Non-Review: Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon

 The next random book on the list was Swan Song, available on Hoopla.  I cannot make myself continue to read this one, not right now anyway.  Post-apocalyptic, it seems that one main character struggles with mental illness and addiction.  Full of violence and people being horrible.  I don't want to sit in that world right now.

Review: Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

 I randomly selected this book from the list I posted yesterday.  I knew very little about it, just that it was most often on reading lists for older children.

Coming to this book in 2021 was very different than if I had read this when I was a kid.  The main subject is hunting and a rather grisly form of hunting at that!  The author was born in 1918 and clearly has a great fondness for coon dogs and racoon hunting.  He also seems to be a Christian and proud American as well.  All of these things are handled gracefully and I can see why it was seen as a children's book.  The killings are mostly off-screen and there is no romance.  Even most of the challenges the main character takes on are described as almost easy.

It is a pleasant story, couched as the reminiscence of an older man back to a time he remembered fondly from his childhood.  But, it is also the story of a very young boy who trains two dogs to kill hundreds of animals for their pelts.  Sad ending, too.  I have very mixed feelings about it.  It has some of the same feel as To Kill a Mockingbird although there are no racial overtones here, and no moral lessons beyond "dogs love people".  And a little bit of "God answers prayers mostly".

I was able to check this out of my local library electronically and it is a short book.  I don't feel the time spent reading it was wasted.

My Reading List 2021-2022

 I have no idea if I can read these in 1-1/2 years, but I'm going to give it a try.  I find the bottom of the list a little more interesting than the top, so I'm going to try alternating between, working towards the middle.  I also may read the first book of a series for those I haven't already read.  Link to source of the list at the bottom.

Books

• To Kill a Mockingbird - Lee
• Pride & Prejudice - Austen
• The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien
• Gone With the Wind - Mitchell
• Charlottes’ Web - White
• Little Women - Alcott
• Jane Eyre - C Bronte
• Anne of Green Gables - Montgomery
• The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Smith
• The Book Thief - Zusak
• The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
• The Help - Stockett
• The Adventures of Tom Sawyer - Twain
• 1984 - Orwell
• And Then There Were None - Christie
• Atlas Shrugged - Rand
• Wuthering Heights - E Bronte
• Lonesome Dove - McMurtry
• The Pillars of the Earth - Follett
• The Stand - King
• Rebecca - du Maurier
• A Prayer for Owen Meany - Irving
• The Color Purple - Walker
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Carroll
• Great Expectations - Dickens
• The Catcher in the Rye- Salinger
• Where the Red Fern Grows - Rawls
• The Outsiders - Hinton
• The Da Vinci Code - Brown
• The Handmaid’s Tale - Atwood
• Dune - Herbert
• The Little Prince - Saint-Exupery
• The Call of the Wild - London
• The Clan of the Cave Bear - Auel
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Adams
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas
• The Joy Luck Club - Tan
• Frankenstein - Shelley
• The Giver - Lowry
• Memoirs of a Geisha - Golden
• Moby Dick - Melville
• Catch 22 - Heller
• War and Peace - Tolstoy
• Their Eyes Were Watching God - Hurston
• Jurassic Park - Crichton
• The Godfather - Puzo
• One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez
• The Picture of Dorian Gray - Wilde
• The Notebook - Sparks
• The Shack - Young
• A Confederacy of Dunces - Toole
• The Hunt for Red October - Clancy
• Beloved - Morrison
• The Martian - Weir
• Siddhartha - Hesse
• Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky
• The Sun Also Rises - Hemingway
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Haddon
• A Separate Peace - Knowles
• Don Quixote - de Cervantes
• The Lovely Bones- Sebold
• The Alchemist - Coelho
• Invisible Man - Ellison
• Gulliver’s Travels - Swift
• Ready Player One - Cline
• Gone Girl - Flynn
• Watchers - Koontz
• The Pilgrim’s Progress - Bunyan
• Things Fall Apart - Achebe
• Heart of Darkness - Conrad
• Gilead - Robinson
• Flowers in the Attic - Andrews
• The Sirens of Titan - Vonnegut
• This Present Darkness - Peretti
• Americanah - Adichie
• Another Country - Baldwin
• Bless Me, Ultima - Anaya
• Looking for Alaska - Green
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Diaz
• Swan Song - McCammon
• Mind Invaders - Hunt
• White Teeth - Smith
• Ghost - Reynolds
• The Coldest Winter Ever - Souljah
• The Intuitionist - Whitehead
• Doña Bárbara - Gallegos

    Series

• Outlander (Series) - Gabaldon
• Harry Potter (series) - Rowling
• The Chronicles of Narnia (series) - Lewis
• The Hunger Games (Series) - Collins
• Game of Thrones (series) - Martin
• Foundation (series) - Asimov
• The Wheel of Time (series) - Jordan/Sanderson
• Hatchet (series) - Paulsen
• The Twilight Saga (series) - Meyer
• Tales of the City (series) - Maupin
• Alex Cross (series) - Patterson

Not Gonna

• Left Behind (series) - LaHaye/Jenkins
• Fifty Shades of Grey (series) - James

source

Review: Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

 I had a hard time with this book.  It was written from the point of view of someone struggling with mental illness and it tended to make me feel a bit mentally ill as well.  Also, the plot lines are contrived to keep the ending a mystery and I didn't really appreciate that.  It was a bit like "I see dead people" and since I had an inkling about the "twist" at the end, it wasn't really worth all the back-and-forth.  I read it for a book club otherwise I might not have finished reading it.  I also got it through Kindle Unlimited so I didn't have to pay for it, another good thing.

I didn't know a single thing about the book ahead of time, which was good.  I jumped right in without any warning and I think that helped.  On the other hand, I could tell that there must be a reason the author kept manipulating the timeline and that brought me out of the story a lot.  It is also a pretty bleak sort of place where this takes place, a sort of parallel world and it was HEAVY on my heart to dwell there.  There was an impossible happy ending, but it felt a bit too tacked on for me to feel as if the ending redeemed the dark journey it took to get there.