Being Dead

By Jim Crace

I probably should have guessed from the title that this book would not be easy to read. Indeed, parts of it made me wish I hadn't picked it up. But for the most part, it was a pretty good read. Very knowledgeable and insightful. But seriously, why did the death have to be so horrible (especially for poor Joseph). The descriptions of what happens to the bodies are also pretty gruesome, but again, the fall under the "informative" category. It was nice to share the time between this read and the previous one (Seven Year Switch). These books are so different, it made complete sense to move from one to the other when I couldn't take one of them anymore (Being Dead was the one I couldn't take much of, actually. Especially in the beginning).

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Seven Year Switch

By Claire Cook

A fun book that is really a page-turner! It's been a while that a reading went so fast for me. It is also informative (culture and wildlife, for example). But there are a few things that bothered me, like putting words in a 10-year old girl that don't make sense for a girl that age to say (criticizing the new star wars movies), and minor common grammatical mistakes (like using "me xxx-ing" instead of "my xxx-ing" in a sentence). They're common and minor, but they still bother me, especially in a book. Also, the end was kind of rushed, like the author tried to squeeze as much as possible in a little bit of space and time. Despite that, I enjoyed reading it. [256 pp.]


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