What Are You Reading Now - January 2010

Since it's still December, I have nothing to report at the moment;-)

Well, it's January in the other half of the world, so...

I'm reading Galore by Newfoundland author Michael Crummey and perhaps tomorrow I will blow through Joyce Carol Oates' latest A Fair Maiden, a tiny novella or novelette. It's calling to me, I've already read the first few pages... you all know how it is...

I've not had a very good end to the year reading-wise. On the night of the 30th I read the first chapter of Their Eyes Were Watching God but the way colloquial and misspelled speech is really off putting. Then yesterday I started to read a Georgette Heyer book, my first from this author but that didn't grab me. Then last night I started to read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle for a group read. I've decided to read a chapter a night until it starts to appeal to me (i.e. last nights reading did not 'grab' me). So that leaves me today and I've decided to take The Gravedigger's Daughter with me to Starbucks and see how that works out.

In the middle of Les Miserables and The Quickening Maze. Enjoying both, so a good way to begin the New Year. Oh, and have a happy one everybody!

I'm finally getting into Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G. Kelley. I'm also just a few pages into The Drift Latitudes, a novel by Jamal Mahjoub that is set in Liverpool in the 1950s, where a German refugee has a doomed love affair with a West Indian hat-check girl, producing a daughter who struggles with her mixed-race identity years later in London.

After I finish the Mahjoub, I'll start Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist, the latest offering from Archipelago Books. von Kleist (1777-1811) was a noted "German poet, dramatist, novelist and short story writer", a leading writer of the Romantic movement, and an influential writer for Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka.

I just started Hesse's The Glass Bead Game while I work through Virginia Woolf's The Complete Shorter Fiction. V. Woolf's stories are so colorful and detailed they grab me at once and don't let go. I have to make sure I am awake before reading one. Hesse's book keeps bringing me back to the Kafka I've read. I hope to read '10' more 'great books' this year.
Happy New Year!

I'm reading Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. It's remotely possible I might finish it before the clock hits midnight here, but most likely it will be my first completed book of 2010.

Having finished 2009 on an unexpected high with my discovery of Mauritian writer Nathacha Appanah, I'm now making slow but enjoyable progress through War and Peace; I'll finish Volume One (the first 300 pages or so) today or tomorrow. I aim to keep chipping away at it whilst reading other things on the side.

After browsing through the toppling TBR piles, I'm starting the year off with The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, the recent translation of some of Tolstoy's shorter works by the noted translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

PS War and Peace is one of my favorite books of all time.

I'm in the midst of three at the moment:

The Wives of Henry Oades by Johanna Moran (an LT ER book)
The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy for a Hardy group read
The Best of Men by Claire Letemendia

I'm reading Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim which I had as a Christmas present. I read The Enchanted April a year or so ago and can't understand why it's taken me so long to read another of her books.

Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
The Great Crash by John Kenneth Galbraith

I'm beginning with The Paris Review Interviews I -- Parker, Capote, Hemingway so far ... and a dozen more to come.

I scrambled last night to finish my 200th book of 2009 and today I am reading absolutely nothing but L.T. I will begin again tomorrow but I am taking today off. (if I can)
Tomorrow I pick up Clarel again, begin Les Miserables, and The Greengage Summer; all for group reads so I will probably have a "tweener" going on at the same time. I still need to pick it out.
belva

The above mentioned book The Paris Review Interviews I sounds fascinating. I went over to the book page and read bell7's review and it totally captured my interest so my "first rec of the year" comes from detailmuse. Thanx a lot MJ. Like I don't have enough waiting!~! hee hee.

>14 rainpebble: too funny, bell7 is who hooked me on it!!

I want the writers each to have some space, don't want to confuse them all together, so in between the interviews I've started The Happiness Project.

Currently I'm close to home in St. Petersburg with Tove Jansson's Sun City while time-travelling all over the world in the 17th c. under Vermeer's Hat and wandering through the Holy Land in the 19th c. with Clarel. I'm planning to go to Sweden soon if I can find our tour guide.....

>9 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, I know how you feel about War and Peace; that's partly why I'm reading it! I'm reading the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation which I think is what you read, isn't it?

The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories by Herodotus
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times by H.W. Brands
Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, Book 2) by Jim Butcher
The Dead Room by Robert Ellis
Discovering the Great Masters: The Art Lover's Guide to Understanding Symbols in Paintings by Paul Crenshaw

#13 & 14, detailmuse & nannybette, I loved The Paris Review Interviews I, not only what the various writers said but how much they sounded like themselves in the interviews. I've also read/dipped into the subsequent volumes II, III, and IV, and while there are highlights in each of them, they got the pick of the crop into Vol. I.

