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Summer Reading Challenge 2016: The Pier Falls and Other Stories
There’s nothing better than a summertime read that so thoroughly describes the tragic, horrific event of an ocean pier falling and taking human life with it. The title of this short story collection by Mark Haddon (and consequently, the title of the first of these stories) is so simplistic, so matter of fact, yet no detail between the covers goes untouched. The first moments of the pier’s destruction to ten years after are well constructed, and while the scenes can be difficult to read, not reading is even more grueling.
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Summer Reading Challenge 2016: A Discovery of Witches
What makes this novel spectacular is not just its length; not just the invocation of hunger for the next sentence, the next page, the next chapter; and not just the web of characters who become suddenly connected although they have been that way all along; no, what makes this novel so spectacular, is Deborah Harkness’ use of the French language; deep knowledge of creatures outside the ordinary human species; the gut-wrenching, goosebump-inducing relationships; the historical wines and delicious descriptions of them; and, and, the unavoidable attention paid to art.
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Summer Reading Challenge 2016: An Introduction
Is summer my favorite season for reading? No. But it is one of four of my favorite seasons for reading; like the fall is for school, summer is for books. It calls for cleaning out To Be Read (TBR) lists, looking for what’s new on the shelves of bookstores (and in publishers’ calendars), and seeking out new and old favorite spots to spend time [reading]. There’s just something about the summer that makes me want to do all of these things, more so than in other seasons. Last year, I tried tackling the Penguin 80 Years of Bestsellers Reading Challenge, and came up quite short, even though I had already read…
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Nothing Gold Can Stay | 2016 Reading Challenge
These stories by Ron Rash are hard-hitting, inquisitive, and conclude with abrupt endings that frustrate, satisfy, and sometimes only led me to wonder if I understood any part of the story that came before. From a story about a couple short on luck to one about runaway slaves during the Civil War, to a girl befriending a pair of hippies and a rural town draining a pond, the range and depth of the book’s contents stretches into a plethora of corners of the imagination and societal affairs in the southern Appalachians.
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February Reading Challenge: Anna Karenina
My desire to get through this Leo Tolstoy creation is red hot; unfortunately my success with doing so is as non-existent as a flame in an outdoor fireplace buried under four feet of snow. I have tried reading this novel over and over and over again, and while I did get further this month than I have during previous attempts, I still could not get through the seven hundred and fifty four pages of this particular edition. Why oh why can I not get through it? Before talking about why my need to read this novel is so intense, I need to tell you that this Reading Challenge conclusion is…
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February Reading Challenge: Introduction
Well February has really crept up on me; it felt like we had just reached the middle of January and then voila, out of nowhere, February 1st! If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my Modern Romance review – I have decided to fashion my end-of-the-month Reading Challenge entries like reviews, to give them more of a direction and so I don’t have to call them summaries (*shudder*). I am reluctant to report that I have not finished The Goldfinch, but I will finish it by the end of the week so stay tuned for that review this weekend. Since I’m feeling a bit down on myself about not…
A blog about books and miscellany
