Library Loot: February 8-14

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

E-books:
• Catherine the Great: portrait of a woman
• Maman's Homesick Pie

Audiobooks:
• The Kitchen Counter Cooking School

Video:
• The Help
• Freedom Riders (likely to get it within the next few days)

Books:
• The Paris Wife

The Gift - Cecelia Ahern

Title: The Gift
Author: Cecelia Ahern
Pages: 305
Published: 2009 (first published 2008)
Challenges: 2012 Support Your Library
Genre: Christmas fiction
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Library
Rating: 3/5


Description: Lou Suffern is practised in the art of concealment. He is, also, always overstretched, trying to do too many things at once. His overburdened schedule gives him few moments of peace, even in his sleep. And when he spends time at home with his wife and family, he is always distracted, and, mentally, somewhere else. 

On a cold winter morning, Lou is on his way to work when he encounters Gabe, a homeless street dweller, sitting outside an office building. Lou is intrigued by him, and contrives to get him a job in the post room. But this act of charity rebounds on him, and Gabe’s presence begins to grate on Lou -- particularly when he discovers that the latter seems capable of being in two places at the same time. Christmas is drawing near, and before the season is over, Lou’s life will be irrevocably change by the casual act of kindness he has performed. (via Goodreads)

Thoughts: It was cute and for the most part the story went over my head and wasn't really engaged with it.  Felt it was a little mundane and by the point I finished it this evening, I just wanted to finish the book.  It wasn't badly written, its just it was something that wasn't really that memorable nor was I that engaged with the book.   The story seemed to be ho-hum through out the book and I suppose it didn't help that it took me about 2 months to complete the book.  Maybe if I had just sat down one afternoon during Christmas, this would have been done sooner.

Bottom line:  This book is meant to be read quickly and not over the course of two months.    Its also clearly a book that isn't hard-hitting, but has a decent storyline and if you want a decent Christmas story that ends a little differently than you expect, this would be a story for you.  A decent read, but nothing to write home about.

Pages read for 2012: 3592

February Prompt - A Classics Challenge

For this month's prompt on Nov, we are be asked to write about a character that we find interesting.  This month I have chosen Konstantin Levin from Anna Karenina.

I am going to answer a combination of Level 1 and Level 2 questions.

My first impressions of Konstantin Levin is of somebody who doesn't enjoy being in the city and is clearly a person who feels pressed in when visiting his friend, Stepan Arkadyevich and somebody who prefers to be on his country estate and getting his hands dirty and not in a fancy home somewhere not doing things with his hands.

I have actually grown to like Levin and even though I think that he can be a bit awkward socially in that he would rather be by himself rather than around the social elite of St. Petersburg and Moscow and like my protagonists to be a little more socially attuned.  I find him to be totally believable because he sounds a lot myself, in which I would rather be with a few selected friends rather than amongst people that I really am not comfortable around.  I would also rather be in a space that is somewhat out of the way rather than in a place that is constantly busy, although I do like being in a place that is close to stores and activity so that when I do need it, I can easily access it. Like Levin, I would also rather be around books than people and find that being around people rather difficult.  I would like to meet him; he seems to be what one calls an old soul, as he is not really concerned about the things of the here and now and more concerned about things that require thought and study.

The Marriage Plot - Jeffrey Eugenides

Title: The Marriage Plot: a novel
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides
Pages: 2239 (576 pages)
Published: 2011
Challenges: 2012 Library Challenge
Genre: Literary Fiction
Edition: ebook
Source: Library
Rating: 3/5

Description: Madeleine Hanna was the dutiful English major who didn''t get the memo. While everyone else in the early 1980s was reading Derrida, she was happily absorbed with Jane Austen and George Eliot: purveyors of the marriage plot that lies at the heart of the greatest English novels. Madeleine was the girl who dressed a little too nicely for the taste of her more bohemian friends, the perfect girlfriend whose college love life, despite her good looks, hadn''t lived up to expectations.

But now, in the spring of her senior year, Madeleine has enrolled in a semiotics course "to see what all the fuss is about," and, for reasons that have nothing to do with school, life and literature will never be the same. Not after she falls in love with Leonard Morten - charismatic loner, college Darwinist and lost Oregon boy - who is possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy and introduces her to the ecstasies of immediate experience. And certainly not after Mitchell Grammaticus - devotee of Patti Smith and Thomas Merton - resurfaces in her life, obsessed with the idea that Madeleine is destined to be his mate.

