Friday, July 4, 2008

To Do List

Here is a list of books that I keep meaning to read but never get around to:

1. The Brothers K - not to be confused with The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, this book is by David James Duncan. My friend Jessie gave me this book a long time ago and said it was her favorite book. Since then many people have told me that it's really good. The problem is - the first 100 pages or so are all about baseball. This is a problem because I hate baseball. So after about 75 pages of reading about dudes loving baseball, I quit the book. But people keep telling me to try again and to just skim the baseball stuff and that it will be worth it. So I've decided I need to try again.

2. The World Without End - this is the sequel to The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which I just finished. I'm worried I'll forget that I want to read this if I don't add it to the list.

3. Run - this is the new Ann Patchett book that will be released July 29th. The whole book takes place over the course of 24 hours and is described as "Suspenseful and stunningly executed, ...ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children."

4. Upside Down Inside Out - I thought I'd read all of Monica McInerney's novels, but it turns out I haven't! She's Australian and her books are perfect vacation reading. I'm thinking I might buy this for our Guatemala trip in August. This will be perfect because we're travelling with our friends Todd and Erin and Erin happens to like Monica McInerney too. This way, maybe we can swap books midway through the trip.

5. This Charming Man - Marian Keyes has a new book! Who knew? Not me. But now I do and I'm very excited. I predict this will take me all of 1 day to read.

6. The Beastiary - this is fairly new book by Nicholas Christopher. At one point, his book A Trip to the Stars was my favorite book. But then I recommended it to a few other people and they didn't really like it. This made me doubt whether it was really that good to begin with. That was 8 years ago, but I think his new book might still be worth a try. It sounds a little "mystical" which I know my friends Maggie and Heidi will not like, but it might be worth the risk.

7. Midnight in Manhattan - A year ago I randomly bought this book called Ask Me Anything by Francesca Delbanco at Half Price Books and ended up really liking it. My expectations were pretty low, I'd bought it in a hurry, but it turned out to be cutting and smart and observant. After I finished it I looked to see if she'd written any other books at Barnes and Noble. The guy at the info table told me that she had another book called Midnight in Manhattan but that it was coming up in their system as "unorderable". He said he'd never seen that status before and that it meant that it was out of print and my best bet was to find it at a used book store. For a day or so I felt spurned, like the world was set against me reading a book that sounded kind of good. I think I may have looked at Half Price Books once but it wasn't there. Then I promptly forgot about it. Well guess what?! Turns out I'm retarded and it was available used on amazon.com for $3.10 all along! And I just happen to have a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com that I got for participating in some random phone survey a month or so ago. Long story longer, I just ordered it online and should have it in the next week. I hope it's not a big let down.

Am I missing anything?


1 comment:

Heidi said...

Love your blog! For the record, I adored A Trip to the Stars, which I read on your recommendation. A bit of mysticism, but not in a Neverending Story-kind-of-way.