Ten years of reading, summed up on my blog.

I really struggled this year, too, as I noted. I had an enormous drop-off, and although I DID need glasses, and I DID spend too much time online, there was also an element of really struggling to find books I wanted to finish. I'm really hoping for a better year next year!

Oh man, I hated that book. A terrific true story written like chick-lit. No endnotes, no bibliography. I think what really rankles is that this author is insanely successful even though she is a terrible writer. I guess there's plenty of that going around, though. 

Aw, thanks.   I want to try to write semi-regularly from here on out. 

It's been a long time, but the way I remember it is that I read it, thought it was "meh," and then for some reason I checked the Amazon reviews of it. The very first review mentioned that this book was a total rip-off of an old novel by L. M. Montgomery (the author of the Anne of Green Gables books) called The Blue Castle. So I found The Blue Castle and read that, and I was just appalled at how blatantly Colleen McCullough had plagiarized it! Plus Montgomery's book was much better. I'd love to know what possessed McCullough to just flat-out copy another person's book.

Yes, I think where you are in your life on a given day can impact how you respond to a book. It could very well be that if I read Olive Kitteridge today, I'd like it. I do generally like character-driven fiction, but Olive really bugged me!

If I had the time, it would be fun to go back and read some of the books I loved and hated, and see what I think today, but my "to read" list is far too long to do that!