Man Booker Prize and Beyond

I have decided to read the ENTIRE Man Booker Prize by which I mean not just the official winners but the long and short list as well. A bit excessive (or obsessive) perhaps? But I look it as a good reference to introduce myself to books I may not otherwise have come across of it I did had not originally thought to actually pursue. I have random system for choosing which books I read next so there is no special significance to the order they are listed in.

I will  divide the nominees from the winners to make it easy to distinguish which is which. I will post the books I have read thus far with some commentary as to my thoughts on the book.

For those books I have read prior to officially starting this challenge I will post separately.

Winners

Nominees

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt: While I am not listing these books in any chronological order this happend  to be the book that really kicked off this challenge for me and gave me the idea to do this. It was in many ways a very interesting book that had a lot of elements which I very much enjoy. For one I love book that center around art and this book dealt with the contemporary art world. I thought it was quite poignant in its observations and criticisms and addressed the struggles of women in the art world. It also used multiple narrators and segments of letters, interviews etc.. to tell the story, which I generally find a compelling technique.

Derby Day by D. J. Taylor: I will admit there were parts of this book that were a bit dry and tedious but for all that it was still quite entertaining on the whole. It deals with the seedy underbelly of the Victorian Age particularly revolving around horse racing at the time.  I loved the dry statistical wit and there is an compelling (if not altogether respectable or likable) cast of characters) One of the things that was great about the book is that each chapter starts with a clipping from an actual Victorian newspaper or magazine/pamphlet.

Child 44 by Rob Smith: A very dystopic book that is yet set in actual history and revolves around events that truly happend. A book set in Communist Russia it features Leo Demidov a loyal MGB officer who becomes wrapped up in an investigation involving the murder of children which ultimately begins to make him question everything he has done for his government and his former faith in his government. There is a lot going on in this novel, it is a murder mystery but also so much more. A good fast paced thriller.

English Passengers by Matthew Kneale: This was in many ways a very unique book. I was first drawn to it because of my enjoyment of seafaring novels. I did think that it got off to a bit of a slow start, but by midway through I was quite hooked. It has a great satirical humor. Most of the characters of in many ways quite awful people but that should not be a deterrent for reading the book. It is very much a parady of English Colonialism. It details the English colony of Australia when it was used as a dumping ground for prisoners as well as the interactions between the English and the Aboriginals.

Feasting, Fasting by Anita Desia: I thought this book was quite lyrically and beautifully written. It was one of the those books in which I did want to keep turning page after page. It is the book of a young girl, Uma, growing up in India who does not quite fit in. She lacks the beauty and grace of her younger sister, and she is clumsy at the domestic chores her family (and the society and culture of the time) expect of her. She loves school and wishes more than anything to continue her education and yet she is in spite of her best efforts a poor student. In addition we have a few rather eccentric relatives.  A rather religiously zealous Hindu aunt and black sheep of the family uncle who Uma into a few misadventures.

The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald: A quite delightful book about how the lives of two people are quite drastically changed after a rather misfortune bicycle collision. A rather charming humorous book.

 

Read Pre-Challenge

A Brief History of Seven Killings by  Marlon James (Winner)

Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel (Winner)

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (Winner)

Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Winner)

The Blind Assassin by Margret Atwood (Winner)

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy (Winner)

Possesion by A. S. Byatt (Winner)

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (Winner)

The Bone People by Keri Hulme (Winner)

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie (Winner)

The North Water by Ian McGuire (Nominee)

The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng (Nominee)

Room by Emma Donoghue (Nominee)

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (Nominee)

On Chisel Beach by Ian McEwan (Nominee)

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Nominee)

Saturday by Ian McEwan (Nominee)

Cloud Atlass by David Mitchell (Nominee)

The Master by Colm Tobin (Nominee)

Oryx and Crake by Margret Atwood (Nominee)

Atonement by Ian McEwan (Nominee)

Alias Grace by Margret Atwood (Nominee)

Black Dogs by Ian McEwan (Nominee)

Such A Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (Nominee)

Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood (Nominee)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Nominee)

An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (Nominee)

Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard (Nominee)

Shame by Salman Rushdie (Nominee)

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul (Nominee)

The Driver’s Seat by Muriel Spark (Nominee)

Fire from Heaven by Mary Renualt (Nominee)

Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen (Nominee)

Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brien (Nominee)

 

 

Publicity Ploy or Literarally Valid

Now I love book awards I really do. I will obsessively look up every book on the list and read it but today in my library that really baffled me and made me wonder who pulled that one out of their ass? It is called (if I recall correctly) The Alex Award and it is for books written for adults that have special appeal to young adults. I am sorry but this completely baffles me.

