A List! Because Those're Always Fun

It's Monday! What are you reading is hosted by One Person's Journey through a world of Books. Each week we spotlight the books we are reading, planning on reading or just finished reading.

I am, as usual, working on way too many books at once and possibly shall never finish any of them. A quick review!:

1. The Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens. I’m reading this for both the TBR Challenge AND the Dickens/Austen Challenge. I was assigned the final day, which I feel either puts pressure on me to deliver in my reasoning of why Dickens kicks Austen’s ass, or maybe everyone’ll have stopped caring by then. Hm. Anyway, I keep wanting to dislike this book and I CANNOT BECAUSE IT IS TOO GOOD. Damn you, Dickens!

2. Slammerkin, Emma Donoghue. This rocks. I’ve never cared about the 18^th century, and this makes me care because Emma Donoghue did so fricking much research for it. There’re all these details about how one got by as a prostitute in 1700s England, which, y’know, is useful in case a freak time machine accident ever sends you back there and you end up a little hard on your luck. Was I aware of how important brightly colored clothes were? I mean, I’ve seen movies, but no, I assumed that was just because the prostitutes had horrible taste. But NO. Apparently if the aforementioned occurrence did, in fact, occur, I would have to forsake my beloved black/grey/brown tones and invest in maybe some actual "colors."

3. Magyk, Angie Sage. At some point in the past this was free for the Kindle, so I snatched it up and recently started reading it. It’s somewhat slow-going, but that’s probably because I’m reading it so very very slowly. So far it seems to be another “YOU’RE A WIZARD, LAD!” types of book. I mean, that’s fine; I enjoy that genre, and the author’s certainly not bad at her job. I don’t expect it to be a favorite series, though.

4. Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee. Really depressing. And I in general don't care about old men living in foreign lands, so that's two strikes right there.

5. The Bible, God. I’m reading Judges right now, and it just got awesome. One of the “judges” (leaders) just went to the King of Moab, said “I have a message from God” and stabbed him in the stomach, making “his bowels discharge.” Yeah. So that happened. And then Jael, the wife of…someone, stabbed an enemy in the head with a tent peg while he was asleep. I cannot tell you how much better this is than reading about how many inches from the shoulder they should make the ephod when sewing it (thank you, Exodus).

6. Devil in the White City, Erik Larsen. This is all right. I haven’t paid it much attention. I bought it while drunk, which would be a downside of the Kindle, because how many times are you drunk in a bookstore? Hm…But no, it seems kind of de rigueur, if you will, to read this if you live in Chicago. The opening talks about why we got the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which mainly seems to be because New York wanted it and we were like “HEY! NO!” And then we got it because we’re awesome.

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It would be so lovely if I finished any one of these. I did, in fact, just finish Hell House, but that was one of those 'I regret reading this' sorts of books, so I don't feel like it truly counts, you know? Anyway, all I'm really doing is waiting for the Chicago Public Library to send my copy of Bossypants to my particular branch so that I might bask in the radiance of Tina Fey's thoughts on paper.