Stuff I’ve Been Reading Vol. 1

One of my all-time favorite columnists is Nick Hornby. I know being a columnist isn’t what he’s fabulously famous for but I can never get enough of his wonderful and thrilling “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns in the Believer. He’s absolutely fabulous and righteously funny. If you don’t feel like trying to track down back issues of the Believer his columns have been collected into two volumes (so far). 

And so in the great tradition of all great writers, I’m going to sort of borrow his concept here. To write a post on every single book I read would be exhausting-for you and me. I simply read too fast and too much. But! There is hope. So here goes. 

I was reading Entertainment Weekly at work today and in their 1000th issue they have the 100 best books of the past 25 years. I have to say that I was pretty happy with the selections overall. It also gave me a lot of ideas for reading. I can tell you that my reading queue at the library will be increasing after today. 

I love the library. I haven’t lived in a place with a fabulous library in a long time. When I was in school I never much enjoyed the library at school and I didn’t take advantage of the wonderful resource of the Boston Public Library because for some reason two stops on the T (that’s we call the subway here for all you folks not from the Northeast) seemed a long walk (despite the fact that I did this walk often on my own for fun.) 

Even when I moved to my own apartment in the city I wasn’t particularly interested in the library until I moved to a small neighborhood that was around the corner from a library. The best thing about the Boston Public Library is that it’s a network of libraries throughout the neighborhoods of Boston and beyond that collectively make up one of the most awesome libraries I’ve been privy too. It doesn’t exactly have anything on the Library of Congress but it’s still quite extensive and wonderful all the same. Because of the networked design of the system I can borrow a book that is in any one of the libraries and they’ll whisk it to my closest library so that I don’t have to tramp all over the city to get it. The existence of this library system has greatly, greatly increased my reading. 

I’ve been trying (and often failing) to cut down on my buying of books and the library has been a help. My recent discovery of the Twilight series, which I’ve written about before, was due to the fact that I got the book from the local library. At any other point in my life I may or may not have bothered to get the book for years because of funds but the ease of the library system got me the book quickly and for free. I’ve since bought the two following books and I’m happy with my purchases. But it all started with the library. 

somehow I’m in the middle of two series at the moment. I just finished Pretties, the second novel in Scott Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, series, whatever you want to call it. I have the final two books at home with me at the moment, itching to be red. What amazes me about these books is the strength of the female character routinely giving up everything she’s worked to attain for the betterment of others. She’s not a perfect hero, but she is a hero nonetheless. I’ve been somewhat disappointed by some of the plot twists, but there were logical at least if not completely satisfying. 

I’m also reading the third book in the aforementioned Twilight series, Eclipse. I just started it today so I’m not very far along yet but I’m waiting for the central conflict of the book to start. Like New Moon, its predecessor, this book starts off fairly tamely. I know that in the next forty pages or so our main character will once again be in a battle for her life, fighting to save the man she loves, and trying to be a somewhat normal teenager-girl?-all at the same time. I’m anxious to see what happens but I also like the quiet periods of the book. The dramatic shift in New Moon was so heart-wrenching, I don’t know if I’m quite ready to have my heart torn apart for these characters just yet. 

Until we meet again, go to the library. Seriously folks, free books.

 

New Moon

I finished New Moon and boy does it pack all the emotions in the spectrum into those 500+ pages. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that was more tense, except possibly Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which had me on the edge of my seat for the entire 22 hours or so it took me to read it. (I tried to stretch it out but I just had to know the end.) The twists and turns and the heartrending inaction of the second book of the Twilight series almost puts Harry Potter to shame. Almost.

In the second book, all your favorite characters are back and it seems almost like a kind of peaceful existence has settled on the life of Bella Swan, our enigmatic main character. Right, because that’s why the book is over 500 pages long. The magic of this story is that it leaves you feeling like the main character, torn in two, searching endlessly to make herself whole.

It’s a story about love, far more than the first book. It shows how love can break a person and make them whole; more importantly, it shows how every new chance at love can weave back the threads of a broken heart. I was moved, angry, annoyed, frustrated and eventually bowled over by the passion and love in this book. I could not put it down for the simple reason that I had to know what was going to happen. I had to heal my broken heart along with Bella’s. This is a story in tandem: the character’s and yours.

 

New Moon, Eclipse and other ways I’ve been wasting my time

I’ll have a post on the second book in the Twilight series tomorrow or the day after but I wanted to check in with my obsessive reading over this long weekend. New Moon, the second book in the series, is absolutely amazing. I’m almost finished and I was so antsy I bought the third book, Eclipse, today when I was out and about in town. I’m absolutely enthralled and so happy that the fourth (and final!) book comes out in August. I’m also gearing up for Stephanie Meyer’s other book, The Host, which I’m waiting to get from the library. (I’m trying to be good…)

At the moment I’m also reading Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld. This is another series of fantasy-esque books that were recommended to me by a friend at work. It’s quite good so far. I’m really hoping to enjoy the series, although I don’t know if it will live up to the awesomeness of the Twilight series, which takes a love story, adds a twist of modern fantasy, and cranks up every emotion possible to the nth degree. 

My brother, who has a killer reading sense, has been recommending David Foster Wallace to me for about a year. I’ve always been a fan of weirdly comic writers so I have two books from him on order at the local library. The Broom of the System, Foster’s first book, I found in the used book cellar of my local bookstore and decided that I wouldn’t spend the money but would dive into this book, which looks to be fascinating. I’ve also got his most recent collection of essays on order. I’m a sucker for nonfiction essays. I don’t know what it is, maybe my background in journalism, but stick a John McPhee or Adam Gopnik essay compilation in my hands and I won’t move for the next few hours I’ll be so engrossed with the text. 

Lastly, I’m trying to get into more classic literature. I’m going to try to read John Le Carre’s The Spy who came in from the Cold because I’ve always loved spy-related things (I’m a Bond lover and I couldn’t get enough of Alias when it was on TV) and I feel like it can’t hurt to read one of the classic spy novels. I’m also gearing up to read The Man Who Was Thursday after seeing an article about Chesterton in the New Yorker by my favorite essayist Adam Gopnik. If he’s recommending it, I’m bound to enjoy it. At least it will broaden my horizons or some such. 

And with that, a fond goodnight. I’ve got faaar too much reading to do.