Man Booker

The Man Booker Prize is a weird thing, I think.

The first Man Booker winner I read was "the Life of Pi" by Yann Martel. I LOVED it. Seriously. It was a great book. I just loved the author's way of xepressing himself. And the story was so fantastic and interesting, and I just wanted so badly to believe. And I loved all the imagery and the way the author presented it. I really think that the only thing about I didn't like was that it wasn't a true story. And that the author decided last minute to try to make you believe that even within the fiction it wasn't true. I really did love this book.

The second Man Booker winner I read was "The God of Small Things." You can find what I thought about this book written in my post about my summer book list (sorry, I don't know yet how to link to other posts - any help?). To summarize, it was the worst book I ever read. I don't know how I finished it. I hated the author's writing style. I hated the story. I hated the non-stop onomotapoeias. And more than that, I sort of hated the characters. It intrigued me enough to hope that the ending might make it just a bad book and not a horrible book, but I hated even the ending. Somehow the ending managed to make it even WORSE, which before the ending, I didn't think was possible.

Now, the most recent book I've read, "the Gathering" by Anne Enright, was also a Man Booker winner. And it, too, was horrible. The main character was ridiculously annoying. There were times when I just wanted to strangle her (rather a violent reaction to a book character, I know). The author also did the really annoying onomatapoeia thing from "the God of Small" things, but less, so it was a little less annoying. Anne Enright seemed to be going for the vaguness of old memories, and she really got it. Everything just seemed vague and out of place, and stories were ending before they even started. And, as a reader, I never knew what to believe or even what she wanted me to believe. This put together could have actually been nice and given a great impression of how she was feeling (the premise was her family getting together because her brother died). But it wasn't. The best way to describe it is just plain ole boring and slightly annoying.

Okay, so now I'm confused. Because "the Life of Pi" was so good, but "the God of Small Things" and "the Gathering" were both horrible in sort of the same way. And yes, I desperately want to read "the Blind A"ssassin" by Margaret Atwood. But it is VERY long, and it also won the Man Booker prize. So I'm afraid to start it because then I will have to finish it, and I will have wasted far too much time reading another horrible book.

Anyhow, it is a dilemma. And while it is not a big dilemma, I still thought that it was worthy enough of a long blog post. Has anyone read "the Blind Assassin?"

Now that that is out of the way, things are good with me. I have been putting off cleaning the apartment, but it has to happen soon with the end of the month approaching and my visitors coming. I am SO psyched! YAY for Mom and Kristen and Grandma and Alex!!!!
And getting ready to see An Cafe. I can't stop listening to them! I can't wait to speak Japanese so that I will understand what I am listening to without having to read the translations. It might be a while, though.