Book Reader’s Blog

My daily commute pattern changed since I moved to my new house. This gives me at least two and a half hours for books every day! The effects of that are clearly visible to me: firstly, I run through books with blazing speed. Secondly, and that part I don’t like, I don’t have time for basically anything else. When I get back home from work I just spend the time with the kids and my wife and fall to bed. No time to post here, no time for hobbies. Well, that’s a clear indication that I’m too busy…

Books:

• Bryson’s Lost Continent (terrible, how could one so full of resentment spend so much time travelling??? Don’t read it.), Made in America (the history of American English—that one is much better, but too long for this kind of book. You just don’t assimilate that much information in a single go).
• To Kill a Mockingbird – a bit slow start, but the story then takes off, and I really liked it after a dozen pages or so. That’s funny, by the way, how often people like books narrated by a kid. Don’t you?
• The Postman Always Rings Twice – I would put it in a single category along with Capote’s In Cold Blood.
• Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel. Well, just like in the book—at the end it’s just as if nothing has happened. It was just pure waste of time.
• Kim Edwards’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter – somewhere in the middle. Worth the time, if only it made you think about the consequences of a single lie, a single bad act.
• Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock – Good and evil, right and wrong. The language and setting is already too old to make the book exciting, but I am glad I read it.
• An attempt at a few Hemmingways. I could finish only one: The short and happy life of Francis Macomber.