A-Z Challenge Completed!

I just finished Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a special edition of the stories, with beautiful illustrations by Felix O.C. Darley. It was my 'I author' for the A-Z Challenge hosted by Joy of Thoughts of Joy and the last book I needed to complete my list.

The stories were ok. I'm sure we studied them at school, but I couldn't remember the details. I think that I understand a lot more of Rip van Winkle now - what with the world changing so much all the time. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow made me want to see the film. Is that bad? I guess neither affected me that much, but they were entertaining. And I liked all the Dutch elements.

What affects me lots more is the fact that I finished one of my biggest challenges of the year a month early! Yay for me! :-) I had so much fun trying to fit books into this one and I discovered so many books that I may not have got to otherwise. An X author, a Z author - go check out my full list to see what else I read. The challenge included 52 books and there were way too many good ones to be able to pick favorites, so I won't even try.

I'll definitely be doing this again next year!

The Third Policeman and some Polish reading

I wanted to read Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman since I heard that reading it would help me figure out what's going on in Lost. Great reason, eh? As it turns out, I'm no closer in understanding Lost... but I've realised that the absurd is not really for me...

The book itself is about some very strange events that happen to our main character. And by strange I mean really strange, like viewing a bicycle as almost human and developing a relationship with it. The action is peppered with some very long footnotes explaining the scientific theories of a Mr De Selby, greatly admired by the main character. I don't know whether the theories or the action is more absurd.

I'm not saying I hated it, I didn't. I did enjoy some bits and parts were definitely amusing. And there is no question that the story is extremely intelligent and that O'Brien was way ahead of his time when he wrote it around 1940 (it was only published in the 1960s). But it just wasn't my kind of thing.

I started The Third Policeman during the Read-A-Thon, which was definitely a mistake. Not a read-a-thon friendly book! The other book I half-finished during the Read-a-thon was a collection of columns by Polish actress Krystyna Janda, Rozowe Tabletki na Uspokojenie, which literally translated means Pink pills to calm you down. I'm enjoying reading in Polish a lot more than I used to, which was the point of the whole excercise so I'm happy. This particular book was entertaining, I'm glad I picked it up.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 888 Challenge, 1% Well-Read Challenge

Murder on a Girls' Night Out and some Polish reading too

I found out about Anne George's mystery series starring two Southern sisters from Joy's blog - she called the sisters delightful and I was intrigued. She was right. I don't read mysteries often, but the first book Murder on a Girls' Night Out was really very enjoyable. Maybe because I really liked the characters and a lot of the book was about them and not only about the murder. Very definitely recommended. Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Southern Reading Challenge

I also finished my first Polish novel of the year - yay me! The title (Tego lata w Zawrociu) translates as That summer in Zawrocie; the book is by Hanna Kowalewska. The story is about a woman who inherits a large mansion from her grandmother, who she didn't really get along with. Throughtout the book, the main character tries to get to know her grandmother through the things she left behind and to figure out why she was chosen to inherit her house. It was enjoyable and I think I'll be less scared to read something else in Polish - I really want to, I'm afraid that otherwise I won't have much contact with the language. 'Polish books' is one of my categories for the 888 Challenge, so at least I got a bit further with that!

Can you keep a secret?

Another very entertaining book by Sophie Kinsella, this one about Emma, a likeable and normal 20-something living and working in London. She's trying to figure out what she wants from life, from her boyfriend and from her job - and of course gets into various scrapes in the process. I didn't like it as much as what I've read of the Shopaholic series or as much as The Undomestic Goddess, but it was a nice light book for what is supposed to be summer - Belgium isn't known for its summers you know!

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Chick Lit Challenge

The Celts, First Masters of Europe

I got this book by Christiane Eluere when I decided I wanted to read up on the historical side of the Celtic world some years ago - we're Pagan and we lean towards the Celtic pantheon and culture more than any other, although others (Germanic, Scandinavian, Slavic) are important to us as well.

It's basically a quick overview of the history of the Celts. It's beautifully printed, on heavier-than-usual paper, I suppose to accommodate all the beautiful photos that are integral part of the book. These photos are one of things I liked most about reading this - they're mostly of various unearthed objects attributed to the Celts and are very interesting to look at. I enjoyed the reading part less - it's a complicated historical period, what with all the tribes and battles, and I found that I didn't have enough knowledge to understand everything. They could have done with more maps of where things were taking place and more basic explanations about who was around back then.

