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.
Mostly About Books 