Dominika's Reading Challenge

It's time to finish!  I had 50 challenges ready and I did 41 of them - not bad and I'm quite satisfied. What I realised lately is that I'm bored with this reading challenge, and reading was always a joy, not a chore for me. I don't want my reading to be tedious and demanding, it's to be fun and relaxing. So - it's the end for me :) Let's go reading - without a list this time! :)

I didn't enjoy this book. Generally, I found it really boring and rather disturbing. It's a story of a woman and a 16-year-old boy, who get stranded on a deserted island, where they spend three or four years before they get rescued. As you can imagine, not many things happen on a deserted island - today we ate a coconut, today we caught some fish, is anybody going to save us? - this kind of stuff. Really, really tiring to read for me. And, as we have a woman and a man - almost a man, let's be honest - there is a love story and that's what I found disturbing. He's just too young. And ok, I get it, there are just the two of them, the conditions are extreme and the boy is 18 before they have sex - still, I hated it. And I was not a fan of the part of the book after they were rescued, again, too long, boring, and people were really mean for one another. Definitely not for me and I don't think I'll read this author in the future.

It's week 41 and it's time for a book from the place I've always wanted to visit - and for me this place is the Maldives. When I first saw the pictures from the Maldives I thought that's how the paradise must look like. I chose: On the Island by Tracey Garvis Graves I heard many good things about this book and I hope I'll enjoy it.

This book was a huge disappointment for me.  It seemed very long and boring, although in fact it was a short book. The sex scenes were quite brutal and didn't seem really necessary to the book, and I really didn't like the heroine of the book, I found her quite stupid and insipid. I could hardly finish and I didn't enjoy this experience at all. I don't think I'll ever re-read this book.

This week it's going to be a book with a love triangle - I hate love triangles and I was not happy about it. But then I've nocited  Lady Chatterley's Lover by David Herbert Lawrence waiting patiently on my to-be-read shelf and I decided it's a sign. I NEED to read this book at last, it's been there for twenty years or more. I really hope I'll love it!

This book is a collection of short esseys about philosophy. It's quite easy and very well-written, so even if you know nothing about this subject you may still enjoy it. I really liked the language of this book, it was a joy to read. I struggled a bit at the beginning, but I loved the second part, about Meister Eckhart, it was great. I'm very happy that I read this book.

I didn't manage to fulfil my last challenge yet (not a surprise), and it's a new week and time for a new challenge. This week it's going to be a book a friend recommended, because last week two of my friends recommended me the same author. That's why I decided to read: Wedrowki w kraine filozofow by Jozef Tischner I hope I'll like this one, I really need something exciting to read - I'm in a reading slump right now. Wish me luck!

It's a hard task this week, and one I'm ready not to fulfil - a book at the bottom of my to-read list. There is one book at the bottom, the book I could never start reading, because it's so long and I felt quite scared to start it, and it's: The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari Well, we'll see if I manage to finish it. Let's hope I will!

This book was simply charming, funny and clever and I loved it. It's a diary of a wife of a doctor and a mother of three boys in the fifties, but the problems and situations we can see in this book are eerily similar to what we can experience in our own houses nowadays. I read this book with great pleasure and I recommend it to everybody, who likes laughing.

I can't believe it's already week 30! I don't have much time this week, so I decided to read something short and easy: Provincial Daughter by R.M. Dashwood I read and loved "Diary of a Provincial Lady", which was written by the mother of R.M. Dashwood. I hope I'll like this book as well!

I enjoyed this book immensely and I was sure I would give it five stars - right until the ending, which was, I'm sorry to say, quite horrible. It was like one of those crazy, silly comedies and I hated it, so finally I gave this book only four stars. The story was simple and cute: Esme, a very poor girl from Vietnam, goes to the USA to meet and marry Khai. Khai is autistic and it's his mother who chose Esme as his future wife. He's not very happy about it at first, but soon he discovers that maybe it's not such a bad idea. I really liked Khai, he was a sweetheart. He always tried to make people happy and he was so  clumsy with people and kept saying and doing the wrong things. And the first sex scene was hilarious. I didn't like Esme. She was dishonest, she didn't tell neither Khai nor his mother about her daughter, which was a huge lie. She kept hiding her thoughts from Khai, although both he and his mother asked her not to do this. She kept taking...