#17 Rachel, I confess that I've actually read W&P three times: as a teenager, when I skipped the war parts, in my 40s when I wanted something to take me into another world while a loved one was hospitalized (and I thought the war parts were great), and then a year or two ago when the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation came out because I had read their Anna Karenina and was eager to read their W&P. I am sure I will read it again at some point. By the way, there is a fabulous Soviet multi-DVD version of W&P that is available on Netflix, but I don't know if you can get that were you are.

Rebecca- That Soviet adaptation is on my wishlist. (I have also been reading War & Peace. I must shelve it for a little while, but will return to it next month.) Have you also seen the BBC one? Was it any good?

I was about to say I hadn't heard of the BBC version when I zipped over to Netflix and discovered it was already in my queue (has the internet completely erased my ability to remember things because it's so easy to look things up?). About to go back and move it up -- thanks for reminding me. But the Soviet one is fabulous -- and for me eye-opening in the amount of resources they devoted to it, e.g., getting real Soviet army guys into the roles of the Russian army and much more.

My Current reads: The River Why, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, and The Jefferson Bible.

I also have American Psycho on the back burner, but I have to be in the mood to slug through all the day to day junk. Honestly I feel that this one would've worked better as a short story.

I'm having a Wodehouse revival, just finished Summer Lightning and two Jeeves books - also dipping into Tolkien's Gown by Rick Gekoski - interesting anecdotes about books and authors and the rare book industry. Also have picked up Cloud Atlas again, which I got halfway through last year and was prevented from finishing. And I have Les Miserables on the backburner, intending to get back to it in earnest when I finish holidays and resume normal life.

I'm starting 2010 by finishing The Temple Down The Road, a history of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. After that, I'm going to crack open Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson - critics have been divided about this one; I'm looking forward to forming an opinion.

I have a review due by the end of January, so I'll be starting that book soon - details when appropriate! And I still have quite a backlog of poetry collections I'm looking forward to reading, starting with Spark by Emma Neale and Magnetic South by Sue Wootton.

I'm still dipping into Nine Black Women and hope to finish it today.

For the Girlybooks group's Orange January read I've started Kith and Kin by Stevie Davies. It's sad and interesting but suffers from the fact that in 2009 I read quite a few similar stories - the narrator is the quieter girl who wants to be like her wild, wayward friend but is too weighed down by parental expectations and her own sense of responsibility. Said wild friend has experienced grief, trauama, trouble with parents, abuse etc etc and often gets her comeuppance through suicide, rape or something else horrible. Each book has a little twist - quiet girl is of Indian descent in Anita and Me, wild girl turns out to be the wiser one in Everything Good Will Come - but they are essentially the same stories.

Are there any friendship stories that are written from the point of view of the wild child? Are there childhood friendship stories written about men?

>25 charbutton: Are there any friendship stories that are written from the point of view of the wild child?

Oh good question, I’m interested too. Of course the “quiet observer” is the stereotypical storyteller, but there must be some that are narrated by the wild-child.

It’s memoir not fiction, but Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy comes to mind. She was the wild one in a friendship with Ann Patchett, whose tells her version in Truth and Beauty.

Like many here, I'm reading Les Miserables for the group read at Le Salon. Now that the holidays are behind me, I hope to be able to get some serious reading done.

Finished JCO's latest A Fair Maiden last evening (read in one sitting). It's a modern fairy, complete with 'original' 3-page fairy tale (complete with a king and fair maiden) tucked into the middle of the book. Another gem by Oates.

Still reading Michael Crummey's "Galore", a family story set in the backwaters of Newfoundland. I'm not exactly sure when this is set, perhaps 18th century, possibly 19th...

>25 charbutton: Are there childhood friendship stories written about men?

Well, I haven't read it myself, but would Kite Runner would qualify here?

Have decided that I cannot manage Clarel and Les Miserables (for the same group read as Talbin....waves...) at the same time so I have, yet again, set aside the "dreaded" Melville to finish at another date and concentrate on Les Mis, which I began this A.M. and 30-40 pages in......he already has me hooked!~! I have chosen The Greengage Summer as my "tweener".
belva

Settled into The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates

I've almost finished The Swarm which is from the 1001 list. Nothing like what I've read over the past couple of years. It is described as an ecological thiller. Plenty of science tid-bits. Plot driven. I'm enjoying it.

