Day 193: a general update

Hey there readers, good to see you again after my break.  Banned Books Week wore me out.  Still, it was an exciting time and I seem to have picked up a few new followers, so at the very least it was productive.  My "holiday" wasn't much of a holiday as I've still been working on blog stuff, but it was nice to do so at a much less hurried pace.  I've started my new group of reading and I thought I'd let you know what you can expect over the next few weeks.  As always I reserve the right to drop books from my list, so if you're wondering "Where'd that title go?" I just couldn't finish it.

On the 9th I'll be participating in my first book blog tour for Call Me Kate.  If you want to get a jump on the blog tour, you can find the list of participants here.  I'm pleased to be part of a book blog tour, and hope I'll be asked to participate in the future.

For the lurkers out there, I encourage interaction with my blog.  If there are particular topics or books you want me to read or that you think I'll like, feel free to make suggestions via email.  I want to thank people who have been linking to my blog, I appreciate the traffic and I think we now share one or two followers.  I'll be returning the favor at some point by creating a page for the blogs that I follow for those interested in where the heck I get my reading list from.  Now on with the books.

Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.
I'm currently reading this, although by the time this post publishes I likely will have finished it.  I rather enjoyed Roach's interview with Jon Stewart, but who wouldn't get a perverse thrill from reading about runaway space poop?  So far the tone has been light without being flippant and the science focuses mostly on the psychology, which is more or less accessible to all.

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman.
If you read my posts on The Golden Compass you shouldn't be surprised that I was eager to put the next book on my list.  Hopefully there will be enough of a break between the books so that it won't seem terribly repetitive.  It's interesting to me to see how my perception of Compass changed from sort of indifferent to "Oh crap, I need to read the next book" somewhere between pages 200 and 300.  So I'm the last person on earth to read these, shoot me.

Role Models by John Waters.
Saw the interview on Colbert Report for this one.  For a while there it seemed like Colbert and Stewart had fascinating literary guests on two or three times a week.  Now that we're into Big Movie season the guests are running towards the mundane, i.e. the movie star "personalities" who have pretty much all been whitewashed with the same typical responses.  They're just a little too prepared and too well groomed to prove interesting.  I was drawn to this one because for a period of about 10 years I disavowed and rejected the mere idea of role models.  I'm starting to move away from that again and see some value in role models, so I'd like to see what Waters has to say about it.

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer.
I think this one got added because I was interested in the sequel The Prodigal Daughter.  Having never read Jeffrey Archer, I'm a little nervous about this one, especially given the size of the tome.  Luckily, if I don't like this I have an excuse not to read anything else he's written.  At age 25, I only have so many reading years left.  It also uses the "switched at birth" gimmick, so we'll see how well that's aged in the 30+ years since it was written.

Glass Houses by Rachel Caine.
It's another teen vampire novel.  Felicia Day of The Guild fame liked it, so uh, hopefully it won't be like Evermore.  Part of me wonders why I keep reading these if they disappoint/piss me off so much.  Then again it's what's popular and I have this sick sense of duty that I'm supposed to be well read in both popular and good literature.  Those two do not always overlap as often as I'd like.

The Countess by Rebecca Johns.
I pulled this from my library's ARC offerings (because apparently I don't have enough of them lying around).  It looked like a good pick for the October month, as it's about the first female serial killer.  I rather liked the cover on this one, it seems to set a very dark and mysterious tone.

Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace.
Sometimes I read things solely for the titles.  I'm willing to admit that I think a catchy title often leads to fresh prose and witty writing.  Not always the case, but then when people ask me what I'm reading we usually spark excellent conversations by the title alone.  This may get the Short Story treatment to be used as filler, we'll see how captivating they are.  This is another cover-grab, the picture of a lobster that seems to be waving borders on adorable.

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie.
This is another attempt to bridge my reading gaps.  I haven't read any Rushdie, and given his contributions to literature, I find the need to fix that.

By the way, look for a new Rupert the Magic Pony story, about this time next week.