He works at Barnes & Noble, which is pretty awesome (despite the minimum wage......), and we've made a friend in one of his coworkers, an English major who loves books as much as we do.
She invited me to participate in a year-long Reading Challenge, the gist of which is reading 40 books in a year that fit into particular categories. Details are here: https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/Reading-Challenge-2018-44138581
I have finished one book, and expect to get to about 12. Setting the bar low. (I'm pretty sure my husband and I spend more time with our coworkers than each other, aside from sleeping, which there is never enough of.)
My first book was:
I don't know quite what to say about it. I picked it because it was languishing on my shelf about eye level from my bed, it had the word "sea" in it, and I originally bought it on clearance and felt guilty about spending money on a book I hadn't yet read.
It's set in the 1700's, just after - and during - the Revolutionary War, which I found very interesting, as I haven't read many novels in that era that weren't focused on Important People or Important Events (hello, endless books about Alexander Hamilton). The war was a faint background for the real story about normal people, full of drama and tragedy. It was a good book, and well written, I think, but so, so depressing. It left me with a vague impression of what it was trying to say, but also confusion - who IS this story about??
I will say that it knocked out the "about death or grief" category in the challenge.
My next book is Chocolat: "Made into a movie you've seen". Quite the change. I analyzed the movie Chocolat for a college class, so I'm enjoying reading the original.
Anyone have any future recommendations? :-)
A hui hou!
A very fun set of four books I found last year is "The Enchanted Forest Chronicles". It's interesting because the fourth book was actually written as a standalone story first, then the other three were written as prequels to explain how the situation at the start of the fourth book was set up. They also have some really well-written and believable characters that inhabit a sort of fairy-tale world without falling into cliches. I'd highly recommend it.
ReplyDeleteThey're by Patricia C. Wrede, I forgot to mention.
DeleteYes!! The Enchanted Forest Chronicles is one of my FAVORITE series. I had no idea the last was written first. Funny story - my family actually picked up the last book on accident, so we read it in that order, too! We had goats named after all the characters :-) I think there was one named Argelfraster...
DeleteI really like her Cecelia & Kate series too; it's written in letters between characters, who are written by two different authors. I always thought it would be a fun way to write a book!