Reading for Me

The Books I Have Read…..Just for Me

Jan 23

#3: The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)

by kennithfreeman

This week’s prompt in the reading challenge was a book with a twist. That was proving to be a challenging thing to determine without getting too many spoilers, so I decided to use the mammoth novel that I began over Christmas break to fill the gap. Coming in at over 900 pages, The Pillars of the Earth certainly had more than a few plot twists that kept me coming back for more. I needed to read the last 250 pages or so this week to finish the novel, so it felt like a reasonable challenge despite the slow reading pace that the novel required. I got done just under the wire on Saturday evening!

I’ve been told for many years that I needed to read The Pillars of the Earth. I had enjoyed Follett’s Century Trilogy, but there was just something about the prospect of reading a massive novel about the construction of a cathedral in Medieval England that did not excite me. As Christmas break rolled around, I knew that I needed something to lose myself in and decided to give the work a long-overdue try. To put it simply, the novel is beautifully written with an exquisitely developed cast of characters.

The story really centers around three major characters. Tom Builder and his family find their way to Kingsbridge as they desperately search for work. Along the way, the family meets Alaina, a beautiful young duchess who has lost her fortune when her father is falsely arrested. The monastery at Kingsbridge is lead by Prior Phillip who is gentle, wise, and compassionate. However, any good story also must have people that we love to hate……and Follett fills the bill with Waleran Bigod, a nasty priest with a thirst for power and the bloodthirsty Earl-to-be, William Hamleigh.

It would be impossible to provide a plot summary in such a short space. While the cathedral is a character herself, the story centers around the people who are instrumental in the construction process. The cast is vast, but can easily be visualized through Follett’s excellent prose. Although set in the Middle Ages, many of the important themes traced throughout the book are extremely modern and relevant to the 21st century reader. Do yourself a favor and find the time to dive into the enthralling world of Kingsbridge. It’s a journey worth taking.

What’s ahead this week? I’ll continue my reading challenge. This week’s prompt is to read a book that is the source of a 2022 movie. I’ve decided to finally read Delia Owens’ Where The Crawdads Sing. I suppose it’s time to see what all of the hype has been about.

2022 Reading Challenge fiction

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Jan 19

#2: Malibu Rising (Taylor Jenkins Reid)

by kennithfreeman

At the beginning of the week, I finished my second novel of the year. I had heard great things about Malibu Rising. It should have been a great match for me. I was familiar with the geography of the city by the sea. I am always a big fan of family dramas. I absolutely HATED this book!

Malibu Rising tells the story of the dysfunctional Rivas family. In many ways, it is actually a blending of two intertwined stories. In the 1950s and 1960s, you have the tragic love story of Mick and June. They seemed to be a match made in the Heaven. Then, Mick finds success and realizes he was not “meant to be” in a monogamous relationship. In the 1980s, we follow the lives of Mick’s four children — now grown — as they figure out how to deal with their feelings about their parents and how to navigate the uncertain waters they now find themselves in. On paper, this should have been the perfect book for me. I found myself constantly frustrated with Reid’s writing and her attempts to be literary by constantly shifting between the major plots.

The novel was not a complete bust. I found myself rooting for the four Rivas children. Nina, Jay, Hud, and Kit were beautifully rendered characters. If only the story had simply centered on their troubled relationships. However, the inclusion of so many minor characters as well as the previous generations of the Riva family made this book much weaker than it had to be.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I nearly put this book down, never to be finished. Somehow,I managed to plug away and make it to the end. When Mick meets his adult children and they are all forced to face their past failures, Reid’s skill as a writer finally came through. There might be hope for this author after all. I found a few paragraphs in the final few pages of the novel worthwhile and beautifully written.

June had given her children this box packed to the brim with her own experiences, her own treasures and heartbreaks. Her own guilts and pleasures, triumphs and losses, values and biases, duties and sorrows.

And Nina had been carrying around this box her whole life, feeling the full weight of it.

But it was not, Nina saw just then, her job to carry the full box. Her job was to sort through the box. To decide what to keep, and to put the rest down. She had to choose what, of the things she inherited from the people who came before her, she wanted to bring forward. And what, of the past, she wanted to leave behind.

