I have so many books on the go at the moment. I’m making progress through most of them but enjoying some more than others.

One book I recently finished, The Lives of Margaret Fuller by John Matteson, I will be writing a post on in the next day or so. But in case you are wondering, it is really good.

There are three books I am actively reading at the moment. For my daily public transit commute, I am reading My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin on my Kindle. I am so very much loving this book. Sybylla, our intrepid young narrator is full of vim and sass and not a few misconceptions, but she is so lively and well-meaning that I just love her. The book sometimes has a Pride and Prejudice meets Jane Eyre in the Australian Outback feel to it. I’m about 70% through the book so I will probably be done or close to done by the end of the week.

In the evenings before bed I am reading The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. It is the Slaves group read that is scheduled for discussion on January 31st. The story begins on a ranch in modern day rural Montana which sometimes doesn’t feel all that different from rural Australia. Sometimes. Our narrator is twelve-year-old Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet, T. S. for short, a precocious boy who loves science and feels compelled to map everything. This book is not a straightforward narrative though. Printed in a somewhat oversized format, there are margin notes and illustrations and maps by T.S. that slow down the reading of the main text but not in a bad way.

The third book I am actively reading is Rereading Women by Sandra M. Gilbert. This book is a must read for anyone interested in feminist theory and/ or literature by women. I’m into part two of the book and currently in the middle of an essay on the myth of the “Belle of Amherst” aka, Emily Dickinson. The essay prior to the one on Dickinson is about the mythology that has sprung up around the life and poetry of Sylvia Plath. One of the things I really like about Gilbert is that she writes in a highly accessible manner. You will not find an abundance of academic jargon in these essays. In fact, there is even an essay about academic jargon and whether feminist theorists are doing themselves and women in general a disservice by filling their essays and books with language that most women don’t understand. There is also the question of whether by writing in academic-speak, feminist theorists are trying to prove themselves to their male colleagues and fit themselves into a patriarchal idea of scholarship instead of subverting it as was intended by so many in the beginning.

I began reading Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James about two weekends ago and have been half-heartedly picking away at it hoping to like it but not doing a very good job of it. I had high hopes for this book, figuring if anyone could do an Austen spin-off it would be James since during a book reading of hers I attended once she commented that she reread all of Austen every year. Elizabeth and Darcy have been married six years, it’s the eve of a big annual ball at Pemberley, and someone is murdered in the woods of the estate. One of the difficulties I am having is that the characters feel flat. Darcy and Elizabeth are harmoniously and happily married, there is no spark, no witty repartee, no arguments, not even any bickering. They are dull and uninteresting. I am just past the 100 page mark and part of me is wanting to put it down and never finish it and another part is saying, well the murder just happened, maybe things will liven up a bit now so keep reading. If nothing else, if I finish it and don’t like it, I can “take one for the team” so to speak and warn you all away.

I’m also still reading Auden’s The Dyer’s Hand and Nabokov’s Lectures on Literature. Nabakov’s lecture on Bleak House is marvelous. He spends quite a lot of time talking about structure and how the architecture of the book is built up and put together. He is so concise and clear and he obviously likes Dickens, it is a pleasure to read.

Looking ahead, a book I’ve been in line for at the library will be mine by the end of the week, Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfied. It is a “romp through the history of fonts.” Totally geeky, right? I also have the first volume of Kill Shakespeare on its way. No line for this one. I requested it last week on a whim thanks to a review of the second volume by Isabella at Magnificent Octopus. I’ve been chomping at the bit to start reading Natalie Angiers’ The Canon but it will likely have to wait with these two books on their way.

Once I am done with My Brilliant Career on my Kindle though I will be reading either Longitude or A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel. When my sister emailed me at the end of December that Amazon was having a one day only Dava Sobel e-book sale and one of the books was only $.99 cents and the other $1.99, I caved in and paid for my first e-books. Galileo’s Daughter was also on sale but it turned out after I did my science by women list, I found a copy of it on my bookshelves. For some reason The Planets wasn’t part of the sale or I would have gotten that one too. No matter, I am happy with the two I did get.

Good reading (for the most part) on the go and good reading to look forward to and the first month of the year is zipping by and in the middle of next week we will find ourselves in February already. Goodness!