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What Are You Reading?
Yesterday, I heard about a book, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking. I love this title, and it makes so much sense to me. The relentless pressure to be happy is enough to make anyone depressed. What a relief to feel like it’s okay not to be upbeat all the time. When I’m tossed around by life, I find reading does help. On my night table right now is Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon.
What are you reading?
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Reading is a comforting constant for me, too. I love Michael Chabon’s wordcraft but am woefully behind in his work.
Currently reading (among many things) TIMELESS by Gail Carriger, which is part of a campy steampunk series (it’s so-so), and listening to a “middle grade” audiobook THE HIDDEN GALLERY by Maryrose Wood–very witty and fun to listen to while sitting in traffic.
Before choosing Telegraph Ave., I’d read a wonderful, but bleak novel, Canada. And Chabon’s books lift my spirits. Kate, I’ve never listened to an audiobook.Do you find the experience as satisfying as reading.
I am FINALLY reading Eric Klinenberg’s Going Solo (about the rise in people living alone). I’m finding it quite fascinating (I’d never really known about the recent history of solo living). I’m also reading (in spurts) Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, a look at human sexuality that challenges our long-held notions and conventional wisdom. Fictionwise, I’m hoping to return to Dostoevsky’s The Idiot–somehow Russian novels seem best read when temperatures drop!
These, plus cookbooks (fall and winter are the big cooking seasons for me)–I LOVE curling up on a chilly day with MFK Fisher’s The Cooking of Provincial France (one of the old Time-Life series).
Reading is something that’s given my mother and her mother pleasure, too. I’m just keeping up the tradition!
A great tradition, Petra. It sounds like you have expansive taste.
THE NOW HABIT, a self-help book a friend rec’ed to curb procrastination… so far, i’m proud enough that i actually got around to reading it 🙂
I’m of the belief that some procrastination has its benefits. Has the book changed your behavior, Sarah?
Twilight of the Elites by Chris Hayes.
My earliest favorite memories are trips to the library, and a couple of libraries are on my list of favorite places ever.
I LOVE Chris Hayes!!
If an audiobook is produced properly and the reader is chosen well, then yes, and I personally do count it as reading. In fact, there were books I might not have been able to sit and read, but listening made them easier. I did not want to read THE CORRECTIONS by Jonathan Franzen for book club, but Dylan Baker read the audiobook version and it was pretty decent. (Plus you get popular titles faster from the library on audio than in print–shorter wait list!)
I have returned audiobooks after listening for a few minutes because the person was shrill or screaming, but that’s rare.
Chris Hayes is way smart and the cutest political nerd ever. 🙂
Couldn’t agree more, Noelle.
Audio books are great! I read books too, but also really enjoy audio. Just read What More Could You Wish For by Samantha Hoffman. Nice to find a book with a main character that is 50 years old, not married, and has no kids.
Juliet, check out the book, Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie, which won the Pulitzer in 1984. It’s also about a single woman in her fifties. http://goo.gl/MDDgS
I actually don’t like audio books because, for whatever reason, I hate being read to. I can read faster and better to myself. If I were blinded or in a coma, of course that would be different!
Audiobooks seem perfect for driving long distances –
I hate being read to, too. I need to see the words on the page. I have tried to understand why. I think it has to do with liking to see more than just one word at a time and anticipate what’s coming next: a dense paragraph of text, or some quick dialogue. It helps me orient myself in the text. Or maybe I’m just a control freak!
PS I am reading Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.
Re audiobooks: I definitely prefer reading to audiobooks, BUT you cannot read while driving! I make frequent trips to NC from DC that can range anywhere from 5-7 hours, depending on traffic, and a good audiobook sure makes the time fly. I’m currently reading a book that I’m too embarrassed to admit to reading 🙂
I listen to the audiobooks on my 45 minute commute to work. And then 45 minutes back. I prefer to read a book too, but during driving it is really nice, before I know it, I’m there! The readers don’t really just read the words, they act them out, sort of like the old radio shows. Some books are done much better than others. Author Jeannette Walls did a really excellent job w/ Glass Castles and Half Broke Horses. In many cases though, a professional actor or speaker is hired to do the audio recording.
Half Broke Horses is a great book!
I do prefer to read, but if I had a long road trip or commute I think I would get into audiobooks too.
Definitely putting Half Broke Horses on my list.
Being a history buff I am reading Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. On the fiction side I am reading Out of Oz, the final book of the Wicked series. Then there is the pile of magazines I need to get to…read most of the articles in them.
I can’t wait to see Lincoln, the new Spielberg movie based on Goodwin’s book, with a screenplay written by the great playwright, Tony Kushner.
Most recently re-read Kurt Vonnegut’s Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons (Opinions), a collection of some of his essays, reviews and speeches. (For example: his observations of the 1972 Republican convention, which still ring true today.) He had one philosophy that I think is apropos for this blog: he believed that most of humanity’s problems stem from the fact that so many of us are lonely. His solution: create huge extended families and assign each person to one of them.
Aside from that, a couple of photography magazines and the current issue of Discover magazine.
Len, do you think that being single makes one lonelier than those who are married?
I just finished the graphic novel “Are You My Mother?” by Alison Bechdel. I didn’t like it much because it feel like taking an advanced psychology course. It is too bad because I love “Fun Home” and her Dykes to Watch Out For series in the early 1990s.
I am also reading “The Elegance of a Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery. Catchy name, huh? It is about a secretly intellectual concierge and a young girl who resides in the posh apartment building. They are kindred spirits.
Kathy, I checked out “Are You My Mother,” as a potential for an FPS contest. But I found it a very challenging read.
I read all the time for work, and so have found that I don’t have much time or inclination to read for pleasure, which saddens me greatly. But I was on vacation last week, and plowed through several murder mysteries (which I love) and Carlos Eire’s marvelous memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana. I can’t recommend it highly enough.