This week it's a book published this year and it's a very easy challenge for me, as I just bought a book I'm dying to read! It's: The Bride Test by Helen Hoang Last year I read this author's first book, The Kiss Quotient, and I simply fell in love with it, so I couldn't wait for the book number two. It's finally here, it's beautiful and I'm very excited!

I'm very disappointed. I didn't like this book at all. It was really boring and slow, much too much talking and not enough action. Everything seemed so theatrical and crazy, there were so many coincidences and lucky breaks, that I just kept rolling my eyes and couldn't wait to finish reading this book. I didn't like any of the characters - to tell you the truth, to the very end I couldn't distinguishing two main heroes and even a so-called romance of one of them didn't help me. All those bad guys jumping from every corner were simply ridiculous. Generally, there were definitely too many people in this book, both bad and good, some of them appeared suddenly only to be shot and forgotten a second later. It was messy, annoying and I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.

It's hot and I feel tired, so I want something easy and quick this week. It's going to be a book with a one-world title, so I chose Athabasca by Alistair MacLean. Alistair MacLean wrote some of my favourite books, but there are also some I didn;t enjoy at all. It seems that I always either love or hate his books, we'll see what I think about this one :) It looks very short, so it shouldn't take me long to read it.

I'm so happy that I decided to read this book, because it was simply incredible! I still can't believe it was written in 1930, because it is extremely modern; it describes the world that doesn't exist yet, but we may almost see it. I really enjoyed the first part of the book, Bernard and Lenina and their almost love story were great - but I have to admit that I was not a huge fan of John the Savage. We saw London and the new society through his eyes, but John is like us, so it seemed a bit boring. I don't know what to think about the ending, I have a few theories what the author wanted to show us, but I'm not sure. I would be much happier if it ended on the discussion between John and Mustafa.  I loved this book, it really made me think. In my opinion everybody should read it.

I didn't hate this book - I just really didn't like it. At least it was short and I read it quickly. Cassie is very poor, but very intelligent - we can guess, because she won this prestigeous scholarship, although her behaviour and choices do not seem very intelligent. She goes to Paris, to study at Darke Academy, she meets two fascinating boys, a friendly roommate and a group of enemies - nothing new here, except maybe The Few, because I still don't know for sure what kind of creatures they are.  Generally, I think this book was rather boring and I'm definitely not going to read the rest of this series.

OK, so it's a book with magic this week! love paranormal romances and I have hundreds books to choose from, but I decided to read something I have no idea what it is about and where I got it from: Secret Lives by Gabriella Poole It's been on my TBR shelf for ages, but how did it got there? It's a mystery, as I don't remember either buying, or getting it. Magic :)  I hope I'll like it!

It was horrible and great at the same time, I both hated and loved it, so I guess it did exactly what it was supposed to do. I didn't give it five stars, because, you know, I hated it - but it was really deeply moving. Classical "Antigone" is generally a story of a girl, who is trying to bury her dead brother. This book tells a similar story: there is a group of homeless people in the park, a crazy woman and two men. One morning they find out, that their friend John died, so the woman decides that he should be buried in the park, next to his friends.  I didn't like any of the characters in this play, I didn't like the story, I hated the ending - and still, I think it was a very good book, moving and thought-provoking, and I'm very happy that I decided to read it.

This book was simply wonderful!  The poems were very funny and witty, I had great fun reading them. My favourite were the first two parts, about animals. The part about people was still good, but I didn't enjoy it that much. The geography part seemed the weakest to me. I really loved the pictures in the book. I'd recommend this book only to the people who have some sense of humour and who appreciate absurd.

It was a busy, busy week for me! Not only didn't I finish reading my last challenge book (and I'm loving it!), but also I forgot to choose the next one. So, there are going to be two challenges this week, but one very easy: a book I can finish in a day. It's going to be Zwierzeca zajadlosc by Stanislaw Baranczak It's a collection of short poems, so I should finish it by tomorrow :)  My second challenge this week is a play - I'm very happy, it's also very easy and, to tell you the truth, I already have my play ready. It's  Antigone in New York by Janusz Glowacki I'm actually quite ashamed that I've never found time to read this play before.  So, these two books this week plus finishing Brave New World and my reading challenge should get back to normal :)