So, yeah, I'm really bad at this blogging thing

I could give a variety of excuses (I've been busy, or something?), but bottom line, I've been an awful blogger lately. The problem is that I keep right on reading, and then I just get so behind that it is overwhelming to try to catch up.

Since last I wrote, I have read 27 books, putting me past my 100 goal for 2011. Go me! Still on track to finish by the time I am 35. I even read Don Quixote, which I consider quite the accomplishment (who knew the windmill part came so early in that tome?). Please insert your own quixotic joke here, since I'm not feeling super creative.

Only one of these books made me so frustrated that I started hitting myself in the face with it. While on the metro. Awkward, I know (but hey, my seatmate got up and left me, so that's a win if nothing else). I also read one that when I summarized it for one of the women I see a lot at the gym, led her to say "Well, I like books, but I don't like that sort of book." These weren't the same two books. Super, magic bonus points if you can figure out which two lead to these experiences!

Let's see, some highlights: still love Kundera, Black Water was very upsetting, the Sayers was just fun, Marya was painful, I cried so much with Timbuktu, really enjoyed Daniel Deronda (so many questions about what it means to be a "good" person, what makes life worthwhile, etc.), and Silk is just devastating and amazing and beautiful.

That's all you're getting on these works, but I'll try to be better generally with blogging. I have one funny story to share in another post, and I'll do a bottom ten and top ten for 2011 soon as well.

In case you're wondering, here are the 27:

The Victim – Saul Bellow
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Untouchable – John Banville
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra