**What Are You Reading Now? JUNE

Starting this thread since I've just finished and reviewed the poetic and moving Five Bells by Gail Jones and I realized it's June 1.

I've started reading The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. Some of my ancestors were in the VOC (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or Dutch East India Company) so I'm finding the Dutch characters quite interesting. They don't sound particularly Dutch to me, more like English sailors out of Dickens, but Mitchell's descriptions are wonderful, truly evocative.

Started The Hunchback of Notre Dame last night. Only a couple chapters in.

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Hope you enjoy the book. I loved it! Although I hate that the title was changed in English. Such a terrible misnomer.

In Hawaiian mode, I've just finished Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz and the Hawaii version of a series of brief histories called On-the-Road Histories (LT series page is here: http://www.librarything.com/series/On-the-Road+Histories ).

Not sure what's next. Possibly Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell or Shark Dialogues by Kiana Davenport or The Folding Cliffs by W.S. Merwin. Also trying to read travel books.

I'm in the middle of the Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, recommended by many LTers. It deserves the recommendations - I'm loving it!

I am back in Japan with The Sea and Poison, an excellent book (so far) about Japanese doctors performing vivisections on American soldiers. It's been hard to put down.

#7 sounds wonderful?

I am reading England made Me by Graham Greene, which I am not enjoying

Many intriguing titles here, some of which are already on my TBR.

Aside from various group reads, I am just about to finish The Art of Memory by Frances Yates, and am about halfway through Illuminations by Walter Benjamin.

on my nightstand for June I have: The Sisters Brother -- strange title, The Pale King -- daunting, Please Look After Mom, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Finn by Jon Clinch.. yay, and I'm on vacation! :o)

I just finished Sarah Waters' Fingersmith, which I enjoyed. Next up is The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer, an ER book I really should have gotten to before now.

>2 dmsteyn: Dewald, I just happened to spot a group read of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet that is beginning June 15 in the 75 Books Challenge for 2011. The thread is here, in case you're interested.

I've finished and reviewed Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo a mystery/thriller with political/social/religious ambitions that was this year's Independent Foreign Fiction Prize winner but which I found frustrating.

I also found Red April to be frustrating; don't bother.

I finished two disappointing books in the past 24 hours: The Bill From My Father: A Memoir by Bernard Cooper, and Elegguas, a poetry collection by Kamau Brathwaite. This morning I began Yemen: Dancing on the Heads of Snakes by Victoria Clark, a recently published book about that chaotic country, and later today I'll start Great House by Nicole Krauss.

I got a little derailed from my Ludmilla Petrushevskaya track by The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson - really interesting to read this selection of short stories and see how the same interests recur in different ways in his stories and novels; and what a marvellous nature writer he is!

Beyond the Petrushevskayas lies Mr Allbones' Ferrets by Fiona Farrell, and short story anthology Tales for Canterbury.

I usually have a volume of poetry on the go as well, but for some reason, I haven't been reading as much poetry this year ... I'm writing less poetry, too. I seem to be in fiction mode all round at the moment.

behind the scenes at the museum is up first for June.

I'm continuing my year of Mario Vargas Llosa with The Bad Girl.

I'm reading The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. This is for the book club and so far so good.

Having enjoyed By the Sea a couple of years ago, I've finally got on to one of Abdulrazak Gurnah's earlier novels, Paradise, set in colonial East Africa about a century ago. Beautiful.

Loved The Sea and Poison so I kept going with the Japanese authors so I am now reading Hell (by Yasutaka Tsutsui).

I've decided to put Downbelow Station on a bit of a hold. It's good but i keep getting distracted. In its place I've started Red Mars, which is pretty great so far 5% in.

I've finished and reviewed the thoroughly delightful Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories: Selected by the Author and the remarkable and puzzling The Foundation Pit by Andrey Platonov.

Finished reading Hell by Yasutaka Tsutsui (the author touchstone goes to the book) which was quite good and entertaining. Currently switching to some Chinese history with The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan D. Spence. Thoughts on Hell can be found on my Club Read thread.

I just finished and reviewed the fascinating A Grain of Wheat by Ngũgĩ wa Thiongʾo.

While I haven't posted about most of it on this thread, I've been getting quite a bit of reading done this month, which is nice. Currently I'm on The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick. It's petty interesting so far.

As a bit of light relief from Porius and The Faerie Queene I am reading Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling

Since it was that kind of day I just sat down and read Keigo Higashino's The Devotion of Suspect X all in one day. It was fun! Haven't done that in a long time either. Like being a kid again where all you do is sit and read.

I just read and reviewed the latest book by Bonnie Jo Campbell, Once upon a River, a deeply unsettling and thrilling novel.

