30 December 2009

the 50 books 'challenge'

adriana, an old school friend of mine, challenged me to read 50 books in 2010 and share my thoughts on them with her on facebook. i figured this might be of interest to you guys, too.

50 sounded a lot to me at first, but i guess this is just because my own reading has become very uncoordinated, reading bits and pieces here and there, and because i have long lost my habit of focusing on just one book at a time. nowadays, i am usually reading three simultaneously: one for pleasure, one for study, and a light one of either kind to bring on the train.

currently, these are:
susan sontag's early diaries,
sol stein's stein on writing,
and i just finished stefan zweig's fear.

here are my thoughts on fear (i won't give you a summary of the book, though, cause i think blurbs make books boring and create a fake experience of literature - no one should be knowing what's about to happen in advance!):

stefan zweig wrote fear in vienna in 1910, but only published the novella in 1925 after thoroughly revising it. i quite liked it, although it didn't take me all too long to figure out its plot. however, fear was still written interestingly enough to finish reading it. i find that zweig was very good at describing his characters and their emotions; in my humble opinion, he sometimes overdid that a little in fear, yet he managed to cut long descriptions just when they started to get annoying. all in all, fear is a recommendable read if you're looking for something brief and entertaining.

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