Wednesday, March 18, 2015

002 book challenge

Time to update my book challenge, where it is more of a challenge for me to "read more" rather than read a certain amount of books in a set period of time. I knocked out 6 books with quite the range in genres if I do say so myself.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver: The concept of this book was so compelling (love is considered a disease) but I felt it didn't really deliver. I think teens would really enjoy this book since it is an easy read and romantic but for me I just thought it felt super cheesy and predictable.

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells: A classic that spawned so much inspiration (the film Hollow Man comes to mind). This was a breeze to read through and quite fun to read due to the old time language. Makes me wonder if anyone really would enjoy the perks of invisibility or go mad.

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk: Spoiler alert I did not like this book. It is my first book by Palahniuk I have read (I have seen the film for Fight Club and loved it but I did not read the book version) and I don't think I will read anything by him for a while since I read somewhere he sticks to the same type of style for each of his books. A lot of text is repeated (part of his style) which annoyed me. I also hated the main character. The "big reveal" that is supposed to shock and and blow your mind at the end of the book was not even shocking and it felt very unrealistic. I finished this book and said out loud, "that's it?!". Very disappointing.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn: I liked Gone Girl more but this book was also a great read. I would recommend it. It isn't predictable and I loved how it kept reverting back and forth between the two important characters so you get so much perspective on how things happened. How do we feel about Charlize Theron being Libby in the movie version? I think she is too pretty for how I pictured the main character to be in my mind but I love Charlize so I'm sure she will perform well.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: I really really enjoyed this book. I was so skeptical at first as it reads in letters back in forth the entire time but after you get past the rough beginning to know who is who, the story was really compelling and touching. It helps that I am a sucker for anything dealing with the Holocaust. I loved the main character and so many moments in her narrative had me chuckling out loud.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: I really wanted to love this book as so many people raved about it but I just found it to be an okay book. It is a story about a hermaphrodite's family history and journey to self discovery. Some parts were so fascinating (I loved the back history with Lefty and Desdemona in Greece) while other parts felt so boring and unneeded. Eugenides is an excellent writer, his vocabulary really impressed me since he used words that I had no idea what they meant but they fit perfectly in the text once I looked up their meanings. But I found hefty chunks of the book had rambling details that were so unnecessary and unneeded that it made me feel bored. Why do I need to read two pages on the history of how decrepit the church that the main character was baptized in was? I also felt the aftermath of the main character's acceptance of who they were wasn't really put into detail or talked about which is a shame.

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