Mount TBR Check-in

By -
Bev at My Reader's Block is having a check-in.  She has two requirements:

1. Tell us how many miles you've made it up your mountain (# of books read).  If you're really ambitious, you can do some intricate math and figure out how the number of books you've read correlates to actual miles up Pike's Peak, Mt. Ararat, etc. And feel free to tell us about any particularly exciting adventures you've had along the way.

So far I have only read 6 TBR titles!  I am not doing so hot.
  1. Anna Karenina, by Lev Tolstoy
  2. The Middle Window, by Elizabeth Goudge
  3. The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James 
  4. The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. B. DuBois
  5.  The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
  6. The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday
 

2. Complete ONE (or more if you like) of the following:
 A. Post a picture of your favorite cover so far.
 B. Who has been your favorite character so far? And tell us why, if you like.
 C. Have any of the books you read surprised you--if so, in what way (not as good as anticipated? unexpected ending? Best thing you've read ever? Etc.)
 D. Which book (read so far) has been on your TBR mountain the longest? Was it worth the wait? Or is it possible you should have tackled it back when you first put it on the pile? Or tossed it off the edge without reading it all?
 
A.  None of the books had wonderful covers.  Meh.
B   Kitty!  I love Kitty.   I like Levin very much too.  (They are from Anna Karenina.)  
C   I didn't really expect to enjoy Anna Karenina as much as I did.  So far it's at the top spot for the year.
D.   The Souls of Black Folk has been on my pile the longest, and it was definitely worth the wait; it was excellent.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Comments

  1. Bev HankinsMarch 28, 2013 at 6:05 PM

    Six books is at least six books knocked off the pile! Still lots of time for more readings. I loved Anna Karenina when I read it college. If there weren't so many other books sitting around in TBR mountain ranges, I'd love to read it again. Thanks for checking in.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more