Door 9:  World Philosophy Day

 

Task 1:  Share your reading philosophy with us – do you DNF? If so, do you have a page minimum to read before you declare it a DNF?

 

You all have been following me for how long now? I DNF. I also post reviews about why I DNFed and what percentage or page number too. I find those reviews helpful and wish more reviewers did it. I get why many don't though. You have to worry about a rampaging author sicking their followers on you nowadays.

 

I have tried to start DNFing books around 20 percent or so if I am not feeling it. There was that one time I DNFed a book 5 pages in, but I am sorry, you could not pay me to read "Far from the Madding Crowd". Some word set me off and that was it for me. 

 

Task 2: Share your reviewing philosophy with us – how do you rate a book? Do you have a mental template for reviewing? Rules you try to follow, or rules you try to break?

 

Well I tried to find the lat time I posted about how I rated books, but realized that disappeared during my great exodus from BL after my reviews all got messed up. I do have a template I try to follow when reviewing and also rating a book. I try to always do a quick summary up front of the things that worked/didn't work for me in the book. Then I did a short description of the book/characters/overall plot.

 

From there I dissect the book by characters (developed well or no? did the characters action make sense from what came before? Was it too information dumped driven for me to get certain characters?, etc.).

I next look at writing and flow. Writing is definitely subjective. However, I get annoyed at too much purple prose or overly descriptive writing. Just tell me what's going on and don't try to describe every blade of glass a character is seeing. Flow matters because sometimes chapters don't flow neatly into one another. It gets worse sometimes when an author is jumping around to multiple POVs.

 

The setting is important to talk about too. I like to say where it takes place, or a time period if it's especially important in the context of the book. Sometimes though I don't comment on this if it didn't move me one way or another.

The last part is the ending. Did the author stick the landing? Did they just throw out some crap and hope you were okay with it? Looking at you "Girl on the Train." 

 

So for me, this is how I rate:

 

5 stars (favorite): This means I would re-read this book again. That the characters, writing, flow, setting, ending all worked very well. That even if something was slightly off, I let it go to enjoy the book since so many other elements just kicked butt. 

 

4 stars: Still a really good book, but I often give books that missed something too much for me to enjoy. The big thing I start to focus on between 4 and 5 stars is that is there something that gnaws at me enough that I know I will slowly over time get annoyed if I re-read this book? If so, you are getting four stars. 

 

3 stars: A solid book. Not bad, just enough things that didn't work for me to go off and rave about it. It's okay if a book is 3 stars. 

 

2 stars: Not horrible, but enough problematic things going on that would have me hesitant to read the author again unless I saw reviews from others that showed me the book in question was good.

 

1 star: Nope. 

 

DNF: I usually 1 star these. It flat out just means I could not finish the book because either the characters, writing, etc. was too much for me to get pass. I call it, my brain got angry and I had to stop. 

 

Task 3: How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods?

 

I read. Seriously. I am trying to whittle down how many books I want to read during my break (starting Wednesday) and while in Honduras. Oh and I watch a lot of Christmas related movies. Not on Lifetime! I just love the cartoons. My total secret shame. I maybe re-watched "A Mickey Christmas Carol" this past weekend 10 times. And then Lady & the Tramp about 30 times (cough it was around 50). I ended up just decorating my house on Sunday cause I am just ready to move pass the terribleness and move into the season of hope and joy. I also work out and go hiking a lot during stressful periods. I finally worked out on Sunday after a week of not working out and my body may be sore, but I slept like a log. Nothing makes me feel rested like working out the day/evening before bed. 

 

Task 4: Did you love or hate the books you had to read for school? Looking back, which ones (good or bad) stand out to you the most?

 

I think for the most part I did love the books I read during school. I just wish they had been more diverse. We tended to not read any African American authors except during Black History Mouth. Stares at school systems in America as a whole. And forget reading authors from other countries. Actually, I want a do-over to this. I think the books were inadequate, but okay to read. I didn't hate them (I got to read Beowulf every freaking year during my high school English classes) but things started to get a little stale since we tended to read the same authors over and over again.

 

The ones that stand out the most are:

 

"Great Expectations." I still can't get over how much I wanted to shake Pip. We got the two endings to the book and we had to discuss the one we preferred. I preferred everyone dying off miserably cause they all kind of sucked, but I was fascinated by that book from beginning to end. 

 

"Of Mice and Men." That book from beginning to end depresses the life out of me. I just want them to start over somewhere else. That's it. Goes off to sob into a pillow.

 

"Beowulf." Not kidding. We always started off with this story during high school. I even did a group book report on it. I get it's supposed to show off the style of an Old English epic poem and all that jazz, but reading it once was enough. 

