Damn it, Averil, I was drinking something and now the cat is laughing at me.
This keeps popping up in different places. My curiosity grows!
I’m reading This Beautiful Life. Next up is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I really need to learn to speed read.
I’ve had my eye on Peculiar Children. I’d love to hear what you think when you’re finished.
i’m standing here holding Gone Girl which I just bought a little over two hours ago and checking email one last time before i retire to bed with my new book.
your post was the first email i saw—i love when my inbox already knows what i’m doing.
Yay! I’m fighting the urge to start the book over again (bad habit of mine) by shopping for something new.
I hope you love it, Josey.
i just finished Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan and highly recommend it. Another one I liked a lot this year was “Fiction Ruined My Family” (it’s memoir).
Ugh, I love my Kindle. i can buy any book at any time. The problem is that I make a lot of purchases. and I haven’t read any of them, because they’re all hidden in the tiny tablet on my nightstand. When I had a big stack of paper books, there was pressure, man. here are the first 10 unread titles currently on my Kindle (I’m lazy and I’m not even listing the authors; you can google if you’re curious):
Pulphead: Essays
We Only Know So Much
Gone Girl
The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.
The Necessities of Certain Behaviors
Where You Lived: Stories
The Family Fang
Descanso For My Father
Legs Get Led Astray
There’s more, but the box for my comment is closing me out.
Count me among the ‘buying too many’ crowd. I should go back to Defending Jacob, which was ticking along just fine until I abandoned it for no apparent reason. I wish I knew why that happens.
I do like your mix.
I don’t know how I missed these posts, but I’m joining the party since I gotta jones. Shanna, you have the best reading lists EVER.
On one side, the collected short stories of Saul Bellow. On the other, Sex with Buildings, prose poems by my friend Stephanie Barbé Hammer.
I am–of course–intrigued by Sex with Buildings. (Ouch!)
How’s the writing coming this week?
My wife has joined me here in Victoria. Need I say more?
Nope.
On my list, too. Set in the town where I graduated from high school. How can I resist?
Is it really? Very cool. Not a lot of setting in this book, though, just so you know. It’s fairly inward-looking, twisty psychological shit.
Twisty psychological shit is what I live for.
I’m actually reading the novels written by the five other people in the editing workshop I’m headed to next week at the Aspen Writers Conference. Honing those skills yo.
The conference! I hope you love it, CJ. (For some reason, I was thinking it was this autumn. I think my brain is approaching maximum capacity.)
Want.
Like Shanna I have this “gotta get it” thing I do with the Kindle (and now we also have a Nook, because it seems that we have pledged technological desegregation), and the, there it sits in its one dimension.
I miss the fondling. You just can’t play with the e-readers like you can the brick-and-mortar books.
The only time I miss a paper book is when I read nonfiction–they’re better for skipping around. For everything else, it’s the e-reader. (Possibly because I’m always sprawled this way and that when I read. I hate trying to work around a fat book while reading in bed.)
Finishing up LIFEBOAT, which Teri recommended. Going now to look up yours.
teri should get some kickbacks, i just finished the lifeboat yesterday.
What did you think of Lifeboat?
(i have zero memory—i just replied to your first reply with the exact same comment i left this morning.) I liked LIfeboat a lot. It’s one of those books that make me wonder how she did it–constructed it–without the construction of it getting in the way of the story. it’s put together exceptionally well, chapter order, character development, etc. makes me want to talk about it.
I love the way she begins the story. It’s almost like an added incentive to keep going, just to see how it ends. And you’re right, Josie. It’s definitely the kind of book you want to talk about.
I’m reading Catching the Drift by A.M. Hartsock. Mostly teen angst, but I’m told it has a very satisfying ending. Also on the bedside table: a biography of Wittegenstein that a friend encouraged me to read.
Mmm, teen angst. Sometimes I want to smack the characters around, Moonstruck style: Snap out of it!
Just finished Ordinary People and am now on Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres.
Lyra — A Thousand Acres, in my top 10. Enjoy!
