2 down, 48 to go . . .

I finally finished Anna Karenina yesterday, around 3pm. WHEW!

The reason it took me so long to read it (two months, the longest it's ever taken me to read anything except The Book of Mormon--including the 2 weeks it took for Little Women) is because I sort of had to psyche myself up to read it every time I wanted to sit down and do it.

See, the whole book is set in 19th century Russia, and is about people in the Russian aristocracy. The customs, clothing, cities, and even the characters' thoughts were all strange to me, so to understand even a little bit of it, I had to concentrate really hard on what I was reading. So, I couldn't really read before bed or anything like that--I had to be mentally awake. That severely cut down the amount of time I could read, and I couldn't read more than 9 or 10 chapters at a time for the same reason--it all just started to run together after a while.

I posted a review of the book at LibraryThing which is more of a rant than a real review, but read it if you like.

I've got 48 books left now, to reach the 50-book challenge posted a couple months ago on the Lois & Clark Fanfic Message Board. So, yesterday I decided that for the next book, I was going to choose one that was shorter, and more modern. That way, it wouldn't require too much concentration and I could read it faster. Not to mention, my brain needs a rest from all that cerebral-ness.

Around midnight last night, I realized that I hadn't yet chosen a book, and since it was so late and I just wanted to go to sleep, I didn't go down to the computer to use LibraryThing to figure out what I had. I just chose a book that I could see just by looking at the shelves upstairs.

I decided I was going to re-read my Harry Potter books. That way, I'll have books 3-8 out of 50 in the bag, and I'll be prepared when book 7 comes out on July 21 (two days before my brithday, yay!).