nonfiction, something about me reading challenge

I Give Up!


Dakota: A Spiritual Geography by Kathleen Norris (1993)

224 pages
Rating: 3/5
I have been reading Dakota: A Spiritual Geography for the last two weeks. I’m only on page 95. I can’t do it anymore! I was reading it for the Something About Me challenge. It was beachreader’s pick. She never did say why she was picking the book. I thought it had a interesting title and looked it up on Amazon.com. The reviews were good, so I started reading it. Dakota is about Kathleen Norris’ journey back to Dakota from New York. South Dakota that is, the place where she spent her childhood and where her mother and grandparents grew up. Norris did a pretty good job describing not only South Dakota but also North Dakota and the problems both states are having with a dwindling population and ecomony and the small-mindness of the inhabitants there. Outsiders are the enemies though they are really needed. Norris lives in the town of Lemmon where there are only 1200 people, down from the 4000 that lived there in the 1970s. Norris also does a great job with raising the question where is the reader’s spiritual geography? What place is home to you and why? It made me think about Long Beach in a different way. Is this city really my spiritual geography? But the problem with the book is that a lot of times the description weighed the book down. A lot of it could have been taken out. But I give it a rating of 3 out of 5 because of the questions it asks of the reader and also of people who live in the many small towns that are dying.
something about me reading challenge

Leave me Alone, I’m Reading

Leave me alone, I’m reading (2005)

Maureen Corrigan

240 pages

I give up. I just can’t do it. There were parts of it that I loved so much like when Corrigan was talking about her family especially her mother and grandmother. Even when she was talking about Eyre, she was Corrigan was so interesting to read. But everything else just dragged on. She was so wordy. I’m a firm believer in being concise and using just enough words and nothing more. I’m sorry but I just couldn’t even find her adopting her daughter in China interesting. I am not a believer in finishing a book that I don’t like. The bad parts out weighed the good ones, so around page 100-and-something, I put the book down.
fiction, something about me reading challenge

The end of I am the Messenger

I just love this book. I finished it yesterday and I was so happy. I am the Messenger is such a great story. I don’t know where a young author like Markus Zusak get his ideas from, but they are so fulfilling and real. Honestly I’m kind of shock that this book was in the young adult section, but it’s not worse than some of the movies and music videos that are out for the young nowadays, and at least the book has a message. The ending wasn’t what I expected. I think the ending would have happened, but not as fast as it did. It should have been different. I recommended it to everyone.
something about me reading challenge

I am the messenger

I love this book! I fell in love at the first sentence: The gunman is useless. Then it goes on: I know it. He knows it. The whole bank knows it.
I was going to save this book for the Seconds Challenge that starts in October. You read more books by the new authors you’ve discovered while reading for your (probably) many challenges. It’s also one of my alternates for the Something about Me Challenge. But I couldn’t help it. I had to start. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak was just so great, I had to read more by him. I opened I am the Messenger yesterday out of curiousity. Now I’m in love.
So I’m off to finish reading this fantastic book that I really don’t want to end. If I keep this up I’m not going to have any books to read for the S.A. M. challenge.
children's books, Newberry Challenge, something about me reading challenge

The Tale of Despereaux

This is my newest favorite book! The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo is a book about a mouse, a princess named Pea, a rat, and a slow-witted girl. This is such a great book. I started the book this morning only to be finished a couple of hours later. I was reading it for the Newberry challenge and also the Something about me challenge. Thanks Booklogged for suggesting it.
something about me reading challenge

Something about me Reading Challenge

The Something about Me Reading Challenge is a reading challenged from Lisa (BreakingtheFourthWall.) This challenge is such a good one. Participants choose up to five books that represent them and tell why. The others look at the different lists and choose the books they want to read. I love reading everyone’s reasons for choosing the books that they think represent them. I was also on Wendy’s blog, Caribousmom, and I’m also going to copy her a little. So below are the books that I plan on reading for the challenge with the possible alternates and the ones I’m going to read after.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (I picked this one off of Dewy’s list and it’s also a book I’ve been wanting to read for such a long time.
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (A book in the life…)
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby (Athena)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I ended up reading this early, so now I have to pick another book. Got it off of Stephanie’s list.)
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate Dicamillo (It’s also on my list for the Newberry Challenge. Booklogged’s list.)
Leave me alone I’m reading by Maureen Corrigan (Booklogged)
Chocolat by Joanne Harris (Chasida’s and Margo’s lists. Read it before and I absolutely love it! Harris’s descriptions of the food and bakery is still stuck in my mind after all these years.)

My alternates: I’m such a moody reader. I have to have alternates.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl (Maryanne)
I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (Jill. I love, as you already know, The Book Thief. Since this is on my TBR list, might as well read it now.)
Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix
Girl from the Sea by Anne Marrow Lindbergh
Why I wore lipstick to my mastectomy by Geralyn Lucas

something about me reading challenge

Something about me reading challenge

Okay that’s it. I’m going to join one more (okay maybe two more,) book challenges but that’s it. The newest one that I’m joining is SomethingAboutMe reading challenge. You nominate the five books that represent you outside the blogging world. Each person in the challenge then pick as many books as they want to read off the list. The reading isn’t done collectively and everyone makes their own list. I love this idea. I know I’m about to find so many good books that I haven’t heard of or read yet.

My five books are:
Blindness by Jose Saramago. This is one of my favorite books in the world.
What’s eating Gilbert Grape? by Peter Hedges. I only read it when I’m depressed
Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott A honest and open spiritual memoir.
Living Judaism by Rabbi Wayne Dosick.
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Such a light, funny book. You cannot read it and be depress.
https://classicvasilly.wordpress.com/category/something-about-me-reading-challenge/
classicvasilly.wordpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2021-39
66353
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:7TZPIIVRRIANRNDBUI4NAREB33U3JMV4
<urn:uuid:e3e14cbf-909d-4cf6-a986-fcbde1f9afd8>
2021-09-21T22:23:39Z
192.0.78.12
text/html
sha1:7MBTTQQELIPXFWWKMNA5QWGADZD5BKTR
<urn:uuid:b1e7a0a5-dfdc-4295-a8eb-0fa000044030>
https://classicvasilly.wordpress.com/category/something-about-me-reading-challenge/
response
<urn:uuid:3fc5205d-ba19-4539-b83f-a4285824290e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2021-39
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September 2021
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-43
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/