My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge:

CHALLENGE COMPLETE!!!!!

My Year of Reading Dangerously...seriously, what a title!? Who wouldn't want to join with that one! This one is for those of us who have been intimidates (scared) of reading certain books, authors, genres, and so on. There is an official list of books that you can read, or you can make up your own scary list! I joined this one, it looked like too much fun. There are 12 picks for this one...so it is a longer list of books. I chose many off of the actual list, because it is always more fun to read with others, and there are many that I am interested on the official list.

1*Franny and Zooey- JD Salinger (Philosophical!)
2*Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy (LONG)
3*Confessions of a Shopaholic- Sophie Kinsella (chick lit!)
4*Moving Parts- Magdalena Tulli (on parts of speech)
5*I'jaam: an Iraqi Rhapsody- Sinan Antoon (Iraq, during Saddam regime)
6*Animal, Vegetable, Miracle- Barbra Kingsolver
7*Voice of Glass/ Voix de Glace- Alta Ifland (poetry, deep poetry)
8*187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border- Juan Felipe Herrera (Mexican relations)
9*The Writing Circle - Rozena Maart (rape, incest and recovery)
10*Two Brothers: One North, One South- David H. Jones (civil war historical fiction)
11*Invasion of the Bible Thumpers- Skookum Maguire ( loggers, life and the Pacific Northwest)
12*Persepolis and Persepolis 2 - Marjane Satrapi ( graphic novels!!)

NOTE: Completed books in ORANGE.

Anna Karenina (the 820 page SAGA SOAP)!

Title: Anna Karenina
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Pages: 817
Completed: March, 10th, 2008
Yearly Count: 8
Rated: 3/5

Okay, okay! I finished it!! That is an amazing feeling, or it should be....but this time it wasn't. I know Anna Karenina is hailed here, there and everywhere but to me it lacked that striking aspect that holds on to your eyes even when you should be putting the book down. I could put it down and then I had to open it and re-open it many times in order to try to get into the lives of the people that it embraced.

For the first 300 pages I really didn't like the book very much, after that I started enjoying it, I began trying much harder to see the value, and feel the love. So, from about page 300 until page 697 it was all "okay", but at that page...when Tolstoy tarnished my last hope of having the book contain one person of quality, it fell apart for me. I think my feelings were abused by the author one too many times and I felt mistreated and really manipulated as a reader. I felt that he had to do this because the book was going to falter, and he wanted a joust. Besides that, almost every night after finishing another section I felt like I had been in a fight with someone because the book is so jam-packed full of arguments, be it with husbands, lovers, mothers, children...it feels like you are submitting yourself to an 817 page long soap opera. well that didn't do it for me. Maybe it will for you, this book is a hit to so many.

I was once told that in order to really embrace a movie or book or play you need to feel like you can relate to someone, or several different people, and on different levels. You need to feel that they are going thought something that you have or just that their personalities are like yours...you need to be them throughout the process. I have felt captured by tons of books, movies, and plays on this principal. In this book I connected with no-one for more than a couple pages. I did at spots with Levin or Kitty, but I did not have that strong connection with them that would hold me.

I think it is excellently written, and it is a powerful testament to what things can come out of disputes, discontent and unresolved issues.The title really should be changed to Anna Karenina: "A book you should read so that you realize that what you think would make you happy, really won't it will destroy you...because you don't know how good you have it now"!

This is a quote pretty much sums up the entire book: "He soon felt that the realization of his desire had given him only a grain of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the eternal error people make in imagining that happiness it the realization of desires" (p. 465).

Read that quote, learn it...live it...skip Anna Karenina. (that's my advice...if you wanted it)

Franny and Zooey JD Salinger

Title: Franny and Zooey
Author: JD Salinger
Yearly Count: 4
Rating: 4.5/5
Pages: 202

Challenges This book is in:
My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge #1
Eponymous Challenge #1
Novella Challenge #1



I highly enjoyed this book, I enjoyed it so much that after reading it I did not have enough of Salinger so I went over to the public library and immediately borrowed Nine Stories and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour , also by JD Salinger!
These stories were initially published in the NY Times, separately. They both involve Franny, who is eccentric and somewhat overwhelmed...really even overwhelming! However she is a blast to read about and the transitions she goes through from when the book starts to when it ends makes it comepletely worth the emotional wreck that this family is.

It is almost like I got what I did despite the fact that the book talks about a group of wonderbread kids who have life so easy that they try and make it complicated. I realised that I did have a hard time tolerating their fainting spells, and when they insulted their mamma and called her fat and such. I began to see them as more spoiled and less actually practising what they knew.

It seems that Salinger could have chosen to use these wealthy, upper class, wonderbreads because of the impact it could have on the reader. It is easier to take something from a preacher who you can see does not have it all together either, you can relate to him...and maybe that is why the author chose to do it that way. Maybe he was mocking the whole idea, as in these are they only type of people who can afford to mope around and recite little prayers....who knows what he meant to do...I do know what I got from it though. But the way the book is written I think almost every reader would get something slightly different. If I were you I'd give this one a try, it is really good.

Also reviewed by:
pussreboots Franny and Zooey