Averil — This is the 3rd time I’ve heard something about this book in 2 days. That’s a sign, right? Right now I’m rereading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.
It IS a sign. The sign says, READ THIS BOOK.
(I’m getting so bossy in my old age.)
Ordinary People is one of those remarkable books that I return to like going back to school. I just open it to any page and feel my writing for that day getting stronger!
These really well-written books kill me. I either read them over and over because I’m addicted to the voice, or put them far out of reach where they can’t smite me. How do those authors make it look so easy?
Have you listened to it on audio, Erika. It’s a female reader, which I didn’t care for at first, but she’s grown on me. Every time I read or hear this book, I’m astounded at the language, the story, the characterizations, and how she makes it look oh so easy.
Averil, they DO make it look easy and still I try and peel apart their genius and STILL I can’t. Will I never learn?
Teri, I have never thought of listening to it on audio–a female narrator? I can’t imagine it–to me its central voice is so male, the male characters the ones I always recall most vividly–but I’m game if you say she does a good job…
I’ve never had the pleasure of reading Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, but her novella The Age of Grief still gives me goose bumps–the good kind–when I think of it, though I read it long ago (and several times). If you haven’t read it, you may want to.
Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative, and some three- or four-month-old issue of The New Yorker (I’m always behind on TNY).
Smarty pants.
So that’s where I left my brains. I been lookin’ an’ lookin’…
I could’ve told you. That’s where all men keep them.
Sounds goood. I’m rereading Patrick White’s Voss because I bought a gorgeous hardback 1957 Viking copy for my son and he ignored it. Brilliant book.
I’d never heard of that book, Cat, so I looked it up and started to place an order, when I remembered that it might be a good idea to get moved to our new address first. (Earth to Averil . . . )
I don’t buy books much lately; no room. I raid the library fairly often. Right now I’m (re-)reading Coetzee, a veritable binge. Three books in four days:
Diary of a Bad Year
Summertime
Disgrace
I don’t know why I love him so, but I’m almost a groupie.
Ummm . . . My Life As a White Trash Zombie.
But I can explain . . .
Oh, my memoir!
Damn it, Averil, I was drinking something and now the cat is laughing at me.
This keeps popping up in different places. My curiosity grows!
I’m reading This Beautiful Life. Next up is Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I really need to learn to speed read.
I’ve had my eye on Peculiar Children. I’d love to hear what you think when you’re finished.
i’m standing here holding Gone Girl which I just bought a little over two hours ago and checking email one last time before i retire to bed with my new book.
your post was the first email i saw—i love when my inbox already knows what i’m doing.
Yay! I’m fighting the urge to start the book over again (bad habit of mine) by shopping for something new.
I hope you love it, Josey.
i just finished Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan and highly recommend it. Another one I liked a lot this year was “Fiction Ruined My Family” (it’s memoir).
Ugh, I love my Kindle. i can buy any book at any time. The problem is that I make a lot of purchases. and I haven’t read any of them, because they’re all hidden in the tiny tablet on my nightstand. When I had a big stack of paper books, there was pressure, man. here are the first 10 unread titles currently on my Kindle (I’m lazy and I’m not even listing the authors; you can google if you’re curious):
Pulphead: Essays
We Only Know So Much
Gone Girl
The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.
The Necessities of Certain Behaviors
Where You Lived: Stories
The Family Fang
Descanso For My Father
Legs Get Led Astray
There’s more, but the box for my comment is closing me out.
Count me among the ‘buying too many’ crowd. I should go back to Defending Jacob, which was ticking along just fine until I abandoned it for no apparent reason. I wish I knew why that happens.
I do like your mix.
I don’t know how I missed these posts, but I’m joining the party since I gotta jones. Shanna, you have the best reading lists EVER.
On one side, the collected short stories of Saul Bellow. On the other, Sex with Buildings, prose poems by my friend Stephanie Barbé Hammer.
I am–of course–intrigued by Sex with Buildings. (Ouch!)
How’s the writing coming this week?
My wife has joined me here in Victoria. Need I say more?
Nope.
