2019 Goals Quarterly Check-in 2

1. Read 52 Books - Progress: 14 > 20 / 52 +6
   Lots of long books this month that didn't fully inspire me to read. I'm a little behind schedule, but I think some of my upcoming books should be quicker reads.
2. Finish my Lord of the Rings in Chronological Order project - Progress: 41%
   Thoughts:  I'm finally at a point where I'm pretty much just reading long swathes of text without switching out of books. It's really lovely. I'm enjoying the books more this time around, so I'm looking forward to how it all finishes. I am, however, about a month behind where I should be if I want to finish.
3. Back to the Classics - Progress: 2 > 6 / 12 +4
   Thoughts: I'm on target for this challenge. I enjoyed my picks this quarter much more than last quarter, the Dickens most of all. I'm excited to start Eliot in July. Two of the books I read for this challenge made their way to my top 3 for the quarter.
4. To Be Read Challenge - Progress: 0 > 1 / 12 +1
   Thoughts: Hahaha! The order I've been reading my books means these books have been pushed further down than usual. But a number of them are going to pop up in the next quarter.
5. Newford Part 1 - Progress: 2 > 3 / 12 +1
   Thoughts: The book I read for this one was super disturbing, but still ended up in my top 3 for the quarter. 
6. Austen Challenge - Progress: 1 / 7 +0
   Thoughts: I'm sad I didn't get anything read for this, but my classics took up a particular amount of energy.
7. Year of Wonder - Progress: 179 / 365
   Thoughts: I'm a couple days behind here, but nothing too bad or that's not to easy to just take a half hour to listen to music! I really enjoy listening to these pieces! The curator has picked some that are super out of my comfort zone, and others that I've never heard of but that are clearly a part of me. This is really a neat exercise.
8. Other Books Read: 8 or more. I'm not keeping careful track of these as most are Middle Grade Novels for work.

Top 3 Books This Quarter

Dickens, Charles - Barnaby Rudge
De Lint, Charles - From a Whisper to a Scream
Márquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude

Top 3 Books This Year

Austen, Jane - Sense and Sensibility
de Lint, Charles - Dreams Underfoot
Arden, Katherine - The Winter of the Witch

Nothing this quarter knocked the first quarter books off their pedestal for favorites for the year.

Things are plugging along. As of right now, I am about a month behind where I should be in the Lord of the Rings challenge. So for next quarter, I'm going to prioritize my LOTR reading as the first thing to do every month. Back to the Classics should be fine. The next two I have lined up are 600+ page books, so I think I'll do with them like I did for Dickens and just read a chapter a day. Which leaves space in the month to fill in with other books. I think I'll just rotate between my other challenge books in whatever space I have left. I'm looking forward to the rest of the books on my various challenge lists.

I also instituted "Quiet Time" in our house. My four-year-old takes an hour to play quietly by herself in her room. That's my time to do what I want, which means meditation and reading. Or administrative house duties... But it's been really great for reading those LONG books that I'm reading only chapter by chapter. Then I can focus my bedtime reading on my other books!

I've been reading the books in a weird order. It's vaguely alphabetical with my goals prioritized, but then I also ordered the books in descending page number order. I can't really describe it easily, but the effect is that I don't end up putting off books until the end. I just read the next one down on the list. Or the next two - one chunky book from the descending pages list and one not-so-chunky book from the mostly alphabetical order list. Looking at what's up next, I'm most excited for the following:

Daniel Deronda
Deep Work
Emma
The King of Elfland's Daughter.

Hoping for a good quarter of reading coming up!

Book Review from 17-Year-Old Me

This is supposed to be a goals check in post, but instead, I got distracted by my old blog from the early Aughts. Here's a review of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that teenage me wrote when the book came out. Warning, there are spoilers for any of you readers who haven't read Harry Potter.

I finished the sixth Harry Potter book at 1:33 this morning. This is a reflection on what I read.


J. K. Rowling's sixth installment of her "children's" series has left a mark. However, I do not believe one can classify this as a children's series any longer. Already a dark plot from the beginning, the rise of Voldemort in the fourth book brings the darkness to a level far more mature than most parents or their children wish to read.

First though, I'd like to point out good things. Harry and Ginny finally get together, as everyone knew they would. I admit, I had a dopey grin on my face when he kissed her. Ron and Hermione also finally get together, which was also known. Admittedly, they had a much more interesting time getting together as they employed every teenage possible when it comes to dating. It was also nice to see the trio got good OWL scores. Also, it was nice to see Dumbledore trust Harry so implicitly as to tell him about Voldemort this year. Finally, Malfoy chickening out and Harry's suspicions about Snape being correct were a huge relief to read.

