november!

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Tuesday, November 08, 2011


This is what it looked like when I was walking into work this morning. The figure up ahead is the youth librarian, returning from her lunch. [EDIT: it was 2PM! where is my head?]

What are you reading? I have a bunch of things lined up, and have read a bunch of really fun things just recently (more on those in future), but right this very moment I am reading two things:

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: I'm almost half way through and have to read the rest of this tomorrow or, you know, pay late fees (which I will do). This was a slow start for me, but it's probably because I didn't sit down and read 50 pages at once to get right into it.  The book is like a YA picture book with creepy photos, which is FUN, but I'm having some trouble with the voice of the narrator  -  it's supposed to be 1st person 16 y.o. boy, but there's a lot of description and that description is very evocative, but...writerly. Although I think I may have just figured out a way to read further without going "I doubt very much he would have described the light as 'gauzy'!" Maybe this story is being told in retrospect by a former 16 year old who is now a writer and therefore prone to describing things as gauzy or "leaving a trail of parenthetical scars on the floor." I'll let you know!

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table: This is for my non-fiction book group  - it's a series of essays about food and family followed by a recipe. Every single recipe has made me hungry and the writing is really lovely.


4 comments on "november!"
  1. I really wanted to be excited about Miss Peregrine's (which I accidentally voted for on Goodreads as best of 2011, damn precarious internet vote-clicking), but, like you, it was lackluster in a way I couldn't pin down. You may have it with the voice.

    I usually have a stack of books built up over years, for which I wish I had more time.

    But I'm going to read Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, The Meaning of Night by Michael Cox, and I want to fit in Megan Abbott's The End of Everything and another Graham Greene novel, probably Brighton Rock.

    ReplyDelete
  2. MP: I saw your vote on Goodreads! I was going to take my copy back to the library and read it later after my current to-read list, but I thought dang, if it's the best book of 2011 maybe I should read it now! ha ha ha. I'm liking it but not loving it, mostly for the reasons stated above and also because I have a feeling it's being set up as a series and is there any book that just ENDS anymore? or do they all have to be set up into potential trilogy/movie/video game JUGGERNAUT?

    Your reading list sounds good and crime-y. I seem to be on a fantasy(ish) kick, which certainly wasn't what I expected when the year began!

    ReplyDelete
  3. About November~~too dark! Summer was truncated--on both ends! I have loved the sunshine of the past 3 days--nothing but rain rain rain ahead. Don't get me wrong--don't hate the rain. Just missing the light!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Look on the bright side, Patty - we might get SNOW this week....

    yeah, I know.

    ReplyDelete

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