Thankfully Reading Wrap-up

Thankfully Reading Weekend is quickly coming to a close! I was not as productive as I wanted to me with my time, BUT I still think I made a pretty good showing. =) Two out of three ain't bad. I have one more day to finish my Book Awards challenge, so I hope I can make it!

I finished up The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood and The Hours by Michael Cunningham. Great reads, both of them. Although I think I enjoyed The Hours just a bit better. I've gotten some 20 pages into Gilead, and I hope I'll be able to knock it out in the next day or so. Wish me luck! Click here to see my reviews.

Considering I also ate an exorbitant amount of turkey, fit in some family time, and watched a couple movies; overall, I call that a successful weekend! Thanks Book Blog Social Club! It was fun to read what everyone else read, too. And thanks to everyone for comments!

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Genre: General fiction
Publisher, Year: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2002
Other Works: A Home at the End of the World
Flags: Moderate language, Adult themes
Rating: A or Great Read
Challenge: Book Awards III, Countdown
Premise: Three women go through the events of their day--strangers, yet inexpicably connected.

I think if I’d read Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, it would have enhanced my experience with The Hours, but having that background was not essential in falling in love with this carefully crafted novel. I love how the title is so fitting and significant. Everything about this book was just right for me.

The book focuses on the stories of three women, all which are told chronologically, although each woman lives in a different time: Clarissa, a forty-something woman looking after a dying friend; Laura, a young mother in the 50s; and Virginia herself, writer and tortured soul. Through the events of a single day, each woman goes about her duties—seemingly insignificant acts, daily events, nothing special. Cunningham very adeptly shows us that those menial moments that we plow through everyday reveal something within us, an inner commentary, a million daily decisions that shape and change who we are, how we live—and how we die. +/-

The book begins with Virginia Woolf’s suicide. (And, I have to say, if death is not an interesting literary topic for you, this book may not be your cup of tea.) The thing I really admired about Cunningham’s take is how his exploration of the meaning of death also accentuated, by showing it in relief, an exploration of the meaning of life. And without the push and pull of trying too hard. Our lives are composed merely and simply of hour after hour after hour. Some of those hours are filled with a rapturous joy, more are filled with sadness. How does that rapture measure up in conjunction with our miseries? How do we move from the sad hours to the happy hours, and what happens to us during those hours in between the tug-of-war?

Needless to say, Michael Cunningham is indeed a talented writer of prose. The language in this book took me to another place. I didn’t find it a page-turner, per se, but I was surprised when I turned the final page. That is to say—the story ran and I hardly noticed the speed. It is a somber work, but a delight just the same. A contemplative work of art.

The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

Genre: General fiction
Publisher, Year: McClelland and Stewart, 2000
Other Works: The Year of the Flood, Alias Grace
Flags: Adult themes, Tenuous references
Rating: A or Great Read
Challenge: Book Awards III
Premise: An old woman reflects on her turbulent life and that of her ill-fated sister.

The Blind Assassin is the type of reading experience that becomes an event. Although it may seem like chaos at first, it’s actually a perfectly choreographed affair, with every moment accounted for. Atwood brilliantly weaves together several stories, which seem unrelated. It’s as if the author took an old woman’s last memoir, a science fiction book, a private journal, and a bunch of newspaper clippings and threw them up in the air, gathering them into one big mess. Then, slowly, they merge and line up in your mind, and their connections suddenly appear. Then, the jumbledness of the text emerges in sharp focus, and the mismatched accounts seem so correctly in their places.

The book begins with the unfortunate report of the death of a young author, Laura Chase. Then, an abrupt shift to a sort of stream-of-consciousness, third person view into a secret love affair--one of the pair a storyteller. The bulk of the book is told from the perspective of a woman in the twilight of her years, Iris, who feels it’s time to put her memories to paper. +/-

I enjoyed Iris’s voice, accepting yet vigorous and dripping with sarcasm. Although, in the end I hated her. Which is unfair, because the reasons I liked her grew out of the choices she made for which I hated her. I didn’t feel a particular attachment to these characters, but that didn’t take away from my experience with the novel, surprisingly enough. I don’t think the author wanted us to connect with them--it’s like she built a wall there intentionally. So that we could look over it secretly, so we could be conflicted.

I found myself completely sucked in by the science fiction side-story, “the blind assassin,” in a sort of gruesomely creative way. And--what sets Atwood apart from others as one of the greats--she expertly turns something detestable into a tribute of beauty and life and love. However, the main story, Iris’s reflections, proved to be equally as compelling.

Atwood is an amazing connoisseur of language--she wove a web of words for which I’ve never seen the like. She is an unforgettable talent. This book is truly a masterpiece, one I know I’ll be thinking about for a long time.

Thankfully Reading Begins!

I've started my Thankfully Reading Weekend! I actually started a little early, and I've already finished my first book--although, I was almost done with it anyway. =) I'm hoping to knockout two more before Monday to finish off the Book Awards III Challenge (which I procrastinated a little too long). So here goes! I'm hoping to post my Blind Assassin review later today. Here are my other choices:

Thankfully Reading Weekend

I love to sign up for challenges. It's a little bit of a bad habit, because I don't always pay attention to the deadlines, and I often get sidetracked by some other book that beckoned to be from the bookshelves that I get to check off NOWHERE on a challenge. Bad, bad book browsing. I get so excited by my booklist and then quickly veer off the path by some other shiny, new thing. I need to work on my two-year-old like attention span.

I've got some deadlines coming up soon, namely, Book Awards III and DystopYA, that I have not made a good faith effort to finish up by their prospective dates. So, when I heard about the Thankfully Reading Weekend that the ladies at Book Blog Social Club came up with, I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to make good on my commitments. And I was planning to hack away at these goals anyway, so why not do so with several others at the same time? =)

So, for this upcoming holiday weekend, I'm going to finish 3 books (The Blind Assassin, Gilead, and The Hours) for the Book Awards Challenge, and hopefully make some serious headway on DystopYA as well. If you'd also like to participate, sign up here.