The first thing I wonder is what the hell does that even mean? What is “special” appeal opposed to regular normal appeal? And who determines that a book written for adults has so called special appeal for young adults?

Is the panel who chooses the winners made up of teenagers and pre-teens (depending on ones definition of “young adult) is a poll taken, do they go by sales, or is it just a committee of old guys in tweed who make this choice?

What is the purpose of this award? Because to me it seems like this is a reward created just to help boos sales of a specific niche of books buy being able to slap an award sticks on them to garner more attention and interest.

Granted if publicity was the purpose I suppose it is working since I am here talking about it, and yes I am tempted to look up the award list and read some of the books listed to see if in reading them the award actually makes some sense to me.

It also make me wonder if some authors who are writing for adults are going to make their books sound more YAish in order to try and garner “special” appeal in young adults. With the going popularity of adults reading YA and now adult book being rewarded for appealing to young adults when will the lines between these genres be completely erased? And what will that mean?

Without having yet done research on reward and what sort of books are included I would hazard a guess that they are books written for an adult audience but featuring a young person as the protagonist.

If any book regardless of the intended audience featuring young adult characters is in some way marketed to young adult audiences how will this change the future of literature? Will it cause a dumbing down or softening/simplifying of some books?  Or will a more bluing of the lines prove beneficial to literature? Will it create more quality in young adult literature?

A Dangerous Thought

I recently stumbled upon a book that quite concerned me, for the record I will state I have not read the book. My analysis omes from the title which first caught my attention, and the synopsis of the book. The book is called The Bookburners, now that in itself was no big deal, it sounded intriguing and could have gone in many different directions. The first thing which came to my mind was the possibility that it was a take on Fahrenheit 451. 

I looked up the book to read more about it. The premiss of the book is that a group of individuals who work for the Vatican have to hunt down certian books that are deemed dangerous to soiciety and destroy them. The book is a fantasy/supernatural story so the said dangerous books are certian books which contian and unleash dark magical powers. The ones who have to save humanity form the evils of magic are part of what is called the anti-magic squad. 

The primary issues I have with this book while it puts it in a fantsy setting about books that release demons into the world it still seems to be sneding a message that some books are bad and it bis up to some people (specifically the Christian church) to determine that said books are bad and destroy them to protect everyone else. 

The other problem I have with this book is its anti-magic message. The idea that magic is inherently bad and must be destroyed. Many of you might think well magic isn’t real so what does it matter? Well for many people who follow a spiritual path outside of Christianity thier beliefs and practices can be said to be magical in nature. For that matter the Bible itself contians magic, but of course Christians call them miracles and some how determine that miracles and magic are not the same thing and miracles = good while magic = bad but that is a story for another day.

To put things into context there is a book called The 21 Lessons of Merlyn, is is a book written as a guide for those who follow the Pagan path. Ala the storyline mentioned above this book could be deemed as containing evil magic and sentenced to be destroyed. 

Some might say that The Bookburners is just a book and I am overacting but books do matter because they can reveal shifting tides in how culture is changing and what the mood of the society is. Yeah the book might just be a story, and maybe no one will take it seriously but you cannot say that the author was not aware of the message he was sending and he had enough of a following to get the book published. 

Now unlike The Bookburners (and those of that mindset) I am not advocating that the book be banned or burned for that matter, but when potentially dangerous ideas pop up we should at least be aware and not caught of guard wondering what happened when the first seeds are there to warn us.  

  

A New Discovery of the Old

I am perhaps ridiculously excitied about my new library card. I know some pepole would not consider it a very important piece of paper and others would look at it as being archaic and perhaps obsolete but it is like having a whole new wonderful world of books while granted I have certainly been to libraries before and always enjoyed them as I bibleophile I have to confess I have not really fully utilized the libraries as I should have. In my former location I lived in an area where Half-Price books was more concinate to transport myself to than the library and there where many other good used bookstores and oppertunities for cheap and free books. I also became quite addicted to the ease of amazon. For me paying a few books was worth the luxury of being able to read the book in my own time instead of having to read with a deadline. 

