Tag: Reading challenge

I was really excited about this prompt. One of my favorite books is A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. I find it hilarious and so very real. When I saw the prompt, I took to the internet and searched “books similar to A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson” and was encouraged when I found an entire forum thread dedicated to this exact question.

Scrolling through the comments, I saw two books come up frequently and went to my library website to find out if they had either. They had one of them and I quickly put in my hold request and texted the selection to my mom.

A book about travel- The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

Eric, a former journalist who has toured the most negative time sand places in the worked during his career, is a self proclaimed unhappy person. His newest project is to research those places on Earth that are considered happy and create his own atlas.

His travel takes him first to the pioneer of happiness research where he spends time reading data banks of information to determine his route of travel. From there he begins by heading first to Switzerland, one of the happiest countries on Earth.

Each chapter of the book is dedicated to a new country where he describes the landscape, culture and what defines happiness in that locale. Eric interviews both locals to the region as well as transplanted Americans to see what they think about being happy.

---

I really, really wanted to like this book. I just couldn’t. I’m not sure how so many people likened it to Bill Bryson on any level other than the basic “its a book about travel” because the two couldn’t be less similar than if they were of two separate genres. There was no humor, no travel gone awry story.

I did enjoy the look he provided at countries I had not even heard of or knew very ittle about such as Qatar, but once the initial descriptive passages were over the book quickly got burdened down in the writers own…well…I’m not sure exactly how to explain it…cynicism, pessimism. Either way it wasn’t a happy or light hearted book.

My other complaint is how much quoted research he had. Nearly every other sentence was a quoted text from some research and while I understood his attempt to put some science behind his work, it was over done and slowed the narrative down to a halt. It also broke up the text in a way that was displeasing.

Another failed pick on my part, I do not recommend  reading it.

1/5

 

 

 

 

 

 

My mom should host a book club. Her picks are the best and this one has topped my list of the favorite I have read in this challenge so far.

A book written by or about someone with a disability – Still Alice by Lisa Genova

At 52 years old, Alice has a great life, solid career and a wonderful, if slightly distant, family. She has tenure as a Pscyhology professor at Harvard and travels the world speaking at conferences. Her husband, John, is cancer researcher on the brink of a breakthrough. Everything is going as planned.

Until the day she gets lost going home and doesn’t recognize anything on a familiar street. Soon after she notices that she can’t remember certain words, has difficulty deciphering her own to do list and forgets to go teach classes. When she forgets to board a plane to head to a major conference, she knows she needs to see someone. She was not prepared for the answer though: early onset Alzheimer’s.

The book follows her progression through the disease. Her family rallies around her, handling it the best they each can in their own way.

---

I adored this book and cried through most of the second half of it which is very rare for me. Told through Alice’s perspective, you get a sense of the losses she suffers, not only in her memories, but in her independence and her sense of self. It is a powerful book with a powerful message.

There are a lot of questions raised through out this book that make you pause and think. In the early stages, Alice plans her own suicide and leaves her future self a daily test and directions in case she fails her test. She does not want to be a burden to her family in the future as a young, but mentally lost dependent.

She has a genetically dominant form of the disease and has three children, each with a 50% chance of having it. Do they want to know? Would you? Her daughter wants children. Should she continue trying to get pregnant knowing that she may pass this on?

Reading how each of her family members treat her is eye opening as well. Some ignore it and plod on with their own lives without wanting to make any sacrifices because “she won’t remember me anyway”. Others try to do everything for her, taking away what little independence she has left. And too few work with her within her abilities and recognize that she still is a person.

This book is amazing and everyone should read it. I know it is also a major motion picture, but I like books better than movies and will not be watching it for fear it will ruin the experience.

5/5

For this prompt, I had to do several stages of research. For starters, I had to look up a list of all book genres then pick one I don’t typically read. From there I needed to find a best seller and a list of the top 30 of all time came up online. Then it was finding which one was available in multiple copies at the library. Phew!

A book from a genre you don’t typically read – Coraline by Neil Gaiman

Coraline is a young girl who recently moved into a flat in a big house. Her parents work from home and it is nearing the end of her summer break from school. She is lonely most of time, having to entertain herself while her parents work. Most of her time is spent exploring the new house and grounds.

One day she opens a door in her sitting room that supposedly was bricked over to create separate flats in the mansion. Instead of bricks, she finds a dark and musty corridor leading to another world.

A darker version of the well known Alice in Wonderland story then commences as Coraline tries to return to the real world.

---

The genre I chose was horror and I don’t believe I have ever read a horror novel outside of Frankenstein in college. When I saw Neil Gaiman, I was excited. One of my favorite books is Good Omens co authored by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and I own most of the Disc World series by Pratchett. This was my chance to read a Gaiman novel within the challenge.

Unfortunately, this is a YA novel and I’ve already written about my feelings on those. This was no different and left me wishing the same topic had been written for a more mature audience. I did read a passage to my son and it scared him, so for the intended audience I would say it does the job.

