I finished Paper Daughter and though it kind of got off track, I enjoyed it. It did make me think about how lazy I was as a child, though.
Anyway, after finishing that I picked up 100 Years of Solitude, a story about the origins and life of a small town in South America (although it is largely a fantasy).
It is a book that I should have read in school but that I never did. To be fair, I think I read an excerpt of it somewhere. Anyway, I am only 66 pages in and have already lost my interest a bit. It is a captivating book but it is also a rather intense read and leaves one feeling a bit exhausted. There are easily three or four words in every chapter that I don't know and the descriptions never let up. Though the book is heralded as a masterpiece (it won a Nobel Prize among other awards), I have to agree with some reviews that also criticize it for being wordy.
HOWEVER, I have been leading a lazy life as of late and I think it is important for me to pick up these types of books (Faulkner, Dickens, Jane Austen, etc) off and on to keep my brain and language ability up to date. Though my job is to teach English, it is very basic English and I am surrounded by Japanese on all other fronts. Although everyone looses a bit of a dip in their ability after leaving school, I think I have to work twice as hard to maintain a rust/dust-free brain. So I am going to plunge ahead and hopefully hit my stride soon. Though I will admit to cheating last week by reading Vanity Fair on our car ride to Kurashiki and by reading David Sedaris during my break at the elementary school. Don't judge me- it was my birthday! I deserved to be stress free! Not to mention I had hose pesky bites fighting my every concentrated thought. Must say that there is nothing like, Me Talk Pretty One Day, to take your mind off of things.
On a side note... This is an article/blog entry from Roger Ebert about the dumbing down of some novels for today's reader. I feel he captures what I was trying to say about struggling through a book even if I don't understand all of the words. I always tell my students that I learned English by reading... and watching TV.
http://blogs.suntimes.com/
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