The book includes a section of excerpts from primary sources, such as Julius Ceasar's The Gallic Wars, and this is the section I found most fascinating. I'll definitely have to plan some of these older materials into my reading.

Challenges: 888 Challenge, Non-Fiction Five Challenge

The Boy on the Bus

Deborah Schupack's novel got a lot of good reviews because it was original and well-written. The story is about Meg Landry and her son Charlie - the boy that gets on the bus in the morning, her asthmatic little boy, is not the same one that comes home after school. At least he doesn't appear to be. The book tells us about how Meg and the rest of the family handle this new situation.

The tone of the book is quiet and calm, despite the emotional subject matter. I also found it a bit desperate. The writing is light but the book makes the reader feel heavy. At least it did that with me.

When I finished it, I wasn't sure that I understood it! I think I do now, so maybe it just needed some time to be digested. Nevertheless, it wasn't the same book that I was looking forward to, somehow I'd expected something completely different. And I can't say that it was fantastic, only OK.

Let me know if you're read and reviewed it and I'll link to your review!

Challenges: 888 Challenge

This Book Will Save Your Life

I finished reading A.M. Homes' well-known book several days ago, but I simply didn't know what to say about it. So I didn't say anything.

I didn't dislike it. But I can't say that I liked it either. I suspect that missed the point.

The story is about a man living in LA - he has isolated himself from the world and from people. One night he has what feels like a heart attack or something and he thinks that maybe 'this is it'. It's not and as his story unfolds, some strange things happen to him and he ends up meeting some of the people who exist around him, including his neighbor. I guess you can say that he joins the living again and all his relationships are improved - including a very difficult one with his son.

I know that one of the points of the book is that we need others, we need their company and we need to feel needed. But I can't say that reading it made me go 'wow'. I'd be interested to know if you liked it as much as some of the reviewers did! It's a only a C in my book and I'm not even sure that I want to read any more by A.M. Homes. At least it counts towards the Initials Reading Challenge!

I hate being disappointed - I had really high expectations of both the book and the author.

Back When We Were Grown-ups

On Monday night, I finished reading Anne Tyler's Back When We Were Grown-ups, started reading Neil Gaiman's Stardust (which I'm loving so far) and decided to give up on the Polish book I was reading - Rzeź Bezkręgowców by Joanna Chmielewska. It wasn't doing anything for me and since I have so many other things to read, I decided to move on. I used to love this author, but she's another one who's been using the same formula forever and it sounds forced by now.

When I started reading it, I didn't like Back When We Were Grown-ups. I didn't like that there were so many characters with strange names or nicknames, I found it hard to keep track and it seemed forced to me.

But it grew on me. The story was simple, in fact nothing really happened, the action mostly took place in the mind of the main character, Rebecca. She was doing a lot of thinking about whether she took the right fork in the road when she married her husband and about how different life would have been if she'd married her high school sweetheart. It's about the highly-addictive 'what-if' game that many of us play (I can't be only one!) and Anne Tyler takes it to a beautiful place. The book goes quickly, the simplest things in life are are beautifully described, all in all it was enjoyable.

I'm giving it 3 1/2 stars because I enjoyed it and would read something else by Anne Tyler at some point, but it didn't wow me.

Children of Men

I finished reading P.D. James' Children of Men a few days ago, but was waiting to watch the movie before I posted my thoughts... Truthfully, I don't know why I still insist on sometimes watching the film after reading the book. It's almost always a disappointment. The film had nothing of the atmosphere of the book. And the story was SO different!! That really bugged me, even relationships between characters differed. I'm no movie maker but I could think of a few places where sticking to the original story would not have been that difficult. Oh and the ending was so cheesy that even I couldn't stand it.

The book was good. I'm not normally a fan of suspense/thriller type books, but I wanted to read this one because I loved the storyline. It's the future and the youngest human dies at 18. People are infertile and the human race is close to dying out. Aside from the storyline, I liked the detail with which P.D. James painted the world where children don't exist. All the little touches were fascinating. Some were horrifying - the book reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go in that it explored what people are capable of ignoring or pretending not to know if only it benefits them.

I decided to try rating books and I'm giving this one 3-stars: good, enjoyable, I'd reccommend it as a fun read. The movie gets one star. If that.