bramble

i am going to get all literary, and go out to hear an author (colum mccann) read later. i have not read his book. i have not read any of his books, actually. and i hadn't heard of him until last week. but, he's reading at the b&n at union square, and i'm free, so. when i was reading about his book, the synopsis reminded me a bit of if nobody speaks of remarkable things which is one of my favorite books of all time. colum mccann is irish (surprise) though now a new yorker. i'm sure i won't mind listening to him read from his book, let the great world spin, even if it turns out to be not very good.

and it means i won't be sitting in the house, which is something i'm trying to avoid doing too much of during my break.

i was unforgivably appalling in the reading department this year.

10. extremely loud and incredibly close, jonathan safran foer

this was an unsolicited loan from my social worker friend at work. once i started reading it, i understood why she lent it to me. though i wasn't much for the backstory that went back two generations, i liked the main narrator, a boy whose father was killed during 9/11. i liked his obsessive nature, the way he thought, and suchlike. and generally speaking, i liked the writer's style. will i read anything else of his? don't know. everything is illuminated doesn't look like a book i'd be interested in, but i'm curious to see how the writer did with it. we'll see.

11. the good fairies of new york, martin millar

neil gaiman mentioned this in his journal some months ago, and he had written the forward for its reprinting. it finally came out here, so i decided to give it a go. it is, as the title suggests, about fairies showing up in nyc. the book is ridiculous. and ridiculously funny. the writing is very straightforward narrative, almost too much so, but there are just bits of hysteria strewn throughout. i enjoyed its silliness, and passed it on to my friend marc to read.

-=-=-

i'm currently in the middle of when i was five i killed myself, which is told from the POV of a boy in the quiet room of a mental health facility.

waiting in the wings to be read because they were lent to me:

running with scissors, augusten burroughs
the road, cormac mccarthy (it was handed to me and i was instructed, "don't read this.")
the people of paper, salvador plascencia, which i'm told i'll love
special topics in calamity physics, marisha pessl

and then i have a few hundred of my own books waiting to be read, plus about ten that were recently given to me as gifts. i'd better do better than 11 in 2007. for crying out loud, i read 47 in 2004.


( thus far... )