I love Paperback Swap!

As you've probably already guessed, I'm a bookworm (I'm also a coffee nut, but that's a little irrelevant...), so you can imagine how excited I was when I discovered www.paperbackswap.com. Books! For free! And I can get rid of all the books that I don't really like and make room for more books!
So yesterday, I got All the King's Men in the mail and Alias Grace is on the way. And since I just sent out three more books, once those are received, I get to choose three more that I want! (I'm reading this and realizing how idiotic I sound, but really, I do get this excited.)
If you're stuck with a bookshelf full of books you never read, it's worth checking paperback swap out.

I'm sorry :(

I know I haven't been good about writing and hopefully once I get back to school and back into a regular routine, I'll be able to keep you updated.

Well, while I've been gone, a couple things have happened. I decided to stop reading Absalom, Absalom! because I needed to finish one of these books for school and I knew I wouldn't be able to finish that. So, I read both The Awakening and The Age of Innocence. It's odd how two books that I picked randomly could be oddly similar and yet incredibly different. Both have feminist undertones (though they are much more evident in The Awakening), but the characters in The Age of Innocence never seem to be able to break as free as Edna. And Wharton is much more detail-oriented in her description of the intricacies of New York society, while Chopin, though she does take time to illustrate the forces working against Edna, never goes into as much detail. But the one thing they both have in common is that I hate the endings.

Let me explain: I am a sucker for Jane Austen-type happy endings where all the loose ends get tied up and every character gets what they deserve, whether it be good or bad. With both these novels, that is certainly not the case. In The Awakening, Edna gets what she wants, but she pays a huge price for it, which immediately negates the happy-ending possibility. And then in The Age of Innocence, Newland is too much of a wimp to go and get his own happy ending; he's happy to content himself with his own imagination. The both made me want to throw the book at the wall when I finished them.

Yes, yes, I know they are great works of fiction and that they have much more value than just the plot, but how hard is it to give your characters a happy ending every once in awhile?

Oh and on a side note, I've finished seventeen of the 223 books. Only six more to go to get the total under 200 by New Years. This should be a piece of cake!