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Katrina at Calipidder Days has asked that we post reflections on our challenge experience.
I completed the challenge on May 18. Here's what I read; the titles contain links to my reviews:
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (overlapped the Reading Across Borders Challenge)
2. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
3. Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (overlapped NYT Notable Challenge)
4. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
5. The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
Now, for the wrap-up (drum roll please!) ...
- What was the best book you read this spring? - It's hard to decide, but I think I'll go with Cloud Atlas. This book had a very unique plot and was beautifully written.
- What book could you have done without? One Hundred Years of Solitude. I just couldn't get into it.
- Did you try out a new author this spring? If so, which one, and will you be reading that author again? I'd read only one of David Mitchell's books before. Cloud Atlas inspired me; I'd like to read many more of his books.
- Did you come across a book or two on other participants' lists that you're planning to add to your own to-be-read pile? Which ones? I'm participating in a lot of challenges, and I find them to be a great way to get ideas, although my TBR pile is now gigantic!
- What did you learn -- about anything -- through this challenge? I learned how much fun challenges are, and am finding them to be a great way to organize my reading, complete books that have been sitting around for a while, and try out new authors and genres.
- What was the best part of the Spring Reading Thing? This was one of the first challenges I joined, and I've discovered so many great lit blogs through the challenge community.
- Would you be interested in participating in another reading challenge this fall? Absolutely!
"Have you fallen behind on your To-Be-Read list? Do you have five books that you've started but haven't finished? Have you been meaning to get around to that great book your friend recommended but just haven't done it yet? Do you love to read and to find out what everyone else is reading? Then this challenge is for you! ... It's all about setting goals and sharing them; little to no pressure."
Great idea! I do have a few TBRs gathering dust.
Challenge completed 5/18/2007!
Read (with links to reviews):
1. One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (overlaps the Reading Across Borders Challenge)
2. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
3. Beasts of No Nation, by Uzodinma Iweala (overlaps NYT Notable Challenge)
4. Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
5. The Thirteenth Tale, by Diane Setterfield
- Mood:
chipper
The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
406 pages
First sentence: It was November.
Reflections: Margaret Lea lives a simple life, working in her father's antique bookshop and eking out a living as a biographer. Out of the blue, Margaret receives a letter from Vida Winter, a very popular author and recluse, who asks that she write her biography. Time and again, Vida Winter has refused to tell her true life story. Why has she chosen Margaret? Will she tell the truth or will this be yet another fantastic but fictional rendition?
Curious but reluctant, Margaret visits Miss Winter to discuss the assignment. It turns out Vida Winter's life story will be about a haunted house, a library, and twins. That did it; Margaret is hooked. As a child, Margaret accidentally discovered that she had a twin sister, who died at birth. Her mother has never recovered from it, and their relationship is strained. Margaret takes up residence in Vida Winter's home, and Vida begins to tell her story. At the end of each day's tale, Margaret transcribes the story into a notebook. Vida Winter's life is the "story within a story" in this book. It's a page-turner, with characters and events that are not what they initially seem. And Margaret's story is poignant, as she comes to terms with the void left by her sister's death. The ending ties all the loose ends together in a highly satisfying way.
The Thirteenth Tale is also an homage to storytelling, books, and reading, exemplified by these two quotes:
- There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner.
- Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.
The "membrane" of The Thirteenth Tale will remain with me well into my next book.
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24 / 50 (48.0%) |
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8,816 / 15,000 (58.8%) |
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austen
349 pages
First sentence: The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex.
Reflections: Jane Austen -- what's not to like? I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The title describes the main characters, Elinor and Marianne, two sisters in their teens. A couple of definitions are in order:
Sense (n): sound practical intelligence
Sensibility (n): mental susceptibility or responsiveness; quickness and acuteness of apprehension or feeling.
Elinor is pragmatic, cool under pressure, and often puts the needs of others ahead of her own. Marianne is more emotional and impulsive, with a tendency toward dramatic reactions. Like other Austen novels, the plot revolves around the girls' relationships with family, and with suitors. Marianne falls for a bit of a cad, who drops her for another woman. This leads to hysterics, and Elinor comes to her aid providing strong sisterly support. This is at the same time that Elinor learns the man she loves is secretly engaged to someone else. Ever the stoic, she confides in no one and pours her heart into caring for her sister. Meanwhile, Marianne is blind to the affections of another, seeing him as far too old for her. Naturally it all works out in the end with both girls happily married to suitable partners.
