Book Updates
And my 'great' books resolution continues:
March:
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl - Yes, I was the only Jewish person in America to make it through junior high without reading this. Frankly (so to speak), I wasn't too impressed by this at all. I'll grant that it is an impressive bit of writing for a 14-year-old girl, but that does not make it interesting or good. Probably I would have enjoyed it more if I was myself a 14-year-old girl, but thankfully I am not.
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms - xhollydayx loathes Hemingway. Aside from a few short stories in high school I had not read anything by him so I picked this book more or less at random. I liked his prose style but the story was a bit of a slog, and the character of Catherine is a twit; I wasn't terribly sorry when she died in childbirth. It would have been an entirely different novel with modern contraceptives, eh?
I didn't get to Shakespeare this month. It's ok, The Second Part of Henry VI is not going anywhere, although I'm seriously considering breaking the chronological order specified by my anthology and substituting The First Part of Henry VI instead.
April:
Kurt Vonnegut - Player Piano - After enjoying Slaughterhouse Five I grabbed this one next. It's not as good as SH5, but the technological world it satirizes does seem like a dreadful possibility. I enjoyed it greatly.
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea - I thought this was really brilliant. I may read it again.
And although it doesn't by any stretch of the imagination count as a great book, John Grisham's Bleachers is the best book I've ever read about high school football, with the possible exception of Friday Night Lights.
March:
Anne Frank - The Diary of a Young Girl - Yes, I was the only Jewish person in America to make it through junior high without reading this. Frankly (so to speak), I wasn't too impressed by this at all. I'll grant that it is an impressive bit of writing for a 14-year-old girl, but that does not make it interesting or good. Probably I would have enjoyed it more if I was myself a 14-year-old girl, but thankfully I am not.
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell to Arms - xhollydayx loathes Hemingway. Aside from a few short stories in high school I had not read anything by him so I picked this book more or less at random. I liked his prose style but the story was a bit of a slog, and the character of Catherine is a twit; I wasn't terribly sorry when she died in childbirth. It would have been an entirely different novel with modern contraceptives, eh?
I didn't get to Shakespeare this month. It's ok, The Second Part of Henry VI is not going anywhere, although I'm seriously considering breaking the chronological order specified by my anthology and substituting The First Part of Henry VI instead.
April:
Kurt Vonnegut - Player Piano - After enjoying Slaughterhouse Five I grabbed this one next. It's not as good as SH5, but the technological world it satirizes does seem like a dreadful possibility. I enjoyed it greatly.
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea - I thought this was really brilliant. I may read it again.
And although it doesn't by any stretch of the imagination count as a great book, John Grisham's Bleachers is the best book I've ever read about high school football, with the possible exception of Friday Night Lights.