Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Question of the Week/De-Lurk: What are you reading?


I need to catch up on my reviews in a serious way--I was up north in Montreal last week tearing through Sookie. Now I've exhausted Ms. Stackhouses wacky magical adventures, and I'm reading an interesting Italian book in translation for a review. I also just started Netherland. After that I look forward to returning to the 19th century--any recs for me?

And what are YOU all reading? To my regular gang, please come back and comment and help inspire me to pump some life into this blog :)

9 comments:

  1. I've got The Boat to read for my book club. So then of course I'll follow that up with Daredevil & Starman. Also a big delicious stack of comics. I can't wait.

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  2. Anonymous11:05 AM

    Currently reading The Way We Live Now and planning on following that with Villette. This is all part of my year spent reading 19th century english literature. I even made it through Middlemarch this year.I have to say preferred Wives and Daughters to Middlemarch. Suprising parallels between the two that I didn't expect but very different novels at the same time.

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  3. I am reading Hari Kunzru's My Revolutions, a novel about 60s/70s radicalism told mostly in flashbacks by a probably-unreliable narrator. (Several of my favorite things!) It is great so far.

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  4. Mansfield Park for a literature group and Cranford every night before sleeping.

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  5. My husband is a used book dealer, so he feeds me books that he thinks I'll enjoy. Yes, I know how lucky I am!

    He knows that I enjoy graphic novels, so I recently read American Widow by Alissa Torres. It was published last year and is an account of the events of September 11, 2001, which left Ms. Torres a 7-months pregnant widow. Sungyoon illustrates the story very movingly. With so many iconic images associated with the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it shouldn't be a surprise that the graphic novel format works well here.

    Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. A suspenseful romp, written with picturesque and picaresage detail. This is one of those books that I always meant to read one day, and now I'm delighted that I did!

    I just finished Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis by Dr. Lisa Sanders. I don't watch House, but she's the technical consultant for that show. Very eye-opening, particularly the observations about the decline in physicians' abilities to perform and interpret physical examinations. I intend to share with some physician friends. (I'm not a physician; just a patient who too often feels unheard.) You may not want to read this if you're a hypochondriac. Just sayin'.

    I'm currently reading A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances by Laura Schenone. This book is so much more than I expected it would be when I first gave the cover and jacket blurb a quick glance; it is a wonderful framing of women and American history through food.

    (Okay, that was one current book and three recently read books.)

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  6. Whoops: Sungyoon Choi illustrated American Widow. I somehow omitted her last name.

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  7. I just got my copy of "The Blythes are Quoted" by Maud Montgomery. So far, so awesome! Montgomery included various poems of Anne in this and what members of the family think as Anne reads out her poems to the family. It's fabulous to read something Anne actually wrote (besides just other characters raving over it) and I found out that Gilbert (yes, Gilbert!) is sarcastic. More delights wait there, no doubt.
    Also picked up "The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane" by Katherine Howe. It's been pretty decent so far- old decaying house, relative who was a witch, student working on her doctoral thesis and discovering things about relative so she can put it in her thesis. Some really great elements but the author keeps telling not showing and that's a fair way to drive a reader a bit batty. Dear Writer, I can see that the character feels that way, so please don't tell me! I understand yet again why show and not tell is such a big thing.
    And the other book is another joyride, two books combined "Betsy and the Great World and Besty's Wedding" by Maud Hart Lovelace. Lovelace wrote about the same time as Montgomery did but with a Totally different perspective. Very light and happy books with great detail about clothes and hair, things like that.
    Also got the Exact translation with the Exact Preface that I wanted for Anna Karenina (I know, nerd alert), so that should commence soon.

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  8. Oooh this is a great selection.

    Catherine, is "The Blythes Are Quoted" available to us US of A-ers? I assume you ordered yours online?

    And to the anonymous 19th-century writer above, I salute you. Wives and Daughters is on my list as well.

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  9. I did order mine online, only I got really sneaky as there's no US copies available and ordered it from amazon.ca instead of amazon.com. There's a good discount on the book right now which helps offset the shipping cost.

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