Contact Me

Follow

Follow on Bloglovin
Powered by Blogger.
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week's topic: Top Ten Books that were hard for me to read. For various reasons

1. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler - Excellent book, a brutal/honest portrayal of what life was like for a slave. No white savior nonsense here.
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - I borrowed this from my English major sister the summer before I started HS. Did not know what I was getting into.
3. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - I like Woolf, but this one's more opaque than say, Mrs. Dalloway. Wrote a college term paper digging out meaning.
4. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - I chose this for a read-a-thon because it's short and that was a mistake. James's sentences tend to be labyrinthine, though interesting.
5. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis - I get it's a satire, but the sheer volume of misogyny-soaked violence turned my stomach.
6. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - The only book I read for school I straight up hated.
7. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - The best dystopia, in my opinion, but terrifying in its plausibility.
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez - another book I borrowed from my sister many years ago, I feel a lot of this went over my head. I should re-read it, I'd get more out of it now that I'm more familiar with magical realism.

9. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - This book almost defeated me due to sheer length, though it's very readable. Also it's uneven: everything with Marian is awesome gothic goodness, Walter is a boring drip.
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I loved this more than I thought I would, but I read it bit by bit over two months, setting it aside for other books whenever  descriptions of Levin's in-depth love of farming  got too boring but always picking it up again. 

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Great list! It's nice to see some Wilkie Collins - if you haven't read The Moonstone I recommend it, it's one of my favourite classics! I really need to read The Handmaid's Tale, and I've considered reading American Psycho just to see what it's like for myself but I really don't think it's the kind of book I'd enjoy. Kindred, however, is on my TBR! :)

Unknown said...

Wow. That's a really impressive list. I actually don't know if I'll get around to reading these books as they overwhelm me!

Unknown said...

Agh I haven't read any of these yet. I am super excited for Atwood and I cannot wait to read her. i think I'll start with The Handmaid's Tale...

Unknown said...

Totally agree about the different narrators in The Woman in White. Marian was great, as were the bits in which Count Fosco gets the reins. Walter is a complete drip and Laura is a non-entity and their love story is a snooze. Still, I love the book and can see how much of an influence it's had on the development of psychological suspense fiction.

Unknown said...

Anna Karenina has been sitting on my TBR shelf for about 6 or 7 years now. I should really make an effort there. This is a great list!

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Top Ten Tuesday: Hard Books Edition

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly event hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

This week's topic: Top Ten Books that were hard for me to read. For various reasons

1. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler - Excellent book, a brutal/honest portrayal of what life was like for a slave. No white savior nonsense here.
2. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce - I borrowed this from my English major sister the summer before I started HS. Did not know what I was getting into.
3. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf - I like Woolf, but this one's more opaque than say, Mrs. Dalloway. Wrote a college term paper digging out meaning.
4. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - I chose this for a read-a-thon because it's short and that was a mistake. James's sentences tend to be labyrinthine, though interesting.
5. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis - I get it's a satire, but the sheer volume of misogyny-soaked violence turned my stomach.
6. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton - The only book I read for school I straight up hated.
7. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood - The best dystopia, in my opinion, but terrifying in its plausibility.
8. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez - another book I borrowed from my sister many years ago, I feel a lot of this went over my head. I should re-read it, I'd get more out of it now that I'm more familiar with magical realism.

9. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins - This book almost defeated me due to sheer length, though it's very readable. Also it's uneven: everything with Marian is awesome gothic goodness, Walter is a boring drip.
10. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy - I loved this more than I thought I would, but I read it bit by bit over two months, setting it aside for other books whenever  descriptions of Levin's in-depth love of farming  got too boring but always picking it up again. 

5 comments:

  1. Great list! It's nice to see some Wilkie Collins - if you haven't read The Moonstone I recommend it, it's one of my favourite classics! I really need to read The Handmaid's Tale, and I've considered reading American Psycho just to see what it's like for myself but I really don't think it's the kind of book I'd enjoy. Kindred, however, is on my TBR! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow. That's a really impressive list. I actually don't know if I'll get around to reading these books as they overwhelm me!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Agh I haven't read any of these yet. I am super excited for Atwood and I cannot wait to read her. i think I'll start with The Handmaid's Tale...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Totally agree about the different narrators in The Woman in White. Marian was great, as were the bits in which Count Fosco gets the reins. Walter is a complete drip and Laura is a non-entity and their love story is a snooze. Still, I love the book and can see how much of an influence it's had on the development of psychological suspense fiction.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anna Karenina has been sitting on my TBR shelf for about 6 or 7 years now. I should really make an effort there. This is a great list!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you, comments are appreciated :)