complacentAnyway, that's the necessary backstory for some of my reading choices this month. Mom forgot to bring a book for the plane (how is that even possible?!) so I loaned her my Kindle and rediscovered the Dresden Files on audiobook. Could it be I'll actually finish Side Jobs on the flight home? It's less likely than you think!
Once I got here I decided to put aside my own books and paw through the ones around me. Tess has the two David Sedaris collections that I had partially read at some point in the past, Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day. I seem to have read fewer of the essays in each than I thought I had, but I still liked them just as much, and hooray, now I'm sure I've finished two books by David Sedaris!
Against my better judgment I succumbed to nostalgia and picked up The Pearls of Lutra next. I might not be able to finish it before I leave and I don't want to borrow it and I hate leaving books hanging (see previous point about Sedaris), but when your sister tells you that her 11-year-old son has finally gotten into your favorite series from childhood, and there are some of them right there that you've never read, and you're stuck and bored, it's pretty hard to resist taking a peek. This one's got a pine marten villain, and a badass archer otter girl I already love.
Back at home I've still got The Gulag Archipelago going, plus The Lord of the Rings (I didn't bring my copy with me so I guess the book club is kind of on hold on my side).
I've also been systematically working through the graphic novels on my shelf, just so I can decide whether I want to keep them all. I own four of the Penny Arcade collections and I had a great time rereading them even though I haven't been interested in current strips for years. I'm still hoping that Simon will check them out (it's really hard to get him to read anything I recommend), but if he doesn't I'll give them away.
Same for Axe Cop - I love it but it takes conscious effort to get into the 5-year-old mindset you need to finish a whole story, so I don't think I need to keep my copies.
The Iliad has been conquered, and though I haven't started on The Odyssey yet, it looks like it's about the same length and I have hopes that the structure will be easier to read. Very exciting!
But in the meantime, I took a break by means of the sequel to that last YA fantasy I talked about, the one that's an obvious HP ripoff but pretty good for what it is. Both were free downloads, but I might not have bothered with a second one if not for the loose threads in the first. SNEAKY! Anyway, The Raven, the Elf, and Rachel was also pretty good for what it is, and fortunately, there are no longer any free ones available, or any loose threads.
So that freed me up for Rose Point, the sequel to Earthrise. Haven't read any Peltedverse in a while, and this one began to involve horses pretty early on so I'm already very much into it.
The bedtime poetry book right now is John Keats, which is already making me miss the last one, John Betjemen, even though I felt fairly indifferent (leaning toward positive) toward it while reading it. It's not that I don't like Keats, it's just...long book, small print, not many in there that I've already read, so I can basically count on having the same poet every night for the next year or more.
Except for times like now, when I've got my travel poetry, Emily Dickinson. She's not my favorite either but she's fun.
And, almost forgot to mention this one because that's how long it's been since I've written a books post: I decided to spend some more time with To Be or Not to Be and see if I could actually finish it. Not as easy at it sounds! I had to start making pencil marks to remember which paths I had already tried and how to get to the ones I hadn't. Even that got pretty confusing after a while, but I've now officially read the whole book, every single node.
No spoilers, but here's a helpful tip: There's one ending where you have to do a math problem to find it, and I can confirm that there's no other way to get there. There's also one ending that's completely hidden, as in, nothing leads you to the node. I will reveal either of these numbers upon request.
