Friday, May 15, 2009

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming and Other Stories

It arrived today ~ my copy of The Girl Who Stopped Swimming! I'm so excited to have gotten it and can't wait to start reading it this weekend. Tonight, though, I'm going to finish up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is, so far, amazing!

Funny story, but true: I tried to read Oscar Wao (as an audiobook) about six, seven months ago. I got less than a full disc in and loathed it! So I turned it off, intending never to listen to it again. If it had been a regular printed books, I'd have surely given it away, but, instead, I just left it, ignored, on my iPod (only because I don't know how to delete stuff manually). Well, anyway, a couple of nights ago, I was bored with what I was reading. To be honest, I didn't feel like reading much of anything. When I get edgy and out-of-sorts like that, I sometimes play a few games of Shanghai, which is a mah jong computer game, while listening to an audiobook. I just happened to click on Oscar Wao and wham! I was struck almost instantly in love with it!

That's how it goes sometimes ~ it's my mood at the time I start a book and not the worth of the book itself. Which is why I never (or seldom) get rid of books I've not been able to read, unless of course the writing is completely execrable, in which case out with the rubbish it goes.

Which reminds me of a couple of well-written, well-reviewed books I've put aside in the past that I should perhaps dig out of whatever box they are in and try again. One in particular I'm thinking about is The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. Has anyone read it and liked it? No, I'm serious, really. If you did like it, I'd love to know it and, if you'd care to comment, why you liked it. Because when I tried it a few years ago, I could not bring myself to read past page 100, even though it was for a book club I belonged to at the time.

Well, The Corrections may be something I look into again. Tonight, it's Oscar Wao, and tomorrow, The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Yes, life is good!

2 comments:

Nicole (Linus's Blanket) said...

I just read Oscar Wao for my book club, and I was really dreading it and couldn't get into it, and then after about 50 pages I was so into it and I loved it so much. It's really a boo that you kind of have to work for because there is so much going on, but once you give into it the author and the narration make it really easy to keep going.

Mary Kontrary said...

Hi, Nicole ~ Yes, I agree with all you wrote. I finished it last night ~ very late because I couldn't stop until I came to the end. It's one of those books that will stay with me for a long time. I'll be reviewing it soon, but suffice it to say it gets a 5-star rating from me. :)