Cannonball Read - Book 40

Let me start by saying: finally. SO happy to have finished another book.

The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen was making the rounds as the It Book several years ago - isn't this the one that Oprah wanted to endorse but he said no, to uphold the book's integrity? I think it was a good choice - I think lots of excellent books have been exposed to the masses via Oprah, and I'm glad that more books are getting read, but maybe some things shouldn't belong to the masses.

I digress. The Corrections is yet another tale of a dysfunctional family from the Midwest, parents growing older, siblings growing apart, and one last family holiday. And it's intense, no doubt about it, but it was very hard to get into. Once it grabbed me, it grabbed tight, but it didn't have a good grip for at least the first fifty pages. But now that I think about it, maybe it's beacuse the characters are so unlikeable - I grew to care about what was happening to them, even as they stayed unlikeable, but it took a while to get there.

One other thing: a lot of stuff that happened seemed far-fetched (of course, I won't tell you what that stuff is, because you should read it for yourself and I don't want to ruin it for you), and I have a problem with that. But the problem comes from the mundane parts. The plot points that were so real were outstanding, but the ones that were extreme left me wanting more of the mundane, more of the "real" that pulls families together and pulls them apart.

The Corrections - B