......to book lists (Booker, Nobel, PEN/Faulkner, Pulitzer, et al) at the Between the Covers website.
It just reminds me of how many books I've NOT read in my lifetime!
I just started The Shipping News which is on two of the lists. We'll see how it goes. I can't say I'm overly taken with the first few chapters.
I saw the movie The Shipping News and found it kind of wierd. I don't know if its based on the book, but I doubt I would read it after seeing the movie. My most recent read was Flirting With Pete, by barbara delinsky which was really good. It had twists I didn't expect and kept me hooked till the end. I love a good novel, I even like some of the not-too-trashy romance stuff. I don't get into super serious stuff much though. Keep my reading light, since I have so little time for it with all the little ones ;)
People whose taste in books usually coincides with mine raved over The Shipping News. I simply could not finish it. I started it twice, over a period of a couple of years....nada.
I once read about a formula that goes something like this:
[The number of pages you should give a book before you give up] = 90 - (your age).
That is...the older you are, the less time/pages you should spend trying to "get into" a book.
There are lots of books on my list and time is running out!
Janet, I LOVE that formula! I, too, am running out of time. I have never been one to slavishly finish a book that I don't enjoy, unless it's one of my book group selections. My mother is absolutely the opposite: she will finish ANYTHING she starts, regardless of its worth. That's just crazy in my eyes.
However, it has led to a funny rating system for really bad books. She read a book once that must have been written with payment by the word, because every time someone was described in the book, the author said, "His two blue eyes looked at her hungrily...." or "Her two green eyes blazed with fury...." It was that way through the whole book. Like what? They would have only ONE eye? Or one eye of one color and one of another?
Anyway, in our family, if a book is bad but not terrible, the review always begins with, "Well, it's not a 'two blue eye' book, but it was pretty bad......"
Dear MamaT,
Not that it means much, but I started The Shipping News four or five times before I decided that it simply wasn't worth the effort for me.
But different books speak to different people. I didn't much care for Bel Canto either and those who raved over the one raved over the other.
shalom,
Steven
read the shipping news about three years ago. it's an incredible detailing of incredibly pathetic characters. i finished it out of some strange sense of "no turning back now" because i'd invested so much time already -- still, it's hard to enjoy a book when all you want to do is pimp slap the main character.
I didn't like "The Shipping News," as I found its plotting and writing style too contrived, but your mileage may vary. When the book first came out, many reviewers rhapsodized over its "fresh" writing style, but as I said then in a review for Amazon.com, Western Union clerks have been writing that way for years.
One thing I can say in the book's defense is that its author describes the ocean and shoreline very poetically-- wait'll you get to the bay that looks "like an aluminum tray, dotted with paper boats."