28 / 50 books. 56% done!

10575 / 15000 pages. 71% done!


Book 29: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee - 220 pages

My little synopsis: David Lurie, a middle-aged university professor in Cape Town, South Africa, has an impulsive affair with a student and ends up losing his job and his name. Retiring to the Eastern Cape to stay with his daughter Lucy, he finds for a time that he is becoming used to his new life. But then he and Lucy are the victims of a savage attack in their own home, and suddenly the changes in the post-apartheid country are revealed in all their staggering and shattering reality to David.

Um, how do I describe this book? It was very clinical, very impersonal, in both its writing style and its characters. I realise it won the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Booker Prize, but I really didn't engage with it. You cannot feel for either David or Lucy, regardless of the circumstances of their situation, because neither lends themselves to sympathy. They are definitely father and daughter in the fact that they are both so alike in their stubborn disregard for advice. Perhaps I missed something, because on the facebook profile for this book, nearly all the reviews are stellar. But I read the book after my brother, who's studying literature in amongst a variety of other uni subjects, leant it to me after having to read it for his class and he got the same impression as me. I don't like it when I can't feel for the characters, I don't like a story for the sake of a story and whilst I understood the point about the change in power in SA after apartheid, I didn't quite understand Coetzee's point - is he trying to make me sympathise with David and Lucy or with the situation of the black population of SA or is he just trying to present both sides of the argument? I don't know. I just didn't feel that it did either side any justice. I've got friends from both sides of apartheid - I work with about 15 South Africans of varying heritage - and I just don't think David and Lucy and any of the other characters did these people justice as countrymen. Oh well, you can't love every book you read can you?

29 / 50 books. 58% done!

10795 / 15000 pages. 72% done!

Currently reading:
- From Modernism to Postmodernism: An Anthology edited by Lawrence Cahoone - 600 pages
- The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Volume 2: The One Tree by Stephen Donaldson - 472 pages
- The True Story of Butterfish by Nick Earls - 280 pages
- A Caress of Twilight by Laurell K. Hamilton - 326 pages

And coming up:
- The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory - 486 pages
- Next by Michael Crichton - 540 pages
- Angels and Demons by Dan Brown - 620 pages