I've actually been reading a bit, just not remembering to blog them afterwards. The former is probably more surprising right now.

For my class with Nancy Pearl I need to read books in multiple genres. I read my first the week before last, the mystery. I'd never read Agatha Christie so I checked Murder on the Orient Express out of the library and read it. I was actually somewhat underwhelmed but am not entirely sure why. I think part of my frustration was due to the fact that there was NO way I could have guessed the solution to the mystery. I realize that isn't the point of reading mysteries, but it still bothered me. The second genre I needed to read was science fiction so I ended up grabbing Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds off of the shelf. It was much more satisfying. I really liked the idea of a religion spread by virus (not meme, virus).

In between those two books were four others I read but failed to mention here: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories of My Melancholy Whores, Bart Kosko's Nanotime, Lee Stringer's Grand Central Winter, and Bill Barnes and Gene Ambaum's Unshelved. The Garcia Marquez book was slim and probably would offend many people (by the subject matter). I was neither offended nor overwhelmed. If you want to read him, read One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love and Other Demons instead. Nanotime was a SF novel dealing with terrorist, the Middle East, and peak oil (published before 9/11). Lee Stringer's Grand Central Winter is a memoir of his time as a homeless drug addict. Unshelved is a collection of the web comic. Wacky hijinks in a library.
posted by kristin at 10:11 PM