Sophie's Choice is going to give me an aneurism (which is a difficult word to spell, so thank you, Spell-Check). I am STILL reading that book, and it's continued to be a difficult read. It's frustrating because I'm normally a fast reader -- I was blessed with the ability to read a book quickly and retain pretty much everything I've needed for classes, essays, or simple memory. That's right, Harry Potter 7 in 3.5 hours.
Sophie's Choice, however, has taken me quite some time, and it isn't that I'm lacking in effort. I've been logging hours and pages into it, but for some reason, it's just not happening. It's an interesting book, albeit a depressing one, but it's KILLING me. And it's really bumming me out, so to alleviate my pain, I decided to break for a bit and read another book. This isn't something that is annoying or difficult for me; being an English major teaches you to multitask novels. One semester could carry multiple literature courses, so you get pretty good at balancing it out. I decided to read Uglies as my self-esteem booster because it was a YA book (that's young adult, for those of you not in the know).
YA books are solid choices for a situation like this; if it's award winning or on several book lists -- Uglies is a summer reading for some school district around here, and it's on several ALA and YALSA lists -- it's generally going to be a good read, both topic and style wise. Uglies was no different. Obviously, there's a message in the plot -- Uglies is about a future 'utopian' society that turns people 'pretty' at 16 with cosmetic surgery so no one can be judged on looks, but some people disagree with this and run away to another society. Blah blah blah, moral is that you can be beautiful and awesome without looking 'pretty' but it was actually a really engaging book. The best part? I read the entire thing in one day; part of it sitting on the couch at home, and the other part at work on a boring, rainy night with no real traffic in town.
Then it was back to Sophie's Choice. The past few days have been hurricane central. The storm hit Saturday and knocked out the power until this afternoon. I planned on reading, because there wasn't much else to do, but honestly, reading by flashlight isn't fun after the age of 8 when you were supposed to be sleeping but you were reading under your covers instead. Unless that was just weird, nerdy, 8 year old Leah... it hurts my eyes, and reading by candle light is even worse. I thought I'd make good headway into the second half of the book, but instead I played cards and took walks. I read about half a chapter yesterday, and I'm still not sure what Sophie has to choose. You'd think by now I'd have an idea, but I'm still stuck.
I refuse to give up, though. I WILL finish the book if it kills me... and it'll be done before it has to be back at the library by the 7th of September. I've already renewed it once, and I do not want to be the person renewing books for a third time. I'm sure there's a big wait for Sophie's Choice, and I don't want to ruin anyone else's good time. I also have Bastard out of Carolina out right now, so if I need another break from Lady Sophie, I may pick that up.
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