But I am curntly living in a location in which used bookstores are not as readily available and while there is still Amazon even for the cheapness of Amazon economics is an issue and I still enjoy the act of physically browsing books.  There happens to be a library quite near by and on eof our friends asked if we wanted to check out the library with her and of course we were up for it. I figured while I was there I might as well get a card. 

As it so happens when I was standning in a random isle trying to get oriented and figure something out by pure chance I spotted a book that I have been wanting to read and it was a quirky (I won’t say rare) but not very common book.  It was like a sign of fate. I must also confess I was exited to discover the library has a graphic novels section including The Walkind Dead comics and graphic novels no matter where you get them are expensive. 

The other cool thing is our library gives you 28 days to have the book with the option of 2 rechecks of which can be done online, so that is almost three months to read the book. They also allow you to check out up to 200 books at a time. The other cool thing is that the library uses Overdrive so if they do not have a book you want they will pool thousands of libraries across the country to find another library they can loan the book form. 

Bodily Harm

I have just finished reading Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood and it was reading many of the negative reviews this book received that compelled me to share my thoughts about the book here. First of I will state that a while back I did a post all about Margaret Atwood and the fact that while I consider her to be among my favorite authors some of her books really can be very hit and miss for me. When she is good she is really good, but some of her works do fall flat with me. I do not always agree with her brand of feminism so to speak.  Many of her female characters are portrayed as victimized and completely passive, and the majority of her male characters are villainous, (not like comic book Super Villain villainous) but they are all portrayed as being oppressors of women, and frequently unfaithful.

Bodily Harm was my favorite non Sci-fi/Dystopian book I have read of Atwood’s since Cat’s Eye which was the first Atwood book I read and made me instantly fall in love with her writing. I think much like the case of Cat’s Eye, I happened to read Bodily Harm at the exact right time in my life in which I was most strongly able to identity and relate to the story and main character.

Rennie is diagnosed with breast cancer and has a partial mastectomy in which a quarter sized portion of her breast is removed. With the removal of this part of herself she feels as if she is no longer complete like some part of herself (not just her physical self, but her identity, who she is) is missing, and with her new perceptions of her body image, and the insecurities she begins to feel about herself she struggles with a crisis of identity. This is heightened by the fact that she is in a relationship with a man who values her and bases their relationships predominately on her physical attributes and the relationship is driven mostly by sex.  After her operation she cannot bare to have her boyfriend look at her or touch her.

I have made a few mentions here that I am currently involved in a long distance relationship and during the time in which I started reading this book I was preparing for a trip for our first meeting together in person, and while certainly we both knew what each other looked like and exchanged photos and descriptions there was still some anxiety about what his perception would be of me when he beheld me in person, and while we always had a very strong connection to each other, and a strong bond of love, there was still the doubt and insecurity about whether or not he would be attracted to me when we actually met in person. And prior to meeting him I was in a relationship with someone who did make me feel bad about myself.

I was actually reading this book on the plane during my flight out to see him, and in that moment I could really connect with Rennie’s struggle with her identity in relation to her body image issues, and feeling as if she would be undesirable because of what was taken from her and her desperately seeking someone that would make her feel attractive again, and perhaps also like a whole and completed woman again.

While I did not have to suffer the physical loss of a part of myself, certainly my body still has its blemishes and imperfections, and I do feel as if I have lost something of my inner self with the experiences of my previous relationship.

So I did think this book was fantastic with a lot of personal meaning.

And just in case anyone is curious the visit with my significant other did go wonderfully.

 

 

I Am Probably a Sexist

There is a fairly common trend I have begun to notice. Oftentimes I will read a book of which I will really enjoy, and out of curiosity I will read other reviews, comments, critiques of said book to discover that the book is criticized for being sexist and my natural reflex reaction to such claims is to roll my eyes and think the people are being ridiculously oversensitive. It is true that when I am really enraged in a story and think the book is well crafted, and has a great plot, I am oblivious or desensitized to the nuances of how women or portrayed in the story or how many female characters may or may not be within the book. If it is a good book, I honestly don’t really cared about that. If it is a book I am not enjoying very much than I might become more analytical of it. And I suppose part of it for me is the fact that I do not think the integrity of the art should be comprised by pressure from society to be more politically correct.

