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.

Tinker, tailor, engineer, spy.

Cause for Alarm is a very neatly written little spy novel.  The basic plot of the book concerns a British engineer who takes a job in Italy for a company that makes machines that make artillery shells.  The engineer gets into trouble with certain agents who want him to do different things for various governments.

It is a classic spy novel - lots of cloak and dagger stuff.  I really enjoyed it - it moved quickly and I loved finding out what happened next.

Awkward!

Before I embarked upon my current path of staying at home with my kids and cleaning up food from the floor, I had a different job. And that different job periodically had meetings in very cool places. Once I skipped a morning seminar to do something interesting...only to run smack into my boss leaving the seminar as I reentered the hotel! Awkward!

Things are also awkward in Caught, which takes place in World War Two London .  The main characters are upper class Richard Roe, and not upper class Pye, who is Roe's superior at the auxiliary fire department. It turns out that Pye's sister kidnapped Roe's son. That's not a great way to start off a working relationship!

I liked this book less than Back, the other Henry Green book I have read. It was kind of slow. I definitely missed nuances. I would benefit from someone who knows literature explaining their take on it, I think.

I love Margaret Atwood's writing!

I love Margaret Atwood's books.  I really do.  I can't believe that I never heard of her until about 5 years ago, when someone recommended I read The Handmaid's Tale.  I thought it was a fantastic book and then with this project I've also had the opportunity to read Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, both of which I really enjoyed as well.

So I had high hopes for Cat's Eye.  It did not disappoint one bit.  Like all of Atwood's writing, it is a complex, multilayered tale.  This story is about an artist who returns to her hometown for a show of her art and the return brings up a whole bunch of childhood memories for her to deal with.  It is really thoughtful and deliberate but at the same time is an intense story.  I really loved it.

Why food on the floor could be LETHAL.

Anything on the floor is fair game for Fuzz to eat right now.  Plus, he spits out his food a lot, so the floor is sort of part of the digestion process.  There are various Cheerios, parts of pretzels, and a couple of sticky spots where he has dropped melons adorning my living room floor at the moment.  Obviously, I should do less reading and more sweeping!

It is a good thing that we don't live in San Lorenzo.  In Cat's Cradle, most of San Lorenzo's citizens were wiped out by simply touching a piece of ice-nine and then touching their mouths.  Not a good situation for busy toddlers!  (The rest of the world was wiped out, too, but that was due to the ice-nine wrecking the earth, not because they accidentally ate it.)

I really enjoyed this book.  I had not read any Kurt Vonnegut books before beginning this project.  What a fantastic writer he is. Cat's Cradle is an amazing, multi layered story about the end of the world  It moves so quickly with interesting characters, an original religion, and a mystery surrounding a famous scientist.  He manages to weave this incredible tale and also present a commentary on today's society without it being boring or preachy at all.

Misfits.

I read The Catcher in the Rye last week.  As I read, I kept thinking about Holden Caulfield, the misfit.  Holden Caulfield, from a privileged background, but doesn't think he fits in anywhere.  Holden Caulfield, kicked out of school.  Holden Caulfield, almost molested by a former teacher.  Holden Caulfield, wanders around New York and has numerous negative experiences.

I understand why people love this book.  People sympathize with Holden Caulfield, the boy who doesn't fit in.

I couldn't.

I kept thinking about Adam Lanza.

I should point out that I grew up near Newtown, Connecticut, and so the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School have been incredibly difficult for me to process.  I still think of those tragic deaths daily.

And so, as I was reading about this classic literary hero, I couldn't get past the parallels between Holden Caulfield, the misfit, the boy who doesn't fit in, the boy who needs help, and Lanza.

Of course, unlike Lanza, Caulfield manages not to hurt anyone, winds up going home and at the end of the book, obtains the mental health care he desperately needs.

Maybe this analysis is too simplistic.  I understand why the book is viewed as such great literature.  Perhaps I simply read it at the wrong time.  In any case, I wish I could like Holden Caulfield more than I do.