My Challenges (timed)


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Completed 8 of 9



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Completed 2 of 3



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Completed 2 of 4



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Completed 71 of 81



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Completed 9 of 10


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Completed 34 of 50



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Completed 1 of 2



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Completed 1 of 2



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Completed 1 of 5



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Completed 5 of 100

My Challenges (perpetual)

100 SHOTS OF SHORT
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CHECKIN’ OFF THE CHEKHOV
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THE COMPLETE BOOKER
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MARTEL-HARPER CHALLENGE
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MODERN LIBRARY'S 100 BEST NOVELS

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NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
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THE PULITZER PROJECT
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TAMMY'S BEYOND BOOKS CHALLENGE

New York Times Book Review: 6/40
New Yorker: 0/36
New York Review of Books: 0/20
Vogue: 1/16
Email: 841/1373

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt


Synopsis (from B&N.com): "Winner of England's Booker Prize and a literary sensation Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once an intellectual mystery and a triumphant love story. As a pair of young scholars research the lives of two Victorian poets, they uncover their letters, journals, and poems, and track their movements from London to Yorkshire -- from spiritualist séances to the fairy-haunted far west of Brittany. What emerges is an extraordinary counterpoint of passion and ideas."

This is a beautifully written novel -- I can understand why it received the amount of praise it did when it was released. It was a little slow going at first, but then picked up so that I didn't want to stop reading, always a good sign. I have to admit that there were parts that I didn't understand, including much of the poetry, but then poetry is one of those areas that I've never been terribly comfortable with. The other "problem" parts relate to the high-minded academic approaches to literature on the part of some of the characters, very theoretical, for which I have never felt an attraction -- it feels too much like scientific dissecting of the work, instead of enjoying the work for its own sake. But overall, I enjoyed it and am not sorry to have read it.

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