Reading : The Sun Also Rises

I just finished Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises". Wikipedia says that The Sun Also Rises is considered Hemingway's best novel by a majority of critics. His only other book I've read is The Old Man and The Sea, but I don't remember it being so abjectly boring, slow paced and meandering.

No Plot

I couldn't figure out a plot to this book. It follows the lives of several characters between France and Spain. There is a little bit of a love triangle story, they go to some bull fights, and that's it. No struggles, no triumph over evil, nothing.

It reminded me of this classic Calvin and Hobbes cartoon which says "not having my emotions manipulated is such a weird experience".

My Recomendation

Read something else. At least Old Man and The Sea was shorter. I thought it was more interesting too.

Good Books In the Home

When I was a kid I liked to read. I would read almost anything I could get my hands on from Medical text books to Shakespeare to Alistair MacLean. I would peruse the local library, but most of the books I read were ones I found at home.



I've often wished that my parents would have had more classics on the shelves. The classics that are sited time and time again by professors, by lecturers and by insightful people everywhere.

While I don't yet know if my kids are going to be voracious readers, I've decided that I am going to at least make it possible for them to be if they so choose. In that vein, I've been stopping at the local thrift store every month or so and picking up any classics I come across. They are usually priced $0.50 or $1 for a paperback, $2 to $4 for a hardback. The average price comes out to about $1.00 per book.

JD over at the Get Rich Slowly blog is usually against buying more books than you will actually read, but I see these as an investment. If having lots of good books around increases the chance that my children will enjoy culture and a love reading, I'll make that investment and take the risk.

And just maybe I'll learn to enjoy reading again.