Wrapping Up: The Chunkster Challenge

Now that the year is coming to an end, it’s time to start publishing my wrap up posts for all those reading challenges I signed up for!  I actually finished the Chunkster Challenge a couple of months ago, but I waited until now to a wrap up because I knew I still had a couple of chunksters (books longer than 450 pages) left on this year’s TBR list. After some reshuffling of my TBR pile, I think I’m pretty much done with chunksters for 2010.

The books I read for this challenge were:

1. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen – 568 pages [review]
2. The Crime of Father Amaro by José Maria Eça de Queirós – 480 pages [review]
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy – 817 pages
4. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen – 562 pages [review]
5. Some Sing, Some Cry by Ntozake Shange & Ifa Bayeza – 558 pages [review]
6. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie – 576 pages

My goal was to read 4 chunksters, but as you can see, I ended up reading 6.  Believe it or not, I actually didn’t intend to double down on Jonathan Franzen this year, either. But since I did, I can say with certainty that I like The Corrections more than Freedom (though Freedom is awesome too), and I appreciated it more on my second reading.

You’ll be hearing more of The Crime of Father Amaro some time next month, but I will say that it was one of my favorite books of the challenge!

My least favorite book of the bunch was Some Sing, Some Cry because of the transition/ plot issues I mention in my review, but it was still an entertaining and enjoyable read.

Final thoughts: YAY! I finally read Anna Karenina, which I’d read about 200 pages of like 8 years ago, then never returned to. I loved what I’d read back then, but at the time I was a full time student with a demanding schedule, and I just never got around to finishing it. I’m also quite pleased I read The Satanic Verses this year because it had been on my TBR list for a long, long time. But I have yet to write reviews on these two, so I’ll stop here. 🙂