Here’s the sequel to yesterday’s Stuff I’ve Been Reading. But I’m frustrated about it for two reasons: One, I can’t figure out how to make the numbering show nine through seventeen, and I don’t want to retype everything, and Two, when I copied and pasted from my Word document, WordPress retained the Times New Roman font, which it never does. So since I’m impatient and irritated because I have a sore throat and my brain is foggy on cold medicine, you get the wrong numbers and the wrong font. Sorry.
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Something Rotten by Jasper Fforde. Thursday Next #4 is just as hilarious as ever, especially because it includes Hamlet and Friday, Thursday’s infant son. (9)
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The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (50%). I was surprised by how little I could tolerate the stream of consciousness narration and inane dialogue, the strange conspiracy paranoia. (2)
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Jingo by Terry Pratchett. Pratchett = Happiness. (10)
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Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion. A former post discusses this early science fiction at greater length, but if you are looking for a book with exciting narrative, Flammarion will disappoint you. (4)
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Old Filth by Jane Gardam. I found the original receipt in this book–it was on my list of longtime Unread Books–I’d owned it since October 2009. Fortunately, I had pretty good taste during that month, because Gardam’s contemplative novel about a retired lawyer was well-written and insightful. (7)
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The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi. Sequel to Old Man’s War, this deals indirectly with the characters from the first book, but can stand on its own. (8) [Why has the font changed again! WordPress, you are not my friend right now.]
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Shopgirl by Steve Martin. Don’t read this if you’re sad and lonely, because it’s a melancholy book under its guise of glamorous California living. (8)
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Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin. A mammoth work of magical realism, this novel does not bother to explain everything that happens, but the beautiful prose will carry you along so well that you have hardly any time to stop to wonder how, for instance, the horse has begun to fly. (7)
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The Invisible Man by H. G. Wells. For my science fiction class. Wells’s classic was a lot more comic than I expected. I intend to write about this book at greater length tomorrow. (6)
Most enjoyable book: The Broken Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin
Longest book: A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, with Helprin’s Winter’s Tale a close second
Shortest book: Shopgirl by Steve Martin, with The Invisible Man a close second
Number of official Unread Books read: Ten
Number of rereads: One
Number of tissues used while writing this post: Six
Now I think I will have a nap.
Mostly About Books 