Status update (aka, what the heck is this blog for, anyway?)

I began an ambitious goal to read a book a week this year when something occured to me that scared me to death - as a 33 year old woman whose life expectancy is 79, my life would run out before the books I wanted to read did. The pace I was reading, erring conservatively, was about one a month. That would leave approximately 552 books left to read in my lifetime.

Aaack.

Faced with the notion that a person has a limited amount of time left in life, their immediate thought is probably not "I won't be able to read all the books I want!" Yes, I realize I am a total geek for admitting this. Oh well - this is my blog and not yours, neener neener.

So if you've made it this far, you may be wondering whether I still feel a book a week is a good goal, or where the heck I'm going with this, so I'll put together a quick FAQ for the remainder of the year.

How many books have I read so far this year?
31, counting 8 full length audiobooks

How many have I started and not finished?
4: Mary by Janis Cooke Newman, Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott, and Jane Eyre, all of which I intend to finish at some point, and Middlesex, which I do not.

Are you still on target for reaching your goal?
If I read 5 books a month I'll have made my goal. It's still ambitous, and I'm a bit behind where I wanted to be, but audiobooks should help.

Any advice for someone who wants to have a reading goal?
Audiobooks are a great way to get some reading in during times that you can't read (like when you're driving), join Goodreads or another online book club for inspiration, and keep your eye on the goal.

Adventures in David Sedaris, part 1

When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
You could probably guess that I am the ideal audience for David Sedaris. For starters,

I listen to NPR regularly.
I love humor laced with sarcasm.
I have an overdeveloped sense of urgency around for gay rights.
My interest for living in the US is waning, and finding American citizens living abroad is more and more enticing.
I love a great story laced somewhere in between these topics.

David Sedaris meets all those things and more. There were times during the audiobook where I literally laughed out loud in my car, then looked to see if anyone was watching me make a fool out of myself. Yet there were other times when his voice became whiny and monotonous when I had to turn off the book just to find - ironically - he was the special guest of the day on NPR.

The part of When You Are Engulfed in Flames dedicated to David's journey about quitting smoking, while interesting, dragged on endlessly. His love of spiders was not entirely enduring either. I mean, who loves spiders above people and - ghastly - above puppies?!

I'm not done yet with David Sedaris, but I hope my next experience doesn't make me want to put down the book. Or worse - turn off NPR.

View all my reviews >>

Dreamland

Dreamland by Sarah Dessen


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I enjoyed this, my very first Sarah Dessen book. Dessen's ability to create characters with complexity was refreshing, especially for this subject - an abusive, co-dependent relationship with a girl you really don't expect to be "that" girl.

The book made me look at teenage relationships in a different light. Should be required reading in health class, although I can't think that any teenage boy would use the book as anything other than a flyswatter.

View all my reviews >>

The Year of Magical Thinking (sans magical writing)

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
So many people have raved about this book, and it won awards so though memoirs are not my usual genre, I thought I would really enjoy it. Boy, was I wrong.



The author is a writer and so was her husband of 40 years. Her writing is excellent, well researched points of view, etc. But as far as being engaged in the story or caring about the characters? Nada.



Perhaps if I had been touched by tragedy and death I would be able to understand and appreciate the authors POV. Until then, I'll stick to fiction.




View all my reviews.

A Certain Slant of Light

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
The premise of the book intrigued me-could the undead really have soulmates? The story line from the book jacket:

Someone was looking at me, a disturing sensation if you're dead. I was with my teacher, Mr Brown. As usual, we were in our classroom, that safe and wooden-walled box - the windows opening onto the grassy field to the west, the fading flag standing in the chalk dusty corner, the television set mounted above the bulletin board like a sleeping eye, and Mr Brown's princely table keeping watch over a regimen of student desks.





That "someone" was Billy, a spirit inside a living person's body. This novel is an interesting and original ghost story that kept me rooting for the main character, Helen, who has haunted her live hosts without contact for over a hundred years. I literally could not put this book down last night until I finished it to find out what happened to Helen as Jenny and James as Billy.



Unfortunately, the end was rather anticlimactic. I ended up reading it twice to make sure I wasn't just tired, but alas... the end lacked the substance that kept the pages moving. The passion in the relationship when Helen was living her life in Jenny's body led to an end I felt somewhat cheated by. Helen and James got to live happily ever after in 400 words or less. There were far too little answers on what happened to the bodies they had been inhabiting while falling in love, their perfect spirit love was rather boring. I felt cheated as this had such wonderful possibilities. It got me wondering whether the editor got tired and let the last few pages go, as the producer did in nearly all of Steven King's movies.



A good, somewhat "light" YA novel with a lot of mature themes not suitable for your little sister.




View all my reviews.

Firefly Lane

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
Lately I've been reading two books at once. Well, not actually "reading". In order to find more opportunity to get reading in and make my commute more bearable (it's not that bad, really) I'm listening to audiobooks.



In the past, I'd only listened to audiobooks on long trips because I couldn't stand the interruptions on short trips, but I've found that if you're listening to a "light" novel and otherwise engaged in another activity (driving, cleaning, etc.) an audiobook is perfect. Firefly Lane is one of those books that makes a perfect audiobook in small doses.



Onto the story...



Kate and Tully meet in the 70s when they are 14 and Tully moves across the street. During that year they become almost immediately inseperable. The story follows their friendship through adolesence, college, and adulthood.



The story has a LOT of references to each time period, which brings the story together in an interesting way. It sets the scene with all the visual details (big shoulderpads in the 80s, changing hairstyles, popular music of the times) that bring back so many memories for us 70s kids. (Okay, a little before my time, but I can still relate)



In the end, Tully and Kate choose different life paths: Kate a wife and mother, Tully a famous, driven career woman. Will an act of betrayal end their decades of friendship?



Another side story is the relationships between Kate and her mother and the difficulty of raising a teenager, then being the mother who understands how difficult she was to raise.



If you're looking for a somewhat light book that will probably make you cry at the end, this is it.






View all my reviews.

Are you more literate than the BBC

Here's something that's been going around Facebook for a while now. It's been proven to be not true, but a fun competition anyway, and I'm in favor of anything that motivates people to read more. Here it goes:

BBC believes most people will only have read SIX of these 100 books. How many have YOU read? Be honest!

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put the ones you've read in bold
2) Underline the ones you LOVE.
3) Italicize those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby *** - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 . Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt

81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

18 on my TBR pile, 34 I've already read.