Today's booksale purchases:
Rita Mae Brown - Claws and Effect
Nicholas Negroponte - Being Digital
Larry McMurtry - Lonesome Dove
Studs Terkel - American Dreams: Lost & Found
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - August 1914
Peter D. Kramer - Listening to Prozac
Cathy N. Davidson - Reading in America
Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice - Promised Land
New York Review of Books Anthologoy
John Varley - Demon
John Varley - Wizard
James Morrow - The Wine of Violence (already have it but figure I'll give it
to someone random to read)

posted by kristin at 2:54 PM

I'm still working on Corelli's Mandolin but got sidetracked by several library books and a Nick Bantock book.

I read the 8th volume of Bone, which was not, as I'd mistakenly thought, the final volume. Now I have to wait for volume 9 to come out. Then I read Orient Gateway by Vittorio Giardino which I'd checked out of the library, but found less interesting than I'd hoped. The Morning Star seems to wrap up the second series of Griffin & Sabine (and Matthew & Isabelle) stories by Nick Bantock. Murder Mysteries by Neil Gaiman & P. Craig Russell was nicely done.

Over the weekend I finished up Ken Grimwood's Into the Deep. It wasn't as good as Remake, but I enjoyed it. Lots of (wild?) speculation about dolphin communication.

Saturday's expedition to the library booksale cost a whopping $15. I ended up with:
The Best American Essays 1996
The Best American Essays 1994
Beyond the Curve by Kobo Abe
More Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
Sleepwalking Through History by Haynes Johnson
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann
Wanderings by Chaim Potok

I went back today and spent another $4.60 but I haven't unpacked the books so they'll have to come later.
posted by kristin at 1:44 PM

I enjoyed Black Projects, White Knights but don't know if I'd recommend it to someone who hadn't read her novels. The stories made a lot more sense since I knew what the immortals were.

Yesterday I tore through the library's copy of The Education of Robert Nifkin by Daniel Pinkwater. This is a book that should be handed to every single high school freshman you know. I wish I'd discovered him when I was younger, though perhaps I'd have ended up even stranger than I did.

Now working on Louis de Bernieres' Captain Corelli's Mandolin.
posted by kristin at 11:02 AM

Monstrous Regiment was, as predicted, a quick read. I enjoyed it, but didn't think it was quite as good as Night Watch or The Thief of Time. Lots of new characters though (unless I missed something again reading them out of order).

I'm now working on Kage Baker's Black Projects, White Knights. Some of the stories I've already read after having bought them on fictionwise, but that's ok. I haven't picked up her latest yet, but from what I read it's not a Company novel, instead, I think, fantasy.
posted by kristin at 2:03 PM

I finally finished Quicksilver on Tuesday night. It was a bit of a frustrating read in a sense. The first half took me over 2 weeks. The second half I read in two nights. I really have no idea how it got so much more compelling, though I think I wrote down fewer words I didn't know in the second half. I did quite enjoy it and am looking forward to the sequel. I won't tell what happens at the end, but will just say that in a sense it was one of his better endings, since it doesn't pretend to wrap everything up.

I started Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment last night. A nice light change of pace.

New books that have arrived one way or another in my collection recently:
The Middle Mind by Curtis White (directly from the publisher)
Paingod by Harlan Ellison (library sale shelf)
Shade's Children by Garth Nix (ditto)
Thought Contagion by Aaron Lynch (ditto)
posted by kristin at 1:06 PM

Still working on Quicksilver....

I went to B&N today though and finally used the gift certificate my parents had sent me last week for my birthday. I walked away with:
Endless Nights by Neil Gaiman
The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage
Tea: Addiction, Exploitation and Empire by Roy Moxham
Women of Sand and Myrrh by Hanan al-Shaykh
posted by kristin at 9:47 PM

Last week I finished a few books I never posted about. Persepolis is a really nice comic book about a girl growing up in Iran. Apparently she's working on a sequel, which I'll have to buy. Volume 6 of Bone was well worth reading as well. Futurama-O-Rama by Matt Groening was ok, but not as good as some of the other comics I've read recently. A friend who works at a comic book company had given it to me though, which I appreciated. On the way to the airport Thursday I finished Ian McEwan's The Innocent. I can't quite decide what I thought of it. It was well-enough written, but never entirely grabbed me. The one gruesome scene in the middle happened to hit right as I was eating, which didn't help.
posted by kristin at 12:20 PM

Purchased over the weekend:
Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler
Islam in the World by Malise Ruthven
(I really like Wessex Books in Menlo Park)
Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis
Overtime by Tom Holt
posted by kristin at 12:16 PM

Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is taking me awhile. I'm enjoying it though. It's fully historical but has the same sorts of weird little tangents that his other books have. (I highly doubt Captain Crunch will come up in this one though).

I bought several books over the weekend in SF, but I need to unpack before I post about them since I don't remember what all I bought. Last week, I do remember, I received Pratchett's latest, Monstrous Regiment as a gift from a friend that obviously knows me well. It's probably next in line.
posted by kristin at 11:39 AM