*** September - What are you reading?

September: the start of the brrrr months. Will you be transitioning to more seasonally appropriate books or continue on with a half-hazard manner of reading?

I will be finishing up Dumas' Le comte de Bragelonne and then will probably start reading shorter books as I tend to do when the brrr months show up.

"brrrr" means below 100F, right? Not yet for me. Maybe tomorrow, they say. I'm tired of reading by lamplight in the middle of the day because raising the shades lets in too much heat.

I haven't had much reading time lately. I'm slowly enjoying Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano. I'm now into the "other writings" part of Confessions of an English Opium Eater and Other Writings by Thomas de Quincey, and my current ebook is Phantastes by George MacDonald.

Yep, it's definitely far from brrr here in Philadelphia; steamy would be more like it.

I'm off from work for the first half of the month, so I'll continue reading the remainder of the Booker Prize longlist; I've completed seven of the 13 novels so far. The last book I finished in August was The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, which was 832 pages in length and is my favorite longlisted book to date, and yesterday I started The Kills by Richard House, which clocks in at just over 1000 pages.

Today I'll start The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History by Molly Caldwell Crosby. I bought this in 2007, and I was inspired to read it after I visited a public cemetery in New Orleans last month, which included several mausoleums of people who died of yellow fever in the city's 19th and early 20th century epidemics.

I'll also start reading District and Circle, a recent poetry collection by Seamus Heaney, who died earlier this week.

I started No Ordinary Time by Doris Kearns Goodwin a couple of days ago, and also need something on the kindle, so picked something totally different Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. I hope to finish the audio version of C.J. Sansom's Sovereign sometime this week. I haven't been alone in the car enough, so still have about a third of it to go.

September is my favourite month in Vancouver-- more "Nirvana" than "brrr" although I do welcome those first weeks of autumn when the air gets crisp and all the smells change. But that will come in October. For now I'll enjoy the mellow end of summer.

I'm reading the critically acclaimed Conceit by Mary Novik. It's historical fiction based on the poet John Donne. It's very well written but for some reason I'm struggling a little bit. It may be that the 17th century is just not that interesting to me.

I was almost finished with Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life but I lost it somewhere in the house! So I started Paul and Ken Kendrick's Douglass and Lincoln again.

I've started the latest by Amos Oz - Between Friends. It's a collection of short stories all set on the same kibbutz in the late 1950s. Very similar to where he started out with Where The Jackals Howl, his first book published in 1965 which I loved.

Carrying on with those classics of Science fiction I am reading Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon first published in 1937.

I'm finding The Laughing Man hard to put down, and very slowly reading Breaking the Maya Code.

For some time now I have had a hard time bringing myself to open a book for a long read. I am near the back end of The Mystery of Existence which I've taken in a bit at a time and which I have just not picked up to finish despite my respect for the book. Two nights from now our book group will discuss The Garden of the Evening Mists. I read a hundred pages happily. Then I had a hard time picking it up again, not for disliking it but for some more general reluctance. So I forced myself to pick it up last night; then fifty pages went down easily.

I wish I knew what was happening.

Robert

10 -
I've had that happen a lot. Eventually I just have to force myself, reminding myself that I do actually enjoy reading. I wish I knew of a cure though.

Also looking for a cure for how to stop getting to the end of a really long book and then not reading the last 50 pages even when I love the book.

That's just perverse lilisin

Yeah, not much brrrr yet in New Mexico, either!

I started off the month with the fun and frequently fascinating Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic by Elizabeth Little, and am now reading The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente. I've been looking forward to that one for a while, since I loved The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making so much, and it is not disappointing me. Next up should be The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. I think this is shaping up to be the month of books with long, strange and interesting titles. :)

I am starting Limassol by Yishai Sarid. It's a book club choice.

I finished Penman's Time and Chance and started The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox. I'm also reading an ER book about Benjamin Britten.

I will be interested to hear about your experience reading The Female Quixote, which I originally planned reading last year (but it did not happen).

Also curious about the book about Britten. Biography or music?

I am starting L'homme revolte or to give it its English title: The Rebel an Essay on Man in Revolt by Albert Camus.

Indecisive about what to read next, but today I started Religion & the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. Dewald reviewed this in January and I had added to my wishlist, but, admittedly, I had forgotten that when I recently requested it from the library.

Am now reading 1948: A Soldier's Tale by Uri Avnery.

Dan, I added that to my wishlist too after Dewald recommended it, and it's sitting on my TBR. Maybe I'll pick it up when I finish Breaking the Maya Code.

