I've started:

The Graveyard book!

Magyk by Angie Sage. It's a "young reader" book. I loved what Neil Gaiman said about writing children's books in an interview done by his daughter Maggie. He basically said that writing for adults there were all sorts of boring bits and writing for children you had to leave all the boring bits out. Which really boiled it down for me why I so love children's literature.

Blindness by Jose Saramago(yes, the move just came out-sometimes when I see a preview of a movie that I might not want to watch-cuz i'm too chicken!, I search out the book instead)

What struck me about the beginning of this book was the style it's written in. It's so free flowing without quotation marks. It just glides along like a brook of bubbling thoughts, comments and actions.

I walked into Barnes and Noble last night and kept telling myself, "no more that $100 tonight" I left with $119 spent...so that is not too bad.(i am such a book addict!)

I'm muddling through the quotation marks-less Ulysses right now. suddenly, I adore quotation marks. they are a miracle and possibly the finest punctuation marks invented.

Deep Storm by Lincoln Child. Again. I can't find anything new I want to read!!

Started reading and filling out The Pregnancy Journal by A. Christine Harris. Fascinating, disgusting, and hillarious. Though I don't think it's supposed to be funny. The day where she explains how the wastes are deposited into my bloodstream for removal had me rolling on the floor. I kept thinking "I am being pooped in!"

I am weird.

You're hysterical, Batty!

I'm reading Spook Country by William Gibson.

good luck, Gia, i think it took me 4-5 tries to actually get through that one.
and i love Gibson
anyway...
right now i'm reading Holly Black's Faerie Realm novels: Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside.
Tithe starts the series, introduces us to Kaye, a young girl who, according to the synopsis on the back of the book, is a modern-day nomad. She travels with her mother Ellen, a musician who is always reaching for that next band, that next gig, that will get her to the Big Time.

Kaye, through multiple and intricate adventures, turns out to be a changeling child, a pixie switched sometime early in life for the human girl who she believes herself to be.

In Valiant, Kaye is only mentioned fleetingly. The main character in this book is Val, a human girl who runs away to the city after catching her boyfriend cheating on her with her mother. She meets some street kids, Luis Lolli and Sketchy Dave, and has her own Faerie adventure involving a crystal sword, a troll, and addiction to Nevermore (a faerie potion).

Ironside brings Kaye back to the forefront, and concentrates on her finding out who she really is as she sets out to find a faerie who can lie, an apparently impossible task set to her after she declares her love for Roiben, the King of the Unseelie Court (kind of the bad guys of the faerie world, the opposite being the Seelie Court. But these are faeries we're talking about so "good" and "bad" are grey areas...)

I first read Tithe a couple years ago, and loved it. It drew me in, the dark, so-close-to-reality, de Lint flavoured writing and the gritty characters.

These faeries are not Disney. They aren't even Shakespeare. These faeries are scary, malevolent, and just not very nice. But they are beautiful and ancient, and the intricacies of their courts draw you to them like Sketchy Dave to a spoonful of Nevermore.

The human characters are real, they are sympathetic, you feel their frustration and despair.

And... Black is apparently both a Gibson and a Gaiman fan:

In the beginning of Tithe, Kaye's mother Ellen is the lead singer in a band called "Stepping Razor".

Also in Tithe, Kaye and her friend Corny (later known as Neil) are discussing comics and graphic novels. Kaye runs through a list of series, ending with "and Sandman, of course."

The books are not Gaiman, they are not Gibson, they're not even de Lint. But they draw you in, into a vortex of honey apples, iron that burns, snippets of poetry, inhuman beauty, and traces of perfume, a world of mothlike wings, fauns and pixies, and the age-old battle between light and darkness.

Just finished Fables volume 2 Animal Farm. Will decide tonight which is my next on the list

I read all three of Wil Wheaton's books in the last week: Dancing Barefoot, Just A Geek, and The Happiest Days. One of them has a forward by Neil! They were all highly entertaining. I liked Will when he was Wesley on Star Trek: TNG but he has become a really good writer since those years and I think I like him better as an author than an actor.

The Engineer Revisited by Neal Asher.

Jocelyn just finished a romance novel. Starring a ninja. From England.

*Sigh*

Didn't you know everyone in England is a ninja?

I told him all ninjas are blond! And he laughed at me!

(It was a pretty good romance novel, btw. "The Shadow and the Star" by Laura Kinsale. I found it courtesy of the "Smart Bitches, Trashy Books" website, which is beyond awesome.)

And they are not just ninjas - they're romantic ninjas.

In other news, Moab Is My Washpot, Stephen Fry's autobiography. I'm enjoying it a good deal more than Doris Sodding Lessing's.

quote:

Originally posted by Jocelyn:
I found it courtesy of the "Smart Bitches, Trashy Books" website, which is beyond awesome.)

Thank you for this! Very entertaining.

ETA: ....and I've followed a link there to Bookslut, which also looks good.

"This Immortal" by Roger Zelazny (audio book), which is - different, I guess, but interesting.
Started reading "Three men in a boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, which is fun.

Bah...I have to read a non-fiction book for English, while we're reading boring books chosen for the curriculum. I get to choose, I just hate that I can't read the other things I've been reading and wanting to read, since I can't read 3 books at a time.

Anyways, anyone have good Non-Fiction? I think I'm leaning towards Blankets.

I finished Nation and now I'm new bookless. *follows Jocelyn's link*

I'm reading "Making Money" by Terry Pratchett, which is feeling distrubingly relevant. Even more distrubing is the fact that Richard Nixon took the US off the gold standard, and I'm imagining Moist von Lipwig sweating and saying "IIII'm not a Crook!" Which I'm sure he'd say, and he'd still be lying, but he'd never sweat.

I still love Spike.

@Hive - I don't really like Bookslut, dispite my love for their name. The reviews are a little too evenhanded and they don't make the subject matter come alive for me. Plus, compared to the Smart Bitches site, there's not nearly enough swearing.

@Maeve - be sure you check out the archive; their funniest reviews are usually for the worst books (don't give in to the temptation to buy to book and see if it's actually that bad - it is). IMHO, their review of "Decadent" by Shayla Black wins the internet, hands down. (Not safe for work, especially if you click the links).

Hey! That's my book! I was going to read it tonight!

I am reading this book by Chang Rae-Lee called Native Speaker.

I have been amazed at the amazingly simple, but incredibly elegant uses of language and description: the way I often wish Hemingway would be, if he stopped being such a jerk (sorry to any fans). Organic description of life as a modern Korean American, and of immigrant families. Honest and cleanly written relationship between the two main characters- no bs, but not clinical. The kind of story that sinks into your pores like moisture, I think it has formed mental cave systems in me.

In particular though, one chapter had, by far, the most heartbreaking and perfect rendering of loss and human emotion I have ever read. I know, sounds like a plug, but I actually think it true. Also raised my kimchee, bibim bop, and soju budget significantly (great food description).

Have been recommending it to everyone who drifts slowly enough past me.

quote:

Originally posted by Alex Freeman:
Bah...I have to read a non-fiction book for English, while we're reading boring books chosen for the curriculum. I get to choose, I just hate that I can't read the other things I've been reading and wanting to read, since I can't read 3 books at a time.

Anyways, anyone have good Non-Fiction? I think I'm leaning towards Blankets.

Alice in Sunderland¬!
this shall mostly be the week i pimp Alice in Sunderland *nods*

why hasn't my book come? WHY? damn you, play.com!