Not as bad as I thought!

The Child in Time is about a kidnapped little girl.  I thought it was going to be extremely difficult to read.  I was pleasantly surprised, however, that it wasn't as sad or horrible as I thought.  Yes, the main characters are grieving and go through some real difficulties, but there is a message of hope at the end that is very nice.  I also liked the intrigue and thoughts about the nature of time that were woven throughout the story.

This is one of Ian McEwan's earlier novels and it is interesting to see how his style developed over the years.  This book was not too bad.

Happy! Happy! Happy!

Fuzz goes around saying "happy!" sometimes.  I don't think he necessarily knows what it means, but it is awfully cute to watch him toddle around saying that he is happy.

After a slog through some really boring, slow books, I was glad that The Charwoman's Daughter was quick, interesting, and yes, happy.  The mother and daughter in the book really love each other and I enjoyed watching their relationship develop.  The mother of 6 next door also loves her children fiercely and does everything in her power to give them the best life - even if it means taking in a lodger, leading to much more work on her part.  The book even had a happy ending!  I liked this one.

Bo-ring.

Pea has really gotten into the Ivy and Bean series of children's books lately.  They are cute.  Bean's way of proclaiming everything "Bo-ring!" has sneaked its way into Pea's lexicon as well.  Now I am going to borrow the term.

Because, friends, The Charterhouse of Parma is boring.  Boring.  Booooo-ring.  I just couldn't get into it.  On the surface it seemed like a story, anyway, but I just did not care about the characters, I couldn't ever figure out who was who, and it was about 10 times as long as it needed to be.  I had to force myself to read a chapter a day just so I would be sure to get through it.   I'm glad to be moving on!

Books 151-160

As I continue my slog through The Charterhouse of Parma, thought I would update the list.

151. The Child in Time by Ian McEwan (1987)
152. The Childermass by Wyndham Lewis (1928)
153. Chocky by John Wyndham (1968)
154. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (2001)
155. Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levy (1945)
156. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843)
157. Chrome Yellow [or Crome Yellow?] by Aldous Huxley (1921)
158. Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee (1959)
159. The Cider House Rules by John Irving (1985)
160. Cigarettes by Harry Matthews (1987)

A long, long, long time ago...

It's been a slow reading year for me.  Something about the ages of my kids and the various activities and responsibilities that they and we are involved in makes it difficult to get reading time in.  (Or, it could be Plants vs. Zombies on my iPad.  But we'll go with the former.)

Chaireas and Kallirhoe was a short and relatively easy read.  I can't really explain why it took me so long to get into it.  The story is pretty formulaic.  Although I suppose that you can't really say a book written so many hundreds of years ago (in ancient Greece) is formulaic if it was one of the first of that style.  Basically - boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married, he accidentally really hurts her and everyone thinks she is dead, she is buried, but alive and is saved by a bunch of grave robbers who carry her off to Persia and various shenanigans ensue.  But all works out in the end, thankfully.

One sad aspect of the story was that Kallirhoe had this baby (and it was Chaireas') and she basically abandons it with Dionysos, the dude who bought her as a slave and fell in love with her) to go back with Chaireas.  I don't think she ever told Chaireas about his son.  The son was like a plot point and then an afterthought.

All in all, I guess I am glad I read this, but it is not one that will leave long lasting memories with me.  It is definitely cool to read a novel written so many centuries ago, though.

...you're breakin' my heart.

Fanny Burney's novel Cecilia is over 1000 pages long.  The beginning was really interesting.  The main character, Cecilia, is a beautiful, smart, thoughtful girl with a huge fortune.  The only catch is that to retain her fortune, anyone she marries must take her last name rather than Cecilia change her name to match her husband's.  (Interesting twist for 1789.)   The first portion of the novel has her staying with a spendthrift couple who she lends money to and then loses as the husband kills himself to escape debts.

Then things get very slow.  Cecilia kind of decides that she likes this aristocrat, Delvile.  His parents, though they like the idea of Cecilia's fortune, are horrified by the idea that their only son would do anything other than carry on the family name.  Hundreds of pages go by and they go back and forth, nothing being resolved.  It struck me how the mutual interest between Cecilia and Delvile is downplayed.  Cecilia seems happy to be single and seems to sort of choose Delvile not out of any strong feelings but more because she doesn't like the alternative suitors and feels like a life with Delvile would not be too bad.  I am not sure whether this is because of the time at which Burney was writing where declarations of undying love would be seen as gauche or offensive, or we are supposed to consider Cecilia's character as kind of above romantic love.

Finally, 950 pages or so into the book, things get interesting again, and our heroine is able to be married to Delvile, and a Delvile relative leaves Cecilia some money because they like her so much and feel bad that she had to give up her fortune.  All's well that ends well in Cecilia-land.

