Book Bender(s)
Good thing I decided I wasn’t going to make any more silly vows about not buying or borrowing books before I read the ones at home, right?
From Half-Price Books, St. Louis Park. I went in looking for Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. I left with these:
Count Zero by William Gibson. Reading the Bigend trilogy made me want to go back and read everything by Gibson.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I chose this for my book group on fiction with religious and mythic themes. I have a signed HC of this, so I wanted a beater copy to re-read. )(There’s a 10th anniversary HC out this June. Ten years? I remember going to Dreamhaven to hear him read from this.)
Farmer Boy and Little Town on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Because I’m brainstorming a new summer reading project of Lizzie Skurnick’s Shelf Discovery and all the books she references in it (yeah, it’s about 70, so what?), one of which is Farmer Boy. I meant to get Little _House_ on the Prairie, since we already have Little House in the Big Woods, but got “Town” instead. Ah, well, guess I’ll just have to go shopping again. Heh.
Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself and It’s Not the End of the World by Judy Blume. Both are referenced in Shelf Discovery.
Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. His follow-up to American Gods.
Kaaterskill Falls by Allegra Goodman. Recommended to me ages ago by my friend Rock Hack. I really enjoyed the recent interview with Goodman at Bookslut, especially this:
Really good fiction operates on you more like a slow poison — in a good way. It enters your bloodstream and changes the way that you look at the world without your realizing it.
God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam. Because I _loved_ Old Filth, The Man in the Wooden Hat, and The People on Privilege Hill.
But that is not all, oh no, that is not all!
On Rue Tatin by Susan Hermann Loomis. From my mother, since my dad and sisters just returned from vacation in Normandy.
Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson. Because I like her site, 101 Cookbooks, and her other book, Super Natural Cooking.
Continuing with the wretched excess, here’s what I have out from the library:
Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Which I’m reading now because a friend said her friend recommended it over The Road. It’s future slang is difficult to wade through, but I’m loving the main character, and will persevere. I think it will pay off.
The Death of Adam by Marilynne Robinson. I wanted to read this in the wake of Gilead. Many challenging essays on a variety of literary and religious topics, I’m reading one at a time between other books. Many are a defense of Calvin and Puritanism.
Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood. Research in the wake of The Handmaid’s Tale.
Margaret Atwood: Vision and Forms ed. by Kathryn VanSpanckeren and Jan Garden Castro, and Margaret Atwood: A Biography by Natalie Cooke. Ditto above.
Younger Next Year for Women by Chris Crowley and Henry S. Lodge. Recommended by a friend in book group. Premise is that sitting tells your body to decay, moving keeps it young and strong.
The Yoga Body Diet by Kristen Schultz Dollard and Dr. John Douillard. Recommended in Yoga Journal, it sounded like a good, albeit pop-y, intro to Ayurveda. I thought I was Pitta, but am Vata instead. I’m so not a Kapha.
Oh, did you think that was all? Bwah, ha ha!
The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. Marilynne Robinson says the Puritans weren’t so bad. Margaret Atwood says they were intolerant and wanted a theocracy. Who to believe? I’m going to re-read Vowell, who I think falls more on the Robinson side of the debate.
Unwritten volume 3. An ongoing series about a Harry Potter-ish character that plays fast and loose with many layers of fiction.
Fables volume 15: Rose Red. Another of the ongoing comic-book series I read in collections, since I tend to forget things when I read them in monthly installments.
And with that, gentle readers, I am going off to nurse my wrist. WAY too many links in this one.