November - This Month in Reading

At the end of October, I wanted to finish my challenges. I almost met that goal; I only have a couple books to read in order to meet a couple of my goals:

Back to the Classics Challenge: 10/12 books read
Color Coded Challenge: completed!
TBR Pile Challenge: technically completed, but could read 2 bonus books
LGBTQIA Challenge: completed!
Mount TBR Challenge: 33/60 books read

Mount TBR is more complicated. I am not sure how I can cram in 27 books into December. I also have some unread ARCs I should really read, so that would be 30 books - a book a day or thereabouts. I haven't had the best year this year, either for reading or in general, and frankly, I think I am just going to let myself off the hook. I will do my best to complete the other 2 challenges  and really try to manage the ARCs but for the first time I am not going to knock myself out to complete Mount TBR. It stinks and I feel like a quitter, but oh well. It's not the end of the world either.

So for December, I'd like to read 4 books, to truly complete the TBR Pile Challenge and complete the Back to the Classics Challenge, and try to read at least a couple ARCs, since I feel really guilty about not managing that yet.

I truly hope your late 2017 reading is going much better than mine!

Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee - Dee Brown

Readers, this will be brief.

This book was 400 pages of unrelenting misery. It was a horrific chronicle of battles and massacres and broken promises and broken treaties and unrelenting racism. It was absolutely horrifying and awful and yet I am glad I read it. It will probably give me nightmares but it is all true and one of the worst parts of a 200+ year history filled with terrible moments, most of them fueled by racism. And if you think we are doing better today... sorry, I have nothing more to say.

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

This book was something of a departure from the previous 2 this month, in that it was much lighter fare, although not a happy tale by any means. The story was very similar to that of The House of Mirth, in that the characters are trapped by the social mores of their time and place (in this case, upper class people in 1870s New York City) and are thereby unable to do what they would really like to do.  I found it really frustrating in that regard, because I despise the whole "what will the neighbors think??!!?!?!?!?!?!11211/?1" nonsense that was imposed on me my whole life, and this is just a larger variation on that, and twice as nonsensical. On the other hand, it is also a wicked satire of that very nonsense, so in that way it's at least a little satisfying.

Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness - Kenzaburo Oe

After the lukewarm reaction to the previous book, I went looking for something I hoped would be different. Well, this choice was indeed different, but not necessarily an antidote for what ailed me. If that makes sense.

This book is really a collection of 4 short novella-type stories. Although there seems to be a connection between some of the characters in 3 of the stories, it might just be a feeling I have. The titular story deals with the same subject matter as A Personal Matter, which is not uncommon, as authors do explore similar themes. All in all this collection wasn't what I was in the mood for, so that's probably why it didn't connect with me the way I was hoping it would.

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (spoilers?)

To be honest, I'm surprised I was able to get through this incredible doorstop of a book in only 11 days. What's funny about it is that as long as it is, it isn't particularly sprawling in scope at all - it doesn't cover a lot of characters or a really long time period or anything. It does get into the backstories of all 4 titular brothers, which I found interesting.

But when I had reached page 500 and the crime that is the centerpiece of the book still hadn't happened, I confess my interest level did lower perceptibly. While I generally enjoyed the first half of the book, once the crime eventually occurs, it all kind of goes downhill for me. The book gets bogged down in paragraphs that stretch over pages and character speeches that repeat the same ideas over and over. And then we get into the whole "I love [character]!l S/he is wonderful!" Five seconds later: "I could never love [character]! S/he has too many faults/loves [someone else]/is guilty/is innocent/etc. etc. etc." The book could have told the same story in about 1/3 of the length and lost nothing.

So I guess this was 50/50 - I liked part of it and didn't really get into the other part. It's surprising because I really did like Crime and Punishment a lot. It's most likely due to my own personal failings as a reader that I wasn't 100% with this one.