Purchased last weekend in New York:
Margaret Atwood - Oryx and Crake
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red

I was very surprised at the dearth of small independent bookstores around town. I went to the Strand, because I felt I had to, but it doesn't really compare with Powells. If there's a neighborhood around that has many other bookstores, I didn't find it. I did run into the New York Antiquarian Book Fair though. Out of my price league but nice to browse.

So in the past couple of weeks, I haven't blogged, but I have kept reading. Like the rest of the series Islam for Beginners was worth the read. An introduction rather than a deep look at the history of Islam, but I feel like I learned something.

I read Underworld last weekend. Airports, airplanes, and then my friend's apartment. I left it with him so I wouldn't have to carry it home. It's big, thick, but interesting and didn't take 400 pages to get into like some books that big do. I noticed landmarks from the novel around New York as I was wandering.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene made me feel a bit like a stupid American. I don't know that I'd known the level of war going on in Vietnam before the US got involved. A short novel worth reading.

Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling was ok, but not as interesting as his earlier works. I'm not quite sure what about it bugged me, but something did, though it was quite readable. I'd read his article in Wired about Turkish Cyprus a few years back so understood some of the background. I think part of the problem I had is that I found the non-fiction article more interesting than the novel. I want the blowup plane though!

The Tummy Trilogy by Calvin Trillin is a book (well 3 combined really) of essays about eating and travel. In that order. He's food obsessed and I mean that in a good way.
posted by kristin at 1:16 PM