2012 Challenges, Books, The Classics Club

Book 155: The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne

Very long review short: I didn’t like this book. At only 158 pages it still took me a full week to read this book and for me that’s AGES. However, this book is my next-to-last book of my 2012 Mount TBR Reading Challenge (24 of 25) and my 14th book for The Classics Club! So at least it wasn’t a total waste. Plus, one quirky thing is they spelled clue ‘clew’ apparently. So strange.

So why, you ask, did I not like this book? First off I fell asleep every time I started to read it. Seriously. I nodded off on the bus, on the subway and even started to nod off during lunch one day, but the big wake-up point (pun intended) was when I started to nod off making dinner one night in a rather uncomfortable kitchen chair and lots of noise around me. So that should REALLY tell you something. However, the worst thing is, is that it’s not a bad book. The story has a lot of potential and the characters were pretty memorable, but the writing was just a bit too detailed or down-trodden or something.

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ARC, Books

Book 154: Life! Death! Prizes! – Stephen May

For what is probably my final galley of 2012 I read Life Death! Prizes! by Stephen May. I requested a copy of the book via NetGalley because the author lives in West Yorkshire, which I love! I received no compensation for the following response, which is my honest opinion.

This book just didn’t inspire me. I thought the premise was a great idea and the title is brilliant, but overall I can’t bring myself to rave about the book. Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely great parts and a couple of times I found myself laughing out loud (see the end of this post), but overall I found the story a bit too much to take in and the writing a bit overworked in some spaces. I unquestionably enjoyed Stephen May’s wit, but I just couldn’t empathize or sympathize with the main character, Billy, until the final few pages of the novel and even then I’m not sure if it was for him or for his little brother Oscar.

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2012 Challenges, Books, The Classics Club

Book 153: 1984 – George Orwell

I started to read this a few months ago, but I just couldn’t get into it in the first few pages. Setting it aside was apparently the right thing to do because when I read it this time I enjoyed everything about it (with the exception of the ending). 1984 counts for both my 2012 Back to the Classics Challenge (20th Century Classic) and The Classics Club.

Once again, as it seems happens more and more frequently, I’m at a loss of how to respond to a novel. I both loved and hated 1984. I thought the ending was a bit tough to get through, but once you got through it the middle of the novel was amazing and kept me wanting to know what happened, but then the ending was let down, even though I get it.

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Books, Reading Events

Book 148: A Son Called Gabriel – Damian McNicholl

I wasn’t sure about this book going into it. One of the best books I’ve read this year was The Absolutist by John Boyne, which is the story of a young gay man coming of age written by an Irish author; and one of my all time favorite books is At Swim, Two Boys by Jamie O’Neill, which is the story of a young gay man coming of age written by an Irish author.

Overall I was completely underwhelmed until the last 15-20 pages of the book. I think McNicholl did a great job portraying working class Northern Ireland and interlacing just enough of the political landscape to keep the focus on the main character and not the conflict, but I just couldn’t get into it. I didn’t feel like Gabriel was a sympathetic character and I just kept wanting to tell him to shut up. I honestly kept thinking, good grief I hope I wasn’t that annoying when I was his age (even though I’m sure I was more-so).

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ARC, Books, Reading Events

Book 145: Israel/Palestine and the Queer International – Sarah Schulman

My third book for The Literary Others reading event, and the final ARC of this month was Israel/Palestine and the Queer International. I requested this book via NetGalley and the below response is my honest opinion and I did not receive any compensation. I requested the book as I’m well aware that my knowledge on what is going on and what has happened in the region is woefully lacking and I thought this would be a great perspective for an introduction and boy was I right.

Like most readers, at least on Goodreads it seems, I expected this to be heavier on academics, what with being a publication of Duke University Press (Go Heels! – sorry couldn’t help it 😀 It’s a gut reaction…), but I found it incredibly approachable, well-reasoned and well written. This work clearly shows that Schulman is first and foremost a writer, her eloquent language, pertinent anecdotes and a great mixture of academia and activism really opened this book to a wider audience than I expected it to be able to reach. Previously, I have read two of her novels, After Delores and People in Trouble, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed and am definitely interested in reading more of her more recent work, as well as her more biographical works.

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