Well friends, how’s it going these days? Here we are barrelling into the middle of December and headlong toward the end of 2016. The book lists are popping up everywhere and I have so far managed to avoid looking at a single one of them. I am afraid if I do I won’t be able to resist adding more to the pile of books that is already growing “for my vacation” the last two weeks of the month.
That’s what I keep using to comfort myself at any rate. The pile is mostly books about neoliberalism and it is not quite done growing yet. Once it is I will give you a full list of what I borrowed from the library. I don’t plan on reading all of them, I am not certain I have that kind of fortitude. When they are all piled up where I can look at them, I plan on sorting through and making a decision about what I will actually read.
Onto this pile has also somehow slipped a gardening book, a science book, and a training book for cyclists. I could play coy and say I have no idea where these came from, but I know I wouldn’t be fooling anyone.
I am still hurriedly reading my way through all the library books I was deluged with over Thanksgiving. I started reading The Lesser Bohemians a couple days ago. I loved McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and very much like the way the new one starts off. Unfortunately it is in a style like Girl which means it cannot be read fast or rushed through even if I tried. Having only a couple days left with the book before it was due, I decided to stop around page 48 so I am not too far in. I will get back on the holds queue for it and when next my turn comes round, I will know I have to pick it up right away. The queue is not huge and my guess is I will have it again sometime in January.
In the meantime, I am rushing to finish The Secret Loves of Geek Girls and when that is done, I am ready to dive in and speed through Lab Girl. Is your head spinning yet because mine sure is!
I have a new book to read and reivew for Library Journal too and it is one I actually would pick up on my own for a change, Siri Hustvedt’s A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women. It is a huge fat book of essays. Yay! For those of your who were interested in The Nemirovsky Question (a play on The Jewish Question), a book I read about Irene Nemirovsky, it is excellent. It is one of those combo kinds of books —biography, literary criticism, social and cultural and political history. Well written and intriguing as it sets out to examine Nemirovsky’s Jewishness (she was accused of being a self-hating Jew and anti-Semitic).
Well and so. I could babble on about the book piles and you would likely be marvelously kind and tolerant about it, but I will not burden you with that — for now anyway! I make no promises about what might happen next week.
I do have a bit of housekeeping I have to let you know about. At the end of December any email address you might have of mine that is from earthlink is going to disappear, zap! So if you need to email me, please use the email I have linked over in my sidebar for the blog. If you have my personal earthlink email address, that will disappear too, so email me before then and I can give you a new one.
My pile groweth as well! And as usual I have more books than I can possibly read through the holidays!!
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cirtnecce, I hear you! Even if I didn’t have a holiday pile I would not be in danger of having nothing to read 🙂
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Just when I thought I could finally begin to tackle more of the books in my current TBR stack, seven new review copies arrived in the last three-days’ mail. Great problem, I suppose, but…I think I got a bit carried away this year with accepting books for review.
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Nice to have some good books on the goat the start of winter. A lot there- geekish neoliberals and gardening cyclists…..a great variety of books. That book about Nemirovsky sounds very interesting and I must look it up.
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Good Books On the Goat is a rather good blog title I’ve stumbled into!
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Ian, Oh I laughed at Books on the Goat! I think you need to start blogging and that should be your blog name! The Nemirovsky book is really good if you are interested in the Jewish Question in relation to her life and work.
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Sam, surprise! yeah, I hardly ever take review copies these days because they throw my reading off. Even knowing Library Journal will send me a book to review every other month or so messes me up because somehow I am always surprised. Keeps things lively and interesting though, right? 🙂
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It does that for sure, reminding me of the way my library holds work…all come at once and then nothing at all for a while. I suppose, though, as far as having a problem goes, this one is not really all that bad.
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Got that right, the best kind of problems!
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I just started The Lesser Bohemians myself, and I’m not sure I’ll love it as much as A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, but it’s still pretty good and certainly better than most everything on this year’s Booker list. I found it started to read more quickly after the first 30 or 40 pages. I’m not sure if it gets less fragmented or I just got more used to it.
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Teresa, it was starting to read quicker but I still knew I wouldn’t be able to finish it. It doesn’t seem as intense as Girl, but I was still enjoying it. I hope you continue to like it. I will be on the lookout for your thoughts on it!
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O, you’ve a full plate of Christmas reads. And I was going to say Ted Chiang’s sci-fi short stories (delightful reads) which are all online, and one more, and that’s Endo’s Silence. Maybe I’ve been too preoccupied with it that at first I read your post title as “The Vatican Piles Grows Large”. Uuh? Of course, I must have been thinking about Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation of Silence premiering at the Vatican this month, before a general release to us lay people. And there’s no Uuh’s. All true. 🙂
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Arti, oh you made me laugh with the “Vatican pile!” I added Chiang to my reading list after you wrote a bout Arrival but I don;t think he is likely to make it onto my end of year reading stack. Hopefully he can sneak in sometime dureing 2017 🙂
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I’m pretty sure I am already using your okay email address, but I will make sure I double check! You have a stack of really interesting sounding books to finish out the year with! And I do hope you will share that list of neoliberalism books, too! I have been eyeing the Hustvedt book myself, so I look forward to hearing what you have to say about it. I am mostly trying to finish up all those partially read books I really want to keep reading and a few others will have to go back to their shelves for some other time. Curiously I hadn’t thought of what treat of a new book I might read over the break, but subconsciously it must be up in my head as I have a stack of mysteries and a few novels that I had ‘set aside’ for later perusal. But now that you mention vacation reading….
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Danielle, I am pretty sure you have the right email 🙂 I almost have all the neoliberalism books from the library so list will happen soon for sure. Ugh, the bane of partially read books. I have a few of those I keep chipping away at as I can. Yes, one must have something totally indulgent as part of vacation reading!
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I really shouldn’t be reading blogs right now but trying to tackle my TBR pile but I love reading your blog so hear I am while the pile just glares an me and wondering why I call myself a reader! I don’t blame it, I wonder myself sometimes!
Love the sound of all your reading, and hope that you, unlike me, will get through a goodly amount over the Xmas period. I hope I don’t sound too bitter 😉
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whisperinggums, it is a dangerous time of year to be reading blogs that’s for sure! You know I always have higher hopes and bigger expectations regarding time for reading during vacation this time of year. We’ll see just how much I manage to read. No doubt it will be more than usual but not as much as I imagine 🙂
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Better to have high expectations though isn’t it.
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Definitely! Wouldn’t want to sell myself short!
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