The Sense of an Ending

"We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe.  We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly.  What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.  Time... give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical."

"I had wanted life not to bother me too much, and had succeeded - and how pitiful that was."

I enjoyed this short novel - apparently much more than anyone else in our book club.  So I found myself feeling like an advocate for the book.  Maybe I enjoyed it more because I didn't even know it was a Booker Prize winner when I started reading it (yes I spend most of my time under a rock) so I just approached it as a something to relax with, rather than judging its merits as a Booker winner.  

I found it to be a real page turner.  So much so that I had to exert self-discipline to put it down for a day or two so that I could savour the ending even more.  

I liked the way Barnes dealt with the unreliability of memories and examined how our version of the past may not be as accurate as we like to believe.  I found the idea of corroboration of memories thought provoking, and it lead me to want to journal more regularly so that I will have more of my own "in the moment" reflections to look back on in years to come.  That's not to say I won't be interested in your version of the past too - so try to lay down some accurate memories please.  :)

He did manage to surprise me with the final twist, but I found the 'twist' convincing and believable.  It wasn't a sky hook and did not induce an "how dare he trick me" fit as all the necessary clues were there, they were just more subtle than the usual bleeding obvious "look here is an important detail" kind of clues.

Maybe the novel was particularly engaging for me as memories and our view of ourselves is something I have been thinking about lately.  I started raving on about memories, neurons and psychobabble but decided to move that discussion over to Mandy's Musings where it belongs. 

Umm, I seem to have lost a couple of months.

Seriously!  Why am I already in the third month of 2012?  I feel like New Years Eve was yesterday.  Or at the most, a day before that.

I had planned to catch up on all my 2011 book blogging before 2011 came to a close.  I have a few that I started months ago and just never finished or posted.  I am such a procrastinator!

I thought about closing my Reading Room Blog and going back to just keeping a notebook to track my reading.  But I kind of like being able to easily scroll back through books - rather than having to try and decipher my messy writing while flicking pages in a note book.

So I am going to try again in earnest this year.  First I am going to catch up on 2011 books, and I am going to cheat by "dating" them all 31/12/11 so that they show up as part of my 2011 reading.  I think some of the entries will probably be just the title, cover pic and a quote so that I can just "get it done".

And then I am going to try and keep up a bit better in 2012.

Also, while I am both berating and trying to motivate my self, why haven't I set any goals for 2012 yet?  No wonder the year is sliding by in a haze of stagnation and un-acheivement (no it's not a real word but it is exactly what I mean).  I am going to set some reading goals for this year and record them here to try and keep myself accountable and on track.

2012 reading goals:
20 Fiction
12 Non-Fiction
Blog all of them
Make a list of wish-list reads (actually this will be an exercise in collating as I have a few of these scribbled lists around the place)

Done!  I mean goals done.  That was the easy part.

Now to catch up on entries for the books I read in 2011