book challenge update (part ii).

Welp, I don't have much to report.  Since my last update I've only successfully completed ONE book.  Oy!  As previously predicted, I quit reading Empire Falls after many weeks and very few pages.  No offense Mr. Pulitzer, but it just didn't do it for me!

What did do it for me though was Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple.  I tend to like to describe things with a single word or phrase, and if I had to do that with book number eight I would say that Where'd You Go, Bernadette was a real gem of a read.  In other words, I loved it.

This review by Janet Maslin of The New York Times sums it up perfectly: "Comedy heaven.... This divinely funny, many-faceted novel...leaves convention behind. Instead, it plays to Ms. Semple's strengths as someone who can practice ventriloquism in many voices, skip over the mundane and utterly refute the notion that mixed-media fiction is bloggy, slack or lazy.... The tightly constructed Where'd You Go, Bernadette is written in many formats-e-mails, letters, F.B.I. documents, correspondence with a psychiatrist and even an emergency-room bill for a run-in between Bernadette and Audrey. Yet these pieces are strung together so wittily that Ms. Semple's storytelling is always front and center, in sharp focus. You could stop and pay attention to how apt each new format is, how rarely she repeats herself and how imaginatively she unveils every bit of information. But you would have to stop laughing first."

So, eight books down, FIVE to go.  Think I can do it?  I sure hope I can.  Next up is The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which I started way back when Andy and I started dating and I visited Chicago for the first time.  Now that I actually know the layout of the city beyond Mohawk Street, I'm ready to devour this fan (and critic) favorite.  Right along side the bestseller I'll also be reading Waiting to Be Heard, the Amanda Knox memoir -- it's for book club but I'm confident enough to say that I'm not so secretly excited to read it.  And then after that one, I'm planning on picking up Divergent, which is said to be the new Hunger Games (need I say more?).

I've been loving this "challenge" so far and can't wait to successfully complete it -- fingers crossed!