The one after it neither.
Under the Net, The English Patient and On the Road.. my hattrick for the year. Three novels I stopped reading before I finished them and don't regret doing so.
Not that they are bad novels per se, but I can't see or have read an interesting thing about it.
They have their good point, since I managed to read at least a couple of dozens pages, but since I'm neither very fond of the desert nor backpacking through the continental US, The English Patient and On the Road aren't books I care to finish. Maybe they get better in the end, who knows, but I've read better and since there are so many different novels to read I'm not sticking with one that doesn't do it for me.
But I hope that my negative attitude towards these novels doesn't hold any of you back to try a hand at them, they might be right for you.
I just give my honest opinion, however harsh it may be, but it's subjective to say the least. I could even say that maybe in a year or twenty I might enjoy novels like this, just not right now.
After having spend a considerate amount of time on classics, I have decided to move to some lighter subjects as you can see in the sidebar.
Hopefully a good romance and thriller can pull me back to my old self, because I have to admit that I've been reading a lot less because of the three novels featured in this blog post.
So a little summary..
The English Patient
With ravishing beauty and unsettling intelligence, Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winning novel traces the intersection of four damaged lives in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. Hana, the exhausted nurse; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless, burned man who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal,and rescue illuminates this book like flashes of heat lightening. (www.goodreads.com)
Author: Michael Ondaatje
First published in 1992
Thickness: 320 pages
Personal rating: 1 star (since I didn't finish)
On the Road
On the Road chronicles Jack Kerouac's years traveling the North American continent with his friend Neal Cassady, "a sideburned hero of the snowy West." As "Sal Paradise" and "Dean Moriarty," the two roam the country in a quest for self-knowledge and experience. Kerouac's love of America, his compassion for humanity, and his sense of language as jazz combine to make On the Road an inspirational work of lasting importance.
Kerouac's classic novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat" and has inspired every generation since its initial publication more than forty years ago. (www.goodreads.com)
Author: Jack Kerouac
First published in 1957
Thickness: 307 pages
Personal rating: 1 star (since I didn't finish)
First published in 1957
Thickness: 307 pages
Personal rating: 1 star (since I didn't finish)
