It wasn’t a terrible month for reading, or a bad to start to a new year of books.
We’re still in this phase of life where we read and reread H’s favorite books on a loop, so even with our trips to the library, we don’t read that many new books. She could have Winnie-the-Pooh read to her every night and be completely happy, and…honestly we’re also pretty happy. Adam loves reading Pooh to her. But we did read some new stuff this month.
I’ve really been in love with all of the books for adults I’ve read lately. Ian McEwan’s Atonement is no exception. I’ve still never seen the movie, and even though by now word of mouth has revealed a lot of the secrets of this book there is still a lot to be savored here.
I’m having a bit of a reading crisis this year. I’ve been trying to go back and read all these classic children’s novels that I never read as a kid. But I’m remembering that there’s a reason I never read them: I find a lot of them painfully boring, and I did as a kid, too. So many of them were just not my thing growing up, so now when someone makes a reference to a Little House book or a sweeping story of historic significance I just blink and nod. My general rule of thumb as a kid was if a character wore a bonnet or lived on the plains/in the country, I was probably not going to love it. I’m finding more and more that this still holds true for children’s books (but oddly, I do love the classics of adult lit).
Read more on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson…
I read this über popular, utterly strange adaption of Jane Austen’s classic around Thanksgiving. Do I think it improves upon the original story, one of my favorite books of all time? No. Did I enjoy it anyway? Yes. But I’m not really sure if I enjoyed it because of all the extra zombie mayhem, or if it was just rereading the wonderful text by Jane Austen that still remains in this book (85% of the original text remains).
Read more on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith…
I didn’t find this next adventure in the Robert Langdon saga as thrilling as The Da Vinci Code, but it did have its moments.
The Da Vinci Code is packed with historical scholarship but thin on real creative writing. It’s fairly formulaic, but Brown’s vast detailing makes up for it to create an overall enjoyable and surprising ride. It’s popcorn reading, which has its place. The Lost Symbol falls short of that adventure, offering a hunt through the symbols of Washington, DC landmarks that leads up to…not very much. There’s no punch at the end, no surprise twist that brings the whole delicious experience of his books together. It just sort of ended, and I wasn’t very excited. I was, however, intrigued by the history of the Masons and the connection to our nation’s capitol. It did make me want to take a trip to DC and explore.