Regular Rumination

Good morning!  As you read this I am doing one of four things:

1. Packing to go home for Thanksgiving
2. Seeing New Moon
3. Driving home!
4. Finishing up my paper on “The House of Bernarda Alba”, which is a great play everyone should see.

I’m super excited for the holidays and looking forward to the break from class.  What are your plans for the holiday?  Anything exciting?  I know that I’m excited about delicious food, like the bbq my grandmother cooks every year.  Mmm.  This week read quite a bit, mostly because I read three YA books that had very similar themes.  I finished Under the Skin, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Genesis, The Compound, The Untelling and The Emperor’s Children.  All of them were very good.  I really didn’t know what I thought of The Emperor’s Children until the very last page, but I’m looking forward to sitting down with the review because it’s going to be an interesting discussion.  Anyone read The Compound?  That books is CRAZY.   Just insane.   The ending wasn’t really shocking, but the whole concept was wild.  I still haven’t wrapped my head around Genesis to write a proper review of it, but it has an ending that will knock you off your feet.

I’m currently reading Man in the Dark by Paul Auster and I really like it so far.  I organized all my books yesterday and they are beautiful.

Okay, now for the exciting news: CHALLENGES.  Twitter and all the blogs have been alight with book challenges and it’s so tempting to join them all.  I joined a lot of challenges last year, but was really disorganized and ended up only finishing a few of them.  This year I plan on being much more organized.  Here is a preliminary list of challenges I have joined:

Women Unbound: Hosted by the wonderful Eva, Care and Aarti, I finally decided to join the Women Unbound challenge!  I’ve already read one book (The Untelling) and I’m looking forward to all the others.  I am joining the Bluestocking level, which is 5 books, 2 nonfiction.  I’m not sure what I’m going  to read yet, but I will come up with a list soon.

AtoZChallenge: Last year I joined this challenge and I went for the most difficult level (reading an author  and a book title for every letter of the alphabet) and I ended up just not having enough time/energy to keep up with it.  So this year, I’m going to be a little bit more conservative and only join the A-Z Titles.

The Challenge that Dare Not Speak its Name: GLBT Challenge 2010.  The amazing Amanda of The Zen Leaf is extending her GLBT challenge for an entire year and I’m really excited about this one.  I was a little eager and already checked out a number of books from the library, including Geography Club, Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories, The Diary of Frida Kahlo, Virginia Wolf, and Bastard Out of Carolina. I signed up for the Pink Triangle level, which is 8 books.  I’ll be doing a post on GLBT poetry for a blog tour for different genres, so keep an eye out for that!

Another challenge I’m really excited about is the South Asian Author Challenge hosted by S. Krishna.  I’ve made a list for this one, including Upamanyu Chatterjee, Vikram Chandra, Indra Sinha, Bharati Mukherjee.  I’m reading 3 books for this challenge.

The TwentyTen Challenge hosted by Darren of Bart’s Bookshelf is a really fun challenge that I’m super excited to join.  The challenge asks us to read two books in ten different categories.

1. YA
2. TBR
3. Shiny & New
4. Bad Bloggers
5. Charity
6. New in 2010
7. Older than you
8. Win, Win! (read books for other challenges)
9. Who Are You Again (an author you’ve never heard of)
10. Up to You!

Isn’t that the cutest challenge ever?  I’m definitely excited about this one.

Woolf in Winter Read Along: I’ve already talked about this in the Sunday Salon, but I thought I’d mention it again!

I’d like to do the Dewey Decimal Challenge again, if The Novel World will host it again!  If not, I might make it a personal challenge for 2010.  I didn’t do very well, but one of my goals next year is to read more non-fiction.

Also: I’d like to reinstate my poetry challenge to start over in January (but anyone who has already joined the challenge will get to count their books and can continue with the already established time line if they’d like!).  I am trying to get a little bit more interest, if possible!  I’d love to see more poetry-love across the book blogging community .  Interested?

Whew, that’s all.  Thanks for sticking around!  I’ll probably be joining more challenges as the year goes on, but that’s it for now.  Have a great Sunday, everyone!

Can I tell you a secret?  We’re at the secret-telling stage, right blogosphere?   Good.  I’m writing this page on THURSDAY!  I’m so caught up on my reviews and reading (this never happens) that I have all my posts for next week scheduled.  I don’t even know what to do with myself.  This is MADNESSSSSSSS. It’s like I’m talking to the future!

You know what else is madness?  The fact that it’s August (well, not yet, but it will be when you are reading this, ahhhhhh). I start graduate school in 31 days. I’m not ready for this.

I had a really good reading month, even after a slow start.  Here’s what I read in July:

1. 2666 – The Part About Amalfitano by Roberto Bolaño 85%
2. The Turnaround by George Pelecanos 68%
3. A Home At the End of the World by Michael Cunningham 89%
4. Broken April by Ismail Kadare 85%
5. Widdershins by Charles de Lint 89%
6. Memory by Phillipe Grimbert 94%
7. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym 79%
8. The Implacable Order of Things by José Luís Peixoto  98%
9. 2666 – The Part About Fate by Roberto Bolaño 81%
10. Maus I, A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History by Art Speigelman 98%
11. if you come softly by Jacqueline Woodson 96%
12. Cool Salsa edited by Lori M Carlson 86%
13. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang 88%
14. Maus II, A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Begin by Art Speigelman 89%

Man, I got on some kind of kick recently.  I read those last 6 books in 2 days.  I am not that fast of a reader.  Grated, they were all graphic novels or poetry or really short, but still.

Audio books: 2
Graphic novels: 3
Poetry: 1
Memoir: 4

Average rating: 87.5% (One of these days I will break the 90% average mark!  One day!)
Total pages: 3,058

Challenges update:

A to Z Challenge – 18/52
Dewey Decimal Challenge – 1.75/10
Read Your Name Challenge – 2/6
Orbis Terrarum Challenge – 8/10
1% Well-Read – 7/13
Celebrate Women’s History Month – 7/7  COMPLETE
Once Upon a Time III Challenge – 4/4  COMPLETE
Personal reading goal for 2009 – 61/100 (YEAAAAAAAH!)

I’m approaching my all-time high record for books read in one year – 75.  I should totally be there by mid September.  Especially if I keep reading like I have been for the past two days.   There are a couple more challenges that I have joined, but I haven’t gotten myself organized yet.  They will hopefully be included in the next month’s update!

Mini Review: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

(See, it’s mini!)

I know a lot of people liked this book, but I was not a fan.  The first part of the book was pretty interesting and well-written.  It was somewhat entertaining to listen to, but other than that, I was actually offended by parts of it.  There were parts when I would think, “Wow, that’s racist.”  And I know that the point was to evoke the atmosphere of the time, but it wasn’t when a character was speaking or when something was being explained, instead it was the narrator who said something that I thought was inappropriate.  I wish I had it written down, so I could quote it exactly.  I was also kind of offended by the ending: black man is wronged in life and only the white man can help him get back on his feet. The writing was poor, which was only more painfully evident when someone is reading it to you.  And, to top it all off, I guessed the ending before it was revealed.  It was so obvious.  I’ve heard that this book is a poor example of Pelecanos’s skills, so I should pick up some of his earlier stuff.

The narrator, however, did a wonderful job.

68%

Disclaimer: I hardly ever read mysteries.