June 2010

Stuff I’ve Been Reading – in June

1. Pointed Roofs by Dorothy Richardson (20%).  I began reading this text that my professor had eliminated from the Modern British Fiction syllabus due to time constraints and, after the first couple paragraphs, understood why it was expendable.
2. Slam by Nick Hornby.  My husband and I, Hornby fans, read this book aloud in the car.  We decided we liked some of his other books (High Fidelity, A Long Way Down) a bit better; but all the things we like about him, we still like.
3. The Ape Who Guards the Balance by Elizabeth Peters.  By this time, book ten of the Amelia Peabody series, things are really starting to drag.  I began entertaining ideas of abandoning the series.
4. Tinkers by Paul Harding.  Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, 2010.  It was terribly short and felt more like an extended character sketch than a novel.  The writing was lovely, but I didn’t much like it.
5. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri.  I mistakenly read this book believing that I was shortly to review it for the American Literary Review blog; but I ought to have read Interpreter of Maladies instead.
6. The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope.  Whenever I get my act together, I’ll be writing a conference paper about this book.
7. The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope.  And since this was Pope’s only other novel, I read it too for good measure.
8. All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.  This first book in the Border Trilogy has nearly persuaded me to change my class schedule for next semester; it isn’t looking too fun to spend two months reading eight McCarthy novels.
9. The Man Who Made Friends With Himself by Christopher Morley (30%).  Despite coming highly recommended, I disliked the narrator’s pithy flights of fancy and plotless wanderings.
10. Stories edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio.  Yes.  I squealed when I saw this on the shelf.  It did not disappoint me.
11. Postsecret compiled by Frank Warren.  This, believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, will be a secondary textbook for the college writing class I’ll be teaching in the fall.
12. The Falcon at the Portal by Elizabeth Peters.  I continue to stagger through book eleven.
13. Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  The most eloquent book of the month by far, this memoir of a French pilot’s experiences delivering the mails during the 1930s is a tremendous tale of adventure and philosophy.
14. He Shall Thunder in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters.  And I decide to stop at an even dozen.  No more Peabody.
15. The Final Solution by Michael Chabon.  I wonder who the old man who keeps bees and solves mysteries could be?
16. Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis.  A retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the perspective of Orual, Psyche’s sister, Lewis’s novel is one of the most underappreciated retold tales.  It remains one of my ten favorite books.