Reading The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. I am about 45% of the way through. Beautifully written, but I am not sure where it is going. Kind of grim, but the characters are wonderful. There is a lot of foreboding language, so I think there will be a disaster soon.

Been reading Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck and am about three-quarters through it. JanetinLondon's excellent review drew me to it, and it is quite haunting, all about a place and the people who inhabited it over time. Also participating in several leisurely group reads in Le Salon: Porius by John Cowper Powys, The Faerie Queen by Edmund Spenser and The Confidence-Man by Melville. Oh, and there's a collection of short stories in there as well.

I'm happily reading Hemingway: The Paris Years by Michael S. Reynolds and the newest by Ruth Rendell, Tigerlily's Orchids.

#30 k4k - I'm very interested in your thoughts on Lords of Discipline. I recently read Conroy's memoir-ish essay collection My Reading Life and would like to read one of his fiction books sometime.

#33 dchaikin - Thanks. I will post here (http://www.librarything.com/topic/105126) when I am finished. I am kind of in a slump at the moment. I hope that doesn't affect how I feel about the book. I usually like a bit of darkness in my reading, but right now I could use something a bit more light-hearted. I can't seem to get the tone right. I am finding the light stuff boring and the deep stuff depressing. We'll see where Conroy's book ends up.

Finished Unfamiliar fishes and more-or-less gave up on Shark Dialogues. I'm now alternating three very different books : The Way of Boys, a book on raising boys by Antony Rao and Michelle Seaton. Island Fire : An Anthology of Literature from Hawai'i by Cheryl A. and James R. Harstad, and Fairie Queen by Edmund Spenser.

Let's see, finished Embassytown and Penwoman. Now reading The Ice People by Maggie Gee and The Wedding of Zein by Tayeb Salih. Also, perusing two quilt-related books.

Just finished Among Others by Jo Walton, which appealed to my inner bookish teenager, and have now started Wiseguy by Mitch Pileggi, which I'm sure would appeal to my inner gangster if I had one.

>37 bragan: Isn't Mitch Pileggi the guy who used play Walter Skinner on X-Files?

Oh, and I just finished reading The Changing Light at Sandover by James Merrill, which was brilliant if sometimes perplexing, and Familiar Spirits, a memoir by Alison Lurie about Merrill and his partner, David Jackson. I'm almost finished with The Iron Dragon's Daughter, a read about which I have mixed feelings, and also almost finished with Ideas: a History from Fire to Freud by Peter Watson. I seem to be finishing a lot of things at the same time.

>38 dmsteyn:: LOL! Oh, dear. You're right. The author is, of course Nicholas Pileggi, and I think we now have proof positive that TV has completely eaten my brain. Even if I haven't actually watched an episode of The X-Files for years.

I wonder if I should edit to fix that, or bravely let the embarrassing evidence stand.

I've had The Iron Dragon's Daughter on my TBR pile approximately forever, by the way, and keep meaning to get to it Real Soon Now. So I'd be interested to hear what your mixed feelings about it are when you're done.

I am reading At Risk by Patricia Cornwell I am a little over half way through it and there is a bit of disconnecting going on...doesn't seem to be following any kind of direction. It keeps jumping around...hopefully it will settle down soon so that I will be able to finish it and read the next book in the series...The Front.

I'm on CD#5 of 19 in The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson. It follows three southerners who flee the Jim Crow South to California, Illinois, and New York. Not necessarily new information so far, but very interesting and immersive.

I'm also finding Jane Gross's A Bittersweet Season very good, about caring for aging parents. Halfway through, it's the best I've yet read on the topic; helpful about parents and our own eventual selves.

And I'm fascinated with Bomboozled: How the U.S. Government Misled Itself and Its People into Believing They Could Survive a Nuclear Attack by Susan Roy -- a documentary about the U.S. Cold War programs for fallout shelters and "duck and cover" training, heavily illustrated with period images.

I just finished and reviewed the thoroughly fascinating and delightful Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole.

I was out of town, and mostly away from computers, for a few days over last weekend, and by pure coincidence I managed to get lots of reading done! I read:

The Corrosion Zone by Barbara Strang (poetry collection) (3.5/5)

He'll Be OK by Celia Lashlie (parenting manual) (3.5/5)

Such A Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry (novel) (4/5)

Lan Yuan:The Garden of Enlightenment, ed. James Beattie
(guide/history) (4/5)

Comments on a couple of these:

Such A Long Journey is the next book the book group I'm in is 'doing'. I enjoyed the stories of the characters a lot, but was less convinced by the plot elements that felt, at times, uncomfortably grafted on top of the character story.

While in Dunedin on my break, I visited Dunedin's Chinese Garden, Lan Yuan, was captivated by it, and bought the book about the garden. It's a strange mixture of academic essays about the history of Chinese garden design, and information about Lan Yuan itself, but still very interesting.