I'm considering reading The Invisible Man and Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde. They were the first books I enjoyed as a kid, and I've wanted to read them again lately
'The View from Castle Rock' by Alice Munro. It's probably going to take me a while to read as I'm only reading it during my breaks at work. I've also just started 'If I Fall, If I Die' by Michael Christie.
The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson. Been very reluctant to read lately, so I'm sticking to Children's, YA, and poetry.
I've just started Catch 22. I get the impression that its WW2 setting is probably a minor part of what is actually going to be a thoroughly pertinent play on the insanity of not only warfare but modern life.
Enjoying it so far. There's some nice wit to it. Dorothea has just written Casaubon to accept his proposal of marriage. So I'm only a little ways in.
Finished The Young Elites and I'm in withdrawals so I started The Inventor's Secret but it's a tad too young so I may not stick with it. It is well written, got no complaints there. But the readers who are going to like this book are going to be the very young teen crowd. I have Without You There Is No Us lined up next. It's nonfiction about a young Korean reporter that spent time teaching the children of the elite in North Korea. I heard the author on BookTV and her story was fascinating.
I just finished Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale. Very compelling stuff. Also the first novel I read on my Kindle (I see the benefits but at the same time, I miss the real book). Not sure what I'll read next.
I recently finished A Dance of Dragons. I'm pretty annoyed at Martin because of the cliffhangers, but I totally enjoyed reading it. I'm embarking in a series of Dystopian novels, starting with A Brave New World (which some people mark as the best in the genre).
I purchased 'Lonesome Dove' because the internet cowboys said it was the best cowboy book, and also ' The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' because I want to find out about Heinlein and sci-fi people.
I had bought The Marble Dance by Lygia Fagunda Telles a while back at my favorite used bookstore and had been waiting my chance to read it. I finished it the other night. It was marvelous. I'm a huge fan of Telles but I think the only thing left of hers available in English is a book of short stories. Ah well. Better to be a fan of a few books than to have fifteen at your disposal and not like any of them.
Bought a new copy of The Hobbit due to the old one sadly falling apart. Now enjoying their run in with the trolls while drinking espresso.
My friend let me borrow "The Oath" By Frank Peretti! I am not very far into it yet, but it is very good. I read the "Lord of the Rings" series again not long ago. Love those!
Just finished listening to The Fault in our Stars. Mostly for market research, but I enjoyed it. Not a life-changer, but a good read/listen.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone I almost put it down as too dorky when the protag gave an ex-boyfriend an itch via a spell bead (they are good for one small wish) to get him to leave. I had just put down The Inventor's Secret after the first couple chapters because it was too young. Steampunk, writing was fine, but I think the target market was about 12. Anyway, I stayed with Daughter of Smoke and Bone and now it's turning out to be more interesting. As long as she doesn't turn out to be a werewolf or something it's fantasy I can enjoy. There are demons who appear to be the good guys, at war with the angels who appear to be the bad guys and a whole world full of Chimera: dozens of animal/animal hybrids and animal/people hybrids. So far a bit more original than fae and vampires (no offense to those writing said characters, it's a personal preference). We'll have to see how the story goes. It seems to have very good reviews. Definitely an A for originality so far.
Seems to be all I want to read at the moment, something I think I can learn something from to use toward my writing.
I haven't had much time to read these past couple of months, so I've been mostly sticking to magazines. The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Analog, and a few others. Also, I've been rereading some poetry.
William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience, still a collection of Emerson's essays, and a short collection of highlights from Dante's Inferno in a new translation. Wonderful stuff. ^.^
Here are the tomes I've discovered in my library this day: I Am Abraham by Jerome Charyn. It's basically the entire life of the 16th US president as told by Lincoln himself through his perspective. I'm torn because a part of me wants to just skip to the interesting bits (ie, when he was the president during the Civil War), but I know that to make sense of anything at all, I have to start from the very, very beginning. The Briar King by Greg Keyes. It's the first book in 'The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone' series, came out in 2003. I checked it out because I recognized his name. He wrote two in-canon novels for The Elder Scrolls series. Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover. Having never been exposed to sci-fi books, Star Wars, I feel will guide me into the genre. I've seem excerpts of Stover's works online and thought he was a brilliant writer. I'll soon see. According to the blurb, the entire book revolves around Master Mace Windu and his missions on the home planet he was taken from as an infant by the Jedi. Since I already know a lot about Luke Skywalker, Anakin, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, it'd be interesting to see Mace's life. It's funny, I feel like I should've gotten more books, 10 perhaps, but three is about all I can do right now.
Recently finished Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I loved the book so much it's already one of my favorites.
I never finished The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm somewhere in the third book of the series titled Life, the Universe and Everything. I really liked the first two, but I seem to be getting bored with this third story. I mean it's all good silly, clever fun, but as far as having an actual story to sink my teeth into, there's not much there. Maybe I just need a break from Hitchhiker's for a while. So I read Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. Finished it last night. I believe it's only one of three Palahniuk books left on my list to read. It was okay. I didn't like the ending very much. I also got sick of all the repetition. I know Palahniuk's into choruses. They're supposed to engage and help pace things and bring back past plot points, but geesh! I'm not that stupid. I don't need you constantly reminding me about things you've already told me. It seems like almost forty percent of the book was him re-hashing stuff. Still love Palahniuk though. And I'm glad I got the older version of Invisible Monsters. I hear the newer version is like a choose your own adventure book, where you jump around. That would've drove me insane. And I liked his descriptions, especially his clothing descriptions. He went into a lot of clothing detail due to the nature of the story. I need to do more of that with my own characters.