 

"Lord of the Flies." Yeesh. I got nothing to add here. I think I reviewed this.

 

"The Scarlet Letter." I got in trouble for asking what the big deal with with Hester having sex outside of her marriage. FYI, I got in trouble a lot during Sunday School. Fun times. 

 

Book: Read a book about philosophy or a philosopher, or a how-to book about changing

your life in a significant way or suggesting a particular lifestyle (Hygge, Marie Kobo, etc.).

 

[X]

 

Tasks Completed: 4

 

I may be the odd one out, but I really liked Far From the Madding Crowd. I liked the sheep, I liked the character of Gabriel Oak and above all, I loved Thomas Hardys descriptions of the landscapes and the weather. Since I know that a lot of people don´t like his writing style, I´m very pleased by the fact that Hardy seems like an author that I enjoy reading.

 

I have to admit, though, I´m not the biggest fan of the heroine, Bathsheba. She is selfish, condescending, at times cruel, vain and, which is my biggest complaint, utterly stupid. I didn´t feel sorry for her once and during the whole Valentine cards fiasco I just wanted to punch her in the face. How she can have three suitors in the first place is beyond me and the falling in love of Gabriel in the beginning was extremely poorly developed. Why is he falling in love with her? Right, it must have been her looks, because they didn´t talk that much to each other.

 

And I still have the same problem with the book as I had with the Carey Mulligan movie way back then:

 

Gabriel proposes to Bathsheba on page 20 or there about. And after 400 pages of drama and stupidity on behalf of Bathsheba, she ends up with the guy, who proposed to her in the first place. Yeah, she is a daft cow.

(spoiler show)

I DNF at 11 percent. I don't hate myself that much to continue to read this.

I have no idea what the hell was going on for most of this book. I finally threw in the towel at 11 percent because I couldn't bear to keep reading "Bathsheba" over and over again. This is the worst name I can think of for any character in a book I have read before. I mean I had to sit and think for 10 minutes to see if I could come up with a worst name and finally just threw in the towel and gave up.

I read this book as part of the Dead Writers Society Literary Birthday Challenge for June 2016. Apparently Hardy and I are not going to be a thing and I am going to stay the heck away from his works in the future.

The book starts off with a snail pace and never does pick up. Saying one thing nice that I can find is that at least the chapters are short though. And I cracked up that the headings to each chapter just clued you in with what was going to happen. Other than that, I got nothing.

Reading about Farmer Oak (Gabriel) and how he came to meet the mysterious female that he sees (yes apparently even Hardy believed in insta-love) named Bathsheba Everdene. Since I read "The Hunger Games" about a dozen times every time the book would have Bathsheba talking I would picture Katniss doing it with a bow and arrow and her hair in a braid.

There's not much there here for me to want to continue to read. Gabriel is not developed at all. And though I guess I am supposed to care that Bathsheba spurned his marriage proposal, I got wonder what kind of fool was he to propose to someone he talked to once at this point.

The meet cute between this couple just turned me off of Bathsheba completely. I wish I would even think of trying to talk to someone after they kept messing with me about what their name was. Or maybe she's just as embarrassed of her name as I am and didn't want to say it out loud.

The writing was okay. I don't know. I found the whole book awkwardly paced and the description of every freaking thing had my eyes glazing over.

So glad to put this down and move onto another book.

I've still got a few reviews to write, but I got a good amount of reading done this month. Yay me! Now it's time to start some research for a new project.

 

Indie/Small Press Authors:

To Be A Queen

The End of Law

Blood and Roses

 

Audio Books:

Night

Far from the Madding Crowd

The Beautiful Mystery

 

Best Book of the Month:

Bloodline - Book 3 of the Wars of the Roses by Conn Iggulden

Sometimes when I'm reading a classic, I don't understand everything or feel the emotions. That wasn't so with this one. Admittedly, I may not be feeling the correct emotions still. I didn't read this in school or study the meaning of anything (I just sped on through) so I may totally be wrong in what I got from it. Oh well. I had a good time reading.

In the beginning, I actually laughed out loud a few times. Was it meant to be funny? Hell if I know, but Gabriel Oak is such an awesome character. No matter what happens, he just keeps pushing steady forward in life. Bathsheba Everdene is such a girl. She has three men sniffing around, and of course she picks the looser. And the one semi-holding the #2 spot is a psycho stalker. Then, there's Oak just over there being all normal and moving on up in life while all this drama is going on. Some parts are probably meant to be sad, but I wasn't sadden a bit. I was just waiting to see what craziness these people would come up next. Ahh, good times.

I'll definitely be checking out more Thomas Hardy books in the future.