Thursday, June 3, 2010

One Month Down.

I've been on a novella reading binge since finishing East of Eden. Large books are more intimate, but they can (especially when you have assigned yourself an inordinate amount of reading) take on the sensation of a wet bog, dragging all production down. So I dove into brief, less-than-two hundred-pagers with the hopes of bringing it all back.

I believe as of the night of May 31st, 2010, fourteen books have been read. I'm not sure on the exact page total, but it is somewhere between 2250 and 2600 I think, not too bad. Here's a list of the collage:

The End of the Affair- Graham Greene
To the Gas Chamber, Ladies and Gentlemen- Tadeuz Borowski
Cannery Row- John Steinbeck
The Procession- Khalil Gibran
To Believe in God- Joseph Pintauro
About a Boy- Nick Hornby
Meditations in an Emergency- Frank O'Hara
Tao Te Ching- Lao Tzu
East of Eden- John Steinbeck
Anthem- Ayn Rand
Antigone- Sophicles
The Love Girl and the Innocent- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Alchemist- Paulo Coelho
What's on Your Mind- Merlin Carothers

I'm off to a good, maybe even excellent, start for June. I've finished The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brian, and am on pace to finish a book a day for about the first week (with all my side projects). Keep reading. I think the month of June's book will be Ishmael by Daniel Quinn, but this is just preliminary speculation.

Steinbeck is amazing.

3 comments:

  1. I'm at 2500+ but feel myself falling behind with my schedule. Am hoping to pick it up this weekend.

    Read so far:

    Ismael, by Daniel Quinn
    My Ismael, by Daniel Quinn
    East of Eden, Steinbeck (absolutely awesome!)
    Shoot the Moon, Billie Letts
    The Honk and Holler Opening Soon, Billie Letts
    The Footprints of God, Greg Iles

    Currently reading: (I always have 2-3 going at the same time!)

    The Story of B, by Dan Quinn
    The Book of Night Women, by Marlon James
    The Girls of Riyahd, by Rajaa Alsanea and Marilyn Booth

    Hope we can make Ismael work for June!

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  2. Oops...forgot one that I finished:

    The Lemon Table, by Julian Barnes

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  3. Awesome read right now. "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb. This is amazing. Only his 3rd book in the 12 years I've been reading him, but they are always worth the wait. Other books by him are "She's Come Undone" and "I Know This Much is True".

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