Book Challenge Update, 1/24

I've made a bit more progress on the book challenge, even though the school year has begun and I have a graduate course starting. It will all likely slow down here soon. But here are my updates for now. Again, I think I'll just move the most recent reads to the top of the list.

1. Trashy Romance - This novel could count in several of my categories, but I think I'm going to list it as my trashy romance. I finally got around to reading Gone With the Wind. I found the first half of the book extremely entertaining and could see how the novel got the following that it has. It reads really well, with some fairly complex and interesting characters. The scenes with Rhett really do pop off of the page. The second half of the book, however, was nowhere near the same quality. This was both as a matter of politics (even forgiving Mitchell a little bit for expressing the views of her time, the racial politics of this part of the novel are offensive, as are the negative stereotypes assigned to northernors) and plot. On the whole, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, but I was a lot more disturbed by the book than I thought I was going to be, too.

2. Graphic Novel/Comics - I used to read and enjoy the Ducktales comics when I was young, and I didn't realize until recently that the original Ducktales comics, authored by Carl Barks, are considered classics. I requested a copy of them, both for the sake of nostalgia and because I was interested if I would still like some of them. It turns out that they were quite funny and well-drawn, though I did probably enjoy them more as a kid.

3. Contemporary Children's Novel - Stephanie and I read Kate DiCamillo's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane together. It's a fable--much in the mold of The Velveteen Rabbit or The Mouse and His Child--about a porcelain rabbit learning to love. DiCamillo is one of the best children's writers around (though it's sometimes debatable whether or not her books would always be enjoyable by children), and this was another well-written fantasy.

4. Poetry - I enjoyed Kathleen Norris's memoir The Cloister Walk back in college, and I've encountered some of her poetry in anthologies, so I've wanted to read one of her books of poetry for quite a while now. I happened across a signed copy of Little Girls in Church one day in a used book story for $1 and have now tried it out. Though Norris can, just on occasion, be a little abstract and over-allusive (is that a word?) for my taste, a lot of the poems--many of them centered around women in history and the Bible--were very striking and thought-provoking. I enjoyed it and will keep it on my shelf.

5. Mystery - I read an Agatha Christie--The Hallowe'en Party--just because I was needing something light and short after Gone With the Wind, and she typically does the trick. This one was one of her final novel--and so one of the lesser ones, since her talent dropped off a bit toward the end of her life. That's not to say, though, that I didn't enjoy it. I just enjoyed it while recognizing it as a middling effort of a very fine writer.

6. Current Bestseller - For a current bestselling novel, I read Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, a novel set in Alaska about a lonely middle-aged couple who forms a child from the snow...who comes alive. It was decent, but it read like a first novel.

7. Thriller - I've been on a big Graham Greene kick for the last few months, and so I decided to read one of his more obscure (though also least popular) novels Orient Express. About halfway through, I thought that I would never be able to consider it as a thriller, despite it being advertised as such, because even though it was well-written, it was just about the sundry relationships developed amongst the travelers on a train. By the end, however, it became a thriller of sorts. And I decided that it was one of Greene's most underrated novels.

8. Popular History Book - I read A Land So Strange by Andres Resendez, about the journey of Cabeza de Vaca through the American Southwest after the Spanish expedition he was on ended in tragedy. It was a pretty fascinating account of a part of history which I, as a Texan, have long been interested in.

9.  Pulitzer Prize Winner -

10. A Vampire Book -

11. Newbery Prize Winner -

12. A book that has or is being made into a movie -

13. A Shakespeare Play -

14. Biography/Memoir -

15. Comedy -

16. British Classic -

17. Sir Walter Scott -

18. Texas Books -

19. Swashbuckler -

20. The Bible -

21. SciFi or Fantasy -

22. Theology -

23. Modern Library 100 Novel -

24. Christmas Book -

25. Education Book -