The book was highly entertaining though, kept my attention and I kept reading past my bedtime to see what would happen. All excellent things in a novel. The characters were a bit bland and the theme was too similar to Alice in Wonderland, but it was a quick two sitting read and enjoyable enough.

3.5/5

 

 

While we waited for my pick to come in, my mom chose her next one and we downloaded the ebook version. True to form, she had the better choice.

A book written by an author using a pseudonym: The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith

Cormoran Strike is a private detective down on his luck: no clients, no money and a recent split with his fiancee. His office is shabbier than his clothes. Enter Robin, a temporary secretary with a secret dream of being a detective. She is smart, resourceful and a great employee. Too bad Cormoran can’t afford her.

That is until someone from his past offers him a job: looking into the supposed suicide of his supermodel, and extremely rich, sister Lula Landry.

---

 

The book is pretty formulaic: down on his luck private eye gets a seemingly easy job, does better than the local cops and makes it big. However, the author builds the characters and scenes in such a way as to keep the reader enthralled. Cormoran, at first a one dimension character, slowly builds up his personality throughout and becomes endearing in his own right.

My ebook version was over 1000 pages and I will admit that it felt mired down in too much detail to the point where several passages could be omitted completely without having any effect on the narrative or character building at all.

I was not expecting the ending, which is always fantastic in a detective “who done it” novel, but I was disappointed in the manner in which it was all revealed. With over 950 pages given to the lead up and investigation of the case, the author then does an information dump in one page where Cormoran goes off explaining exactly how everything happened even though much of it was hidden from the reader until this soliloquy. I know the author had to end it and wrap it all in a neat bow somehow, but I am just not a fan of the detective explains it all to the killer method.

Since I wasn’t the one who picked the novel, I was very surprised when my mom informed me that the famous Harry Potter author JK Rowling was in fact the author of this book. I fully admit that I am not a fan of the Harry Potter series and only barely made it through the first novel (and have no interest in the movies). This novel, compared to those, has a much more mature vibe and is obviously intended for a different audience as it is full of swear words, sex and drugs.

I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good detective novel and found myself looking up the next Cormoran Strike novel and adding it to my “to read list”.

4/5

 

Man, my mom picks way better books than I do. From the word go, I knew I would love this book. It has my two favorite things: historical fiction and following the life of a character from childhood through adulthood.

A Story Within a Story: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. 

Canada in the early 1900s – Grandfather Chase builds a button factory where solid, plain and reliable buttons are made for work clothes. His empire expands to add factories for undergarments and he accumulates a sizable inheritance for his three sons. Unfortunately, WWI hits and two are killed at war leaving the button and undergarment factories to his last remaining heir. He has two daughters and thus enters the protagonist of the novel: Iris, the eldest of the two.

The book is written through the first person narrative of Iris and as such we meet each character through her own biases and relations. From the start we understand that Iris hungers for money, prominence in society and worldly exposure and that drives many of her decisions through her life: both the good and the bad. Iris is elderly and writing her legacy, telling secrets and revealing truths buried deep, while also reflecting on her own motives through the microscope that hindsight affords.

The second story, which fulfills this prompt in the challenge, is a third person narrative of a tryst between two young people. It is obvious from the start that they are hiding the relationship, but their motives and identities are hidden from the reader. It is does expertly too – I was kept guessing who this couple was (well, one person was obvious, but the other not so much) until the very end and could have been convinced it was either of two people readily enough.

As the book progresses, we follow Iris through her childhood and into young adulthood where her true nature comes to light. Eventually the book comes to a close when her narrative catches up to the modern day elderly version of herself and all secrets have been revealed.

---

---

This section may have some spoilers, although I will not ruin the ending as it is the payoff for getting through the entire thing. 

The book has its fair share of criticisms and acclaims. The biggest criticism I read was the length of the book. At just shy of 530 pages in my print form, it is a lengthy tome, however I did not find that any part lagged or slowed the pace of the narrative down. Of course, when your favorite book is War and Peace, nothing really feels slow or arduous when it comes to this type of story. I relish in historical fiction and tales of a life gone, while not awry, at least not the way the person had intended.

Any book written in the first person will have skewed versions of characters as you only see them through the eyes of the narrator. It does lead to some hidden motives and unanswered questions, but I thought nearly every character was as well rounded as possible except for perhaps Richard although Iris admits her own faults in not being able to give him a better view. In her life, she could never figure him out and this is reflected in her prose about him.

I was  left with a burning question as to what exactly the book that Laura published was actually about. This novel is introduced early into the book and runs throughout as a character all of its own, but the actual text within is never revealed. There are a lot of theories and I have my own, but it is not clear within the novel itself.

I would highly recommend giving this book a read. it is lengthy and it does jump around between Iris’ present day, her past and the story of the young couple and takes a little time to get used to the format. It is worth it though and I give it a full 5 stars.