapted to the screen, like A Home at the End of the World and The Hours, but I didn’t know how great of a novel he could write! This book definitely belongs in the Top 5 Books I’ve read in 2012. It also counts towards my Mount TBR Challenge and officially puts me over 75% on my 2012 challenges! (It’s also the last book my boss gave me to read almost exactly a year ago.)

This is the story of the Stassos family over three generations and although it starts off slow it’s an amazing read. If you’ve ever read my blog before you know I’m obsessed with characters, especially minor characters, and their portrayal. Although there are very few ‘minor’ characters in this novel it doesn’t matter because this is one of the best novels from a character perspective I’ve ever written. Cunningham somehow got inside his characters heads at all ages and really exposed them. When I started reading, I thought these characters are all crazy, but the more I got to know them and as they grew up I realized that he really wrote the book in such a way that you realize hey I probably had thoughts similar to this but could never in ages figure out how to put them into words.

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