I just read and reviewed The Laughing Man by Victor Hugo, which I found compelling and horrifying, although I didn't love it as much as I loved Toilers of the Sea.

>16 edwinbcn: The Female Quixote is amusing and reading fairly easily so far. The Britten book is a biography. It's interesting because it was written by a non-musician, Neil Powell. He does a lot of comparing to literature trends of the time and not as much in depth musical analysis. I'm only about a quarter of the way in and I'm liking but not loving it. We'll see.

I have started to read Frankenstein: Norton critical edition by Mary Shelley. I particularly wanted to read the Norton critical edition for its background and contextual information. Brian W Aldiss claims that this is the first novel that can be called science fiction and so I am interested in the critical reviews at the time of it's publication.

I have also downloaded to my Kindle Ayesha, the return of She by H Rider Haggard.

I'm still reading In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century by Geert Mak. It's fantastic, but I keep having to pause to think about it for a while. I think baswood recommended this one, but I can't remember.

I'm also almost finished with The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson, which won last year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and I'll have an opinion on it (hopefully) when I've finished it.

I've just finished and reviewed Alain Mabanckou's clever and understanding Broken Glass, and Abdellatif Laâbi's harrowing but moving and poetic memoir about his return from prison and his prison experiences, Rue du Retour.

Now I've finished the somewhat disappointing 419 by Will Ferguson, a not so exciting thriller with a lot of social commentary.

#26 - I'm disappointed that people aren't reacting to 419 better--it sounds like such a great premise. We considered it as a read for our book club this year, and the one person who read it dissuaded us. She said it was an interesting book that wasn't very well written. Too bad--I've liked the non-fiction and magazine articles I've read by the author.

He is a good writer, and it is an interesting premise, but I think he was trying to do more than he really could.

Last night I read the first quarter of Einstein's Mistakes by Hans C. Ohanian to supplement the reading for a discussion in the 75 books group. So far it is not very well written, and it has gratuitous polemical assertions, but it also has some information value, so I will continue.

Robert

I'm reading The Trial by Franz Kafka. Soon I will know what people mean when they say a book is "Kafka-esque" in a review.

Finished Utopia by Thomas More and couldn't resist immediately starting another similar work, The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella.

I recently finished Hen's Teeth and Horses Toes by Stephen Jay Gould, a collection of his essays on evolutionary biology and related subjects. Now reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, the most recent book in her Miles Vorkosigan series (although it's not about Miles). Next up is I'm Your Man by Sylvie Simmons, a biography of Leonard Cohen.

StevenTX, no reviews yet of The City of the Sun, hope yours is going to be the first.

I'm currently reading Children of God by Mary Doria Russell. It's the sequel to one of my favorite novels, The Sparrow. Pretty good so far!

Marion

I recently finished and reviewed Red Spectres: Russian Gothic Tales from the Twentieth Century, which was mildly interesting but basically not my cup of tea, and the utterly fascinate Breaking the Maya Code, by Michael D. Coe.

I have started Tono-Bungay by H G Wells and I have got to finish it for my book club meet on Friday.

Just finished the last volume of Le vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas and I am still basking in its glory.

I'm reading The Execution of Noa P. Singleton by Elizabeth L. Silver and I am not understanding the love this book has gotten from reviewers.

I know several people at ClubRead are interested in reading Russian classics. Just thought I'd point out this edition of Chekhov, Gorky, etc.

Looks like a winner, Joyce!

I just finished and reviewed the absolutely fascinating Onitsha by J.M.G. Le Clezio, and I'm still thinking about it!

I read the first 74 pages of Boomer last night. Although the setting of railroad operations is essential to it, it is not as much about them, in fact is not clear about them, as I had expected. It is, however and so far, about the railroad life. It is very engaging; I went to sleep because of the time, not because I was done reading.

I am, I take from some other recent reading, a railfan, not a railroader, and the author Linda Niemann is a bonafide railroader. It is said that a railfan is interested in the locomotives while a railroader is interested in what's behind the locomotive. I am not avidly uninterested in what's behind the locomotive, but you can tell from the pictures on my thread that locomotives turn my head.

Robert

I just finished a new favorite, The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Now I'm starting The Secret History by Donna Tartt and I'm inching my way through Britten: A Life for Music which I am not loving yet.

And now I've finished L'Amour by Marguerite Duras, a strange and mystifying, yet poetic, novella.

