Book Two: Pledged

Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities, Alexandra Robbins



A book club read. I must say, reading this book just reminded me how much I hate sororities. I thought I could be fair minded, but I don't think I can be. And, as more than one book-clubber suggested, this book may have been entirely made up, but even so I wouldn't doubt that any of this shit doesn't take place on a daily basis across America in sorority after sorority. Seriously, this covers the gamut from date rape to binge drinking to cheating to hazing to dirty monkey sex (ok, no, not the last one). I do think that the author is really trying to be fair and attempting to show the nice side of sororities, but this thin, superficial shit doesn't really go that far. Seriously, can't a person make lifelong friends and find support in other places in college without joining a sorority? While I went to a school that was, in essence, one gigantic sorority, I had wonderful friends that I met in the dorms that I loved dearly and still attempt to stay in touch with and didn't feel the need to pledge my life to a house of women who could only put me down behind my back, call me fat, and make me feel bad for being date raped. But, again, I might not be the most un-opinionated person to ask about this book.

For a good time, might I suggest reading the customer comments on the book's Amazon page?

Book One: Scoop

Scoop, Evelyn Waugh



It's back to the beginning for me! And I'm already one week behind for 2008. Woot!

So, I'm going to subtract the 1/2 from my 2007 total and start off with Scoop as my first read for 2008. We all know how much I adore Evelyn Waugh by now, and Scoop was no let down. The only problem is that when it takes me more than a couple of weeks to read a book, I kind of lose focus and I forget aspects of the plot. Which is why it took me a while to figure out that the wrong Boot got sent to Ishmaelia (fictional African country) to cover a pending revolution. But once I flipped back to the beginning, read through the first few pages and it all came back to me, I realized how funny it really is. Anyhow, it's silly satire of the British newspaper world, though not as funny, in my opinion, as Vile Bodies.

Year of Books in Review

• Number of books read: 38 1/2 (currently in the middle of Evelyn Waugh's Scoop)
  
• Most read author: Alexander McCall Smith, hands down, at five books
  
• Second most read author: Evelyn Waugh, at two and a half books
  
• Number of books by female writers: 10
  
• Number of mysteries: Eight (including a few that might be debatable, though I did not include the last two of the Isabel Dalhousie novels)
  
• Number of books by British writers: 12 (!!!)
  
• Favorite book: The Slaves of Solitude, followed closely by Brideshead Revisited (but then again, how can I ignore the final Harry Potter book?)
  
• Least favorite book: Corks & Forks
  
• Number of non-fiction books: 12
  
• Number of fiction books: 26
  
• Total number of pages read: 12,249
  
• Average page length: 322
  
• Longest book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 784 pages, followed very closely by Dream Boogie at 768 pages
  
• Shortest book: Portuguese Irregular Verbs at 128 pages