15 August 2005 Monday

Book Baton

i almost missed this one…
well thanks, James, for passing it along…. here i go:

Number of books on the shelves:

… hundreds in my bedroom, in boxes, throughout home, etc.. some i’m keeping simply for eventual kids in the distantish future..

Last book I purchased:

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Book I’m reading right now:

• Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, at Alberto‘s suggestion. I think i’m a bit past halfway through with it… ‘had no idea what it was about, going into it… pretty good so far.

Last 4 books read:

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

• all the other Harry Potter books (we’ll count that as one book), so i am fully caught up with the rest of the world now. they were better than i remember (had read the first two a while back, and have kept up with the movies besides… third movie lacked some important backstory info though, such as the origins of the map.)

• The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis is an interesting scene of faith and hell. i’d like to think over it further.

• Shadow Puppets was the latest Ender/Shadow book by Orson Scott Card.. he’s not as good as he used to be, and his actual views on the world are terribly surprising compared to the concepts in his fiction, but i still do like reading these stories.

Favorite books:

• Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlen is wonderful sci fi with wonderful real concepts. I should give it a third reread now after another so many years has passed, after all, to finally possibly grasp the religious interludes.

• East of Eden by John Steinbeck and The Grapes of Wrath are beautiful, beautiful books. the writing, the imagery, the concepts, the depth, the experiences… truly treasures, these books.

• Ender’s Game series and the Ender’s Shadow series by Card are certainly fun reads, and Ender’s Game was cool on so many levels and the rest in the series weren’t quite as fun but definitely interesting and worth thinking over. The writing’s gone disappointingly downhill over the years, but i still like to read them.

• Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice is a very interesting book. It’s the only Anne Rice I’ve read; filled with some very poignant ideas and some of the only sense that’s ever sat well with me on a few religious points.

• and other childhood favorites like The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings and The Velveteen Rabbit, which my Daddy used to read to me when once upon a time I was a very very little girl.

Five people I’m passing this on to:

• Alberto, who’s always reading something
• Michael, who’s busy like the rest of us, but is maybe reading some good stuff too
• Andrew, who hasn’t been writing lately.. maybe he’s been reading
• Ann, who seems to be reading, among much else
• Amit, who wrote the asv_amazon plugin and i imagine he’s reading something.