...because I can never have enough books...
Time for a trivial post.
I've rejoined the Quality Paperback Book Club: my initial shipment just arrived, and now I'm completely torn as to what I should read first. I just started a very long, involved space opera called PANDORA'S STAR by Peter F. Hamilton, bought during a book run last week.
(Why'd you buy books last week, if you knew you had more coming this week, hmmm?)
Shut up, voice in my head.
(No, really, it's like buying stuff for yourself on the twentieth of December. What were you thinking?)
I was thinking, if you really must know, that my initial QPB order might not show for another two or even three weeks. I could always cycle back through things I'd already read, of course, but a detailed survey of the library upstairs left me feeling like I'd just read everything in it. I could go to the library--I have, actually--but everything I'm itching to read has so many holds on it, I'd be reading in my grave.
So: book run. I've finished IMPERIUM, by Robert Harris, a so-so historical novel about Cicero. Riveting in places, plodding in others, I was kept interested by the detail. Ancient Rome has fascinated me for years. Everything from their houses to their politics wouldn't look too out of place today.
I also read the second of Giles Blunt's John Cardinal mysteries, THE DELICATE STORM. Blunt never seems to write the same book twice. This one had a healthy dollop of Canadian history thrown in with the murderous mayhem. Not up to the level of the others in the series, but worth a look.
Now I'm fifty pages into PANDORA'S STAR...and it's only half the story: between it and its sequel there are something like 2100 pages. Assuming it's all a good read, and bearing in mind upcoming holidays, that'll take me two weeks or so. Two weeks during which all these other books are just sitting here unread. But if I drop PANDORA'S STAR, given there are six (!!!) books vying for my attention, I might not get back to it until Christmas or later.
"So what?" says Eva. "It's not like they're going anywhere."
Too true. But one of the places they're not going is into my head, where I want them.
I wish I had my wife's facility for reading. She manages about a book a day, and she does it by multitasking. She even reads in the shower, the secret to which I am forbidden to divulge. She can read and watch television at the same time. I can't do that: when I read, the book becomes my world. I post sentries to alert me to anything unnatural in the real world around me, but the babble of a television wouldn't get their attention no matter what was onscreen.
As I said, I've got six books, including two Pulitzer winners. These'll be the first Pulitzer Prize winning books I've read in my life (not counting To Kill A Mockingbird, which I had to read for school and thus got next to no pleasure out of). All came highly recommended by one friend or a gaggle of strangers. And I just don't know what to crack open.
The Road (Cormac McCarthy): Postapocalyptic, which hooks me every time, and literary? Sounds fantastic.
Middlesex (Jeffrey Eugenides): Yes, it's an Oprah selection. So sue me. I've read a couple of the books she's touted and enjoyed them immensely. I Know This Much Is True is a powerhouse of a novel. Besides, Middlesex is also one of those Pulitzer winners: evidently Ms. Winfrey isn't alone.
Fragile Things (Neil Gaiman): Short stories, a point in this book's favour, actually. I've got most (but not all) of Gaiman's work now: he's one of about ten authors I'll buy sight unseen and know I'm getting good value.
Ysabel (Guy Gavriel Kay): Yes, I know, Jen, I should just burn all the other books and read this one. My friend Jen introduced me to this Canadian master of historical fantasy a few years back. I've now got his entire output except for the first trilogy. That trilogy is supposedly quite reminiscient of The Lord of the Rings, which has scared me off. Kay's set a good chunk of this latest book in our world, time present. That unsettles me just the teensiest bit, because all the Kay I've read is set in a parallel universe, jumping all over history. Can he pull off a book set in a world he didn't make up?
The Dark River (John Twelve Hawks): His first, The Traveller, was a tour de force of storytelling. But it's been two or three years since I read it and I've forgotten much of the detail. It's out on loan to Eva's parents. I think I'll wait to read this second installment until I've had a chance to re-skim the first.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus: because I wouldn't feel right without getting at least one book I could learn something from. This looks like the sort of book I could read in sips...like on the toilet. (You laugh: we have twelve different Uncle John's Bathroom Readers in this house. I've almost crapped myself more than once looking for that perfect book for the loo.)
Decisions, decisions. Those of you on Facebook will see the outcome...
1 comment:
Burning books is bad, m'kay...I would never recommend it. The smell, the waste of trees and ink are just not worth it. It's good to have so much of what I call "pleasure reading." I miss that. Most of what I am reading now is interesting, but it's not exactly fiction or something I'd take out of the library.
As for Ysabel, I found it much better and easier to read that Last Light of the Sun, and I was actually more compelled by the story. It does take a couple of characters from The Finovar Tapestry, that monolith trilogy (and only slightly like LOTR...add Arthurian legend and a couple of other high fantasy concepts and you've got it about right), but you certainly don't have to have read it to "get" their backgrounds.
I vote (gulp!) for Middlesex.
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