Welcome to the forty-third post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012.
Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com.

A few years ago, I decided to commit myself to ploughing through the ‘classics’, becoming familiar with authors with whom I was not well acquainted, and those I was well acquainted with and detested when I was at school: the ever-expanding list authors such as Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, Oscar Wilde, Goethe, H G Wells, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

So far, the project has been serving me well. That was until I started Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.

The title character and I do not have a good relationship: Madame Bovary is an unfeeling, vulgar harlot. I despise her so much, and spent the entire book wishing harm to come to her. With each turn of the page, she becomes so much more despicable.

A composite sketch of Madame Bovary

[Source: The Composites]

It’s quite ridiculous how strongly I feel about this. It’s just so frustrating when you invest all of that time and energy in a story, and it never quite fulfills its promise. I feel the same about Margaret Atwood’s novels: beautiful, luscious prose with half-arsed endings.

But as of right now, I think I’m in need of a new era in terms of my reading. It’s time to stretch the mind in a different way and explore the million other options available to me as a new(ish) Kindle user.

So, I’d love to know what you are reading? What’s something you suggest I try?