My sleep has gotten a little bit wacky over the past few days. I have not been getting enough sleep at night which leads to weird nap times and then staying up too late again. So here I am, basically wide awake at 5:30 in the morning. The only saving grace is the fact that it is Sunday and not a more active day of the week. I have a lot of stuff to get done this week and I am trying to relax and be productive at the same time. I think that may be a conflict of interest.
The silver lining to this sleeplessness is that I have been steadily making my way through the audio of The Windup Girl. After it’s recent success and all the interest from many of my friends, I was beyond eager to read this book, but now I am trying to read it and I cannot get into it. The book is different from what I expected, though I am not sure what exactly it was that I was expecting. Usually when I am reading dystopian/science fiction books they connect with my own world. There are a lot of science fiction books where that isn’t true, but I tend to read books that connect with out world. And even though The Windup Girl is very much in our world, using names of places that I know, yet the whole thing feels so intensely foreign.
I have heard from a lot of people that this book is hard to get into. But on the other hand most of these people seem to think it is worth it. But for me, a book that takes so long to get into, no matter how wonderful almost isn’t worth it. A book that is hard to get into is failing in craft in some way.
It is definitely frustrating when you can’t get into a book you were excited to read. Not to mention that it took about 40 pages before the windup girl came into the story. After restarting and restarting the book because I couldn’t grasp much of anything that was going on, I finally decided to just push through the words. Now that I have made some progress, I really want to go back and review some of the earlier parts of the book.
Have you read The Windup Girl? What did you think about it?
The Lost Entwife is hosting a read-a-long for 1984 and we are supposed to be done discussing part one of the book (88 pages in my edition) later today. I still have quite a bit of reading to do, though I am loving re-reading this book. This book is so essential to the understanding of dystopia and is one of the most common books that is help up as an example, and sometimes even a definition, of dystopia. Re-reading 1984 is an exceptionally slow experience. I am trying to record note, thoughts, and research for each chapter so that I know I have a firm understanding of the details of the novel. I have also decided to try and do a post for the blog for each chapter of the book. I am worried about it getting a little tedious for my readers, so I am trying to brainstorm the best way to do this without being completely mind numbing.
Since the last time I posted I was able to finish two books. Both of these will count for the YA dystopia challenge I joined. I finished Matched, which was amazing. For now I am waiting to review it because I was hoping to head to an event with Condie but it seems like I may not be able to make it. Look for my comments towards the end of the week either way. The other book I finished was Hunger. Originally I wasn’t going to use this towards the challenge because I started it before the challenge started, but it took me so long to finish I decided to include it anyway. The book was good though, that wasn’t the issue with finishing it. Life was the issue! A review of Hunger will be up very very soon because the book will be released on Tuesday! I found it to be a unique book and was surprised with how much I liked it.
Do you make the best of your Sundays or do you already feel like the weekend is slipping away? I have a lot of reading and housecleaning to get done today. But I also have a lot of sleep to get in too. I better slip into dreamland before the sun comes up now. I hope you are having a wonderful weekend and a super relaxing Sunday.