Reading Challenges Update

I've been reading like a madwoman lately. I'm knocking-out at least one book a week, which means I'm back to my usual stride. Hooray -- life is at a comfortable pace, affording me reading time.

Luckily, Inky Darcy and I are finally at the comfortable place where we can enjoy each other's company by engaging in our solitary hobbies and silently enjoying companionship. For example, last Friday night Hope was at the grandparents' house. After work I went with Inky to the tattoo shop. While he was drawing tattoos and such I sat in Ye Olde Tattoo chair and read more than half of Heart-Shaped Box.

So I reckon it is time for me to get my lazy-ass in gear and actually blog / half-ass review my recent reads.

Classics Challenge book #1:
Germinal by Emile Zola

This book was recommended to me by the soon-to-be-web Traci. Actually, Traci got me hooked on Zola last year when I read The Masterpiece. I love me some Zola. Anyhoo, this book concerns this luckless chap, Etienne, who is out of work and happens upon a job at a mine. The miners live in squalor, although the Company provides coal, housing, and medical care, the workers are laboring in horrific conditions and only given just enough food to keep them from starving. Thus the super-weak die and the ignorant-tired masses keep breeding a workforce which is essentially indentured to the company. Well Etienne, who is fairly intelligent despite his lack of education, finds himself in the midst of a strike complete with starvation, death, misery, violence, and a gruesome scene where the women of the strike rip off a dead grocer's penis and parade it about town on a sticks.

Wow.

Educational and enlightening (a.k.a depressing) Germinal was a fast read despite it being a classic well-over 400 pages long. I think the timing was bad reading this book though. Given the U.S.' s dire economic crisis and feeling like I've been ass-raped by corporate America made me slightly panic while reading this book. There is no message of hope in this book!

R.I.P. Read the Second:
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

I started this creepy read on Thursday morning. Simply because Inky Darcy was at the house and I didn't want to read it while I was alone because, I admit, I'm a total pussy. The books started out creepy enough. An aging rocker who collects the macabre wins a dead man's haunted suit off of an Ebay-like auction site. Of course the suit is inhabited by an evil old man bent on revenge.

The book was creepy until about midway through. Then it was simply violent. Lots of broken body parts and blood. I prefer books that stay rooted in the uncanny. That is why House of Leaves freaked me out so much. I find the unknown far more creepy. Anyways, the end blew dogs as well. Of course the guy and the girl stay together and the evil dead man goes away and they live happily ever after.

But the first half of the book really creeped me out. Good thing I read it at the tattoo shop under bright lights and with brave Sir Inky Darcy. He did make fun of me quite a bit for being all jittery.

So there you have it. Reading Challenges galore. I'm nearly done with Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library for R.I.P. and I will post a review of it later in the week (provided I remember)