What books are you reading right now?

I just finished "Sugar" which had been a free Kindle book awhile back. I forgot how much I love to read. Exam is in 9 days and 4 hours. Lockdown studying commences in 2 days. Enough time to get through at least one more novel. I miss regular books, but there's no time to hit the library. Free Kindle titles on Amazon it is!
Oh, and I'm almost through David Baldacci's "The Camel Club" on audiobook. It's okay, too. Creative, but a little to terroristy for my preferences.

 

I just started The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I'm on page 38, not far enough into it to have a set opinion, but at this point I'm hoping that Larsson stops introducing so many characters and starts connecting them in some way.


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I finished The Printer's Devil, a Young Adult novel by Paul Bajoria. It was just OK.....but keep in mind I'm about four decades past being a Young Adult. This is book one, published in 2005, in an ongoing series which I have no interest in following. For perspective, I did read The Hunger Games triology. Partially because of the hype, but mostly because I think they're well-written.

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Since I'm already posting, a few books from my recent resale/thrift store run:

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. Some posts in this thread by a new member stirred my curiosity.

Charlotte Bronte, Complete and Unabridged, compilation of four novels: Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor.

 

Currently about halfway through Warm Bodies. It's surprisingly better than the movie trailer would have you believe.

 

Tell more about the speakers. I have a set of paradigm studio 20s. I have heard a couple pair of Maggies and they are very nice. They need a lot of wattage but they sound good.

 

I am exploring more authors thanks to goodreads lately. Just started Michael Connelly's "Blood Work."

 

I just finished The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I enjoyed it. Stieg Larsson kept things moving, but it would've benefited from some editing, namely the cutting way back on the history of the Vangar family. It's a shame that he passed away before the money from the books sales and movie deals started rolling in.

 

I started another Kindle Daily Deal book yesterday: The Dead Don't Dance, by Charles Martin. I liked the first chapter, but I've kind of lost interest since then. It started out very prose-y and beautiful, then...I don't know. The dialogue seems stilted, and it's gotten a little overly exposition-y. I'll give it one more chapter before throwing in the towel.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Marketing-Research-Applied-Orientation-Edition/dp/0136085431

This is my life for awhile.

 

"Blindness (1995) by Jose Saragamo, a Portuguese writer who won the Nobel Prize For Literature in 1998. I'm about 40 pages into this novel. So far the social commentary and philosophical musings don't fit well with a book about a mysterious blindness. It'll be interesting to see where Saragamo takes this novel."

I went back this book, and am very tempted to set it aside permanently. Saragamo doesn't use quotation marks (which I can live with, think Carmac McCarty), but he frequently has two or more characters speaking in the same paragraph, and it isn't always clear who is speaking. That gets very annoying. I'll try it in small pieces.

 

This is a freebie deal of the day.

The Dirty Parts of the Bible.

 

Go for it. Old people can be really cool.

My musician/music teacher wife has struck up a friendship with an old guy widower at church. His wife was an amateur musician, flutist mostly, and he's very happy to have found someone who appreciates her hobby. I'm also trying to get my wife to meet a TFPer who now lives in the Houston area. They're both into music, and are involved in the same religion.

EDIT--I was in a resale/trhift store and spotted a pair of Bose speakers for $39.99. I have no idea what model they were, they were relatively small (maybe 24"H, 18"W, 18"D) and had multiple tweeters. Unfortunately the woman who saw them first and was standing in front of them eventually talked her husband into buying them .

 

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I'm about 124 pages into it, and like it so far. Wroblewski's writing is much like that of John Irving, IMO.

 

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

I seriously despise 'open' endings that leave characters hanging and situtations unresolved. I don't care if "it's a metaphor for (whatever)," to me it means the author had no idea how to end the novel.

Spoiler alert.



Spoiler alert.



Spoiler alert.

We can be pretty certain that Claude and Edgar died in the fire, even though their actualdeaths are not clear cut.
Most likely Trudy and Glen will eventually talk in depth and figure out that Claude was up to no good, and Edgar somehow discovered something about it. What won't be known is Claude killed his brother Gar, who was Trudy's husband and Edgar's father.

The ghost of Gar talking to Edgar was a bit much, as was the old woman seer/psychic/clairvoyant who ran the general store. And Claude becoming Trudy's lover then cohabitant after Gar's death.

All of the dogs gathering to join a stray and running away from the only home they had ever known (actually one dog had went with Edgar when he ran away for two months). I suppose that is supposed to be some great metaphor.

 

Currently two chapters into Becoming Maria: Love and Chaos in the South Bronx, by Sonia Manzano. On my last drive from Ohio back to NC, I came across her being interviewed on NPR, and ended up listening to the entire segment (which included a "quiz show" contest about Sesame Street trivia that I am happy to say I would've won had I been a participant.) I always loved her on Sesame Street, and vaguely remember hearing she'd be retiring; but beyond that, I knew very little about her. She's a very warm, funny, charming lady, and I was pleasantly surprised that the interview was, in part, to promote her recently published book.

Again, I'm only a couple chapters in, but I'm..."enjoying" it seems like the wrong word. She didn't have an easy childhood, and she doesn't shy away from that. But I love her writing style, and I'm finding it very easy to lose myself in her memories.