Month in Review

The greatest thing that happened in November may have been the greatest thing to happen this year: I found a new used book and it is quite literally right across the street.  I thought Bookmiser went out of business no less than twelve years ago, seems they only moved to a new location and never told me about it.

It's odd for me to go to a used book store and have zero store credit but hopefully that will soon change; it's not as if lack of credit impeded me from buying…  This store is beautiful.  New and used together on the same shelve; immaculate organization, neat, clean, tidy as could be (and if you've ever been in one of 'those other' kind of used bookstores you'll know the value of neat clean and tidy although I'll be the first to admit that 'dust, mildew, and cluttered' certainly has it's charm.)  I bought The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys both by Michael Chabon because he's awesome.  I remembered the title and positive reviews of Better Living Through Plastic Explosives by Zsuzsi Gartner.  Perhaps that goes to show the value of a great title or maybe the benefit of being shortlisted for the Giller Prize.  Either way, the title stuck.

I bought six books in total this month, which is at least six too many considering what I still own and haven't read.

I read all of four books this month: this is a A LOT considering my recent reading fatigue.  I owe The Parrish Lantern and huge thank you for bring Full Blood by John Siddique and Warriors by David Lloyd to my attention.  The Tombs of Atuan by Ursual K Le Guin was perhaps the best and most boring book I've read this year.  Soon, I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman was phenomenal for more reasons than I can recall and launched a new name to my 'immediate read' list.    

December brings the holiday madness… blah…  Hopefully it will go over as well as Thanksgiving did.  In terms of reading, I'm currently in the middle of two books that I'm finding excellent: How To Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall and How to Read Literature like a Professor by Thomas Foster ; only one of those is non-fiction; color me surprised that I like it as much as I do.  For the rest of the month's reading I'm eyeing Thomas Lux's God Particles and, for some reasons, werewolves in London has a certain holiday appeal to me so I'll dive into Martin Millar's Curse of the Wolf Girl since I liked the first book so much.

Can anyone make sense of that last part?  Cause I can't…

In rereading this post, I see that my reading is all over the map!  And I honestly think that's a good thing.