Sunday, July 18, 2010

What I'm Reading

Several weeks ago, I took a stack of books off my to-be-read shelf and moved them to my dresser. They were books that had sat on my shelf for about 15 years on average, and I was tired of looking at them. I wasn't even sure if I wanted to read them, but I was certain that I wanted them to be done and off my shelf. Then hopefully sent to Paperback Swap or sold on Amazon.com, where I'd end up getting more books... but hopefully ones I was actually interested in reading.

I finished the following books:
Collected Poems by H.D.
All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C.S. Lewis 1922-1927
C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences by James T. Como
The House of Seven Gables by Nathanial Hawthorne
Tibetan Meditation: Practical Teachings and Step By Step Exercises by Tarthang Tulku
several volumes of Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE by CLAMP

I'm still reading:
We the Living by Ayn Rand
A Floating Life: The Adventures of Li Po: An Historical Novel by Simon Elegant
Dreamfall by Joan D. Vinge
Collected Poems by Yevgeny Yevtsushenko
Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

Haven't yet started:
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In the American Grain by William Carlos Williams
A Perfect Vacuum by Stanislaw Lem

I feel stalled out on these books, and I really want to throw myself into some trashy fantasy or science fiction novels. Even Dreamfall, which is classic cyberpunk, feels boring right now. I really can't stand Ayn Rand, but I can't say she's a boring writer. A Floating Life should be the easiest to knock off because it's the shortest, but it has its lulls.

For the past couple months, every quiet day I can spend at home, I usually spend it reading. I'm in a phase where I want to take in as many books as I can. If I could swallow them whole or sleep with them under my pillow and soak them in that way, I would. I seek out things to read while I'm at work. I'm absolutely loving T.A. Pratt's serialized novel Broken Mirrors, the 5th book in the Marla Mason series. (I read, I donated, and you should too!) The next book I might tackle is Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. There's so much great stuff out there, but I also feel this need to take in as much as I can, regardless of quality, as long as it entertains me on some level, however slightly.

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