20 December 2010

Day 268: a general update

Hello friends,

It's been quite the adventure lately with the house sitting and the snow and things.  I've been doing a lot of reading.  This post means I've finished about a third of the books I brought with me on this trip.  Most of those were from my Forgotten Bookmarks win.  This next batch is mostly from ALA.  Yes, I'm still working through my ALA 2010 books.  It is insanity.  I think if I manage to read through all of my stash before I head back to Bowling Green, I'll treat myself to Justin Cronin's The Passage on my Nook.  I've been wanting to read that one for awhile and I'm itching to read something that has received rave reviews that I can also spend a good deal of time with.  If this happens, expect to see a number of guest posts while I plow through the 800 pages of vampire fun.  On with the reading list!

Smallworld by Dominic Green.
This was offered to me by Fingerpress.  I haven't read any good sci-fi in awhile and I'm interested to see what someone who normally works in short fiction does with the extra pages.  I also snagged an interview with the founder of Fingerpress, Matt Stephens, so look for that too.

Lament by Magie Stiefvater.
She's popular.  And the book was free at ALA.  The cover is quite fetching, so I grabbed it.  I haven't read Shiver, etc. yet.  If I like this one I may track them down.  I'm nervous that the fairy aspect will just come off as silly, but there are some authors who can make compelling fairy tales that aren't childish.  Unfortunately the top one that comes to mind is Shakespeare...  Okay, I just made myself more nervous.

At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson.
Another ALA.  This one is actually an ARC that I am late in reviewing.  I lent it to my someday-to-be mother-in-law and she got it back to me right before I started NaNoWriMo.  There was no way I would be able to finish a 300-page non-fiction and give it the attention it deserve with the NaNo-crazies.  So I'm reading it now, and it's late.  But I'm not under contract with the publishers, so there.  Mom loved it, by the way.

Murder Out of Wedlock by Hugh Pentecost
This is part of the Forgotten Bookmarks win.  I actually wasn't going to read this one since I wasn't entirely impressed with Pentecost.  The writing wasn't terrible though, and I'm in a freakin' blizzard.  I will read what I can.  Also seems a shame not to read a free book.  So lonely, so neglected.  I get the feeling I will be raging on this one almost as bad as Murder on Ice.  I'm glad most of my reads are from ALA this time.

Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl by Daniel Manus Pinkwater.
I can't recall ever having read any Pinkwater before.  I have a sneaking suspicion I will enjoy his sense of humor.  It might have something to do with the fact that he likes poking the catalogers.  "Pinkwater varies his name slightly between books ... allegedly, he claims that he does this in order to annoy the librarians who have to catalogue his books."(source)  What can I say, I think every librarian needs to be poked now and again.

The Clearing by Heather Davis.
This is yet another ALA review copy that is "late".  This one isn't my fault though!  The conference was in June and this was published in April.  It doesn't look very impressive, but I recently read a review from Donna at Bites that made me a little more excited about it.  Hopefully I will enjoy it as much as she did!  The main character and I share a name, which might be kind of weird.

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