Week 1

The first book I read in 2018 was A Quiver Full of Arrows. I had discovered Jeffrey Archer in January 2017, and this book was on a sale table in a Bowral book shop. I didn't realise when I purchased it, that it was a book of short stories. I devoured this book quickly. One of my favourite short stories in the collection is the first one, The Chinese Statue. Its an eclectic mix of short stories that made it an average book to read. 

This book was on a list I discovered on Pinterest entitled, 50 Empowering Books for Women...I added it on my audible app. I don't know if I feel it was a book that I felt empowered reading. Amy Schumer is an award winning comedian, actress and writer. I had seen her in a couple of movies, Trainwreck and more recently Snatched. The book has the same raunchy style of humour she is renown for, and that isn't my particular love of comedy. At times I found it rude, I listened to the story and would have been embarrassed if others heard me listening. Amy writes about a lot about her family, living in New York, on becoming a comedian and starring in Trainwreck. The stories that she narrates in the audio version of her book, is at times quite sad. Especially when she talks about her dad and family break up. I didn't love her before I read the book and after reading it, I feel the same, overall it was an average read. 

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was a book that I read when I was in school. I can't remember if we studied this book or Tom Sawyer for English class. Rereading this book was completely different the second time. It also took me a few days to get into it, and its still unfinished. I was actually surprised we read Mark Twain in high school now. Thinking back, we read a lot of British and American literature classics and Shakespeare for English. Now that I am a teacher, I am surprised we didn't any Australian literature. This book was actually written very colloquially in Huckleberry's voice. It has really poor grammar. I hope my son doesn't have to read it in high school, now in retrospect. I think there is a lot more quality Australian literature which is an exemplar of colloquial writing, or imagery.  A classic American story but for now, its a DNF, a did not finish. I will look for another book for Erin's Reading Challenge. 

And so after the first week, I have read two novels towards the Ultimate Reading Challenge, and one towards Erin's Reading Challenge 8.0.