This is a fairly basic, tried and true, storyline. Austen's character development adds richness and depth. She introduces several archetypes: a greedy sister-in-law who convinces the girls' brother to provide them with none of his inherited fortune; Willoughby, the cad who mistreats Marianne; and Mrs. Jennings, a caring but meddling woman who draws hilarious conclusions from misinterpreted actions or partially-overheard conversations
This is the third Austen book I've read (the others being Pride and Prejudice and Emma), and I'm now committed to reading her remaining three novels as well.
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22 / 50 (44.0%) |
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8,122 / 15,000 (54.1%) |
- Mood: content
Beasts of no Nation
Uzodinma Iweala
142 pages
First sentence: It is starting like this.
Reflections: This fictional account of an African boy soldier is a powerful and disturbing book. I managed through it, but barely. I thought, with only 142 pages, that it would just take a day or two to read. But I found it so intense, I could only read one to two chapters in a sitting. The brutality of war, and the brutality of conscripting children to fight that war -- it was just too much.
One form of abuse involved giving the children drugs prior to going into battle. "Across the stream, I am feeling in my body something like electricity and I am starting to think: Yes it is good to fight." (p. 45) The main character, Agu, is sexually abused by his commanding officer. He longs for his family: "I am remembering my mother and how she is so good to me that each time she is hugging me that is all I am needing to see the dark skin of her arm holding me close to her ..." (p. 106) Nevertheless, he begins to identify with his fellow soldiers, and his commanding officer, as his new family. But after a time he begins to see the futility of war and feels trapped: "...I am fearing because I am seeing that the only way not to be fighting is to die. I am not wanting to die." (p. 116)
This is not a book I would enthusiastically recommend but it was certainly a conciousness-raiser.
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18 / 50 (36.0%) |
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6,718 / 15,000 (44.8%) |
- Mood:
depressed
Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell
509 pages
First sentence: Thursday, 7th November - Beyond the Indian hamlet, upon a forelorn strand, I happened on a trail of recent footprints.
Reflections: I absolutely loved this book. I couldn't put it down, and finished it in just a few days over the long holiday weekend. David Mitchell weaves together the stories of six people, living at varying points in history (and in the future). Beginning in the 1850s, each story reaches its halfway point and then abruptly moves to the next, several years later. The sixth tale takes place in a kind of post-apocalyptic Hawaii and once it is fully told, we travel back in time again, completing each story and learning how they all interrelate. The book's title refers to a sextet composed by one of the characters. The Cloud Atlas Sextet was a "sextet for overlapping soloists," with "each solo interrupted by its successor." Just like the book. Clever.
In addition to creative genius, Cloud Atlas contains powerful messages about society. The stories set in history provide a backdrop that shows how our current 21st-century society came to be what it is. This brings an air of credibility to the futuristic stories that I don't normally find. A story set in a future Korea shows the potential consequences of the 21st century's consumerism and excesses. This society began to manufacture slave labor, and over time the humans lacked the core skills required for a society to function. In the final story, the post-apocalyptic world then reflected on the 21st century society's perpetual hunger for "more .... more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power...".
Well, it just makes you think about what might happen if we continue our current trends of consumption, discrimination, terrorism, and so on ... this is an important book and highly recommended.
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17 / 50 (34.0%) |
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6,576 / 15,000 (43.8%) |
- Mood:
contemplative
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
458 pages
First sentence: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.
Reflections: I learned something reading this book: I learned that I do not particularly care for "magical realism." I was initially attracted to this book because it's one of the "1001 books you must read before you die," and because the author has received such critical acclaim. It seemed like a must-read. When I decided to read it to satisfy both the "Reading across Borders" and "Spring Reading Thing" challenges, it became a must-read. I perservered, but in the end I am left with little to say about this book.
One Hundred Years of Solitude is a multi-generational family saga. Magical realism, according to Wikipedia, is "an artistic genre in which magical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting." I was reminded of American folklore like Paul Bunyan. The characters had unusually strong abilities, and fantastic events like plagues happened often, and yet the setting in which this occurred was a sleepy rural village that you might find anywhere.
The writing is lyrical and in that sense I can understand why Marquez is so highly regarded. I just couldn't connect with the style and I think this may be one of those books that would be more appreciated if read as part of a literature course, where you can explore the themes and hidden meanings of events that take place in the story. As leisure reading, it left me flat.
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16 / 50 (32.0%) |
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6,067 / 15,000 (40.4%) |
- Mood:
apathetic
