UGGGHH! 2017 is coming to an End!

If you would have read my  2017 Book Challenge post, you would know that I have been in a race against time to complete ten books before year end.

 

                        

Since my last post, I have read three more books, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by himself.

I absolutely loved The Picture of Dorian Gray. It made me interested in rereading books- an exercise I thought would be somewhat of a waste of time if I wasn’t trying to jog my memory on more academic or theoretic books. This book was that good and entertaining.I didn’t particularly like any character as they all appeared to be too imbalanced- too depraved, too vain and too naive, however, they were too interesting for me not to want to learn more about them. This book definitely made the cut as one of my favorites for the year.

The Fall of the House of Usher was a difficult 36 page read. I did not enjoy it while I can acknowledge Poe’s aptitude for descriptive writing. I can appreciate the fact that I read this book because as small as it was, it was a challenge because it isn’t particularly a genre that I am interested in.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass was somehow a breeze to read. In my former book post, I mentioned apprehension to reading books about heavy topics that stem from our slave past but I felt that this book was one that had to be read. It was brilliantly written and followed the life of a person living under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But get that, it showed Douglass as a person. Not  “slave” as an identity but rather an enslaved person with natural human desires including the natural desire to be free.

So, yes. That means that I only have one more book to read. I started reading Solomon Northup’s 12 Years a Slave after breezing through Douglass’ book but I have been stuck. I thought that I would have mustered up the strength to read the 12 Years because of how enjoyable I found Douglass’ writing to be. However, I have just been getting next to nowhere reading 12 Years. Granted that the 16% that I’ve read (according to Kindle) isn’t terrible, there just isn’t anything compelling me to read more.

I am probably going to complete Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost as my 10th book of the year as I have started reading it since I have been undergoing difficulty reading Northup’s book. I also started War of the Worlds by HG Wells and the first chapter (which I did not even complete) was not enticing in the slightest. However, all of the books that I’ve mentioned and failed to complete are still on my to read list but I do not think that now is the best time for me to tackle those books. I just am not that interested right now. And that’s ok. 🙂