A Book a Week...So Far

Here's a quick run-through of the ten books I've read so far in the Book-a-Week Quest. While I don't rate books, in this "round up" I'm listing these books from best to worst, along with a quick blurb from my "reviews." Clicking on the title should (and I emphasize "should") take you to the full "review."

1. Of Mice and Men -- Short, sweet, and to the point. Clocking in at less than 100 pages, it is certainly a simple story, but a touching (and shocking) one, detailing the lengths one will go to in order to protect a friend.
2. Revolutionary Road -- Yates excels at dialogue. So much of it rings so true. Entirely believable, I could hear the words being spoken as I read it.
3. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close -- By the end, I really did come to care for this odd little kid, and I was genuinely moved by this story of loss and love. Now, it's still a weird read, and it's definitely not for all, but it was certainly interesting...definitely the most "experimental" book I've ever read.
4. The Eyre Affair -- The quote from the cover by the Wall Street Journal says that it's an amalgamation of "Monty Python, Harry Potter, Stephen Hawking, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
5. To Kill a Mockingbird -- Characters were well developed and interesting, the writing style was easy-to-read, and the story was fine, though a little dated (to be expected, however).
   
6. Of Human Bondage -- Maugham's writing style is very "readable." There's not a whole lot of superfluous descriptions and details, but he does have a tendency to go off on philosophical or artistic tangents.
7. Pride and Prejudice -- I don't know if it's Austen in general or this book in particular, but I think that if you're born with a 'Y' chromosome, you're just not going to enjoy it as much as those missing that gene.
8. Hocus Pocus -- It's just random thoughts. There was no cohesion here...names were thrown about here and there, were forgotten about for a hundred pages, and then mentioned again as if I was supposed to remember them.
9. The Reader -- I can see why this was an Oprah Book Club selection (my first in that prestigious *pause for laughs* club). Very melodramatic. Oprah strikes me as someone who would fall head over heels for a romance between a female Nazi and a teenage boy...As I type that sentence I'm actually not sure whether I was trying to be funny or not.
10. The 39 Steps -- Author Buchan's writing style is not the least bit interesting at all. At times he's way too descriptive and at times he is much too straight-forward...Dialogue is written in varying English dialects and I literally could not understand what people were saying...Maybe it worked in Britain in 1915, but it didn't work in 2009 America.

Short story Rear Window probably fits in between 9 and 10. By the way, I'm only one week behind on the book-a-week quest which is a whole lot better than I thought I'd be at this point. This may actually be an achievable goal...

A Book a Week - Rear Window

Book Eight-and-a-Half of the Book-A-Week Quest

Rear Window (original title - It Had to Be Murder)

by Cornell Woolrich (1942)

This one was a short story, so I can't legitimately say it was a book (which is why this is book 8.5). 36 pages just doesn't count.

When I started reading it and I looked and saw how many pages it was, I was utterly confused how Alfred Hitchcock could've made such a great movie with it.

The reason Hitchcock succeeded is that he added so much to it. Heck, Grace Kelly's character wasn't even in the novella...and Rear Window without Grace Kelly would've been sacrilege! (Not to mention the fact that the novel didn't even include the great character actress Thelma Ritter's role as Jimmy Stewart's nurse)

It was pretty much just "eh." That's the best way to describe it. The movie fleshed everything out and was much more suspenseful. In this one, the guy suspects that his next-door neighbor has murdered his wife and then we discover whether he did or didn't. That was it. There was nothing exciting to it.

Do yourself a favor. See the movie. It's one of Hitchcock's best and one of my favorite movies of all time.

You can skip the book.

A Book a Week

"I used to walk to school with my nose buried in a book." - Coolio

Really, Coolio? As you walked through your "Gangsta's Paradise" your nose was in a book? I find that hard to believe. Of course, since I found that quote on the web, who knows if it is properly credited.

Last year, I read a whopping one novel. Granted, it was a doozy -- Cormac McCarthy's The Road -- but it was still only one. Nothing can numb your mind like reality television. While I'm not gonna give up the reality tv (American Idol starts in mere days), I can't live with not reading anymore, so a few of my work colleagues and I decided to pledge to read a book a week for a year. Why not, right?

First up, one that seemingly every single other American other than myself has already read -- Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.

So, in the immortal words of Dr. Seuss -- "The more you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."