Dominika's Reading Challenge

It's week 18 in my reading challenge! I finally got back home and I'm so happy to see my TBR books again! :)  This week I got "a book set in a different country" - different that the one I live in, I guess, but, as I read most of my books in English, I decided to avoid also all of English-speaking countries. And no fantasy or any make-believe places. And that means I'm going to visit France this week! Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller  was on my TBR list for years - I never read it, because I always secretly suspected I'd hate it. It's high time to grow up, read the book and finally decide weather it's going to stay or leave my bookshelf for good! Wish me luck! :)

I'm so glad I decided to read this book! Not only was it engaging and really informative, but also so well-written, that reading it was a real treat. I especially liked the first part of the book, where the author wrote about her early life in Romania - by the way, after reading this book that country seems an extremely scary place I'd never want to visit. The second part, where she writes about other people, was less interesting for me and I did not enjoy it as much as the first part. I was afraid this book would be very sad and depressing - it was sad and scary and difficult to accept, but I couldn't stop reading it. I think Herta Muller is an extremely talented author and this book was fascinating.

I'm going to cheat a bit this week (again :) ). I got a prize-winning book this week, but I don't have one with me, as I'm still at hospital. So I decided it's going to be a prize-winning author instead.  I chose: Immer derselbe Schnee und immer derselbe Onkel  by Herta Muller . As far as I know, this book didn't get any prize, but this author got the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature, so it has to be enough. I just hope this book is not going to be too depressing!

My mom chose this book for me because she loves this author and I really tried to like it but I simply couldn't. I don't know why, I think I just don't like this author's writing style. It's a story of Marianna, who is middle-aged, single and quite depressed after the death of her sister. She discovers that her father fell in love and is shocked and jealous of that woman. At the same time she begins her own love story with an ingeneer who lives and works abroad. I found Marianna quite boring and opinionated and I didn't like her too much. Generally, I didn't care if she got her happily-ever-after or not. There was definitely much about food - I had a feeling that they all kept eating almost non-stop and it was quite tiring for me. Not much action, only talking, talking, talking and eating all the time. I think this book was too long and not much fun to read. I don't think I will try this author in the future ever again.

This time the choice was very easy for me, because it's my mom who chose a book! Unfortunately, she chose the author of whom I'm not a huge fan, but - who knows, maybe I'll love this book? It's going to be: Trzymaj sie, Manka! by Malgorzata Kalicinska. We'll see. Wish me luck! :)

I was bored half to tears with this book. There were so many interesting things - gods and spirits, demons, magic - and yet it was one of the most uninspiring books I've ever read.  Torin is a great warrior from the past and Emma is a modern doctor, who came to Scotland to create a new clinic for children. Their task is to defeat a horrible monster from the other world, a demon called Arach. Emma doesn't believe in magic and she is quite shocked when she finds out about her destiny, but she soon learns a lot about her own powers. As I said, I found the book extremely boring - to the point that I had to make myself read the next chapter. Emma was stubborn, her reactions were strange and quite illogical for me. Torin was better, he didn't annoy me much - I felt quite sorry for him; I can imagine how scary and tiring it must be to live in the 21st century for a person from the past. I hated the Arach's parts, definitely too many descriptions of roasted human bodie

I had a problem with my challenge this week, as I am at hospital and I don't have too many books to chose from with me. I decided to do "a book by a female author" challenge, because - let's be honest - it's the easiest one from my list :) And the book this week will be: Stone Guardian by Meave Greyson, which is probably a paranormal or historical romance and should be very easy and quick to read. I'm sorry for cheating a bit, but I feel very tired right now.

I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would, considering it was written by the literary Nobel Prize winner.  I think the main problem I had with this book was that it contained so much history - I do understand, that the literature of Poland is deeply connected with its history and to understand one you need to know something about the other - but I had this feeling, that a half or more of this book was about history and literature was less important. Some authors were just mentioned in a few lines and I kept thinking why Milosz wrote about them at all if they were obviously so unimportant for him. I'd prefer less names, but more facts about the ones who were left. On the other hand, I think the book was very well written and really informative and may be a good textbook for people interested in learning more about both history and literature of Poland.

This week I got a nonfiction book. I had two nonfiction books I really wanted to read and I decided to choose a bigger one, so it's going to be:  The History of Polish Literature by Czeslaw Milosz I'm sure it's going to be interesting. I just hope I'll manage to finish it in a week :)

I have some mixed feelings about this book. I really enjoyed the first part of the book, I thought I'd give it five stars - but I quite hated the second part. I didn't like almost any of the characters. Finally I decided to give this book four stars, because I think that generally it was a fun read, but I'm not sure if I'll try reading any other book by this author in the future. It's a story of a 17-year-old Bianca, who has some serious issues - her parents are getting divorced, her father has a drinking problem and her friends are much prettier and more popular that she is. She feels the ugly duckling of the group and being called the DUFF - the designated ugly fat friend - by the most popular boy at school doesn't help. To stop thinking about all of this Bianca gets into a strictly sexual relationship with Wesley and, obviously, fells in love with him. Bianca's parents are horrible. Her mother is a joke - always absent, she just sends her husband