Has anyone read Lolita? It’s been on my to-read list for quite some time, and I finally checked it out from the library, but I have not cracked for over a week now after having read the first couple of pages.
This seems to be my reading schtick: when I’m deep into a book I’m loving, whether it is fluff or good literature, every spare minute I have I spend reading it.
When I’m in the middle of a book I’m not enjoying, I do everything BUT read during my spare minutes.
I’ll sit down to read it occasionally, and with intention, but it’s not what I want to do when I have just a moment.
Ideally I would always have a book going that calls to me from its pocket in my backpack, but that’s not realistic.
So through Lolita I will continue to trudge.
P.S. Don’t worry, I have fully embraced not finishing books that I’m not enjoying. I just haven’t even given poor Lo enough of a chance to make that call yet.
September saw a few books that I couldn’t put down.
I’ve been re-reading the Little House books piecemeal, but I recently brought them all to my house from my parents’ attic and have since read three.
This one I literally read in an afternoon. The descriptions in the books are just SO rich, and the stories they contain are so foreign to my modern existence. I love them as much as I did as a girl, which is a pretty cool feeling.
Plus they are obviously about me, since my name is Laura. (mic drop)
I don’t know how I came to add this book to my list, but I ate it up. It was not particularly great writing, but the Quiverful movement is so fascinating to me, and it was engrossing to follow the (fictional) story of a girl close to my own age who was grappling with it. I then spent a fair amount of late night time on the Internet reading real-life Quiverful stories and shaking my head in dismayed wonder.
I read Mary Oliver’s book of poetry Evidence to satisfy the collection of poetry task for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge.
I have to say, I didn’t enjoy it in sum as much I enjoy the bits and pieces of her poems that have been Pinterest-ized. In general, I think I just don’t like reading poetry as much as I used to. I’ve become too pragmatic in my old age, and I can’t seem to see the point. The words are beautiful on occasion, but I’d rather have a story these days.
I finished the audio book of Yes Please.
In the “I made it through but didn’t love it category:”
(Check out Slate’s Audio Book Club discussion of it to hear a better fleshed out version of what I basically thought.)
And, hoo boy:
Slate nailed it again on this one, which was my book club’s September read. If you take it as what it truly is–a draft–it’s much more bearable than if you expect it to be a novel. It needed some editing, which it didn’t get because it was rejected. There were passages where I could barely even track with what was going on because they were so couched in historical allusions. FWIW, I wasn’t as upset with the picture painted of Atticus as most of the Internet seemed to be. I sort of didn’t see the Big Deal that was positioned as the crux of the novel. I didn’t ruin To Kill a Mockingbird for me. It almost just felt like an entirely different set of characters from an entirely different author.
If you’re into books, you should probably read it. That’s as rousing of a recommendation as you’ll get from me.
That was 8 books, if you’re counting. I’m DEFINITELY going to finish the Read Harder challenge–only one to go, and I’ve settled on the short A Christmas Carol, which I will pick up closer to Christmas. I’m at 54 books for the year, and I’d arbitrarily like to hit 75, so I’d better pick up the pace! A few more Little House books should help me along…