Having finished with Feynman, I'm about to start The Scar by China Mieville. This one may take me a little while to get through; Perdido Street Station did. I'm looking forward to it, though.

Light In August and Les Miserables

I'm in the middle of...and making no progress on...a number of books. I think I'm going to declare defeat on them and re-group and re-start them later. I'm about to start The Tongue's Blood Does Not Run Dry.

>33 bragan: The Scar reads more easily than Perdido Street Station does, imo. His prose is less 'baroque', but the story is certainly as complex. I loved the 'city' he constructs for this one...

>19 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, thanks for telling me about this Soviet film version of War and Peace; I'm intrigued. I'm also greatly amused by the idea of the teenage Rebecca skipping the war bits! At first I didn't enjoy them as much as the non-war scenes but I have to say that they're really growing on me; I'm finding them particularly evocative.

>25 charbutton: Are there childhood friendship stories written about men?
I'm so pleased you ask, Char! It gives me another excuse to plug my recent find, The Last Brother (Le dernier frère) by Mauritian writer Nathacha Appanah. Touchstones not working but you can read all about it in a forthcoming issue of Belletrista! (English translation comes out next month).

Belva: The Greengage Summer...I don't know what I'd think now, and I don't think I want to read it again for fear of spoiling the magic, but it was possibly my favourite book as a teenager. I've no idea how many times I read it. Hope you enjoy it!

As for what I'm reading, have finished Volume 1 of War and Peace so am plodding on happily through Volume 2. In the meanwhile I've picked up Learning English by Lebanese writer Rashid al-Daif, an interesting short-ish novel about a trendy young academic in Beirut who despite his best effots is unable to shake off his links with his traditional native village in the north of the country.

Started Lituma dans les Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa (Death in the Andes) a few weeks ago but didn't read during the holidays so I'll be getting back to it this January.

>38 rachbxl:, happy to give you an opportunity to plug!

I finished Kith and Kin today and feel that I was a bit hasty in condemning it as a coming of age story like others. There was more to it than that.

I'm happily reading Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt, which is set in North Bay, Ontario in February.

I started Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon this evening. Since school starts tomorrow and the book is over 700 pages, it may take me awhile to finish it, but I am looking forward to it.

wow... there's a bunch of great titles listed in this thread. their eyes were watching god, war and peace, and light in august are three of my favorite books. this looks like a nice place to be.

i'm currently reading a burnt child by stig dagerman. haunting little book. it's a slow read... a languid pace that covers you in a thick blanket of melancholy... sorrow made sweet by beautiful writing. although tension has been building and i expect the spring which is constantly being wound is about to snap.

Started Unto a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg for the Reading Globally Sweden thread. This book is even better, IMHO, than the first. Moberg is doing an incredible job of conveying the feelings and experience of the immigrants as they arrive and travel across the country to where they plan to settle.

I am almost through The Emigrants by Vilhelm Moberg. Even before seeing Lisa's praise above, I knew I had to read the next two books of the trilogy. I will also read Cry the Beloved Country this week for my RL book club. Last month we read The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, so we will be making comparisons. And, of course, continuing with Les Miserables, which has begun to drag a bit, especially during some of Hugo's lengthy digressions from the story.

I'm getting to the end of Les Miserables - 200+ pages to go.

Over the weekend I started The Passport by Herta Mueller - when my library request came finally came through.

Finished my re'reading of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. There were some details in my first reading that I didn't find in this reading, also stuff not in the first reading, but appearing in this. I read the book in the mid 1980's, when it first came out. It's a translation & I wonder if the translater is the same. it was still a good read that held my attention even tho I knew the ending.

I *have* to finish everything I've got on the go at the moment before I can launch into the new pile so, for the month of January, I shall be tying up the following (incredibly entertaining) loose ends:

The Girl who Played with Fire on Audio
Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life - my latest ER book
O Jerusalem by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins
Life and Fate for Group Reads Lit
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Murakami
A Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

I finished Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi and started Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron on Sunday. I really enjoyed Open, even though I don't know much about tennis, and so far am loving Shadow of the Wind.

Read a few chapters from Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing this morning. I find much of what she has to say, still valid (Comments on my thread). Otherwise, at night I'm still reading the Michael Crummey novel as note in #28.

