Reading Frenzy...

For me the reading frenzy continues with mixed results.  This week I finished "The Fall of Giants" by Ken Follett, the first in a trilogy about the 20th Century.  This book covers the first world war and Russian revolution.  It took me more than a year to finish this book.  While I got off to a good start, I got bogged down in the minutiae of the revolution.  The characters play well, but making progress was difficult.  Glad to have this one in the "2012 Finishes" column.  I am looking forward to the next installment, "Winter of the World," coming out in September.

The next book on the "ta-da" list is "A Visit from the Goon Squad."  Another book with which I got off to a good start.  However, I got lost in the various stories.  There were times when it was difficult to tell where in time the stories were taking place.  The story told in diagrams and charts seemed trite. The end picked up the story in a more clever way. The fact that this won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle prizes was lost on me.  I treated this a a novel, but many critics treated it as a collection of stories.  Maybe if I had looked at it from that point of view it would have been a better read for me.

As always, the best has been saved for last.  Just as soon as I finished "Goon Squad" I decided to start with another book so I wouldn't lose my momentum. Some time ago I had put "The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating" by Elisabeth Tova Bailey on my Kindle. People at the library that I used to work at always recommended it. I had just never gotten to it and now was the time. Who could have imagined that the story of a very ill woman who keeps company with a solitary wild snail would be so enchanting. It is the perspective in which the author puts her story and that of the history/habits/life cycle of the snail - period. I zipped through this book in record time, but not so quickly that I didn't take time to appreciate Bailey's fine prose. She is a wonderful writer who could probably make reading about paint drying exciting.

Next up is "The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life and Legacy of Frances Perkins, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and the Minimum Wage" by Kirstin Downey.  I started this for a book group months ago, but got sidetracked.  Now, I'm back on track and happy to be there.  I can't promise that I'll see it through, but I'm making great strides...so many books, so little time!