2012 Challenges, Books, Quotes, Reading Events

Book 147: Other Voices, Other Rooms – Truman Capote

After putting this book off for more than a month so that it would fit within The Literary Others reading event and after it sat on my shelf since I purchased it from the 2011 Boston Book Festival I’ve finally gotten around to reading it. I’m not really sure if it was worth the build up to keep putting it off, but it was an interesting read. In addition to being a part of The Literary Others Event it also counts towards my Mount TBR Reading Challenge (23/25)!

This is only the second Capote work I’ve read and it was very different compared to In Cold Blood, which I read before I started this blog. Other Voices, Other Rooms is Capote’s first published novel and is semi-autobiographical. You can definitely see the personal influence from the effeminate young boy to the faded rich southern decadence you catch glimpses of throughout.

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Books

Mount TBR: Climbing Mt. Vancouver (Checkpoint 3)

Bev of My Reader’s Block has called for the third check in of the 2012 Mount TBR (To Be Read) Reading Challenge and I’m quite pleased with my progress this quarter!  With the recent completion of Kafka on the Shore I have read 22 of 25 books—an astounding 88%!

In addition to our basic check in – Bev has asked us to do a couple of things.  The first is determine how far we’ve made it up the mountain (that’s above) and if possible convert it into actual distance.  As of the last check in, I was 10,735ft or 3,272m up Mount Vancouver (Mount Vancouver is 15,787 ft/4,812m tall according to Google). This check in I am 13,893ft or 4,235m up Mount Vancouver! I’m defintiely entering that final stretch and am very excited as I’ve already completed one challenge for 2012.

The second thing she asked us, is to do one of the following 1) compose a poem (with extra words if needed), 2) Make a suggestion for a new level of Mount TBR (with a corresponding mountain suggestion) or 3) Share a book which has surprised us.

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2012 Challenges, Books, Quotes

Book 140: Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

You’ll have to excuse the language, but this book was a mind f*ck. Now, don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t mean it was bad, it is actually one of the best written books I’ve read this year, but my brain hurts trying to process the novel.

A friend in the UK recommended this book to me and I only just now got around to reading it and thus it counts for my Mount TBR Challenge (22 of 25).

I did a brief cursory search to see if I should save this novel for the Literary Others event in September and I should have with the amazing character Oshima, but I’m glad I didn’t. At one point he says this and it boggled my mind at how awesome he is. I mean there were a lot more awesome things, especially as to the reveal which happens pretty late in the book, but still definitely a great character. Click here to continue reading.

Books, Quotes

Book 136: Flesh and Blood – Michael Cunningham

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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2012 Challenges, Books, Quotes, The Classics Club

Book 134: Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

I want to like Dickens—I really do. The only problem is that I’m convinced if he had a better editor these books would have been BEYOND amazing. The same thing happened while reading Great Expectations to me while reading A Tale of Two Cities. There were probably 200(+) pages in the middle of the book that just felt waffly and I could’ve done without. The openings were both great, once I got used to the language, and the endings were PHENOMENAL!

Great Expectaions counts for both my Mount TBR Challenge (20/25) and The Classics Club (11/100)!

I don’t want to boil this down to a love story, because it is so much more, but we all know my responses generally focus on one theme that really strikes me and the love of Pip for Estella definitely overwhelmed everything else (with the exception of his learning to love Magwitch). But seriously, how can you not be bowled over by the following quote? Click here to continue reading