Reading Update. Because There’s Nothing More Interesting to You Than What I Am Currently Reading.

Jump to Comments

I am the Queen of All Genres, the Indecisive Persnickity Reader, and I seem to Require a Book for All of Life’s Moments.

I don’t think I’ve had my grubby little hands in this many books at once since I was in college. I have reading ADD or something:

War Journal by Richard Engel

This is about his time in Iraq from 2003-2007, and is much more political/factual than the previous Fist in the Hornet’s Nest, which read much like a memoir. Journal is informative but pretty heavy reading. I’ve been hitting 5-10 page of this a night as I nurse Patter to drowsiness/sleep.

The Best Short Stories 2007, Edited by Salmon Rushdie

God, I’ve been reading this collection for months now. At first I whipped through a few stories and felt inspired to write short fiction again. This plot is ripped from the headlines~I can do that! This one is utterly fantastic and dreamlike~I could do that! And then some time passed, and I picked it up again, and I got depressed. I’ll never write like this. And I would have a terrible time falling asleep, feeling inadequate and trying to come up with a new goal in life. So, yeah. It’s taking a while to get through this. But the stories are great. Really.

The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits, by Lee Standiford

My father gave this to me for Christmas last year, and I figure, t’is the season. So far I’ve used it as Emergency Children are Napping the Car Far from Home reading, and when I use the pumping room at work. So I’m 50 pages in and no where near Dickens creating Scrooge McDuck.

I’m learning all kinds of interesting things about early publishing houses and author/house relationships, and am reminded that the college class I took titled something like, Dickens and Suffering in Victorian England was taught by an instructor who was way too sentimental about debtors’ prisoners and unclaimed corpses and the poverty of people who are long dead. I donno. Maybe I thought people in Africa currently dying of AIDS deserved more of our tears. This is probably why I only got a B+.

Anyway. I bet you didn’t know that Dickens  and his wife visited America for the first time in 1842, a mere four years after the first steamship trip across the Atlantic. (Imagine flying in a commercial plane only four years after the first flight. Eeek.) And, Catherine Dickens left her children behind in England with her sister. Her FOUR children, including a SEVEN month old baby. The travel + the American tour was five and half months long. Clearly there was a wet nurse involved here. Bye, kids! C-Ya! Mommy will blow you a first birthday kiss from across the ocean! 

I can’t decide if Catherine was totally crazy and negligent, or if her decision to take a near-six month vacay with Charlie was a stroke of brilliance. Hey Sweet Cheeks, want to run off to Hawaii and leave the kids with my mom till May? Not an entirely awful proposition, is it?

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore

Hadn’t heard of it until a book club pal handed it to me. Clearly missed out on a pop culture moment several years ago when this one became the talk of the town. I’m 40 pages in and really enjoying the writing, creativity, humor, and the poignant moments. I’m reading this when I nurse Patter for his afternoon nap. Vs. bedtime reading. See? Entirely different purpose/book.

And finally, some memoir about a guy who relates all of his childhood stories to movies.
I started this one in August, the weekend of the triathlon. Brought it home with me from Chicago and haven’t opened it since. It may sit a while longer.

In the next few weeks, I’ll start The House on Fortune Street, by my former graduate school prof, Margot Livesey, for my book club.

Clearly, I need to STOP THE MADNESS. Or at least not watch TV until 2010.

What’s on your night stand? Do you read one or two books at a time like most sane people, or are you on the path to insanity like me? See you there!

5 Comments

Filed under book report! book report!