Arrived in the mail yesterday:
Will Self's Dr. Mukti and other Tales of Woe
posted by kristin at 2:02 PM

I've been a bad blogger..

Jasper Fforde's The Big Over Easy was his first non-Thursday Next book. It was apparently also his first book written. An enjoyable, quick read, but not as good as his others. It's a murder mystery with Humpty Dumpty as the murder victim.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood's Pashazade was also a murder mystery, this time set in near-future Egypt. Not bad, but I'm not sure I'll bother tracking down the rest of the series.

I'm not usually that much of a comics person, but I tracked down Black Widow: Homecoming because the story was written by Richard K. Morgan. It was ok, but I think I'll stick to his novels.

Nancy Pearl's More Book Lust was skimmed through (I read all of her descriptions but skimmed the lists for the most part), but will be referred to in the future.

Peter Hessler's River Town is one of those books I'll probably recommend heavily. It's a memoir of his two years spent in a town along the Yangtze in China as a Peace Corps volunteer. My reading of it was timely since a good friend of mine just left for Bangladesh in the Peace Corps. I'm sure his experience will be different, but there will probably be some similarities in the fumbling to try to live in a foreign culture.

Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife was recommended to me partially because one of the main characters is a librarian. His librarianness really isn't a huge part of the story, but it was fun to read, though sad.

I finally finished Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. I'm not even sure when I started it, but it hadn't been the sort of book that I wanted to sit down and just plow through so I read a chapter here, a few pages there. Very worth the read.
posted by kristin at 10:19 AM