Learning That They Can't All Be Good Choices

I hosted one of my book clubs this past Sunday afternoon. This is the first book club I joined/started, and we've been meeting for almost 5 years, I think. This is the one that technically doesn't have a name, but is made up of the 7 Sisters of Soul - my best friends since college. The books I've chosen when it was my turn to host have generally been well-received, with The Hunger Games being my crowning acheivement. (We loved that book so much that we put off meeting for an extra couple of months so that everyone would have time to read the whole trilogy instead of just the first one.) But you can't make good picks forever, it seems.

When I've picked books for the club, I've often chosen a book I've already read that I love and think others would enjoy. Or I've chosen books I know a lot about and have some level of confidence that we'll all like it. I kind of thought this choice was in the latter category, but it definitely wasn't. I brought 4 choices to the last meeting. They were all books I had on my shelves but hadn't read yet. We ended up choosing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. As we always do when choosing books, we had read the back of it and the first sentence to get a brief feel for the style. It sounded like it would be good - a Dominican nerd growing up in the ghetto wants to be the next Tolkien and wants to find love, but has to battle the curse his family believes they're under. In some respects, it delivered on what I wanted from it, especially in the area of nerd culture. There were a LOT of fun, nerdy references to things like video games, comic books, sci-fi/fantasy literature, etc. I loved reading those things and feeling on the inside because I understood most of the references, and I enjoyed looking up the ones that were too obscure for me. But I think that hindered the enjoyment of the book for some of the other members. Some of those references were over their heads and they're not as nerdy as I am to want to look up the obscure ones and learn something new about Lord of the Rings. The characters also speak Spanish often and the narrator doesn't always tell you what it means. You have to figure it out in context, look it up, or just be content to not know exactly what they're saying. That last option is what most of us went with. And there was honestly WAY more sexual stuff than any of us could've expected from the description on the back of the book, and we did not want that. Another difficulty with the book was that it skips around telling the stories of different characters and that made it hard to connect with any of them very much.

But you know what? Sometimes you pick a dud, and there's still fun conversation discussing all the reasons we didn't like it and all the characters we didn't enjoy. We always wrap up each discussion by rating the book on a 1-10 scale. Here's what everyone said:

Allison - 7
Stacey - 4 (she didn't read the book, but this was her rating based on the conversation)
Erin - 4
Camille - 5
Kristin - 6.5

My rating would've been significantly lower if it weren't for the nerd references. I'm a sucker for that stuff.

If you're interested in what we thought about other books we read, and a complete list of all our books, check out 7sistersofsoul.blogspot.com and follow @7SistersofSoul on twitter!

What I Read: July 2012

Books Bought:
Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
The Snowman by Jo Nesbo
The Map of Time by Felix J. Palma
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Books Read:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
John Adams by David McCullough
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

So one of the books I read this month inspired me to start a monthly series here about books. The Polysyllabic Spree is a collection of articles Nick Hornby wrote for The Believer about reading and books in general. Every month he listed what he read and what he bought, and shared what he thought about them. It was funny and interesting and made me want to read even more.

As far as books I bought in July, I may have gone a little overboard... I don't usually buy this many books in a month (or I try not to anyway), but July just happened to be a month of great sales at Barnes and Noble and lots of coupons to there and Half-Price Books in my inbox. I couldn't pass all that up, could I?

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the book we chose for one of my book clubs this month. In the interest of not spilling the beans before our club meets on Sunday, I'll just say keep an eye on 7sistersofsoul.blogspot.com for a blog post on what we all thought of this book.

I actually started John Adams about 2 years ago, then put it down for a loooong time. I want to read a bio on every president, so one of my summer goals was to finish it so I could move on (and I've already started the Jefferson one, so hooray!). Despite how long it took me to read it, this book was actually great! I learned a lot and McCullough is an excellent writer.

Next up was Anna Karenina, which was the final book on my summer goal list of classics to read. Some of this book was a little boring, but on the whole I really enjoyed it! It has potentially 2 of my favorite characters in literature (which seems to me like a bold claim. Maybe I should make a list of my favorite characters someday.) and potentially two of my least favorite. Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky both suck. I just really can't stand those kinds of self-centered characters that are never really redeemed and ruin the lives of many people around them without caring about it. I know there are people that would say I'm being harsh on them, but I don't think so. But Levin and Kitty...I just love them. Their story is sweet and I never wanted it to end.

After that came Polysyllabic Spree, and then came Ready Player One. This book, y'all. I don't know if I could ever explain how much I love it. I don't want to ruin anything for anyone by revealing too much about it. It takes place in the future and is full of 80s pop culture references. It's a thrilling adventure that I literally didn't want to put down. I read at every moment I could, and for three nights in a row I didn't stop reading until almost 3 am. I already want to read it again, and I'm pretty sure it's one of my favorite books of all time. (Am I over-selling it? Read it and find out for yourself!)

That's it for this month! Over 2400 pages. Not bad, if I do say so myself.

What have you been reading?