Wow...as 2008 comes to a close, I get to look back at all of the reading I have done. This is the first year that I have chronicled my reading, so I have nothing to compare it to...but, wow. 34 books in 12 months. That works out to almost three books a month. For being a stay at home mom with four kids...that is a lot of reading!
I would have to list my favorite books of the year as the Twilight series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn), the Harry Potter series, The Kite Runner and Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral. I enjoyed all of the books that I read, but these would be the top picks for 2008 and the ones I would recommend most highly.
I wonder how many books I will read next year...it will be really fun to have something to compare this year to. Happy Reading!
2008 Book List
The Bell Jar
Obsidian Butterfly
The Handmaid's Tale (Book Club)
Blue Moon
Burnt Offerings
The Killing Dance
Bloody Bones
The Lunatic Cafe
Circus of the Damned
The Laughing Corpse
Guilty Pleasures
The Call of the Wild
Cane River
Fourplay
Name Dropping
Breaking Dawn
Fearless Fourteen
Lean Mean Thirteen
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (Book Club)
Sweet Memories
Flowers for Algernon
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows
The Host
Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince
The Kite Runner (Book Club)
Eclipse
New Moon
Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix
Twilight
Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire
The Society of S (Book Club)
Plum Lucky
A Long Way Down (Book Club)
Monday, December 29, 2008
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
This novel was recommended to me by a friend who is a literature teacher. It is a novel about a woman facing the pressures of life and going through a mental breakdown. It is beautifully written and haunting; at times very dark and at times quite funny.
Because the novel is written in the first person, the dark moments are disturbing. It is an excellent look at what madness truly is. The descriptions, the things the main character (Esther Greenwood) sees, the intense detail here and lack of detail there. This is not an uplifting novel. Added to its disturbing nature is the fact that the novel is semi-autobiographical. The author wrote this novel by fictionalizing her own life and the people in it. The history behind the novel is as interesting as the novel itself. The novel could not be published until the author's mother died. (The Harper Perennial publication has a forward that describes the publishing process for the book, and a "biographical note" at the end regarding Sylvia Plath's life.)
Definitely worth reading. Don't be fooled by its small size. This novel took me a while to finish. Partly because of the time of year - being Christmas time with not much time to read, and partly because of it's intense nature.
Happy reading!
Because the novel is written in the first person, the dark moments are disturbing. It is an excellent look at what madness truly is. The descriptions, the things the main character (Esther Greenwood) sees, the intense detail here and lack of detail there. This is not an uplifting novel. Added to its disturbing nature is the fact that the novel is semi-autobiographical. The author wrote this novel by fictionalizing her own life and the people in it. The history behind the novel is as interesting as the novel itself. The novel could not be published until the author's mother died. (The Harper Perennial publication has a forward that describes the publishing process for the book, and a "biographical note" at the end regarding Sylvia Plath's life.)
Definitely worth reading. Don't be fooled by its small size. This novel took me a while to finish. Partly because of the time of year - being Christmas time with not much time to read, and partly because of it's intense nature.
Happy reading!
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