August 2009

Here is my monthly “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” post.  If I were truly dedicated to blogging and reviews, I’d write a litte blurb about each one, but…

• With Lawrence in Arabia by Lowell Thomas
• The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
• The Eye of the Heron by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, “Fifth Day” to “Postscript”
• The Soloist by Mark Salzman, to page 156
• Genesis by Bernard Beckett
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
• Home by Marilynne Robinson
• The Gospel of Judas by Simon Mawer, to page 72
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
• Snow by Orhan Pamuk
• Straight Man by Richard Russo
• Borges on Writing edited by di Giovanni, Halpern, Macshane
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link

Disregarding my two half-finished books, I maintained my thirteen book standard (and some of them were impressively long, too).  You see far fewer rereads this month than usual – only one and a half, actually – so I feel as though I’ve covered a lot of ground.  Aside from The Name of the Rose, which is always excellent, my favorite book this month was Genesis.  And aside from the two books I abandoned, my least favorite was The Sheltering Sky, which I almost left for dead along with the others.  Snow and Home were both excellent, as was Straight Man, surprisingly, but in a vastly different way than the other two.  And then I took in some Hemingway and Austen, and naturally UKL.  I’m not sure whether a whole month has gone by without her.  If so, it was a sad month.

Starting next month, however, you will begin to see some textbooks; for instance, I am halfway through Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs – something I would not have chosen for pleasure.  Something I would distinctly not have chosen for pleasure.  Ah well.