Old Book, Old Book #13: Graceling & A Long Way Down

So, last I wrote about what I was reading, I was starting "The Miracle of Forgiveness". That was like 3 months ago. And, I guess what happened was I got partway through that book, and then started another book for a book club I joined, and then the copy of Miracle of Forgiveness that I'd gotten at the library happened to have some printing problems (there were large sections where every other time you turned a page, the next two pages were blank). Anyway, I took Miracle of Forgiveness back to the library without finishing it, and in the meantime I read two other books for this book club.



The first one, Graceling, was a first-time effort in fantasy realm that had some potential starting out, but then mostly turned into a romance/feminist novel that stopped caring about the plot that I was caring about and started caring about whether the heroine could be happy in a committed relationship or not. Not my favorite.



The second one, A Long Way Down, was a novel by Nick Hornby (author of About a Boy and High Fidelity, both of which I enjoyed), about 4 strangers who meet on New Years Eve on top of a building they plan to jump to their death from. They end up not jumping and spending the next 90 days deciding if that was a good choice or not. In at least one case the book is clear, in the other 3, I'm not 100% sure what happened. It was my least favorite Hornby that I've read so far.

Seems like this book club thing isn't working out too well for me. Also, it's keeping me from reading some books that I'd like to read, so not sure whether I'll stick with it going forward or not.

I just finished "A Long Way Down" today, and I happened to be at my local library to do some writing (still trying to finish up the last bits of my dissertation) and took a few minutes to look for my next book. No luck finding something I was really interested in -- this library is pretty small, so I mostly use it as a pick-up spot for county-wide requests -- so I picked up another Cormac McCarthy, "Blood Meridian", but when I got home I went online and put in a few requests for stuff I'd really prefer to be reading ("Atlas Shrugged" and "Fight Club"). So I might hold off on starting something new for a week or so to see if one of those comes in. Oh, and tonight during dinner I ended up reading maybe a third of "The Christmas Box" which our stake presidency bought for each member of the stake as a Christmas gift. So I guess that counts as a book, right? Maybe it will tide me over for a few more meals. :)