I really enjoy the writing of H.G Wells and I have noticed that a lot of people criticize him or do not enjoy his works because of the almost complete lack of woman within many of his books, and for me in a way I find it kind of refreshing to read a book in which there is not this need to create some romantic story line as a way to make the book more interesting, or appealing to women readers.

It is hard to find modern books which don’t have some romantic love interest thrown into the mix somewhere even if that is not really what the main story is actually about and many authors feels the need to do that in order to appeal to women readers.

I am reading the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, and before I started reading him I have heard him trashed several times as being some kind of woman hating masochists because of the scenes of rape within his books. And yes, there is violence against women and rape within his books, but there is also a lot of war, and anyone who knows anything about history knows that with war there was often raping and pillaging, that was just a fact of life.  It is not as if the rapist in his books are the heroes of the story, the people doing the raping or the bad guys, and it is portrayed in the books as a terrible thing to do. Terry Goodkind does not glorify rape in some positive way. And one of the main characters of the story is a strong, confident, powerful, intelligent woman.

As a reader of historical fiction and reading a lot of comments and criticism about different works of HF there seems to be this common trend that anytime a male author (regardless of context) writes about rape in a novel he is labeled as being a sexist. Obviously I am not defending rape, but just because a man within a work of fiction acknowledges the fact of life that sometimes women are raped does not mean he hates women.

But that is a tirade for a different day.

Mostly recently I have read this book called The Ritual, which I absolutely loved and thought was fantastic, and I was reading some of the reviews of the book and came across one in which this person went off on how sexist the book was.

First of all I will state the book is a horror novel, and it is about a group of four friends who go out on this hiking trip together. Three of them are married one of them seems to be happy in his marriage and the other two are separated from their wives and there is a lot of trash talk about their wives and the fourth is not in a committed relationship but just sleeps around with various different women.  The only female characters to appear in the story are a strange old woman who hardly ever speaks, and a girl who is basically a total psychopath and described frequently as being fat.

So yeah maybe the book does not have very positive portrayals of women but for one thing it wasn’t that kind of book, and I did not perceive it as being that the book and/or author was sexist but rather I saw it more of a reflection of the characters within the story. Yes the author could have had one of the hikers in the group be a strong, independent woman but that would have changed the whole dynamic of the story.

Consequently I will say that times the female characters that I tend to find the most offensive and insulting to women are usually in books that were written by women predominately for women, which everyone else raves about. And I am thinking to myself “really? you think this is a positive image of women?”

It could be a combination of my perhaps having some skewed and twisted views and the fact that I do tend to connect better to men than I do to women. I don’t have any girlfriends. All of my closest friends are guys. So books that are perhaps more male/masculine driven appeal to me more, and do connect with me better than books that are more female/feminine driven.

Summer Reading Review

Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat 

This is a novelization of Mowat’s real life accounts of his time he spent in the Arctic studying a group of wolves. During the period when a lot of anti-wolf hate really started up wolves were being blamed for causing a sudden drop in the caribou population. There where claims that wolves would slaughter entire heards for the pure joy of killing. Mowat was sent to access just how much of a nuisance the wolves were. But when Mowat arrived he soon discovered a truth that was very different from what he had been led to believe. Soon the wolves earned his respect and admiration and he felt himself almost a part of their family while discovering their many very human traits.

Mowat is often criticized for being quite liberal with the facts and truth in his books. It is true the story may not portray a truly accurate account of his experiences, and he does give many embellishments and exaggerations but in doing so he creates a very charming story which I found engaging and entertaining to read. It is full of humor, eccentric characters, including a shaman how is believed to have the ability to speak to the language of the wolves, and a very endearing family of wolves of which Morley does humanize in many ways. It is a book of adventure, survival, and nature.

Pan by Knut Hamsun 

Though this is a work of fiction there was an aspect about it, particularly in the beginning that really brought me to mind of Thoreau’s Walden. It is the story of a man who lives nearly isolated in a small cabin in the wilderness surviving off of the land, while engaging in occasional sometimes awkward, sometimes bizarre and inexplicable encounters with people.   The descriptions of nature I thought were quite poetic and I found the story rather compelling.

