Fall of Giants and The Corrections

I figure that I talk about books with enough people that it wouldn't be weird if I talked about books on my blog. So feel free to leave comments about these books or books you are currently reading.

The majority of the books I read are fiction. But I'll occasionally throw in a few nonfiction books about whatever subject I'm interested in at the time. Did you see the list of books that President Obama was taking on vacation with him? There were 5 books. How in the world can he read five books in one vacation?

The only book I brought with me when I moved to Tijuana was Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy. I couldn't fit my box of books in the car with me for the ride out here, so my mom said she would send them to me. It's been almost 8 weeks and I'm still waiting.

Ken Follett is the author of Fall of Giants. His most popular book is Pillars of the Earth, which I really enjoyed. Fall of Giants is a historical fiction book set mostly in Europe during World War I. I really liked this book. I'll admit that I don't know that much about WWI, so it was fun to learn more about it through his fictional characters. Ken Follett is a simple writer, so although it is a big book (almost 1000 pages), it is actually a pretty quick read. All of his magic comes from the characters that he creates. I would definitely recommend it. It is the first of a trilogy. His subsequent books will follow future generations of the same families throughout World War II and the Cold War. The book was first printed less than a year ago. So the only bad thing about reading this book now is that I know I will forget a lot of details by the time the second and third books come out.

I finished Fall of Giants several weeks ago. Since I hate paying full price for books (sorry Borders), I have had to find alternatives. Paperbackswap.com and bookmooch.com are both pretty good places to start. You have to send other people books through the mail to get credits. You pay for the postage. But when you have credits, you can request books from others and will receive the book completely free. These sites are not very good if you want brand new books. But if you are looking for classics or older books, then they work great.

I also started buying books from Goodwill. They have great deals there. Small paperback books are only $.75 and larger books are $1.99. I'm almost obsessed with going to Goodwill to see what new stuff they've got. Over the weekend, I finished my first Goodwill book, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. I didn't know anything about this book when I bought it other than it was an Oprah's Book Club book. It was an interesting book. I guess I would say that I liked it. The author has a way of writing that was at times hard to follow. There were certain points that I had to push on accepting the fact that I didn't understand what he was trying to say. But all his characters are messed up which makes for a good story. And at times he went on tangents that reminded me of some of the tangents my own mind makes sometimes. Like being reminded of a gift one of your parents got you when you were a kid that you didn't really like, or something like that. All in all, I would only recommend this book if you had nothing else on the reading list.

I'm currently reading The Law of Nines by Terry Goodkind.  So you'll probably hear about that one in a week or so.