*25 - POV of the Wild Child - Pat Murphy's excellent wild angel. Take Mowgli (make the him a young girl) and set her in the wild west and then in what passes for human society - and let her loose. Great fun.

*25+ male friendship stories - that at least begin in childhood - Kavalier and Clay? YA fiction is a more verdant source - Bruce Brooks, Chris Crutcher, err. Lord of the Flies ;-)? David and Jonathan by Cynthia Voigt, Freak the mighty by Rodman Philbrick, if rock and roll were a machine by terry davis.

Started Cloud Atlas as I have been meaning to for ages -- yes it means loads is on hold, stil on the Pacific Journal part, so slow progress due to other demands.

I am currently reading American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I am about half way through the American Wife. I am enjoying both books at the moment.

Happy New Year Everyone!!

I've finished The River Why, have a feeling it will become one of my all-time favorites, and started The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. Hoping that I can read a few pages of the Non-Fiction titles I have going between stories.

I have to take back what I said about Shadow of the Wind in message #57. I wasn't very far into the book at that point. I gave it up at around page 120 as not for me and too overblown. So I moved on to the light and fluffy and palate-cleansing Murder with Peacocks to bring me to the weekend.

I am in my mother's room. It's I who live there now. I don't know how I got there...

Just started Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnambable by Samuel Beckett and am reminded of his beautiful voice.

Abandoned Cloud Atlas for the time being (love it, just not the right time for it) and now reading Out Stealing Horses.

I am at the ending of "Ken Follett - The Pillars Of The Earth"
It is the second time i read this, just one of the best book ever.. :-)
"World without end" Is also a great book.. :-)

160 pages into the girl with the dragon tattoo - yet another fine Scandinavian mystery in translation.

Still reading Les Mis and Light in August and dipping into Selected Cronicas and Posthumous Keats

I am still reading American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld (hope to finish today since I have less then a hundred pages to read.) and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Then I need to see what to pick up next...

Just finished the new Pevear-Volokhonsky translation of Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories -- some great, some interesting, some too religious for me (more comments on my thread).

For my "subway read," I'm continuing my mini-theme of financial reading with The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson.

I'm planning on taking Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa, which I've wanted to read because of the enthusiastic recommendations of Darryl/kidzdoc and others and because I loved his The War of the End of the World, to jury duty with me on Monday, but I may try to read something short over the rest of the weekend.

Have finished "Galore" (no touchstone) by Michael Crummey which is a fine bit of storytelling in an oral tradition sort of way.

I also finished I Lock My Door Upon Myself, another novella by Joyce Carol Oates (circa 1990) and an interesting read after the Crummey. It is the story of "Calla" as told by her granddaughter - in small narrative pieces which in places read like a prose poem.

I'll eventually write up my thoughts on both for my journal thread but perhaps not until later today.

This morning I read Matigari by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, which was very good. I'll submit a review of it this afternoon.

I hope to finish Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives by Brian Dillon, which discusses the history of hypochondria through nine famous individuals, including Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, and Glenn Gould. It was shortlisted for the inaugural Wellcome Trust Book Prize last year, which is a UK prize that "celebrates the best of medicine in literature." I plan to read all of the books on the 2009 shortlist this year, which included Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, which was one of my favorite novels that I read last year.

I'm also reading The Word Book, a collection of short stories by the Japanese writer Kanai Mieko, which I'm planning to review for issue 4 of Belletrista.

After these books, which I should finish this weekend, I'll read Small Island by Andrea Levy, for the Orange January read. Throughout the next couple of months I'll also read The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, which is a comprehensive collection of her work from 1968 to 1998.

I too have had a slow reading start this year. I have just finished Doctor Glas, a depressing gem of a book, which I may review later. I have restarted Gregorius by Bengt Ohlsson, which tells the story of Doctor Glas from the sexually loathsome (in Söderberg's version) Gregorius's point of view. In addition to reading Gregorius, I have started Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice, the introduction of which I have already filled with copious notes.

>25 charbutton: Regarding male friendships in the bildungsroman, you might try Taha Ben Jelloun's The Last Friend

Read through the novella, The House of Paper by Uruguayan author Carlos María Domínguez late this afternoon. Read a JCO essay on fairy tales as dessert.