Malibu Rising, 357.

For what it’s worth, I give this novel a hard pass. I don’t think it is worth the effort. Maybe it wouldn’t be bad as an audio book if you needed a simple diversion and there were no other options available. But there ARE outstanding family dramas to dive into and enjoy immensely. Skip this flippant journey through the hills of Malibu and go for another family saga instead. You’ll be much happier that you did!

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Jan 15

The View From My Reading Chair – January 15, 2022

by kennithfreeman

The second week of the year did not bring the finish that I had hoped to be able to report. The week was incredibly busy with the start of classes and lots of physical demands. Somehow, I managed to stay on track with reading at least one page of text for pleasure each day. (There were a couple of days where it almost didn’t happen, but having a goal and habit tracker definitely helped.)

Part of the problem this week was that I was also attempting to return to graduate work with a course on Shakespeare. While I enjoyed the topic and re-exploring the plays, it quickly became evident that the demands of the class and my personal teaching load were not going to be a healthy mix for my life. As I am writing this afternoon, I still feel very groggy after a hard 13-hour sleep last night and find myself anxious to crawl back in bed again in a few hours for more rest. Last week almost did me in!

The other issue that I am facing is the book I’m reading. I am working my way through Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but the plot hasn’t grabbed hold of my heart yet. I’m only about 130 pages into the novel, so I’m hoping things improve as I move closer to the mid-point of the book. I’m too far into the read to desert it now if I want to stay on course with the goal of reading 40 books this year. I had hoped that I would make more progress today so I could potentially have a finish on Monday. Right now, I’m not incredibly hopeful for that.

Since there was limited reading happening here, I didn’t make any significant progress on The Pillars of the Earth or Going There. I think that I am going to use Pillars as my January book with a twist — because there have been a few — and hope to get back on track with the audio book as well. Both of those books are within the realm of having fairly quick finishes, so I don’t think I will be too far off the monthly goal if I can just manage to get my tail back in gear! Thankfully, tomorrow is the beginning of another week and a chance to make some improvements in my own reading life.

update

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Jan 1

The View From My Reading Chair – January 1, 2022

by kennithfreeman

Happy New Year! I hope each of you have a healthy and prosperous 2022 filled with love, laughter, and good reading! Even though today is a holiday, I thought a brief update on this week’s reading progress was appropriate on this Saturday afternoon.

Unfortunately, I have felt under the weather much of the week and reading goals took a backseat. (Congestion, cough, headache, fatigue, and muscle aches finally sent me to the doctor on Thursday. Although the rapid test came back negative for COVID-19, the doctor was not satisfied since the results did not match the symptoms. I anticipate getting the results from the lab test on Monday morning. The steroids prescribed at least having me feeling a little more like a human at the moment.)

I continued making my way through The Pillars of the Earth and have managed to get just over half of the novel read. I ended last night’s reading with the death of Tom Builder during the murderous attack on Kingsbridge by William and his men. I’m intrigued to return to the novel this evening to see the implications that this will have on the cathedral’s process as well as the lives of Alfred, Jack, and Phillip. Needless to say, I think Ken Follett is a master storyteller.

For the past several years, I have intentionally started reading a new book on January 1 of each year. In 2022, I am opting to participate in the reading challenge from Booklistqueen.com. I’ve never had great success with reading challenges, but this one looks like a lot of fun and I enjoy the way that she has broken down the list into monthly goals. The first goal for the month of January is to read a book by an author you love. So….that lead me to start Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult. I’ve read about 50 pages of the novel so far and find it fascinating. Set in the early days of the COVID pandemic, the novel features on a young woman who goes on vacation in the Galápagos Islands while her boyfriend stays behind in NYC on the front lines of the pandemic in March 2020. It’s a fascinating look back at how all of the mess that we continue to live through all began in our nation. I’ll keep you posted on how the novel continues to hold up through the rest of the week.

Lastly, I set my reading goals for 2022 over on StoryGraph. I decided to repeat the same goal that I pushed for (and failed to meet) in 2021 of reading 40 books. I thought it would also be interesting to set a page number goal…….it seems realistic that I can read 10,000 pages in 2022. Here we go!

update

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