Friday, March 7, 2008

Reading Recap for January and February 2008

The following are the books that I've read for the year thus far. I think it's quite a diverse list (for me, anyway). It contains a couple classics, some genre fiction, some nonfiction, a couple arcs and some YA literature. Some of the books have been in my tbr pile, but others were chosen because they were part of reading challenges or for book discussion groups. Just for fun, the breakdown looks like this.
  • Total number of pages: 5,194
  • Number of fiction: 15
  • Number of nonfiction: 2
  • YA Literature: 4
  • Reading challenge books: 2
  • Book club/discussion group books: 3
  • Arcs: 3
  • For class: 6
  • Books reviewed: 13 (links are to the original review)
The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
Perelandra (Space Trilogy, Book 2) by C. S. Lewis
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis
The Magician's Nephew (Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by C. S. Lewis
The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari
They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
The Essential C. S. Lewis edited by Lyle W. Dorsett
Pushing Up Daisies (A Dirty Business Mystery) by Rosemary Harris
The Uncommon Reader: A Novella by Alan Bennett
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
The Tin Roof Blowdown (A Dave Robicheaux Novel) by James Lee Burke
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

This weekend I'll finish up Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood for the the third installment of the Year of Reading Dangerously. I'm enjoying it so far, but I think I still like The Handmaid's Tale better. I have an Anchor Books edition, which is full of typos, which is driving me crazy. I'm also reading Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters, which will probably take a while since I'm just dipping into it here and there. It's interesting to see what he was like as a little boy and what influenced him as a writer. It's kind of weird to be reading personal correspondence. I don't really write many letters, but if I did I'm not sure I would want them published after my death. There is something about it that seems wrong in a way. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I'm not very far into this collection of letters. Right now, Doyle is still a young boy away at school. He had a very annoying habit of writing entire letters without capitalization or punctuation, which makes them a little difficult to read. I've skipped ahead and found that he does indeed begin to use punctuation a little more later on. Thank goodness!

6 comments:

Rebecca H. said...

That's an impressive number of pages! I've never counted pages before; it might be fun to try it and see ...

Lisa said...

dorothy, this is the first time that I've ever counted pages. I was quite shocked at the number. A couple of the books were quite long.

Tara said...

I've also started counting pages this year. I noticed some people did and I was curious about my own.

I agree with you about Cat's Eye - it's not my favorite Atwood, but still worth reading. How frustrating to have so many typos! I generally only expect that in ARCs.

Lisa said...

Tara, I don't think I've ever had a book with so many typos in it. I've just begun reading The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly and am loving it. However, I've already found a typo in this one. I don't know what's going on.

BooksPlease said...

I see you've read some of my favourite authors recently - Dickens, Atwood, Morrison and Bennett & Lewis. The Arthur Conan Doyle book sounds different, one to check out I think.

I'm looking forward to reading what you thought about Lewis's The Great Divorce.

Lisa said...

booksplease, I really liked The Great Divorce, but I haven't done a review because someone has borrowed it before I had time to get my thoughts together. I hope to get it back soon. The Arthur Conan Doyle book is quite interesting. It's the type of book that is nice to have by the bed so you can dip in and out of it for quick snippets.