The triangle in this amazing and delicious novel about a generation beginning to grow up is age old, and completely fresh and surprising. With devastating wit, irony and an abiding understanding and love for his characters, Jeffrey Eugenides resuscitates the original energies of the novel while creating a story so contemporary that it reads like the intimate journal of our own lives (via Chapters.ca)

Thoughts: This one took me awhile to get this book read as I found it to a bit of a struggle to get through and found myself going through each section breaking down how far I was into a section on a regular basis.  There were times that I tore through a section and would soon found myself slowing down in the next section.   And therefore I found myself not wanting to read it and in fact last weekend, I didn't read any of the book and only got back into reading the final quarter of the book in the last few days, once I realized I only had a few more days with it.  I guess I expected more out of the book, especially since I had really enjoyed The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex; I found this one to be a little too cumbersome and something that I felt that I was doing out of obligation rather than pure enjoyment, much like how Madeleine made her choices throughout the book.

I did like the fact that there wasn't just one focus and that there were differing views of a similar time period and that it alternated between three of the four main characters in the book.  It was certainly an interesting way to tell a story and it felt like it captured a moment in time in their lives and has me wondering what happened to Leonard, Mitchell, and Madeleine and what happened to their relationship.

Bottom line:  I wasn't particularly impressed with this book and had slightly higher expectations of the book.  While the writing and the characterizations in the book were really good, it just didn't draw me in; the story with the three characters seemed to be a little lost at times and had a bit of an aimless feel to and is probably something that I won't pick up again.  Its a good read for a vacation, but nothing really mind blowing.
  
Pages for 2012: 3287

If you have read the book, I am curious to hear what you thought of the book.

 

Booking Through Thursday - Only five

Booking Through Thursday asks this week:

If you had to pick only 5 books to read ever again, what would they be and why?

The five I would choose are:

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte:  It was my first classic novel and the first book that I really fell in love with and something that every time I reread fall in love with all over again.

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck: There is something that keeps drawing me back to this book and the two times that I have read the book I have found something new with the book.  And the story is so well told that once I get into it, I can't stop reading it.

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: The story is very well told and engrossing to the point that I am starting to see why one of my very good friends really enjoys the book.

• Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Even though I have had complaints about the start of the book, I am starting to really enjoy this book and can clearly see why a lot of people enjoy this book.

• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling: I don't know why I choose this book in particular but I think its because the book still has that child-like manner of the first two books in the Harry Potter series, but has that element of darkness that seems to invade the last four books in the series.  Its almost an end to the innocence of Harry and a reality check that things are going to get darker in the coming years.

WWW Wednesdays (Feb. 8)

This is a weekly book meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you'll be reading next?


My answers:
1. What are you currently reading?

• 11/22/63
• Anna Karenina
• Les Miserables
• My Life in France
• The Gift
• The Great Gatsby
• The Kitchen Counter School
• The Marriage Plot
• What Alice Knew

2. What did you recently finish reading?

• The Help by Kathleen Stockett (review)
• The Cat's Table by Michale Ondaatje (review)

3.  What do you think you'll be reading next?

Catherine the Great: the portrait of a woman

Happy Birthday Charles Dickens!

Yet Another Period Drama Blog has put up these questions in celebration of Charles Dickens 200th birthday.  I took from a combination of Miss Laurie and Alexandra

How were you first introduced to Charles Dickens?

I was introduced to Charles Dickens through my dad who had A Christmas Carol available in his classroom.

Which Charles Dickens novels and stories have you read? Which are your favorites?

I have read:
• Oliver Twist
• A Tale of Two Cities
• A Christmas Carol

Which Charles Dickens novel(s) do you most want to read?
I really want to read Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Bleak House  

How many Dickens adaptations have you seen?
I have seen quite a few of them, especially A Christmas Carol (1951 with Alistair Sim and 2009 from Disney).  I have also seen the BBC's adaptation of David Copperfield (1999) with Daniel Radcliffe, Maggie Smith, Bleak House (2005), Little Dorrit (2008), The Old Curiosity Shop (2007), Oliver (2007), and Nicholas Nickleby (2002).

Which Dickens adaptation is your favorite?
My favourite adaptation is the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, but Little Dorrit is not far behind (2008).

Have you seen multiple versions of A Christmas Carol? Which version is your favorite?
 1951, but 2009 is closely behind.