Glahn was living a quiet life living off the land with only his dog as his companion when he becomes entangled between two different women, neither of which he can truly have.  The young charming, Eva who seems innocent, and genuine, falls in love with Glahn, who at first takes her for the blacksmiths daughter, to discover later, that she is in fact his wife.  The enigmatic, and sometimes cruel Edvarda enchants Glahn and continues to toy with him, never willing to either commit herself to him nor cut him free. She sends him a series of mixed messages of rejection, and invitation casting him in a state of emotional turmoil.

His relationship with Eva is physical, primal, and very simple. He is drawn to her youth, beauty, and sexuality, and she remains always waiting for him, giving herself willingly to him while asking for nothing in return.

But Edvarda holds his heart, and torments him. His relationship with her is complex.

Pan is a psychologically charged novel which explores our primal natures and delves into the depths of human emotion, and how we connect, or disconnect with ourselves, nature, and each other, exploring a range of complexity of human interaction.

Jaws by Peter Benchley 

Now I admit that Jaws is one of my favorite movie, I think it is an iconic classic. I was quite looking forward to reading the book, and I found the book to be somewhat disappointing. While the movie does stay pretty true to the book, I think this is a story that does translate better into the visual of a move than it reads as a book.

Needless to say the writing was mediocre, and in many ways it did feel very dated. I did not find any of the characters to be particularly likable or sympathetic. Brody at times was I would sympathize with, and there where moments when I liked him, but there where other times when I would be irritated by him. Though I think it was the authors intent of trying to make the characters very human, by showing all of them as having both their good points as well as being very flawed. But I didn’t really relate to any of them. Quint was a bit Captain Ahab like, and that stereotypical caricature of the cliched fisherman.

One of the things I did like about the book is I thought Benchley did a good job with his portrayal of the shark. He was able to really make the shark a character, and at moments give the reader a glimpse into the shark’s point of view, but he was able to do this without anthroporophizing the shark, and he stayed true to the shark’s primal nature.

Wilderness Tips by Margaret Atwood 

This is a short story collection by Atwood. The first few stories I did not really care for and fell a bit flat for me. The first story True Trash I felt was both rather uninteresting and pointless, the following stories Hairball and Isis in Darkness I felt did have certain interesting things about them, but still when I finished them left me wondering “Why did I have to read that?” I found the stories really did not accomplish anything.

But after that I found the stories did begin to get better. Death By Landscape was my favorite story in the collection, and the following stories I found to be interesting, engaging and had a good deal more substance to them than the first few stories did.

The one thing I really liked about the whole collection is that most the stories had something unsettling about them, there was a certain mystery in each of them, and most of them ended with a question mark. They did not truly have conclusions, they where not wrapped up neat and tidy. They left you wanting to know what would happen next. They did not give answers.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins 

The second book in the Hunger Games trilogy. I felt that this book got off to a bit of a slow start, and while there where things about it which I found to be somewhat interesting at the beginning, it did take me a while to really start to get into it.  But I have to say after the book progressed I came to feel that it was better than the first book, of which while I enjoyed, I also wasn’t necessarily that impressed by. Originally I didn’t even really plan to continue the series. It was watching the movie which made me want to read the book.

I liked the way in which the book did address the issues of PTSD in Katniss  as well as other tributes, after her and their experiences within the arena. And I did like seeing how the rebellious feelings within the people started to steadily grow. Also I have to say one of the things in the Hunger Games that turned me off from wanting to keep reading was the introducing of the love triangle between Katniss, Gale, and Peeta. I don’t really like love triangle story lines, and I don’t like romance in YA novels (or really in most other novels but in YA it is usually particularly annoying) but I thought that it was handled very well in this book. It did not distract from the main story and it was done in a way that did feel believable and realistic. Though I prefer Gale over Peeta (frankly I find Peeta to be a bit annoying and kind of boring) I can understand with everything they have been through together how feelings between Katniss and Peeta might develop. I did like the scenes of Peeta having to comfort Katniss because he was there with her and went through it with her, so he is the only one that can really understand it.

