Book 7 of 80

How about we skip over the rest of the Baltic States and Belarus and go to Ukraine. I’m starting Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. This book was recommended to me by a colleague who said his wife loved it. So, it’s a second-hand recommendation, but I’ll take it. On the flip side, my brother-in-law said this is one of the worst books he’s ever read. Best book? Worst book? Hmmm…

I’m usually pretty in line with my brother-in-law — but I guess I want to like this book because I’m eager to fall in love with something right now. Except, I really don’t want to like this book because I don’t want to tell Lukas that I liked it. Quite the dilemma.  

If I don’t like it, that’s okay. I know I have some AMAZING books waiting for me in the next couple weeks. You’ll have to wait to find out what they are…but I went to Powell’s, spent all my casino winnings, piled the books up at home, and nearly wept with excitement. 

On a side note: Another colleague handed me the book Graceling by Kristin Cashore to check out today. I’m gonna try read that one too right now…but it won’t be for the challenge. If there is interest, I’ll pop a review up. There will probably be other books I read this year for various reasons that won’t fit with the challenge…which means I’ll just have to read those challenge books FASTER so I can make sure I keep up. And that catching up probably won’t happen this week because we’re embarking on finals; I guess I better go be a better teacher now and prepare myself for the onslaught of essays coming my way. Maybe I’ll threaten my students and tell them that I’ll publish the worst parts of the essays on the blog. No, nevermind, some of them would take that as a challenge instead.