In looking back on all the blog post I didn't make this month and the notes I took that nothing came of none stood out more than my reading plans for this summer and how to make sure I'm more productive in my reading from June to August than I have been in previous years. Perhaps I should have taken my own advice and implemented it earlier: as in January.
This has been a super slow reading month. Rather pitiful in truth. I managed all of two books, BADASS by Ben Thompson and Breakable You by Brian Morton. I've read about half of The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi and nothing else. Breakable You certain stunted my interest in reading, but Maria assures me it has great movie potential so I'll keep my fingers crossed for that. Bacigalupi I'm gonna put down for a bit, but I need to explain that. The Windup Girl is like nothing I've read before (in part because I don't read enough science fiction). There's a good chance I'll be saying it's the best book I read this year, come December, and for that reason alone when I finish, I'm determined to leave comments. That said, it's not a book that I would say is for me, or possess the traits and qualities that I personally look for as universals in books that I enjoy. The short version explanation of that last sentence is that I like the intimacy of characters more so the the vast creation of the world people live in. The Windup Girl is amazing, but it may end up being the most challenging book I get through this year and while that's not a bad thing, it is a thing.
What I've been reading aside, I've been writing a lot this month and that more than anything has soaked up what used to by my reading time.
If anyone reading my blog has managed to read if for over a year (congratulations) then you will know that I hate the word February: the worst word in the English language. Aside from that fact that no one says it properly, myself included because it's just too much work, and that it's not even English, it's also really short. I'm gonna reinstate my reading goals for this short, horribly, named month of Latin derivation. I plan to finish The Windup Girl, A Model World by Michael Chabon, Occulations by Laird Barron, as I seem to always read something by John Fowles in the winter I'll crack open Daniel Martin.
(That last one is really, Really BIG.)
Wish me luck.
I am very eager to see what you make of Wind-Up Girl. Since you don't read much science fiction, you are the perfect person to review this book.
ReplyDelete"Since you don't read much science fiction"
ReplyDeleteI've had to think a lot about that comment. (I was the first to make it so it's not like I'm calling you out or anything.) I'm sure I've read more than I think I have, only my definition of fantasy and plain old 'fiction' are too accommodating. I admit that I have a problem seeing the genre benders and if what I'm reading is good, I really don't care what genre it goes in: my mind just doesn't work that way. So, Michael Chabon, Michael Swanwick, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez can play with 'what if...' and magic and I just don't see it.
For me, The Wind-Up Girl is unique in that it forcibly said to me, "This is sci-fi." Which has taken me a while to digest.
Now I feel the pressure is on concerning my comments for the book.