People Are Funny and Free Books

There is a local library that has this annual book give away in which in this back parking lot there are just boxes and boxes of books that are free for the taking. And of course if there is one thing I need it is more books, but one of the cool things about it is that it does give more room to explore different books. If there is something that sounds kind of interesting but wouldn’t necessarily commit to buying if it is free I figure, what the heck, no harm in just taking it and giving it a try.

While I was there, there was this other group walking around it looked like a woman with her daughter, and the daughter saw a copy of The Book Thief, and picked it up to show her mom and ask if she wanted it, but the mom told her she did not think the book looked to be in very good condition so the daughter (who looked to be a teenager) tossed the book back in the box and the mom got mad at her for throwing the book, and told her “That is not the way we disrespect books”

 

Ok, I will just pause and let it sink in why that is a funny statement.

 

Now if you still don’t see the humor there I will explain.

While I understand what the woman is trying to say, that you shouldn’t treat books that way, the way she said it sounds as if she is suggesting that there is a correct way to disrespect a book, and her daughter just did it the wrong way.

And now, here are the books I took home with me:

The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy
Be My Knife by David Grossman
Sustenance by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jenifer Egan
Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
Frankenstein’s Monster by Susan Heyboer O’Keefe
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett
Under African Skies: Modern African Stories
When My Heart Was Wicked by Tricia Stirling
Ramses: The Son of Light by Christian Jacq
Zorro by Isabel Allende
Breakfast with Buddha by Roland Merullo

 

As Simple As Snow by Gregory Galloway

This was one of the most beautifully written and compelling YA novels I have read. Most YA books including ones I have read and enjoyed have a certain simplicity to them in the prose, dialogue, character development etc. It is as if the writers do not fully trust the intelligence of the reader, or don’t want to challenge the reader. But Simple As Snow is filled with complexities, a depth of emotion, layers of symbolism and the prose at times is almost poetic. Reading it it does not have that feel of reading a YA novel.

I loved the many references to books and music within the book which help introduce the reader, and encourage them to exploring new experiences. I enjoyed listening to the CDs that Anna made for the narrator. Each of the songs was like a message revealing something about Anna.

I thought the narrative style was innovative and engaging keeping me wanting to keep reading and turning the next page.

While on the one hand the novel is very believable, and relateable in many ways. It is a realistic work of fiction yet at the same time the way it is written, there seems to be something that feels almost magical about it. The story does take very small subtle steps just outside the bounds of reality

My Vacation Reading

I will be heading off on vacation soon leaving the first week in August to go to Lake Tahoe. I belong to several different book groups on Goodreads, and so usually I am always reading this or that book for one of my groups, which I enjoy because it provides a good opportunity both to get motivated to read some books I have had sitting around on my shelf but always put off reading for another time, or daunting books that I want to read but because of their length I always postpone, as well as a way to be introduced to books I previously never heard of before.

But in August I take a hiatus from Goodreads, and put together a selection of books which I want to take with me to read while I am on vacation. Of course I usually always end up taking way more books than I actually need but better to have too many books than not enough, if there is such a thing as too many books. No one has been able to convince me of that yet.

So my vacation reading this year:

Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat – When I was a kid I saw the movie they made from this book and I loved it. A book about survival in nature seems like an appropriate book to read while I will be up in the mountains.

Jaws by Peter Benchley – I admit that Jaws is one of my all time favorite movies and I figure this book would be a good summer read. And while I won’t be at the ocean but at a lake instead, still seems a good book to read while sitting on the beach.

Pan by Knut Hamsun – I have heard good things about Hamsun, and when I first saw this book I was intrigued by the title and it seems like a fitting book to read while I reconnect with nature.

Choke by Chuck Palahniuk – I am a fan of Palahniuk and I find his books to be easy fast reads for me, because they are so compelling. I love his dark humor.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games I had to read in this course I took on Children’s Literature when I was still in school. I enjoyed the book well enough, I do like Dystopia fiction but I didn’t feel that compelled to read the other books, but I got into watching the movies, and I thought the movie was really quite good and made me want want to continue to read the books.

Wilderness Tips by Margret Atwood – I don’t have much of an explanation for this one, but I am an Atwood fan and the title at least fits in with the nature like theme that I unintentionally ended up with.