krazy4katz's reading journal

Happy New Year, everyone! I will be starting my second year in Club Read.

My 2011 thread is here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/105126

I will be using this space to compile a list of the books I read in 2012. My first is one that I began in 2011, but will not finish until 2012 (only 10 hours away!).

1. Hotel Angeline by Jennie Shortridge and 35 other authors; reviewed in #3 (http://www.librarything.com/topic/129517#3137396)
2. Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith; reviewed in #7 (http://www.librarything.com/topic/129517#3191851)
3. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks
4. The Burned Tower by Sergey Dyachenko
5. My Ride With Gus by Charlie Carillo

I finished Hotel Angeline! Here is my review:

I didn't expect to like Hotel Angeline. After the first couple of chapters I was tempted to put it down. OK, it was funny and a brave effort at performance art by 36 authors writing in 2-hour stretches in front of an audience, but that doesn't make it a great or even a good novel, right? I was very frustrated by the inability of Alexis to learn from the people around her what her reality was. Are all 14-year olds this dense?! Somewhere around the middle of the book, I began to care about her, to hope that she would somehow get herself out of this unholy mess. Finally, I began to see her yearning for normalcy, the desire to be a child again - protected, cared for, loved. We all wish for this sometimes and I am glad that Alexis had the good fortune to find a way. Definitely worth it in the end.
3.5 stars

Now on to something else. I should begin my birth year read for Club Read 2012, but I think I will delay just a bit and start Obsessive Genius by Barbara Goldsmith, a biography of Marie Curie.

Or not! We'll see...

I love serial novels (great literature they are not but they are always an interesting way to see how different authors handle situations). Need to get that one I guess.

Do you have recommendations for other serial novels? This is my first experience with one.

Thanks, AnnieMod

I read the newest one ( No Rest for the Dead) last year and despite its flows, I actually liked it (and I think that most of the authors got to write what they are best at - which helped).

I've read the two Naked Came novels as well (long time ago) - http://www.librarything.com/series/Naked+Came...+serial+novels

If you know what to expect from such novels, they are not that bad. The Naked Came ones are worse but I kinda like them - in some parts of it in the "let's see how much they can screw it up" kind of way.

The rest I had read had not been in English :)

Thanks, Annie! I will look into those. A new genre (?) for me!

I have finally finished Obsessive Genius: The Inner World of Marie Curie by Barbara Goldsmith. The reason it took me so long is that I like it so much I began reading it a second time.

Here is my review:
Barbara Goldsmith's biography of Marie Curie is a wonderful portrait of the scientist and the woman. Her work is placed in the context of the science in Europe in the early 1900s, so that you can truly understand its groundbreaking nature. You learn about other scientists whose work intersected with and competed against the Curies, such as Roentgen, Becquerel and many others. Goldsmith also addresses Marie Curie's struggle for recognition, for simple acceptance, as a woman in a male-dominated world: how she would have been passed over for the Nobel Prize if her husband, Pierre Curie, had not stood up for her, how she was rejected from scientific academies, how she had to beg for money even after winning the Nobel Prize. Her personal struggles with depression as well as her relationships with her loving husband, children and others in her world are also finely depicted. Altogether a very worthwhile read.

I should have begun my birth year read, but the library emailed and said The Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague by Geraldine Brooks was available, so I am reading that. I am about 20% through it and I like it very much so far. The writing is as beautiful as I remember from this author but very different from People of the Book. She must have done a lot of research into the language/vocabulary in England in the 1600s.