What I'm Reading, Week 6

Of course I'm still reading A Voyage Long and Strange, I bought it, and am thus under no pressure to finish it. It's good though, and I'm enjoying little bits and pieces of it as I grab some time for it when I can.

I started and finished Holly Black's Black Heart, whatever, judge me if you want. I'm afraid that I'm finally an adult because the star-crossed love stories in these teen lit books look an awful lot like hormone driven stupidity to me. C'mon y'all, there's nothing wrong with getting you all sorted before you go on hitching your life and all your choices to another human being. You can still date each other in the meantime.

I bet the really good ones wouldn't make me feel that way. But I'm not reading any of those right now because they're ALWAYS ON HOLD. And I've run out of hold spaces. Sigh.

Can't even lie, I'm really off pace right now and it's only February. I got on a knitting jag, and I cannot, in fact, read and knit at the same time. The blanket I'm knitting is turning out great, though, so there's that. Whatever, I'm not getting graded on any of this.

What I'm Reading, Week 4

Gotta say, I had a real busy weekend, so I didn't get to start much new material. I'm still on A Voyage Long and Strange, which I expected, since I tend to blow through fiction but take a little more time to absorb non-fiction.

One of the irritating things about trying to read 100 books in a year is that, unless you've got the funds to just buy 100 new books, you have to put some of those suckers on hold at the library. Don't get me wrong, I think the Chicago Public Library's e-book collection is just about the coolest thing since DVR, but the most popular reads do tend to have a bit of a wait to get your mitts on them.

Which is how I end up reading things like Red Glove by Holly Black.

This is the second in a series. I read the first one in about five minutes. Unless you're trying to read 100 books and waiting for the good ones to come off hold, skip this. Just skip it. I don't mean to hate on Holly Black, because I read The Coldest Girl in Coldtown last year and liked it well enough. But man, this genre is tired. Maybe because I'm a grown woman reading teen fantasy? Probably.

Hopefully, the coming week will bring me one of the novels I've been waiting to read. Otherwise, I can't even lie, I'll probably read the third one. Gotta keep my numbers up.

What I'm Reading, Week 3

You're thinking, "Oh, man, I missed weeks 1 and 2!" Welp, no you didn't, and I'm not a man. It's merely the third week of the year. Herein I will describe what I'm currently reading in my quest to complete 100 books in one calendar year. Accountability, yo.

I'm currently on these two suckers, A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz, and Madeline L'Engle's perennial favorite, A Wrinkle in Time.

Horwitz's book, which I'm only a little ways into, seems to be somewhere between a historical study and a travelogue. His charming writing explores the history of America between Columbus and the Pilgrims, more or less. I'm quite enjoying it so far; and, although I have a weakness for American colonial history, I think it'd be interesting to a wider range of people than just fanatics like myself.

A Wrinkle in Time, published in 1962 and winner of the Newbery Medal for that year, first crossed my path about 13 years ago, sometime in middle school. I loved it upon first reading and I love it even more now, if possible. The story brings up issues both mundane (feeling like an outcast in school) and fantastical (saving one's father from intergalactic enemies) and uses them to probe deeper meanings of life, probably for the first time in the experience of the book's intended audience. Really, though this is my umpteenth re-reading and tinged with more than a little nostalgia, it makes me think a little more broadly. If you never read it, you missed out, so go ahead and just power through. I'm almost done, it's only a good few hours of reading for an adult.

Have any of you read these? What did you think?