Now, onto the "bad" things. HOW COULD ROWLING KILL DUMBLEDORE!?! I cried from the moment Snape (yes SNAPE) killed him. After I finished the book, I sobbed like a baby for a good five minutes. Dumbledore was finally starting to tell Harry good stuff about the Horcruxes and Voldeomrt and then he died! Sirius was bad enough and now this...? And Snape, not that I could abide him before, but he was evil! To make it worse, Dumbledore trusted him; therefore, Dumbledore looked like an idiot. This is more minor, but I do NOT like the idea of Fleur marrying Bill. She is one of the most annoying characters in the novels, and I do not wish to see her have a part in the seventh. Harry breaking up with Ginny, that also got me angry, but I had predicted it.

Harry leaving school next year is going to have a profound impact on the seventh book. It is not going to follow the same formula the six have followed thus far. I am very keen, yet I have some trepidations to read it when it comes out. If Rowling would kill Dumbledore, she may kill Ginny, or Ron, or Hermione, or... she may kill Harry.

Last thing I have to say. I loved the family strength shown in the novel. A good example is when Ron is poisoned and the twins come in. The twins torment Ron relentlessly but when he's hurt, they are extremely upset.

Though very upset about most of the plot, this installment excellently sets up the seventh book. I enjoyed it immensely.

It's very obvious to me that I was in still in high school while writing this. My writing style seems so different. Definitely more school formatted than the stream-of-conscious wall of text I put up now. Anyway, regularly scheduled updates will be happening either tonight or during the busy upcoming week.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

Title: Breakfast at Tiffany's

Author: Truman Capote

Pages: 142 (my copy was only 89)

Finished: June 21, 2019

First Sentence: I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.

Summary: Capote's novella follows a short episode in the narrator's life as he interacts with his neighbor Holly Golightly. Holly is a young woman who doesn't want to be tied down. She lives life with seeming no plan and goes where the wind takes her which eventually leads her to trouble.

Thoughts: I remember seeing the movie to this when I was in college. It's one of those movies everyone talks about but I never took the time to watch. I was unenthused. I didn't really like Holly Golightly, and the other characters were forgettable to me.

The book feels much the same. Ultimately, it's a book about a 19-year-old trying to find herself. Holly is unabashedly herself, and the fact that she is so immature is explained by the fact that she is so young.

I think ultimately, the reason why I responded so viscerally to Holly is because she's so similar to other people I know who act the same way. And it's obnoxious as hell to try and be friends with them. I feel like most of my books for Back to the Classics are following the same theme of Glad I Read It But Won't Read It Ever Again.

This counts as my Classics Novella for Back to the Classics and crosses another Classics off my Club list.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

Title: One Hundred Years of Solitude

Author: Gabriel García Márquez

Pages: 416

Finished: June 18, 2019

First Sentence: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. 

Summary: This is the story of the Buendía family and their surrounding town of Macondo from around 1850 to 1950. Honestly, trying to summarize it is rough. It's a story that follows each generation of family from the first to the last of the lineage. We the readers see how the family makes the same mistakes over and over and over again. And we see the town prosper and fall. All while floating on a lyrical narrative.

Thoughts: This was a weird experience. I found myself drawn to the book even as I disliked the characters. The writing was just fascinating. Like reading poetry in prose form. And yet, the narrator was fairly objective. So even as I was reading all these things that were extremely distasteful, the objectivity from the author just made them another fact of life. It was a very strange experience. Like I was floating down a river or something.

The book itself is a bit of a project to get through. There's a family tree that I kept referring back to because woah boy. Every boy is named either Jose Arcadio or Aureliano. The other thing that was really interesting was how Márquez played with time. Often he'd start with something in the present, then jump back to the past, then maybe even to the future before going back to the present. It certainly kept my brain going. (Even more fun, I was reading this at a rate of a chapter a day and concurrently reading Barnaby Rudge at the rate of two chapters a day... Lots and lots of words.)

The book takes place during a time of great civil unrest in Colombia. While I didn't know the history, I didn't find it too difficult to keep track of what was happening in the book. Afterwards, when I did find out the history, I was able to fit things in better. That being said, the magical realism almost helped place this book OUT of time.

Characterwise... well. What I found interesting was that each character started as a decent blank slate. I'd want to like them, because usually you do, but then they'd do what they do. And each generation got worse and worse. And yet, I kept reading because of that objectivity that I had mentioned. The incest, the dubious consensual intercourse, the religious zealousness from one character, it was all really stuff that I don't like reading about. Yet the objective narrator made it bearable in some way.

