Apr 2, 2010

Critical Monkey! Update the 9th!

Wow, what a roller coaster of a month! Two completions! Two survivors! Two participants of iron will, joining the ranks of the immortals! So exciting, I can't even form coherent hyperbole to adequately describe it!! Must resort to extra exclamation marks to express pleasure!!!!

Let's go to the stats:

Acceptance (seven reviews)
Lori L
Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
Roses of Glory by Mary Pershall
Spock's World by Diane Duane
A Texan's Honor by Leigh Greenwood
Star Wars: Rebel Dawn by A.C. Crispin
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer *ineligible for contention*
Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke
The Outlaws of Mesquite by Louis L'Amour

Steve Zipp
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town by Stephen Leacock
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
The Whiteoaks of Jalna by Mazo de la Roche
The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola
Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens
The Navy Times Book of Submarines by Brayton Harris

Depression (six reviews)
Corey Redekop
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
The Justice Riders by Chuck Norris
Jake and the Kid by W.O. Mitchell
Left Behind by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison
The Murder of King Tut by James Patterson & Martin Dugard *ineligible for contention*
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

Anger (five reviews)
Jeanne
Empire of Lies by Andrew Klaven
A Merry Heart by Wanda E. Brunsetter
A Washington, D.C. by Robert J. Hensler
It's Not that I'm Bitter by Gina Barreca
Fat Girls in Lawn Chairs by Cheryl Peck

Scrat
Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey
Hold Tight by Harlan Coben
Double Cross by James Patterson
Strangers in Death by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

Guilt (four reviews)
Bargaining (three reviews)
Betty
Generation Dead/Generation Dead: Kiss of Life by Daniel Waters
A Bend in the Road by Nicholas Sparks
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

Denial (two reviews)
gypsysmom
Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

Shock (one review)
Alison
On the Road by Jack Kerouac

First off, congrats to Steve and Lori, our two fightin' centurions of literary merit. Steve made up for losing Canada Also Reads (and my respect) with a sterling non-fiction look at submarines, and Lori takes on a classic oater. As well, Betty and Scrat both took on books of a biblical bent, Jeanne attempted a little-known (by me, anyway) memoir, and I took to the high seas with a childhood staple.

As promised, I have an ARC of Alan Bradley's The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag available to anyone who wrote a review this month, which gives us a pool of five. And the winner is...

Jeanne! Whoo! Whaa! Wheee! Whuuu! Whiii! Jeanne, I'll contact you for your address.

And three months left to go. Who will be next to finish this horserace of utter futility? I'm betting on me, but I'm lazy, so someone could take third place of the tried.

But I only need one. When I started this, I wanted to force myself to not only read authors I've never read before, but to read the novels I prejudge as being 'awful' based on nothing more than my own unfocused rage. I'm not sure I've done that, not for every selection. Certainly, I always assumed I'd like Harry Harrison. I have violated one of my core principles, and for that, I must be self-punished.

I hereby promise that my next, and final, selection will be something I have been loathing to read. I cannot name it here, because frankly, I do not know the title. I will scour the shelves of my local public library and, rest assured, I will come up with something so potentially damaging it could endanger my very spirit. I am looking for something, in the words of Clive Barker's Pinhead, that will tear my soul apart.

4 comments:

gypsysmom said...

The 3rd book that I read for this challenge, Nostromo, was a library book so I only reveiewed it on WeRead. I hope this link to the review works so that it can be counted:
http://weread.com/review/Nostromo/3086369

Unknown said...

PHEW! I did it! I finished and reviewed the last of my seven novels for the Critical Monkey Contest or as I refer to it ... the Painful Reading Challenge!
Steven King's Lisey's Story was number six and Mitch Albom's the five people you meet in heaven was number seven. Were it not for the fact that Albom's novel is a library book, I would be gathering some Shelf Monkeys and starting a fire.

Jeanne said...

Wow! Thank you! Reading The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag will surely equip me to steel myself afterwards and get to the next level in the next two months!

Alison said...

I made it through a second book alive... barely... I don't know how everyone else has done it! I'll have to get cracking, clearly.

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