29. The Stranger
My introduction to existentialism came in a fiction writing class in college. It was a workshop course, and a French student wrote an incredibly bleak, dark story in which his protagonist wandered around brooding and smoking a lot. I don’t remember whether or not anything else happened. What I do remember is that I hated it, and that my professor thought it was brilliant. And that was what I thought about when I read The Stranger. I also thought about this song. For years, because of the fiction writing experience, I believed that I hated existentialist writing. I now realize that isn’t true…Ron Hawkins, after all, writes incredibly existentialist lyrics and I like him just fine…maybe it’s the French part that gets to me. 😉

Um, anyway…I’m glad I read this, but it didn’t inspire any great emotional reaction in me. I read some of the reviews at Amazon, and saw that a number of people loved it *because* they hated it so much. I didn’t hate it, but like Meursault, I was emotionally indifferent to it.

28. Ishmael
A guy sits around and has conversations with a telapathic gorilla about the meaning of life, the nature of humanity and our place in the world. A lot more interesting than it sounds. 😉 What I enjoyed about the book is that it raises good questions and forces the reader to question his or her attitudes about the aforementioned topics. I picked this up at the school where I was subbing yesterday…apparently, the teacher had used it in a class, and I can see why. I’ll bet they had some fascinating conversations. 🙂

27. The Virgin Suicides
I finished this one so quickly that I never even got the chance to put it up on my sidebar! A fascinating and utterly compelling read. I haven’t seen the movie, but I think I might check it out now…I really, really enjoyed Lost in Translation, so I’m interested in seeing what Sofia Coppola did with this story.

26. Cry Me a River
Yeah, I needed a little break from Solitude. I liked it. I found it to be highly emotional and very moving at times. Although your sympathy was mainly with the protagonist, a father just released from prison, trying to save his son from death row, you could understand the anger and hurt directed at him by the other characters (his wife and sister, as well as his father-in-law). The ending may have been somewhat predictable, but still touching.

25. ‘Til the Fat Lady Sings
I thought this book was really entertaining. I’m definitely enjoying Alisa Kwitney’s style, and would like to continue reading her stuff. My one quibble with this book…was the main character, just a teeny bit taller than me and exactly my weight, really supposed to be fat? Or was it the idea of her struggle to fit into a thin world? Was the author trying to make a point about our culture’s attitudes about weight? Um, anyway…I did like this book.

24. Preacher
What a fantastic story. Rand and I have been reading this together (my first time, certainly not his…) for quite a while now and just recently finished. The most compelling thing about this, I thought, was the love story between the two main characters. Somehow, amidst all the weirdness (and it was weird, believe you me) this romance worked. Also some good stuff about friendship and grace and redemption.

Uh, still working on One Hundred Years of Solitude… 🙂

See the rest of my list here.