Bookshelf excerpt

Bookshelf excerpt
Originally uploaded by Kill Pop

It's probably no surprise to any of you but I read three or four books at a time. Wait, that's not true - I read three or four books at a time and listen to an additional one or two. I know some of you have expressed concern with that concept and have asked how it's possible to get involved with more than one novel at a time and my response is always this: Do you watch more than one television series each season? Well, reading more than one book at a time is not much different than watching episodes of House, Grey's Anatomy, and Curb Your Enthusiasm all in the same week.

Your mind is capable of moving from one idea to the next idea at an alarming rate of speed - after all, don't you switch gears constantly throughout the day, transitioning easily from Mr. Brown's Humanities class to Mrs. Ambrosy's Psychology class to Mr. Markot's math class?

Just as our appetite cravings vary from one moment to the next, so do our emotional and intellectual desires. By providing a bit of variety in your reading life, you'll find it's easier to satiate those cravings; in turn, your reading life will be well fed and able to take root. For those of you who are reluctant readers, you may find yourself looking forward to spending more time in your reading world because it's the one place you can travel to without moving your feet!

Having said that, here's a list of what I'm currently reading:

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides:

The book begins with "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day of January 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of l974". 'Nuff said?

Ps. This is the book where I got the quote about marriage taking place in circles

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro:

This is the book I'm currently listening to and I'm not kidding when I say that it's the reason I leap out of bed in the morning - I can't wait to get in my car and find out what's happening in the messed up, dystopian world of Never Let Me Go. The characters are intriguing and the setting is brilliant. The writer reveals plot elements just in time to keep the reader from going mad while veiling the novel's dark message in a tale of childhood friendship set in a seemingly ideal location. Don't let the author's easy style and subtle clues trick you into thinking this is just another novel about boarding school!

Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman

Having read her novel, What the Dead Know, I was excited to read another of Lippman's books. I chose this one because the cover looked kind of creepy and I like creepy!

Here's a blurb I found online about this novel: "Two little girls banished from a neighborhood birthday party take a wrong turn down an unfamiliar Baltimore street -- and encounter an abandoned stroller with an infant inside. What happens next is shocking and terrible..."

Well, I must admit - it's not so shocking and terrible that I haven't been able to put the book down. To be honest, since I started Middlesex, I really haven't paid too much attention to this book but I'm not worried. It's a paperback, so it will either get shoved in my purse and read while I wait in my dentist's waiting room or I'll pick it up before bed on one of the few nights I haven't gluttonously watched 4 straight hours of crime shows.

The Murder Room by P.D. James

This one doesn't really count as current because I finished it last week but I'm going to bend the rules and include it on this list. P.D. James wrote Children of Men - a GREAT novel but not such a great movie (sorry, Gaby!) but most of her novels are not science fiction ones like C of M; instead James is famous for her murder/mystery novels. In The Murder Room, James once again evokes her effective formula, summoning Commander Adam Dalgliesh "and his team to investigate the murder of a trustee of the Dupayne, a small private London museum dedicated to the inter-war years and an establishment locked in a battle over its future" The team "find their probe complicated by a second corpse, as the case threatens to destroy Dalgliesh's growing relationship with Emma Lavenham".

I love murder/mystery novels, particularly ones set in Great Britain, and James is, in my opinion, a masterful writer whose characters are so intricately woven one can't help but feel they are real. Not only that, there's a hint of romance between characters; it's just enough to keep the characters realistic without being treacle. In fact, the way the novel is written speaks volumes of the differences between the way Americans and Britains conduct themselves and between the societies themselves.

Hmm, what else am I reading? I can't even remember - I know there are at least one or two other titles, one being a John Irving novel (The Fourth Hand), but I'm not deep enough in them to report on them just yet, therefore I'll stop here...

After all, it is time for Cold Case!