I know I haven’t been updating this blog in years . With all this COVID bullshit, I’ve been blessed with a lot more free time to work on my to do lists.

Last night I finished reading For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. I had tried starting this book back in 2017. I came back to it last year. I finally knocked out the last 300 pages this week. If I’m being honest, it was my least favorite Hemingway book to date. I’ve read The Sun Also Rises, The Old Man and The Sea, and A Farewell to Arms.

For Whom The Bell Tolls was good, I just didn’t enjoy the story as much as his previously mentioned works.

**SPOILER ALERT**

Aside from ramblings and flashbacks, The story takes place over only 3 days. The book is almost 500 pages! 400 of those pages is all a huge build up to blowing up this bridge. I didn’t have the patience to get through it.

Hemingway sort of breaks the 4th wall to talk about his family. He talks about his his father’s suicide and how that affected him as a young man. Talking about his father he went from ashamed to angry and back again. It seemed as though he still blamed his “bully of a mother” for the loss of his father.

I resonated with the main character, Robert Johnson. His idolizing of his grandfather and how he wished he had more time with him. The internal dialog/conflict of Johnson was very realistic.

I also have to take into account the age of this book. Nowadays we’re spoiled with these epic war movies and interactive video games. This book had been one of few that dove into the grit of guerilla warfare.

There were a lot of parts to this book I enjoyed. It was difficult to grind through all those pages, without much action to happen. Perhaps now that I know the ending, the book would read different? Sort of like those kind of movies. This will be my first many book reports to come.