I liked this book, though it was kind of slow in parts.  I like learning about upper class society from these times.  I can't believe how long it took me to read it though!

Sad reflections on The Cement Garden.

I can definitely appreciate the quality of writing in The Cement Garden, Ian McEwan's first novel.  It is intense, interesting, and I found that I could not put the book down once I got to the middle of the book.  It is also an incredibly sad story and I wished that I had not read parts of it.

The story is about 4 children ranging in age from 4 to 17.  Their mother dies and they are left on their own.  They fear foster care, so they inter their mother in their basement and go about attempting to live on their own without an adult.  The story is just so sad.

As a parent, I really felt so bad for the children and that poor little 4 year old crying for his mama.  It really made me think about some of the things I fear the most.

All in all, an excellent book, but I'm not really that glad that I read it.

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.

Books 141-150

Here are the next 10 books on the list!

141. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1963)
142. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (1988)
143. Caught by Henry Green (1943)
144. Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler (1938)
145. Cecilia by Fanny Burney (1782)
146. Celestial Harmonies by Peter Esterhazy (2000)
147. The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan (1978)
148. Chaireas and Kallirhoe by Chariton (1750)
149. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal (1839)
150. The Charwoman's Daughter by James Stephens (1912)

I'm looking forward to reading more by Margaret Atwood and Fanny Burney this winter/spring!

Happy New Year and a slow read!

Happy New Year 2013!  Many things other than reading have captured my attention since my last entry in December.  I seemed to have lost whatever few minutes I have had to read in the past.  Hence, it took me nearly a full month to read Catch-22, a novel by Joseph Heller.

I was first introduced to Catch-22 when I was in high school and I selected it from the summer reading list.  The only thing I remembered from the book the first time around was Major Major.  Major Major is still one of the more entertaining aspects of the book, and will probably be what I remember from it years from now.  This book just wasn't entertaining, friends.  The critic on the back of the text says the book is "bitingly funny" and I just don't see it.  Perhaps I'm too far removed from the realities of a war to truly understand the humor.  I'll treat that as a blessing.

When everything is turned upside down.

I keep trying and failing to come up with a real life corollary to the dilemma faced by the main character in this book.

Anthony Trollope's Castle Richmond is a very interesting story of upper class life in Ireland during the famine.  The famine is the backdrop to the events that take place, though the main characters themselves are not starving.

The story revolves around the Fitzgerald family of Castle Richmond.  The oldest son's legitimacy to inherit his father's estate and title is called into question, and the book examines the impact on him, his family, his betrothed, and his cousin - the man who would take the estate if the oldest son were not allowed to inherit.  

It is hard for me to imagine how it must feel to be a man whose whole life has been directed by the expectation that he would inherit an estate and be a country gentleman - and is then faced with the prospect of making his way in the world, finding a job, etc.  I really liked this book, especially as it picked up steam toward the middle/end and found it fascinating.

Underwhelmed.

Cat and Mouse is about a group of boys growing up in World War II era Germany.  It follows the narrator's obsession with this other boy, Mahlke.  Mahlke was kind of a different kid and the narrator can't figure out what makes him tick or why he operates the way he does.

I didn't find this book very interesting.  I couldn't really get into it in the beginning and it just kind of dragged on.

Distractions.

I really wanted to like Castle Rackrent.  I loved The Absentee, Maria Edgeworth's other book I read for this project.

I made a mistake though.  I opted to read this one for free on the Kindle for iPad.  And of course, when the book doesn't grip me immediately on the iPad, I have a hard time focusing on the book because there are so many other fun things to do on the iPad.  I literally had to force myself to read for 15 minutes before opening up any other apps to play around.  That doesn't happen to me with a book, and why I very much prefer to read the old analog way.

I don't mean to imply that Castle Rackrent is not excellent literature.  I understand it is once of the first historical novels written in English, and I am always impressed by Edgeworth's characters and how easily the messages can be adapted to modern day society.  I just wish that I was a little less distracted so that I could have more easily enjoyed the fullness of this book.

A castle featuring...a giant hand!

The Castle of Otranto was the third book in a row that I have read that featured the word "Castle" in the title.  The peril of reading these books in alphabetical order, of course.  This was the first one that was actually readable.

The book is short (about 100 pages) and old (published 1764) and free on the Kindle.  What's not to like?  Basically this lord, Manfred, has his castle taken over by the supernatural on the day of the wedding of his son.  But it wasn't obvious supernatural - my favorite was the giant body parts that the servants reported seeing.  The report of a glimpse of a giant hand was fun!  This book was pretty interesting and very readable considering its publication date.  I'm a fan.