Finished Les Miserables after 36 days... then finished The Passport by Herta Muller - a short quick thought provoking read. Then I had this brilliant idea of trying Paradise Lost, which is one of the le Salon reads. So, I read the first four pages - about ten times a piece, and I think I was beginning to be able to follow - but no, not really. I'll try some more but I won't get too far there. Now I'm mainly reading a very large fantasy book - the latest in the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series called The Gathering Storm.

a double post, now deleted.

I'm halfway through My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, and about to finish Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals. Also reading The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding. I plan to start Silvina Ocampo's collection of short stories Leopoldina's Dream this weekend.

Finished the very brief and fascinating In Search of a Lost Ladino by Marcel Cohen, highly recommended by wandering_star during the Reading Globally translation group read.

Finished Disaster: Hurricane Katrina...& the failure of Homeland Security by Christopher cooper & robert Block. It was good reporting, telling the story, then letting the read come to her own conclusions. Reading about tropical storms & a blizzard outside, interesting.
Also reading Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for hard times a few poems at a time, letting them digest.
Now started Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan, almost 700 pages about a family selling their summer home & gathering for one last time. The setting is Lake Erie shore near Buffalo & their weather is summer heat & drama. Love it.

Now reading Openwork by Adria Bernardi.

Hi Marian, Yes, it is the same translator for all edition of The Name of the Rose -- Eco worked closely with William Weaver on the translation.

I started 2010 with Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna, and am about to start El Monstruo by John Ross, a book about Mexico City, and Unfinished Desires: A Novel by Gail Godwin.

I have started volume I of a trilogy called Charles le téméraire by Yves Beauchemin, an author whose previous works I have thoroughly enjoyed. So far, so good. Very engrossing and descriptive of characters, though quite sad already.

Hi. I'm Judy, new to this group, but there are so many interesting threads, I couldn't resist jumping in.

As of this posting, I've read The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears, which left me with much to think about (comments here,) and F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton, which filled a hole in my series reading. In the last few days I've caught up a bit on my ever-expanding pile of New Yorker magazines (details at Ffortsa's General Store in this group).

This week I hope to return to one or two of the non-fiction books simmering with neglect on the bookshelves.

Finished Unto a Good Land and Suite Francaise over the weekend and hope to get reviews (or perhaps better called "essays" as Tomcat Murr says) up in the next couple of days.

Now reading The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

>67 urania1: urania: I am waiting for Sen's book from the library. Good thing I still can't bring myself to write in books!

I finished American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. Am finishing up The Picture of Dorian Gray then I have a real easy childrens book to read from the member giveaway program that I need to do a review on, the book is You did it for Me: Friendship and Kindness by Robert Hug. After that I need to decide what I am going to read. I have so many books to read I don't know what to choose.

>79 LisaCurcio:,

I always write in books. I scribble and type notes on Baron von Kindle (poor thing - he is so fussy about his appearance.) If I am reading an Adobe file, I add notes. I scribble notes to myself on my hands. I *gasp* have left highly intelligent notes in library books for future readers. What can I say in my defense? What one of my grad. profs said to me: "Instead of having doctoral comprehensive exams, we should simply collect your books and read your notes/annotations. If they are intelligent and thorough, you pass. If not . . . leave."

P.S. I always read philosophy texts slowly and thoroughly. Thus far it looks as if Sen is setting up an interesting argument. He clearly aligns himself with the analytic philosophers. I can see why someone with a Nobel Prize in economics would do so. The continental philosophers simply wouldn't work for his kind of argument. I am surprised, however, that thus far he hasn't at least given a nod to Habermas.

>79 LisaCurcio:,

But he will be discussing Habermas.

I'm reading through - a bit at a time - Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser. I put away Openwork when the novel refused to go the way I wanted it to go (imagine!) and it seems I was just not in a following sort of mood.

I may pick up Tender Morsels by one of my many, many favorite authors - Margo Lanagan, due to some discussion on my thread and a post (by Merry10) that reminded me that I had the book on our coffee table (along with about a dozen other books)...

*****btw, I thought I'd mention that using this thread, along with your post in the introductions thread, helps everyone here get to know you as a reader. With so many individual threads out there, it can be overwhelming, and one cannot expect everyone to visit everyone else's thread. However, we can connect with persons-of-interest as we get to know them here and on the intro thread.

I just finished a short story collection, Great Stories by Nobel Prize Winners which was also a good introduction to the works of some of winners I've never read before like Wladyslaw Reymont, Roger Martin Du Gard, Johannes V. Jensen, Henrik Pontoppidan. Also just started Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, and The Crime of Father Amaro by Eça de Queirós.

