Sunday, April 08, 2007

Reading Withdrawal

I don't need to say that I haven't had much time for reading lately (but I did just say it, so I guess I did need to.) I was reading Annals of the Former World when Q. was born but I haven't had the head for geology since then, even in the form of narrative nonfiction. I'm thinking I need some light novels. So I perused my shelves when Q. started sleeping better and I wasn't so tired. (She slept through the night last night, by the way! 12 am until 7:15 am. I don't think Little Guy did that until 11 weeks.) But I didn't find much on my shelves because we did a big house purge and got rid of a lot of clutter before the baby was born and when we got new carpeting downstairs, and part of that purging was my books. I packed up boxes and boxes of books that were spilling off my shelves and in stacks on the floor in my room and now they're in my parents' attic. I did leave a few books that I haven't read yet, but I'm not in the right frame of mind right now for The Historian or Gilead, for example.

So I started A Life's Work by Rachel Cusk, her nonfiction book about motherhood.

And yesterday I went to the new used bookstore near my parents' house. (The one closest to my house just closed.) This new store is fabulous. It's called The Cracked Book and they trade AND give cash for books. The one near me only traded and it was dingy and they had some really old, boring stuff in there. This one has a really great general fiction section and all the other genre sections are also big and varied. The children's section is adorable and packed with books. And it's not even a huge store square footage-wise. Anyway, here's what I got:

Possession by A.S. Byatt--I've seen a lot of book bloggers reading this lately and it sounds really good

White Teeth by Zadie Smith--I know On Beauty is supposed to be good and it's gotten very famous and everything but I had never read anything by her before. But when I picked this one up, looked in the inside cover and saw that Zadie Smith was born in 1975, I had to get it. We're the same age. She's a famous, published writer and I'm. . . not.

The Postman by David Brin because I'm still in my dystopian/post-apocalyptic phase

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood ditto the above

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. ditto the above

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've been in a reading slump lately but don't have the excuse of a new baby to validate it!

White Teeth is on my TBR shelf so I'll be curious to see your thoughts on that one. And The Handmaid's Tale is marvelous.

12:31 AM  

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