Six-word book reviews

Liza's been working on her Mensa For Kids reading list, and early this year I decided I would start reading the books on the high school list. After all, most of them were books I hadn't read since high school (or junior high, or EVER, in a lot of cases), and they would add a bit of depth to my reading. Because, you know, "vampire porn" is a pretty shallow pool - more of a puddle, really - and it's wicked difficult to discuss at the dinner table.

So I decided I would read at least one of the Mensa list books a month this year. So far, I'm kicking butt and taking names, and I've found that I'm actually enjoying the books more than I expected. Of course, the fact that I don't have a deadline or anyone telling me which book I have to read next helps a lot. When, for example, I started listening to The Odyssey on audiobook, and in the first 5 minutes there were 45 different random characters listed and I couldn't keep ANY of them straight ... well, that sucker just went back to the library, and I moved on to something else. Since many of the books on the list are "classics" which have also sort of run out of copyright protection, I've got plenty of them on-demand from the e-book section of the library. Awesome! You never know when you're going to want to start reading War and Peace at midnight on a Sunday, after all.

And now I've decided that just READING the books isn't enough. I'm going to write a book review for each one as a way to keep track of what I've read (and brag about it online, of course). But since I have, like, no time for or interest in writing substantive literary criticism, I'm going to do them all in the Six Word Story format. Yep, Six Word Reviews, here I come!

Jane Eyre: Never realized this was a comedy... Thumbs up!
The Moonstone: Multiple narrators, achieved in style. Bravo! Thumbs up!
Walden: Treehugger waxes lyrical about being poor. Thumbs up!
The Turn of the Screw: What the hell was that about? Confused thumbs down!

Watch this space for more reviews soon - I think I'm on a roll! And feel free to chime in with your own reviews of these or any other books. I can't wait to see what you come up with!


ps: link to the book lists: http://www.mensaforkids.org/content/school_readeraward.cfm