After I finished my other books listed above I chose to read Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris. I finished that book today and started reading Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I hope to finish that book possibly this weekend. Then I don't know what I will read.

Millhauser is a writer i feel i OUGHT to like, given his odd tweaks of off kilter lives and that he writes well. But though i often don't mind "cute" at all, he comes across as peculiarly pat and unsurprising.

I finished the The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates. After taking two weeks to read it am immensely pleased that it was a 5 star book (in my opinion). Two weeks is long time to read a book for me yet it wasn't a slog it was a lovely meander.

Now I am reading The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez recommended by Avaland in her thread "Still, it's a quick read that will make you smile, if not chuckle." I saw it on the shelf at the library today and grabbed it. It's only 112 pages long and I read the first 30 on the bus on the way home so I expect to finish it tonight.

Up next (out of necessity as it's due back at the library next) is Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracey Chevalier.

I can't remember whether I posted this or not, but I am reading East of the Sun by Julia Gregson, a story of a young woman who, as a chaperone, accompanies two young women and a troubled young man to India on a ship in the 1920s. I've never read much about India, so I'm enjoying this as an easy read and a light historical novel.

>87 bobmcconnaughey: I'm with you on Millhauser, Bob.

I had very little time to read this week, but am looking forward to spending more time this week with Les Mis, Light in August, and The Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen.

I'm 2/3 through The Paris Review Interviews I and enjoying it. Very light to read except that I'm not familiar with the work of some of the writers and (gulp) haven't heard of a few. But that means I go off and look them up, and I'm making a list of something to read by each.

I'm also reading How to Teach Physics to Your Dog by Chad Orzel -- a college physics professor lightens quantum theory (somewhat) by applying it to a dog's life. And I just started The Periodic Table by Primo Levi -- chemical elements prompt reminiscences of his life as an Italian Jew during WWII. It's a great coincidence that The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe just came through inter-library loan -- visually it's fabulous, and the text is informative and wry.

I'm planning to start and finish at least two books this weekend: Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig, and The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria by Randall M. Packard.

After putting aside Warrior Queens by Antonia Fraser - I'll come back to it in a while - I had to take a break with a mystery. For some reason, I keep finding holes in my series reads, so I broke down and bought H is for Homicide, which was not in the library. Alas. I keep trying to pass the mystery stories on, or at least not buy them. Oh well. It's a very suspenseful book, not Grimes' usual classic whodunnit, since we mostly know who the bad guys are. But very fast-paced and entertaining.

I've got a bunch of non-fiction perking along. I can't seem to read them straight through as I do fiction, so I'll generally mention them here when I finish.

>87 bobmcconnaughey:, 90 I'm not enjoying the Millhauser as much as I thought I would, but I am enjoying it (I thought I wou;d love it...).

I finished two thought-provoking books this week, Alamut (wrong touchstone) by Vladimir Bartol, and Half of Man is Woman by Zhang Xianliang, both recommended.

I've been ignoring Les Miserables, and must get back to it. Perhaps I'll do some skimming of Hugo's lengthy digressions. I'm keeping up with Within A Budding Grove, and still loving Proust. I started A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep, Rumer Godden's memoir, which so far I'm finding just so so.

I am currently finishing book two, in the banned and the banished series, entitled Wit'ch Storm. I will have to reacquire book three, Wit'ch War tomorrow since I realized this morning it was lost at the airport on Friday when the outside pocket on my suitcase was discovered busted open on the conveyor belt in baggage claim. I'm also beginning Necroscope.

Over the weekend, I finished Conversation in the Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa and Where the God of Love Hangs Out by Amy Bloom. Very different, but both excellent.

I finished East of the Sun by Julia Gregson and started The Story of Edgar Sawtelle yesterday.

Just began World War Z on a recommendation from a professor. I'm really enjoying it so far--much less cheesy than I expected.

>#50:
That looks like a very interesting reading list.
I will have to grab a couple of recx!~!

I just finished Doctor Zhivago & The Picture of Dorian Gray. Right now I am immersed in Les Miserables, started World Without End, half-way through Anne of Green Gables, beginning The Return of the Native and have yet awaiting me:
Paradise Lost,
the 1st book of Herodotus Histories,
Crime and Punishment is on the list but I am passing,
Moby Dick,
Light in August, (this will be my 1st Faulkner and I am very excited about it!~!),
The Post Office Girl, and
In a Lonely Place for January.
So I have a lot on my plate for this month. I hope that I have not bit off more than I can chew and that I do not let myself down.
belva

I finished The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold today and started reading The Surgeon By Tess Gerritsen.

