One of my favorite challenges! The books I enjoyed the most were the Montgomery titles, the play by MacDonald, Atmospheric Disturbances, Fugitive Pieces, and The Tricking of Freya.
Thanks, John, for hosting again. I’ll probably participate each time until I get my fill of Atwood, Shields, Montgomery, and the many other fantastic Canadian authors!
The immigrant Icelanders are so obscure you could easily go your entire life in this country and never hear a word about them. [...] Nobody’s heard of New Iceland. Was it because we were so wretchedly oppressed? Hardly. If anything, the opposite was true. We assimilated more quickly than most, with our fair features and devotion to literacy, our ability to persist through hardship etched in our genes. No, the answer is simple enough, it seems to me: there were too few of us to matter. All said, only fifteen thousand Icelanders emigrated at the tail end of the ninteenth century — a droplet lost among the million-size waves of immigrants who flooded North America’s shores. It’s no wonder we never made it into my college history books.
The Tricking of Freya is a wonderful debut novel by Christina Sunley. Taking place in Canada and Iceland, the book is a love letter of sorts to her Icelandic ancestors and heritage.
Freya is the granddaughter of Olafur, one of Iceland’s greatest poets but who had, much to the chagrin of Icelanders, emigrated to Canada. Though she spends her first 7 years in America, Freya learns first hand about her Icelandic heritage when she and her mother travel to Gimli, just outside of Winnipeg. There she meets her grandmother for the first time and her aunt, nicknamed Birdie. Birdie discovers that Freya’s mother has not been teaching her Icelandic, and she immediately begins that task. Freya takes to Birdie and her Icelandic heritage very well, but also slowly learns that Birdie can be unstable.
When Freya gets the opportunity to go to Iceland, she becomes even more aware of her heritage. One of the most interesting facets of Icelandic life is their love of books:
Cousin, that house was the most marvelous thing I had ever seen. Not from the outside. From the outside was a three-story cement facade painted pastel green. But the inside! Books lined every wall of every room. Books climbed up stairs and rested on landings. Books stretched over the arches of doorways like bridges, stood guard over mantels. Old leather-bound volumes with gilt titles gleamed in glass cabinets. Books in the basement, books in the attic. Four stories of books. How many, I wanted to know.
“Nine thousand, six hundred,” Ulfur answered. ”Approximately. The largest private book collection in Iceland.”
This book’s themes include history, mythology, psychology, and the significance of one’s family roots and heritage. I enjoyed it very much and will look forward to Christina Sunley’s next book.
Do you always read what you know you will like, or do you sometimes try to stretch yourself to see ‘what’s out there’? I go in cycles. Sometimes I have no patience for something that doesn’t fit my personality, and other times I do like to be exposed to books or other art that is far from my own personal norm.
Skim is not something I probably would have picked up if not for the Canadian Challenge or the Graphic Novel Challenge. It was also a quick read. While I very much sympathize with the typical teenage angst in the book, with themes of suicide, w*tchcr*ft, and hom*s*xual*ty, Skim just wasn’t for me. I do give the author credit, though, for writing the characters in such a way that the reader does feel their emotional pain. That alone, though, just wasn’t enough for me to enjoy the book.
Of course it’s every peasant whose forgiveness must be sought. But the rabbi’s point is even more tyrannical: nothing erases the immoral act. Not forgiveness. Not confession.
And even if an act could be forgiven, no one could bear the responsibility of forgiveness on behalf of the dead. No act of violence is ever resolved. When the one who can forgive can no longer speak, there is only silence.
Fugitive Pieces is a must read for those interested in Jewish fiction or the history of World War II. The book is told in two parts. In the first we have Jakob Beer, rescued as a child from the forces of WWII by a Greek scholar. He struggles mightily with the memories of his parents and sister. They haunt him throughout his life, overshadowing even the good. In the second, we have Ben, the son of two Holocaust survivors. He is much influenced by Jakob’s poetry, which helps him understand his parents’ deep emotional pain, and, in turn, his own. In this regard, I found the second section a bit reminiscent of Maus. In both parts, there is always the question of whether or not the survivors really and truly survived or if they are hopelessly caught in their pasts.
