The Great American Read: Day 31 The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

I think I first saw The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz in Entertainment Weekly when we use to get those magazines.  I remember it being hailed as just this great amazing book.  To tell you the truth when I read that about a book this is what my I hear in my head- "There will be a lot of cussing, whining, and sexual awakening because we are enlightened now" in this book.  And, boy, was I ever right.  Add some cultural stereotyping, awkward footnotes, and can't understand in context Spanish words that I had to look up continually and you have this book or at least this book so far.  I only had time to read 25 pages because I had to look up so many words, but I don't see this going in my "loved" or even "liked" it pile .  I will be lucky if I can finish it so I will just stop this post right here and hope for the best.  Two stinky books in a row is not a fun come back from being so sick.





This is also a library book and I don't plan to buy it any time soon.  I honestly am looking forward to quite a few others on the list before I get to this one.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mom's Reading Corner- brought to you by a tropical smoothie

Image
This week for the Popsugar Challenge I have finished Miss Spitfire: Reaching Helen Keller by Sarah Miller for the prompt "a book by or about a person with a disability".  I have wanted to read this book for awhile since I found it was an Oregon Battle of the Books books.  I have been a fan of The Miracle Worker and Helen Keller's life for a long time.  I love American Sign Language and was even privileged enough to work with a group of deaf children as a camp counselor for a week.  This was a great book from Annie Sullivan's perspective.  She does call Helen some names that would be greatly frowned upon today but knowing that this is from a different time and being sensitive to Annie's childhood I was not taken aback.  I enjoyed this book.  I was originally going to attempt two books this week but as soon as I started reading Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery I knew I wanted to savor that book.  Montgomery has such a way with words an...
Read more

The Great American Read: Day 49 War and Peace

Image
The unfortunate problem with doing a daily project such as this is that if you miss a few days they start piling up pretty fast and some books will not even get as much of a post as others especially incredibly long books such as War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  This book is just about as long as The Count of Monte Cristo but seems a lot more intimidating almost solely because it is Russian.  My roommate in college read it and I should have given her more props for such an amazing accomplishment.  Any way this will be the second to last book I get to on The Great American Read List .  Here are a few things I watched to give me an idea about what I will be getting myself into in the far far future.  One of the lamest and biggest reasons I want to read War and Peace is because one of the translators is named Larissa.  It is too bad Larissa is such a popular Russian name and Russian literature is so daunting to me.  This is a library ...
Read more

The Great American Read: Day 14 The Da Vinci Code

Image
"Everyone loves a conspiracy."  Yes, I am part of that everyone.  I really do love conspiracies, secret societies, ghost stories, mysterious disappearances, and haunted houses...all that stuff.  I use to have a big series of Raintree books from the 1970s that dealt with all of those things.  I have searched in vain for a picture of these books and the closest I have come is this blog that only has the pictures of the creature books.  Still those books made a big impression on me.  I think about them whenever I want to think about leaving it all behind to go on a crazy adventure to discovery what is the secret of the Bermuda Triangle...and get famous....but honestly it is just a bunch of fun thoughts of a different life that I don't have.  No worries- I still just read about them and stay safe at home.  All that to say I have been reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.  It is fun stuff.  It is a little cheesy writing wise but I am to...
Read more