As of ten minutes ago I was on the Night Watch; however, earlier in the day while following The Posthuman Dada Guide, I found that the search (for whatever) was an Infinite Jest, so I will return to my contemplation of The Idea of Justice.

I started The Craftsman recently and will be starting Light in August this week. Picking over a lot of other things.

I just finished Circumference: Eratosthenes and the Ancient Quest to Measure the Globe by Nicholas Nicastro and am about to start on The Help by Kathryn Stockett.

I finished The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria yesterday. I'm nearly finished with a fantastic short story collection, Amok and Other Stories by Stefan Zweig, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. After that I'll resume reading Small Island by Andrea Levy, the winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction, for the Orange January read.

I just cracked the cover open on The Favorite Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Caroline Kennedy. It promises to be a rather short read, but enjoyable. I just finished 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal, which was quite the enjoyable read!

Just started Doctor Glas fro the Reading Globally Sweden theme read.

"Dipping" into Theory of Justice; still working on The Magic Mountain and started Père Goriot for something a little quicker!

It's 1492 and I'm in Radwa Ashour's Granada, which the Moors are about to lose to the Christians. This is a time and place which have fascinated me for a long time, and the writing is so beautifully evocative that I can't read it slowly enough (very unusual for me!)

I'm also in Ethiopia, at the end of a wildly adventurous journey from South Africa in Za Glosem Sangomy by Agnieszka Podolecka, a Polish novel I've been plodding through for ages. It's required a total suspension of disbelief but I've really enjoyed the ride.

Finished Wish you were here by Stewart O'Nan
A 5 star book - see review in review section.
Now reading Last night in Paradise by Katie Roiphe & A River Remains by Larry Smith (A collection of poetry)

I'm about to finish Ruby's Spoon by Anna Lawrence Pietroni.

It's been a useful reminder that I need to defeat my book prejudices. It looks like chick lit and has a mythical/fairy tale feel to the blurb so I would never pick it up in a bookshop. But I'm actually really enjoying it!

106, kidzdoc,

"by Stefan Zweig, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors"

That makes me smile. A lot. :)

> 110 rachel, we might just bump into each other as i, too, wander the streets of Granada. i'm in Al-Baisin, just outside the walls of the Alhambra, joining the celebrations for the birth of Leo Africanus not long before Granada falls.

I stayed up late to finish Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracey Chevalier. The end as very satisfying. Today I will start The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. I read Tipping the Velvet a few years ago and hated it so I hope this is better.

I have just finished Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, a flawed but very interesting book which I review at http://bit.ly/7dNHsO.

I'm now onto a book which I'm reviewing for Belletrista (so no details yet!) plus two volumes of poetry, Spark by New Zealand poet Emma Neale and Sappho: A Garland, translations of the surviving fragments of Sappho's poetry, plus notes and discussion, by Jim Powell.

Finishing up the 5th short story in Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories by Philip Roth. Debating whether to read the title novella or continue on to some other volumes of short fiction as planned....

Finished The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, which left me sorely disappointed and really, really angry; read my first Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, which was fun but not a masterpiece or anything. Now I think I might be reading my first great book of the year - The House at Riverton by Kate Morton is probably not deep or anything like that but it has so many elements that draw me in: English manor family before and during WW1, told from the perspective of an outsider, family secrets, and an extremely compelling and teasing way of narrating the story of those secrets. I am bitter after Atwood, so I'm trying not to be irrationally exuberant, but so far, I love this book. I think I have urania to thank for recommending it as a good comfort read many months ago.

After drifting into some short fiction by Colum McCann, I went back and read Goodbye, Columbus by Roth, to complete that collection. After dipping into a bit of poetry by Irish poet Eavan Boland, I'm back with McCann.

Just finished the latest early review Gator A-Go-Go, a fun and fast paced read. Good for a weekend read.

Currently reading: Fahrenheit 451 and Good without God

Hopefully I'll get back to reading my Teddy Roosevelt material after I get through Good without God and after a small break I'll finish Maus II, lot's of traveling and a desire to preserve my very worn secondhand copy of this book has led to a prolong absence from a great read.

I finished reading The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen I am now reading The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey and The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman.

I finally finished Les Misérables, and I'm in the LT minority - I didn't really like it. I found it too sentimental and melodramatic for my taste (and the digressions of the narrator - oy). Here's my review.

