Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Whatcha readin'?

I installed this nifty widget on my sidebar that shows what I'm reading. It comes from librarything.com, which is a great site; the blog widget's a tiny fraction of what it does.

Seems I can't read just one book at a time. My book groups read things monthly, and I always have longer-term or additional reads going too. So the list will change every few weeks, and maybe I'll post more about books than I have been, or maybe I won't.

Sometimes I don't have much to say about 'em. For instance, I recently finished The Sea, by John Banville, and although he's obviously a very good writer, and there is rich vocabulary and a certain intriguing rhythm to this novel, its characters are vile and/or inaccessible, so the book left me feeling appreciation but also a sort of distaste. Hardly a wholehearted recommendation. Yet it won the Booker prize, so what the heck do I know.

At any rate you can expect that George Washington bio to be weighing down my "currently reading" list for the next decade or so. After I read David McCullough's John Adams, which was wonderful, I was so enthralled with the joy and virtue (!) of reading Presidential biography that I made an informal vow to read one a year, starting with Washington's. And... that was probably 5 years ago now. The biography of Washington that I chose is a miserable slog compared to John Adams. I am too stubborn to quit it and get a more readable one, too easily distracted from it to ever get through the dang thing.

Do you like to read? What's in your stack?

4 comments:

  1. Currently, I'm having a real problem finding books. It's partly being in Norway, and partly because I don't really have the time to immerse myself in a book. Two pages every night is just not enough.

    So I'll look at your list and get inspired. The Helen Boyd book looks really interesting...is it? That's a subject I don't really know anything about.

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  2. Ditch Washington so that you can read the great new biography of Jefferson.

    Is there an enthralling biography of Millard Fillmore? Do let us know when you get there.

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  3. Hi Heidi! Yes, Helen Boyd's book is very interesting. She has certainly thought about gender more than most people ever do. It's something most folks take for granted -- you're either female or you're male, right? Turns out things aren't nearly so clear for a lot of people. Transgenderedness is just beginning to get any kind of public understanding, and transgendered people can have a really tough row to hoe.

    Mrs. T, I am *this* close to tossing that Washington book and reading a children's bio of him instead, just to get to the Jefferson one.

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  4. I just finished Little Children by Tom Perrotta (sp?); I'm currently reading The Alienist by Caleb Carr; next is Elizabeth & Leicester by Elizabeth Jenkins.

    The children HATE it when I read anything that I am not reading aloud to them, so reading is not easily done in my household. :-(

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