Saturday, May 16, 2009

Summer reading

So I forget how much I enjoy reading while I'm not doing it. In fact, if you had asked me a few weeks ago if I liked to read, I probably would have told you no. This did not stop me during the last week of classes last semester to read through 1600 pages of Fabelhaven when I should have been writing papers and preparing for finals. (They are really good, by they way. I give them a hearty recommendation.)

Now that summer is here, and I haven't made dozens of friends yet. I find reading one of my leisure activities of choice. So far I've read "The Last Lecture" and "Outliers." I think that they both got a lot more hype than they deserved, but each his'er own.

Today I went to the bookstore to get a copy of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" for my summer book club. It was going to be a quick run: rush in, grab it, and rush out. (And pay for it somewhere in there too I suppose.) The problem is that I'm a bookstore junky, and The Coop in Cambridge is one of the more beautiful bookstores that I've seen. So I took some time to wander through the shelves.

In short, I discovered that the next "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" book came out a few weeks ago. I was really excited, so I left with 2 books instead of one. Oh well. I'm really excited for it though. (That whole series also gets a hearty recommendation.)

I'm game for other people's recommendations too. I sort of think that I want to read Julia Child's autobiography, but that is the only one that comes immediately to mind as I sit here.

3 comments:

jaks said...

I totally empathize.

I feel like I've read through most of the interesting-looking books I have at home, so I am now making my way through the Mormon romances. This indicates slight desperation. I only recommend those on special request.

For a real novel, my favorite of my life thus far is probably "Portrait of a Lady" by Henry James. As far as fantasy goes, I really like the Dragons series by Patricia C. Wrede, and everything I've read by Diana Wynne Jones. Also OSC's Ender and Bean parallel series are awesommme. And Ayn Rand is fantastic (political novel/fiction, and she's Russian!) but is also a modern-day Korihor, so if you go that route keep that in mind :)

Um I like all these books/authors a lot. Having never heard of any of the books you mentioned except Fablehaven, I figured I'd cover several genres.

Crolace said...

The Julia Child book is quite good.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence totally rocked my world.

If you haven't read Guns, Germs and Steel, I think you'd like it. It's a non-racist look at why some civilizations have advanced further than others.

The grammar-lover book I recommended to you the other day was Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog. It's about diagramming sentences.

Amy said...

If you want a good hippie book I highly recommend "Ishmael". It's about a talking gorilla who tells you how to save the planet. Pretty amazing stuff...