Beloved by Toni Morrison

Title: Beloved

Author: Toni Morrison

Publisher: Vintage 1988

Genre: Literature

Pages: 291

Rating: 3/5 stars

Reading Challenges: Fall into Reading; Time Top 100; Rory Gilmore; 1001 Books; Ebook; Lucky 14 - Been There Forever

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.

I was intrigued by the storyline.  And the characters were great.  I really fell for Sethe and Denver.  But I must say that I was not a fan of the writing style. After almost 300 pages of the writing, I almost didn't make it to the end.  I wanted to see what happened to everyone, but the writing was getting to me.  My biggest complaint was the dialogue passages. Often I got very confused about who was speaking at any given time. Not a fan at all...

2014 Reading Challenges -- Perpetual Edition

Overall, I want to focus most of my 2014 reading challenges of knocking out some of my perpetual reading challenges.  So I've chosen a few books from each challenge to help me reach my ultimate goals.

Fantasy Project: 20 Books

1. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
3. Graceling by Kristin Cashore
4. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
5. A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
7. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
8. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
9. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
10. Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
11. Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
12. The Little Prince by
13. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein
14. TBD
15. TBD
16. TBD
17. TBD
18. TBD
19. TBD
20. TBD

Nonfiction Adventure: 20 Books

1. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
2. Living History by Hilary Rodham Clinton
3. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
4. John Adams by
5. Washington by
6. American Lion by
7. Woodrow Wilson by
8. Alexander Hamilton by
9. The Private World of Georgette Heyer by Jane Aiken Hodge
10. What Ifs of American History by
11. A Vindication on the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft
12. Becoming Mona Lisa by Donald Sassoon
13. The Emperor of Maladies by
14. TBD
15. TBD
16. TBD
17. TBD
18. TBD
19. TBD
20. TBD

NPR Scifi and Fantasy: 10 Books

1. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
3. A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin
4. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
5. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
6. The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley
7. Neuromancer by William Gibson
8. Contact by Carl Sagan
9. Dune by Frank Herbert
10. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

NPR Teen Books: 10 Books

1. Graceling by Kristin Cashore
2. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
3. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
4. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
5. Dune by Frank Herbert
6. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
7. TBD
8. TBD
9. TBD
10. TBD

Top 100 YA Novels: 5 Books

1. Graceling by Kristin Cashore
2. City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
3. Tithe by Holly Black
4. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
5. TBD

21st Century Women Authors: 5 Books

1. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
2. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
3. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
4. House of Riverston by Kate Morton
5. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

United States of YA: 5 Books

1. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
2. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
3. TBD
4. TBD
5. TBD

Time Top 100: 5 Books

1. Neuromancer by William Gibson
2. Beloved by Toni Morrison
3. TBD
4. TBD
5. TBD

Rory Gilmore: 10 Books

1. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
2. Living History by Hilary Rodham Clinton
3. The TIme Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. Beloved by Toni Morrison
5. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
6. Siddartha by Herman Hesse
7. The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
8. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
9. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
10. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

1001 Books: 10 Books

1. Neuromancer by William Gibson
2. Contact by Carl Sagan
3. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
4. Beloved by Toni Morrison
5. A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
6. Siddartha by Herman Hesse
7. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
8. Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
9. The Little Prince by
10. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams

U.S. Presidents: 5 Books

1. The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
2. John Adams by
3. American Lion by
4. Washington by
5. Woodrow Wilson by

Time's Top 100 Novels Reading Challenge

Robert started 101 Books as a way to document his goal of reading Time Magazine's Top 100 Novels (since 1923).  I decided this was a worthwhile reading challenge to add to my perpetual challenges.  I will be adding this challenge to my Perpetual Reading Challenges page.  Out of the 100 novels, I have already read 18.  Here's the complete list:

• The Adventures of Augie March (1953) by Saul Bellow
• All the King’s Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren
• American Pastoral (1997) by Philip Roth
• An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser
• Animal Farm (1946) by George Orwell
• Appointment in Samarra (1934) by John O’Hara
• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (1970) by Judy Blume
• The Assistant (1957) by Bernard Malamud
• At Swim-Two-Birds (1938) Flann O’ Brien
• Atonement (2002) by Ian McEwan
• Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison
• The Berlin Stories (1946) by Christopher Isherwood
• The Big Sleep (1939) by Raymond Chandler
• The Blind Assassin (2000) by Margaret Atwood
• Blood Meridian (1986) by Cormac McCarthy
• Brideshead Revisited (1946) by Evelyn Waugh
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thornton Wilder
• Call it Sleep (1935) by Henry Roth
• Catch 22 (1961) by Joseph Heller
• The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger
• A Clockwork Orange (1963) by Anthony Burgess
• The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) by William Styron
• The Corrections (2001) by Jonathan Franzen
• The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) by Thomas Pynchon
• A Dance to the Music of Time (1951) by Anthony Powell
• The Day of the Locust (1939) by Nathanael West
• Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather
• A Death in the Family (1958) by James Agee
• The Death of the Heart (1958) by Elizabeth Bowen
• Deliverance (1970) by James Dickey
• Dog Soldiers (1974) by Robert Stone
• Falconer (1977) by John Cheever
• The French Lieutenant’s (1969) by John Fowles
• The Golden Notebook (1962) by Doris Lessing
• Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) by James Baldwin
• Gone With The Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck
• Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) by Thomas Pynchon
• The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• A Handful of Dust (1935) by Evelyn Waugh
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers
• The Heart of the Matter (1948) by Graham Greene
• Herzog (1964) by Saul Bellow
• Housekeeping (1981) by Marilynne Robinson
• A House for Mr. Biswas (1962) by V.S. Naipaul
• I, Claudius (1934) by Robert Graves
• Infinite Jest (1996) by David Foster Wallace
• Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison
• Light in August (1932) by William Faulkner
• The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950) by C.S. Lewis
• Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov
• Lord of the Flies (1955) by William Golding
• The Lord of the Rings (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Loving (1945) by Henry Green
• Lucky Jim (1954) by Kingsley Amis
• The Man Who Loved Children (1940) by Christina Stead
• Midnight’s Children (1981) by Salman Rushdie
• Money (1984) by Martin Amis
• The Moviegoer (1964) by Walker Percy
• Mrs. Dalloway (1925) by Virginia Woolf
• Naked Lunch (1959) by William Burroughs
• Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright
• Neuromancer (1984) by William Gibson
• Never Let Me Go (2005) by Kazuo Ishiguro
• 1984 (1948) by George Orwell
• On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey
• The Painted Bird (1965) by Jerzy Kosinski
• Pale Fire (1962) by Vladimir Nabokov
• A Passage to India (1924) by E.M. Forster
• Play It As It Lays (1970) by Joan Didion
• Portnoy’s Complaint (1969) by Philip Roth
• Possession (1990) by A.S. Byatt
• The Power and the Glory (1939) by Graham Greene
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark
• Rabbit, Run (1960) by John Updike
• Ragtime (1975) E.L. Doctorow
• The Recognitions (1955) by William Gaddis
• Red Harvest (1929) by Dashiell Hammett
• Revolutionary Road (1961) by Richard Yates
• The Sheltering Sky (1949) by Paul Bowles
• Slaughterhouse Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut
• Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson
• The Sot-Weed Factor (1960) by John Barth
• The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner
• The Sportswriter (1986) by Richard Ford
• The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (1964) by John Le Carre
• The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway
• Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston
• Things Fall Apart (1959) by Chinua Achebe
• To Kill A Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee
• To The Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf
• Tropic of Cancer (1934) by Henry Miller
• Ubik (1969) by Philip K. Dick
• Under the Net (1954) by Iris Murdoch
• Under the Volcano (1947) by Malcom Lowry
• Watchmen (1986) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
• White Noise (1985) by Don DeLillo
• White Teeth (2000) by Zadie Smith
• Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) Jean Rhys