(I like these covers, although I’ve read none of them. From the Bookcover Archive.
The rate I am absorbing book pages has greatly increased during times on unemployment. But as my books-to-put-on-hold list of 50+ was accidentally deleted from the SFLibrary server, unbeknownst to me until today, I no longer have a queue of things to read. An endless sad face.
So, if anyone out there in the vast and spacious internet has a book (or long list of books!) to suggest to me, please do so with expediency! I need to do a lot of fun reading over the holidays, as I will be alone with cats for a week. Embroidering. Cleaning my false teeth. Making tea cozies? I don’t even know what a tea cozy is, nor do I really like tea except chai, but the point is that I will be a little old lady wrapped up in a blanket alone except for cats, and I REALLY NEED BOOKS TO FILL MY TIME OKAY THANKS?! I don’t need to validate myself here on the internet!
Tags: books
Apparently no one reads.
This blog or otherwise.
Ohhhhh welllll!
nahnah.
i’m currently reading The Daybooks of Edward Weston, wonderful to read and revealing good insights on photography and life and art, all for themselves, as with each other. an enriching lecture, good for the bus, the afternoon tea, before going to bed – just anytime. the ’73 paperback edition is nice and also the cheapest to get. perfect.
i spend some summerdays (most in a row) with the stieg larsson trilogy. a good crime, hard to stop to read, but also – i have not often read a book which is describing a character so well. family, politics – all in. and more.
a book which accompanies me often on travels is The mythology of the Greeks and Romans by Karl Philipp Moritz (or ‘Charles Philip Moritz’). it’s very old and should be able to get in antique shops. i found it once in denmark (or it fond me) and i payed not much. it was written for the masses back then, telling all the stories of the old myths which found their way back in classicism that time when they discovered pompeji and all was in vogue again. besides it’s nice to look up one god or half-god one stumbled upon in some old painting or whatever, and finding oneself flipping the pages to the other mentioned ones – it’s just lovely stories, rich in what they tell. and most probably a wonderful old binding to hold in hand.
I’m still fighting with The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, but i know it’s a good one.
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco is for sure, if you ever feel trapped in some conspiracy theories, it’s a must. and besides of all that – it’s one of the most wonderful love stories. but you will only get it at the end, why.
i found an old copy of Max and Moritz and Other Bad Boy Tales by Wilhelm Busch at a fleemarket this (or last?) year, and i’m happy i did. i have no clue how good it is if not read in german, but as far as i know it was translated into many languages, so it probably does not rely on the original language.
oh. and it made me discover children’s books again. or, that children books only means, it’s for children as well. but not only.
enjoy the ‘days inbetween’ (as we say here),
happy hunting and reading,
g.
EXCELLENT! An entire list, this is very good.
I love Umberto Eco, I read Foucault’s Pendulum a few years back, and The Island of the Day Before while in high school. Those books were so convoluted with references, I should read them again because they actually take me a long time to read! (One of the reasons that I am always asking people for book ideas is because I read really really quickly.)
I started to read the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo earlier this summer, but only a few days before it was due and I was not allowed to renew it, so I never got to an interesting part! (Too much money/conspiracy talk in the beginning, hard to follow.) I hope to get it again and get all the way through it before having to return it!
Thank you for the list, I hope I can find most of them. The mythology one may be hard to come by, and as I love mythology & old tales, I would love to get my hands on it. But the SF library has a lot of old books, too, so we’ll see.
Gonna be vague, sorry! XD
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Sputnik Sweetheart (or any others) by Haruki Murakami
Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer
Hopefully you haven’t read all of these, lol. :)
Thank you! I just added most of those to my holds queue at the library. (Some of them were not found.)
I just finished The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Neffenegger. It was really really good!
Oh yes, that’s one of my favorites. I read it around a year ago and luckily got it for Christmas, so I started re-reading it yesterday to take a break from The Mists of Avalon, what I’ve currently dived into.
A History of Love by Nicole Krauss, anything by Jeffrey McDaniel. I’m currently reading Fargo Rock City: A Heavy Metal Odyssey in Rural Nörth Daköta.
Oooh. The first sounds so good. I love umlauts, too. Not really liking heavy metal, does that mean I wouldn’t like a book on it?
If you’ve never read Frank Herbert’s Dune. it’s probably one of my top books. Incredibly rich economic/ecological/political narrative; anyways I’m rereading this right now so it’s on the top of my head.
Also Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand a weirdly poetic SF story I really liked when I read this year. Unfortunately the sequel will never be wriitten, although I am in love with both titles: The Splendor and Misery of Bodies, of Cities
Dune! I love Dune. I recently tried to re-read it, but check out 5 other books at the same time, and so I never got around to it before they were all due.
Haha, I immediately thought that SF = San Francisco, where I live, until I saw the cover. I do like science fiction and fantasy, although I don’t read enough of either. Thanks for the recommendation.