Forty-seventh (?) challenge finish of the year.
I chose this one for the 'featuring a natural disaster' prompt even though I don't actually consider the Dust Bowl as a natural disaster so much as a man-made catastrophe. But the drought that started it was definitely a natural disaster. With all the wild fires everywhere, this was very depressing realizing that climate change is only getting worse.
So I started listening to this audiobook because I have had a TON of other things to do this week. I was several chapters in when I realized I had already read this around 2020 or 2021. Anyway, because I was so busy, I finished listening to it, and so I am counting it dammit!
I also listened to The Remains of the Day, which is my book club's selection for this month. This is the third book I have read by this author (two of them for book club) and I didn't like any of them particularly well. I don't really think it fits into any of the challenge prompts, but I may go back and look. Also, I will BEG my book club never to add this author to our list again!
I'm trying to get this post done in a hurry. I am on hold with my bank for the second or third (fourth?) time today. I have succumbed to a fraudster, and trying to get it all straightened out is a pain in the @$$. I could just cry. Right now I noticed two more transactions that need to be added to the fraud report.
I worked in the financial industry since 2001, and I am VERY careful. These guys were good...er...bad...very bad! Don't trust ANYBODY!
I feel the same way as you about Ishiguro. My book club read his "When We Were Orphans" in September 2007, and here is what I wrote about it: "The local book club read and discussed this for the meeting last week. I thought it was an awful book. I suspect it was chosen based on Ishiguro’s reputation for The Remains of the Day (which I have not read, and, after this awful book, have no intention to read). However, this book had a slow, improbable, frustrating, nearly non-existent plot in an absurd and illogical setting with an unbelievable, naïve, unlikeable, uninteresting, conceited, self-involved, stupefying protagonist. The other characters were remote, weak, stereotyped, wooden, and underdeveloped. Aspects of the storyline were implausible bordering on preposterous. The only reason I even finished it was due to the book club. Avoid this book."
ReplyDeleteI hope your bank situation has been resolved in a positive way.