| 50 Book Pledge | Book #13: Dear Life by Alice Munro |
That’s one of the amazing things great books like this do—they just don’t get you to see the world differently, they get you to look at people, the people around you, differently.
| 50 Book Pledge | Book #6: The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe |
A new year, another chance to take the 50 Book Pledge. And why wouldn’t I? I had a blast last year. I read fifty-seven books. Fifty-seven! I still can’t believe it. There were so many fantastic books. Outliers. This Dark Endeavour. The Phantom Tollbooth. A Monster Calls. Beautiful Ruins. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Night. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. Oh, and I can’t forget The Shadow of the Wind and The Prisoner of Heaven. They took my breath away. They were entrancing. Hypnotic even. Carlos Ruiz Zafón made a fan out of me. I had to get my hands on The Angel’s Game. I couldn’t wait to be blown away again. The characters. The setting. The exquisite detail. It’s going to be fantastic! But wait, something’s missing. Oh no. This can’t be happening. Not at the beginning of my pledge. Maybe I just need to give it more time. Should I give it more time? Even if I’m not excited? But I’m not looking forward to reading it. Not even a little. I don’t care if I never know how it ends. Damn. That’s my answer, isn’t it? I’ve got to close the book on this one. Permanently. Carlos Ruiz Zafón. The Angel’s Game. My apologies.
This bias worked against The Angel’s Game ( REVIEW ). My anticipation for the novel was sky-high, having first read The Shadow of the Wind only a few months earlier, I was desperately eager to spend more time in Zafón’s version of Barcelona, with his characters that I loved dearly. The bar was set impossibly high and, as the old adages often do, “the higher they are, the farther they fall” proved too true. My initial review of The Angel’s Game was positive (and I still think positively about the novel), but on reflection the flaws can’t be ignored and, as a follow-up to The Shadow of the Wind, The Angel’s Game was a disappointment. It stands to reason, then, that my expectations for The Prisoner of Heaven would be tempered somewhat. But, no. That little squealing fanboy in me couldn’t help but put Zafón’s latest novel on a pedestal, well before it ever hit store shelves. So, keep that in mind. I’m not to be trusted. For a bias is a wicked beast in the mind of a critic.