Tag: Gabriel Garcia Marquez

August 2013

Stuff I’ve Been Reading

  1. Murder Must Advertise by Sayers, Dorothy L.
  2. Black Glass by Fowler, Karen Joy
  3. The Southern Gates of Arabia by Stark, Freya
  4. The Nine Tailors by Sayers, Dorothy L.
  5. World Made By Hand by Kunstler, James Howard
  6. Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Garcia Marquez, Gabriel
  7. An Artist of the Floating World by Ishiguro, Kazuo
  8. The Winter Prince by Wein, Elizabeth
  9. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Doyle, Arthur Conan*
  10. Unnatural Death by Sayers, Dorothy L.
  11. The Night Circus by Morgenstern, Erin
  12. Clouds of Witness by Sayers, Dorothy L.
  13. Zoo Station by Downing, David

Italics indicate library books, asterisks indicate audiobooks, and I did not finish reading number three.

It seems to have been a month of mysteries. I confess: I read four Lord Peter Wimsey novels and a John Russell thriller. The other books on the list, while very good, especially The Night Circus, were judiciously inserted between Sayers novels chiefly so that I didn’t gobble up the entire series in a month.

As I’m still reading through the stack of books I bought at the library sale or was given by my parents, I only read three library books this month. Nor do I expect that number particularly to rise during September, when I plan to reread Megan Whalen Turner’s four-book series about Eugenides, and at least two more Sayers books. I will probably also tackle Legend by Marie Lu, and, if it’s as good as I hope, I will want to read the sequel Prodigy right away. So that’s eight books already on the agenda for September, to say nothing of Blood of Tyrants by Naomi Novik, book eight of the Temeraire series, which I have just picked up from the library (where I have three more books on hold, eek).

Plus, September is the month of my birthday, and I anticipate gifts of books, book money, gift cards for books, or, if all else fails, self-indulgent book-buying (Shift and Dust by Hugh Howey, I’m looking at you).

I am a bibliophile, I am a bibliophile, I am a bibliophile. There are too few waking hours in the year to read all I wish to read. The end.

WWW Wed Aug 14

WWW Wednesdays

What are you currently reading?

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I have read the first two pages–the novella has only 113 more–I have the morning to myself–and this slim book will probably soon graduate to recently finished. The average person reads 300 words a minute (very roughly, a page a minute); I read at least twice that (2-3 pages a minute, depending on the type of book). So I have a pleasant hour of reading before me.

What did you recently finish reading?

World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler. After the bombing of the capital and the death of electricity, the New York small town of Union Grove decayed into a complacent status of getting by. But when Robert Earle, a former executive turned carpenter, witnesses a murder; and when a new religious group comes to town; and when lawlessness comes too near their homes–Robert decides to shake off his lethargy and get things done. A literary fiction novel tracing the changes in the town and in Robert, this book keeps company with The Dog Stars by Peter Heller, another well-crafted novel about what happens afterwards and who will survive.

What do you think you’ll read next?

While I am waiting for a package from Powell’s in Portland, courtesy of my parents who traveled there, I will busy myself with more of my recent acquisitions. Having finished all my Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries (one of which I actually solved) and having abandoned Freya Stark’s travelogue halfway through, I can choose from two Kazuo Ishiguro books and a handful of new-to-me authors.

Recent Acquisitions

Here is a list of some of the books I have recently acquired, one set through trips to Half Price Books and to Recycled, the other via the gigantic Plano Friends of the Library book sale. This is probably more money than I have spent on books all year; even so, I am proud of my economy.

  • Four Dorothy L. Sayers novels: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, Five Red Herrings, Murder Must Advertise, and The Nine Tailors ($2 each)
  • The Southern Gates of Arabia by Freya Stark, a travelogue from the 1930s ($1)
  • Two Kazuo Ishiguro novels, the last two of his I haven’t read: A Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating World ($1 each)
  • Katherine by Anya Seton, a historical novel set in the 14th century ($1)
  • Pavane by Keith Roberts, an alternate-history steampunk novel ($1)
  • World Made by Hand by James Howard Kunstler, an alternate-history no-electricity novel set in a small town in New York ($2)
  • Karma and Other Stories by Rishi Reddi, a short-story collection by a new-to-me-author who has been published in Best American Short Stories ($1)
  • Memories of my Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a novella by the master of the novella ($1)
  • Galileo’s Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson, in which Galileo gets kidnapped by someone from the far future ($8)

For a Grand Total of $25, I am now thirteen books richer. That’s at least a month’s worth of reading for less than a dollar a day. Which is what I call a Win.