Maybe it should be "1000 books..."

It is a rare occasion that I find a book utterly, completely unreadable.  Peter Esterhazy's Celestial Harmonies is one such book.  It is over 800 pages of stream of consciousness about a man's family and history in and of Hungary.  It was totally confusing and I had no idea what was going on at any point in it.  I finally resorted to skimming because I just wasn't getting anything out of it, then to flipping pages and reading every second or third page.  Just terrible.  Even still, it took me over 2 weeks to read.

So whatever I was supposed to have gotten out of this one, I didn't!

Man Gone Down.

Man Gone Down is not a book I would have found on my own, but I am very glad that I read it.  The main character is a black man who has a white wife and 3 young children.  The story centers around four days in his life where he is trying to get enough money to get their lives back on track - he needs to pay rent and tuition at his kids' school.  In the process of doing this, he reflects on his life and what race has meant to him and his family.

This book was very interesting and made me think quite a bit.  I really enjoyed it.