On my list, too. Set in the town where I graduated from high school. How can I resist?
Is it really? Very cool. Not a lot of setting in this book, though, just so you know. It’s fairly inward-looking, twisty psychological shit.
Twisty psychological shit is what I live for.
I’m actually reading the novels written by the five other people in the editing workshop I’m headed to next week at the Aspen Writers Conference. Honing those skills yo.
The conference! I hope you love it, CJ. (For some reason, I was thinking it was this autumn. I think my brain is approaching maximum capacity.)
Want.
Like Shanna I have this “gotta get it” thing I do with the Kindle (and now we also have a Nook, because it seems that we have pledged technological desegregation), and the, there it sits in its one dimension.
I miss the fondling. You just can’t play with the e-readers like you can the brick-and-mortar books.
The only time I miss a paper book is when I read nonfiction–they’re better for skipping around. For everything else, it’s the e-reader. (Possibly because I’m always sprawled this way and that when I read. I hate trying to work around a fat book while reading in bed.)
Finishing up LIFEBOAT, which Teri recommended. Going now to look up yours.
teri should get some kickbacks, i just finished the lifeboat yesterday.
What did you think of Lifeboat?
(i have zero memory—i just replied to your first reply with the exact same comment i left this morning.) I liked LIfeboat a lot. It’s one of those books that make me wonder how she did it–constructed it–without the construction of it getting in the way of the story. it’s put together exceptionally well, chapter order, character development, etc. makes me want to talk about it.
I love the way she begins the story. It’s almost like an added incentive to keep going, just to see how it ends. And you’re right, Josie. It’s definitely the kind of book you want to talk about.
I’m reading Catching the Drift by A.M. Hartsock. Mostly teen angst, but I’m told it has a very satisfying ending. Also on the bedside table: a biography of Wittegenstein that a friend encouraged me to read.
Mmm, teen angst. Sometimes I want to smack the characters around, Moonstruck style: Snap out of it!
Just finished Ordinary People and am now on Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres.
Lyra — A Thousand Acres, in my top 10. Enjoy!
Averil — This is the 3rd time I’ve heard something about this book in 2 days. That’s a sign, right? Right now I’m rereading Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye.
It IS a sign. The sign says, READ THIS BOOK.
(I’m getting so bossy in my old age.)
Ordinary People is one of those remarkable books that I return to like going back to school. I just open it to any page and feel my writing for that day getting stronger!
These really well-written books kill me. I either read them over and over because I’m addicted to the voice, or put them far out of reach where they can’t smite me. How do those authors make it look so easy?
Have you listened to it on audio, Erika. It’s a female reader, which I didn’t care for at first, but she’s grown on me. Every time I read or hear this book, I’m astounded at the language, the story, the characterizations, and how she makes it look oh so easy.
Averil, they DO make it look easy and still I try and peel apart their genius and STILL I can’t. Will I never learn?
Teri, I have never thought of listening to it on audio–a female narrator? I can’t imagine it–to me its central voice is so male, the male characters the ones I always recall most vividly–but I’m game if you say she does a good job…
I’ve never had the pleasure of reading Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, but her novella The Age of Grief still gives me goose bumps–the good kind–when I think of it, though I read it long ago (and several times). If you haven’t read it, you may want to.
Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative, and some three- or four-month-old issue of The New Yorker (I’m always behind on TNY).
Smarty pants.
So that’s where I left my brains. I been lookin’ an’ lookin’…
I could’ve told you. That’s where all men keep them.
Sounds goood. I’m rereading Patrick White’s Voss because I bought a gorgeous hardback 1957 Viking copy for my son and he ignored it. Brilliant book.
I’d never heard of that book, Cat, so I looked it up and started to place an order, when I remembered that it might be a good idea to get moved to our new address first. (Earth to Averil . . . )
I don’t buy books much lately; no room. I raid the library fairly often. Right now I’m (re-)reading Coetzee, a veritable binge. Three books in four days:
Diary of a Bad Year
Summertime
Disgrace
I don’t know why I love him so, but I’m almost a groupie.