I have a difficult time reading anything about the Holocaust, even if it deals primarily about the aftermath of the survivors. But, I feel it is extremely important for me to do so. I highly recommend this book if you have a similar interest in this topic.
The first half of the year is almost over, and I know I won’t finish any more books this month because I’ll be really busy for the next few days. So I thought I’d go ahead and post my mid-year report because I’m a kind of a stats and numbers geek.
Overall, I’m happy with my reading for the first half of 2009, but there are some areas that I’d like to work on in the latter half of 2009. The items in blue are the stats I’m excited about, and the ones in red are the ones I want to work on.
I am happy that I read 55 books, BUT, only 12,489 pages? I usually like to read about 30,000 pages in a year so that’s way below target. I read quite a few Newbery winners and other kids’ books so that’s why the total number of pages are low. The stats I’m happiest with are that 55% of my books were from non-Americans and 25% were originally in other languages. I like to keep it at least 50/50 American/non-American so I was very happy with 55%. And I won’t be too surprised if my 25% translated works even goes up in the second half. I have some German and Japanese reading to do soon.
As far as the other figures go, I aim to go no greater than a 40/60 split either way on female/male authors; and although I think 71% is way too high a figure for books published in the 2000’s, the main reason for it is the Countdown Challenge, so I’m allowing myself a little leeway there.
I had to re-create this post as some of my posts went to never-never-land last week. The ones in brackets are the ones I still have to read. If anyone has any other suggestions for my missing letters, let me know!
So far: 42/52
A
Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
Reading Challenges: a help or a hurt? Do you find that the reading challenges keep you organized and goal-oriented? Or, do you find that as you near the end of a challenge that you’ve failed because you fell short of your original goals? As a result of some reading challenges, I’ve picked up books that I would have otherwise never heard of or picked up; that, frankly, I have loved. Have you experienced the same with challenges? If so, which ones? Do you have favorite reading challenges?
I really liked Caribousmom’s questions for herself in this meme so I used them as well.
Do I feel stressed if I cannot finish a challenge?
A little. I like to complete what I start, but I’ve started to relax a bit more in this area.
Why do I like reading challenges?
I love challenges. They push me to read books that have long been on my tbr list as well as books I may never have read on my own.
What are my favorite challenges?
My favorite challenge for 2007 was the By the Decade Challenge because I read 18 books from 18 consecutive decades. I was very pleased with that accomplishment. I had really wanted to read some of the classics and I was definitely able to do that in 2007.
In 2008, my favorite challenge was the Canadian I Challenge hosted by John at The Book Mine Set. With all the Atwood, Shields, and other fantastic women Canadian novelists’ books I want to read, I foresee doing this challenge every year for quite a while.
“And where would we be in a world without the old Botswana morality? It would not work, in Mma Romatswe’s view, because it would mean that people could do as they wished without regard for what others thought. That would be a receipe for selfishness, a recipe as clear as if it were written out in a cookery book: Take one country, with all that the country means, with its kind people, and their smiles, and their habits of helping one another; ignore all this; shake about; add modern ideas; bake until ruined.”
It is clear from this series that Alexander McCall Smith loves Botswana and the people in it. His respect is such that with each book that I read, he makes me want to visit Botswana someday all the more.
In this installment, we have an advice columnist, a cook, a hornbill, high blood pressure, uncomfortable chairs, and questions about being ‘traditionally built’ and feminism. Good fun as always!
One of my favorite challenges is the Once Upon a Time Challenge, hosted by Carl of Stainless Steel Droppings. This is the third year, and I enjoyed all three years tremendously. Carl had a number of ways to participate in the challenge, and I chose ‘Quest the First,” where I chose 5 books from the fantasy, folklore, fairy tales, or mythology genres.
The books I read:
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde (review to come)
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.”
13 books about or by Canadians
Do you always read what you know you will like, or do you sometimes try to stretch yourself to see ‘what’s out there’? I go in cycles. Sometimes I have no patience for something that doesn’t fit my personality, and other times I do like to be exposed to books or other art that is far from my own personal norm.
The first half of the year is almost over, and I know I won’t finish any more books this month because I’ll be really busy for the next few days. So I thought I’d go ahead and post my mid-year report because I’m a kind of a stats and numbers geek.
