Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Reading Wrap-Up

Here we are racing toward Christmas and the New Year and I've hardly stopped to take a look at my recent reading. I managed to add some more classics to my repertoire this year like Wuthering Heights, Count of Monte Cristo, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, and blogger favorites like The Book Thief, Shadow of The Wind, and Norwegian Wood. Good books, all. Some personal favorites were A Moveable Feast, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Golden Mean, The Bean Trees, and Rebecca. A couple of disappointments came by way of Revolutionary Road (fabulous story but the ending made me want to scream!), Jamaica Inn (there was no need to have a romance in this otherwise good book), and Balzac and The Little Chinese Seamstress (ehn-I don't remember what it was I didn't like about this one - it was just different from what I expected). The weirdest book I read this year was Perfume. Not only was the whole story bizarre, but the ending? what the hell? And then there were the inevitable DNFs: Olive Kitteridge, The Savage Detectives, The Help, and The Winter Vault - either the writing was annoying/odd, or the story was just not very engaging, so.

Over the holiday's I'll take it easy with Bill Bryson's Notes From a Big Country and Alberto Manguel's A History of Reading, both light, interesting and easy to put down and pick up whenever. And then, in the quiet days of the new year, I'll get back to some of the lingering TBRs on my dusty old shelf and the classics I've been on a quest to conquer familiarize myself with.

6 comments:

Beth said...

Wishing you Happy Holiday Reading and a Very Merry Christmas!

Trish said...

Thanks Beth! Back at ya :)

Tracy said...

Merry Christmas, Trish!
You've read some of my favourite book this year.

I've signed up for a classics challenge next year (thanks to Katherine at November's Autumn) so I'll certainly be catching up with some serious reading in 2012. I had Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress for my birthday - so I'll have to see what it's like but I've put it forward for the next round of bookclub.

Trish said...

Yes! I think we have a similar taste in books. I don't think I'll be joining any challenges in the new year, though. I did a Victorian and Gothic challenge this year, and completed them, but I think I'll just be watching those from the sidelines this time around. I'm looking forward to seeing what you'll be reading in 2012!

Anonymous said...

Aww, you DNF'd The Help? You might have posted about it before, but what made you drop it? It wasn't the best thing I'd ever read, but I did enjoy it.

I got Shadow of the Wind as a Secret Santa present; I'm looking forward to reading it!

Trish said...

ehn, yeah, The Help. I couldn't get past the uber-heavy dialect-y writing. Perhaps it's all phonetically, historically accurate, but it came off as demeaning in my eyes. Dialect is something that is heard and not written. A brief exchange written in dialect is fine, it sets the tone and atmosphere and place. But when I see page after page of phonetic writing I feel like it is either written by or for a five-year-old and not the intelligent, contributing members of society that these women were. No matter how they spoke, they sure wouldn't have written like that.

I can't really comment on the rest of the story because I didn't get past the first ten pages.

The Shadow of The Wind was really good, though! I hope you enjoy it :)