Thursday, July 28, 2011

A new mini-challenge!

Vonnie added a new mini challenge for our summer reading challenge. Here it is:

Mini Challenge #5: Read a book that's part of Oprah's Book Club Collection.
Here's the link: http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/Complete-List-of-Oprahs-Book-Club-Books
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Challenge must be completed and reviewed by August 16th in order to receive an extra entry to raffle at the end of the game. Good luck!

I have Night by Elie Wiesel, so I will read that. It was on Oprah's list, and I ran across this on Wikipedia:

Ruth Franklin writes that Night's "resuscitation" by Oprah Winfrey came at a difficult time for the genre of memoir, after a previous book-club author, James Frey, was found to have fabricated parts of his autobiography, A Million Little Pieces. She argues that Winfrey's endorsement of Wiesel's work was a canny move, perhaps designed to restore the book club's credibility with a book regarded as beyond criticism. She writes that Night has a useful lesson to teach about the complexities of memoir and memory, and that the story of how it came to be written reveals how many factors come into play in creating a memoir: "the obligation to remember and to testify, certainly, but also the artistic and even moral obligation to construct a credible persona and to craft a beautiful work ... truth in prose, it turns out, is not always the same thing as truth in life."

I have the book in audio form, which is acceptable for the challenges. I have listened to one hour of it, and find it extremely sad, gripping, disconcerting, moving, and emotional. The reader is excellent. I had to take a little break between the two hours of the audio, and will probably finish it tomorrow.

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