Category Archives: Reading

"The Road"

I kept waiting for the hopeful part of “The Road.” Rockford said there would be a hopeful part, and some reviewers on Amazon have called it “uplifting.”

I don’t think so.

It’s the post-apocalyptic story of a boy and his father, and they’re making their way south and everything is ash and terror.

Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

It gave me nightmares, and I think it will continue to do so.

Reading challenge

Michelle at Overdue Books has started the “From the Stacks” reading challenge. Here are the official rules:

So for this challenge we would be reading 5 books that we have already purchased, have been meaning to get to, have been sitting on the nightstand and haven’t read before. No going out and buying new books. No getting sidetracked by the lure of the holiday bookstore displays.

The bonus would be that we would finally get to some of those titles (you know you picked them for a reason!) and we wouldn’t be spending any extra money over the holidays.

The time frame would be Nov. 1st until Jan. 30 and there will be some small, fun prizes awarded to random participants and/or those with clever review posts. There will be one random drawing for a prize to those who submit their list of books in the comment section by Nov. 15th but feel free to join any time. There will be another random drawing for those who submit five reviews by Jan. 30 for a small gift certificate to Amazon.

I don’t buy very many books. I might have 5 books in the house that I haven’t read. I know I have two Cormac McCarthys and two Ngaio Marshes. I haven’t read anything by either of them before, and if I sign up for this I’ll feel obligated to read both books by each author and I’m worried that I won’t like one of them, or maybe both, but I’ll feel obligated because I signed up for this challenge. So I’m not signing up. But I’d like to encourage you to play if you have a lot of books in your to-read stack.

"Stripped"

I can’t believe I got beyond the second chapter of “Stripped.” Here’s a quick plot outline: Sex sex sex, murder, sex sex, murder, sex sex sex, murder. But it is pretty suspenseful, and there are a couple of good twists. If you can get past the Vegasness of the book, it’s not bad.