Next up: I'll finish an Early Reviewer book, Heresy by S.J. Parris, within the next day or two. I read the first book of Paradise Lost last night and will be continuing on with Milton this week. I also hope to start Faulkner's Light in August before the week is done.

After finishing Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg (excellent), I read A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (a dud) and The Siege by Helen Dunmore (excellent). Not sure what I'll read next bookwise, as I've been catching up on the newspaper and old issues of the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.

>123 rebeccanyc: Glad you liked The Siege. It has been a number of years since I read it now, but I think it is Dunmore's best.

Well, I certainly didn't like her With Your Crooked Heart, so even though I loved The Siege I'm leery of reading anything else by her.

I should finish Small Island by Andrea Levy today, my Orange January read. After that I'll read Beneath the Lion's Gaze by Maaza Mengiste for issue 4 of Belletrista, and Moving Parts by Magdalena Tulli, an Archipelago book.

122> Paradise Lost is one of those works that I really hated when I was younger, but it gets better every time I reread it.

I finished Thomas Hardy's first published novel, Desparate Remedies and Rumer Godden's memoir of growing up in India--I review them both on my thread.

I've started Under a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg, the second of the Emigrant novels. I need to start Light in August, and I've got to get back to Les Miserables.

I have Unto a Good Land by Vilhelm Moberg - mix up in translation? It's the 2nd book of the Emigrants.

Started The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri, it's funny, a fast read. My order of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver arrived from Amazon, 500 rather dense pages, so I'll be busy with that for a while.

Finally got my head down and concentrating on Les Mis again at last. Just finished with Waterloo... wow... Hugo name-drops a bit confusingly for someone not familiar with the history, but his descriptions are like living paintings (rather than film). Mist and blood and sabres, and rain, and mud.

Idea of Justice by Amartya Sen which will take me a good long while. For fiction, Remains of the Day, and I just pulled Snow by Orhan Pamuk off the shelf.

I'm also reading Idea of Justice, which will take me a good long time as I must read it very slowly, and Light in August, which I am thoroughly enjoying and am almost finished with, and Les Miserable, which I must get back to. I've also finally managed to get Summertime by Coetzee, from the library, which will complete my Booker reads.

What's your first impression of Idea of Justice? Is Sen readable? I know I have something here by him that I've been meaning to read just because of his broad reputation, but I fear stuffiness. The synopsis of the book looks good, but there is only one review here, and that is skimpy enough to be unusable. The review at Barny Noble's however was very favorable and reasonably substantial.

Robert

I'll also start The Idea of Justice, but not before mid week, at the earliest.

Having finished the Roth and the McCann collections, I've started Flesh and Blood, stories by Michael Crummey.

My detective-fiction addiction is perking along with J is for Judgement by Grafton, which I slipped in before The Book Thief. I still have a week to go for that one before my book club, and since it's a hard-cover, I don't care to carry it around through my day. So I'll have to buckle down after today.

I've recently finished Eiji Yoshikawa's epic, Taiko, about feudal Japan. I love big epic sagas like this (for cultures I'm interested in at least) so this was fantastic. Battles and strategy everywhere!

Currently reading Voice Over by Celine Curiol.

i'm about to finish Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf, still working may way through The Fatal Shore:The Epic of Australia's Founding, and will start Cormac McCarthy's Suttree sometime this week.

I am still working on Gravity's Rainbow, which I have been reading for a couple weeks. I am at the midpoint of the novel. It was a pretty slow read for the first 150 pages or so, but it got a lot better after that.

I've started Alice Munro's latest collection, Too Much Happiness. Some of the stories appeared previously in the New Yorker, and I have already read them, but it it is good to read them again.

I just posted on Les Miserables on my thread, and I just finished The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson. I've started Nadirs*, Herta Müller's first book (from 1982). When I finish I think I'll give Paradise Lost a serious go.

*ETA - there's a touchstone when I edit, but it doesn't stick when I post. Here's a link to Nadirs: http://www.librarything.com/work/2374505

I just started rereading Cold Mountain, which I'm teaching in one of my classes.

Along with the Michael Crummey short fiction, I seem to have slipped into a Reginald Hill mystery A Cure for All Diseases and have picked up two volumes of poetry at the store today - Heather McHugh and Serbian poet Novic Tadic.... (I'm leaving breadcrumbs so I can find my way back...)