I'm ashamed it took me so long to read this. I thought this was the book I tried to read my senior year of high school, but I don't remember any of this, so I'm betting that was Love in a Time of Cholera. Either way, people talk about how much they hate Gabriel García Márquez, and I put it off out of fear. I'm glad I read it. I likely won't ever read it again, but it was a profound reading experience.

This books counts for A Novel from the Americas in Back to the Classics AND it knocks another book off my Classics Club list! Also, a shoutout to Joel from I Would Rather be Reading who inspired me to read it this month. 

Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens

Title: Barnaby Rudge

Author: Charles Dickens

Pages: 634

Finished: June 9, 2019

First Sentence: In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London—measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore—a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.

Summary: The novel follows the lives of a select few people and how they are affected by the Gordon Riots of 1780. The first couple hundred pages introduce us to the characters. We see their lives, find their big issues as they currently are, and pretty well figure out who are the good guys and the bad guys. The narrative jumps five years in the future and gives a very detailed account of the Gordon Riots through the eyes of some of the primary rioters and other people affected by it. And like any Dickens novel, things turn out all right in the end.

Thoughts: Whew. First of all, I enjoyed the book. I found the story compelling, and I wanted to finish it. But boy am I out of practice with Dickens. I started writing down a sentence summing up the chapters after I finished them. And eventually I concluded I could really only read at a pace of two chapters a day just so I didn't start forgetting details.

Anyway, the introductory chapters took some time to get going. I realized at one point that this was basically setting the stage for the story. All books have that to some extent, but because it's Dickens, it took many more pages to get through that bit. Once I figured that out, I was much more able to get through.

Regarding the Riots, I found myself doing more research. I participate in Revolutionary War Reenacting, so I found it really interesting to read about what was going on in England during the conflict in the Colonies. Mainly, the level of detail Dickens added was disturbing and sad at the same time. The mob brain. People dying as they were destroying things. Perhaps I was more sensitive to it thanks to last month's razing of Kings' Landing in Game of Thrones, but it was just really really sad. And I wanted to believe that it was not really true. That perhaps Dickens took creative license to deal with it. But from what I was reading, the damage was very thorough, the violence graphic, and the loss of life higher than one typically wants.

As usual, Dickens has a cast of characters full of foibles and very marked characterizations. I will admit, I was pleasantly surprised when the despicable Hugh had a bit of a soft spot for Barnaby. It popped up where I least expected it and I found myself way more interested in the character than I had been originally.

One of the things I like about most Dickens novels is, even when things are at their darkest, you know things will turn out right in the end. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I didn't enjoy The Old Curiosity Shop quite as much.

While I was reading, I found myself thinking about the nature of how Dickens's novels were originally published. Yes he was paid by the word, but the serial publishing is basically how television shows are released. Or were. Now we can binge. So to have basically and episode come out every month or week and then have time to talk about it when visiting, that'd be very interesting. I imagine it'd completely change the way one experiences the story.

Okay, that was very long and rambly. I might try to edit this later. I had Barnaby Rudge slotted as my 19th Century Classic for Back to the Classics and I can cross it off my Classics Club list.

Lord of the Rings April/May Check-In

April and May have been tough months for me. I've been reading a Dicken's novel which, while amazing, definitely takes some brain space. I also read Wuthering Heights which was... well... my review is on this blog. So with a good but long book and a fairly uninspiring book that I've been working on, my challenge sort of fell by the wayside.

At the end of the month, I'm only three chapters behind the pace I should be reading on to finish by the end of the year. The most exciting bit has been getting to read long swaths of text. Basically, all of the first part of Fellowship of the Ring with an interjection in the Unfinished Tales discussing how Gandalf discovered stuff about the Ring and how the Black Riders discovered Frodo.

As I read, I can't help but compare the books to the movies. I will admit, I love the Lord of the Rings movies. I've long maintained that they capture the spirit of Lord of the Rings so well that I'm okay with the changes. Having finished the first part of Book One, I'm surprised at how much slower the books are. It took many chapters to actually leave the Shire. There are parts that were missing, but I find I don't mind that at all. 

Pippin and Merry's characters have been changed a bit for the movie from what I can tell so far. Not enough that I'm bothered. 

What the movie has down very well though is the friendship between the four Hobbits. While I like how the book gets them together much better than the movie, I always thought the movie did a great job of showing their bond.