I have had to put Virginia Woolf's Night and Day aside yet again, and am now half-way through the long, dense and very detailed The Children's Book, by AS Byatt. I'm really enjoying it, and prefer it to her masterpiece, Possession.

Banned Books Week begins today. The only banned/challenged book I currently have in my TBRs is Catcher in the Rye, a re-read, so I choose it.

# 46 - I usually like to read a banned book during this annual event, but I'm not sure if I have anything worthwhile left in my TBR pile. Last year I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I thought deserved to be banned due to its bad writing and manipulative style. It was written with the specific goal that it wanted the publicity of being banned: I'll talk about (insert controversial subject) and (second controversial subject) and then have my character commit a controversial act. All while on drugs and having abortions. Blech! Not all banned books are worth reading.

Back in high school and university, I worked in a mall bookstore. The banned book display was always something that made the managers nervous -- we even had to take it down early one year because someone complained. One year an older man in Levis, large belt buckle and cowboy hat came in and belligerently wanted to talk about banned books. It turned into a lecture to us, as women, to never move to Texas, because he didn't think that women were fairly treated in the Lone Star state. That week was always good for discussion and I had a pretty good spiel for calming down those customers who felt it was an attack on their values.

I had a pretty good spiel for calming down those customers who felt it was an attack on their values.

Does that mean their values included telling other people what they can read? How are their values threatened if their neighbour reads The Color Purple, or their child reads Beloved? I just don't get it. If you have time, I'd love to hear your spiel.

I'll have to check out that list of banned books and see which I have. Thanks for posting the link, MJ.

In the meantime, I've read two new books: Still Midnight by Denise Mina, thanks to your recommendation, RidgewayGirl, and my third book by Alain Mabanckou, Blue White Red.

Joyce, as this was back in the late eighties, early nineties and the people who were willing to be offended by the display were invariably older, I'd talk about how Communists banned the Bible. Worked every time, or at least deflected them into a sort of nostalgic outrage at those godless commies.

...never move to Texas, because he didn't think that women were fairly treated in the Lone Star state.

Smart man.

#51 - Ha ha. That's good. Those terrible commies.

Sometime back, I believe when it was offered as some kind of deal of the day, I bought Hiking Through by Paul V. Stutzman (there are two editions of this book on LibraryThing; I've asked Combiners to combine them) for my Nook. I'm reading a thematic triad now, Boomer, this one at the moment, and next Wild, the last for discussion at my book group in October, all on the theme of big personal transformation. Hiking Through seems a little fluffy on important subjects, but it seems also to be readable.

Reading on a Nook is a different experience for me. I mostly use my Nook to play Bejewelled and to check a couple of web pages when I'm away from my computer.

Robert

I finished Hiking Through (impressed, but realizing that the author's religiosity is not for everybody) and almost immediately picked up Wild by Cheryl Strayed. So far she's a better writer and a much worse outdoorsperson. I think that I am happy that I took on these three books together.

Robert

Still reading Religion & the Decline of Magic, but it's going slow. I read only about ten pages in a sitting. So, my interest in wandering and i'm also reading A Theory of Flight by Andrew X. Pham (a random memoir of sorts, not recommended), Vermilion Sea : A Naturalist's Journey in Baja California by John Janovy, Jr. (a memoir of a student field trip. There are some interesting parts...here and there.) and trying to convince myself to read more of the bible, not going well. And I'm listening to The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David G. McCullough - which started out dull, but listenable to. But it's turned into an odd and very entertaining oblique and American history of Paris in the 19th-century.

I forgot one book...I'm also reading Cuba: Poems by Ricardo Pau-Llosa, which I'm enjoying, although I'm reading only a poem or two a day.

Just finished another seminal work of science fiction and the earliest published, perhaps, by a woman author: The Blazing World (1666) by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.

Just finished The Secret History and now on to To the Lighthouse after loving Mrs. Dalloway last year.

Just finished listening to One Step Behind by Henning Mankell, and reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn.

I will start Regeneration by Pat Barker today.

I just finished Midnight in Peking: How the Murder of a Young Englishwoman Haunted the Last Days of Old China, which I found well written and moderately interesting, but definitely annoying.

I finished Douglass and Lincoln yesterday morning and started Unclay by T.S. Powys last night.

I am reading Trillion Year spree: The History of Science Fiction by Brian W Aldiss

I've recently finished The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfeld, and my most recent ER book, SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future by Richard Martin. Next up is Redshirts by John Scalzi, which looks to be a lot of fun.