Books Read in 2010

[iam_kayak]

Its much harder to get in the habit of typing 2010 than it is hand writing 2010. I just keep wanting to hit the 0 twice!!!

Anyway, every year (since 2006) I try to read as many books as possible--the unattainable goal is usually 50, and the closest I've gotten is around 27 or 28. Sometimes my record keeping is shabby, and I never know whether to

Comments

[iam_kayak]

Thanks for the recommendations!! :-D

[silver_tiamat]

Oh geez. "Midnight's Children." I wanted to like Salman Rushdie, I really did. I mean, he's in Bridget Jones' Diary, as himself, which is just awesome. And he's one of the few living authors that people just laude praise on.

...but it was awful. I absolutely detested it. I had to read it for my Decolonization class (which was not a good class to begin with), and I found Rushdie almost impossible to read, because I was either bored or annoyed at EVERY turn. Picking the book up made me groan, and I could feel my eyes glazing over often while "reading" it. How are you feeling about it? Did you do any research about the events that he mentions in the novel before reading it, since it is so much about the real events that surrounded India's somewhat sudden independence? Especially since you're reading E.M. Forster's "Passage To India" as well? (I liked Forster's "Maurice" well enough, and found him a good read.)

[iam_kayak]

I am REALLY liking Rushdie so far, actually. I'm about 100 pages in and I'm doing fairly well at keeping up with the jumping-around nature of the writing. I'm fairly familiar with the events too, given my background studies in international politics...
I'm actually seeing some similar idiosyncrasies with a book I read last year by an Indian author (can't remember what it was called or who wrote it, all I remember is that I HATED it). But noting the similarities is making me smile.
Forster, actually, is the boring one making me groan!!

[silver_tiamat]

Haha, we must have totally different tastes! I don't mind skipping around--hell, I love Italo Calvino's novel "If on a winter's night a traveler" which is a really GREAT example of a "jumps around" novel (and one of the only books I've ever seen written in SECOND person! =D). But, I felt that Rushdie was doing to for the sake of doing it. I didn't feel that it did anything but obscure aspects of the novel. And I do. not. like. obscuring things in novels, unless the novel deals with obscuing in some other way as well. It feels like he really didn't have a lot of control on the novel.

I haven't read "Passage To India," so I can't tell you if Forster would make me groan or not on that particular novel. He does have a very clear, precise tone that typified his generation of writers who didn't subscribe to the full on Romantic/Gothic movement. Maybe that's why I liked him so much--haha. So sick of the Ann Radcliffe imitators...