Ah, brilliant. Yes, I am....

I am having trouble with this entry, starburst. Some technical difficulties. I am so happy that you have agreed to extend our reading. I agree, and June for me was too full of yoga training, and less full of reading, which saddens me greatly. Alas, I think I will have to take a break from our friend and her hedgehog, and make up for some lost time. I have a huge pile of books beside my bed, and a few more that I must pick up tomorrow from my local bookstore.

We are rare, you and I, in many ways. And I am grateful that we have each other, and our own club. Lola keeps flicking her tail on my keyboard as I type this which is making it difficult.

I heart you, Farley.

Your Brilliant Thought

Dear Sweetest Knees,
I agree, your idea is brilliant! I was getting sad that the month was ending and I mightn't have finished all that I had planned. This burdensome thing called work and life and trips to weddings became almost impossible to read around. But July looks good for reading. And in fact, the whole rest of the year does. Which is good because I have ever so many books I want to read. And only you really I feel like sharing them with. Because you are like me. You are a reader. They are more rare than people think and probably less rare than I do. And they are a very special type of person. But I am not giving up the pace. I will be victorious. And... I have the advance readers copy of Muriel Barbery's next book. So, after I finish Hardball by Sara Paretsky, perhaps I will sink into the lovely french philosophy myself.
xoxox

I adore you not matter what

Dearest Rebekah,

A thought came to me in the night - a brilliant one, if I might say so myself. What if we readeth beyond the month of June...what if we extend our readathon to the end of the year...what thinketh you? I am stuck still on the Hedgehog, while reading now and then The Tree of Yoga. You may be ahead of me now, dear friend, but I am not far behind. xo

You are going to hate this

Hi Bry, Whilst you have been swimming through French philosophy and hopefully loving it I have just finished another Charlaine Harris novel filled with were-people and vampire love. Ahhh. It was the last one written for at least a year so no worries about future obsessions. Mostly I had to break the block I was having about choosing just the right next book. I am currently reading the new hardboiled detective mystery by Sara Paretsky and then will be moving on to Glass Castle as my nonfiction read. Not sure what my two classics will be and have so many great books piled up next to my bed that I am overwhelmed. I love you. And, more importantly, I am ahead of you. xoxo

the elegance of a hedgehog by muriel barbery

i am still in the midst of this one and i am finding it to be a tough read. i don't mind the double narration, but i have a feeling that most of it is going right over my head. more as i push my way through it.

Caroline Coraline

I just finished reading Coraline by Neil Gaimen. It lives in the realm of cautionary children's stories. Coraline lives in that space at the end of the summer when boredom has created a landscape and parents don't always stop to pay attention. Finding a door that opens to a brick wall is just the first mysterious thing to show up in her life. Managing to go through it and finding her "other" parents and a more exciting version of her life is next. But things quickly turn scary as she realizes that the "other mother" is not what she seems and her real parents are missing. Really great, creative, spooky tale.

Lost in The Finder

This was actually a good book. I have no idea why I slogged through it. I think it just wasn't good enough. The pace was too spread out. The story followed too many characters, some I did not care at all about. The story was great, the perspective was not. I wasted a whole week on one book!! AAARGH! Anyway, it was good, just not great. And not great in that way that makes you fall asleep right away at night instead of having to read just one more page.

look for me by edeet ravel

i was so enjoying the beginning of this book - it's a love story framed by the vivid realities of the israeli-palestinian conflict. dana's husband disappears, and she has waited for him to return for eleven years. i was very much into the story until around page 232, and that's when it all started to fall apart for me. you spend the first 231 pages in anticipation - where is her husband? why did he disappear? why won't anyone tell her where he is? the answers, though perhaps truthful, are disappointing and shallow. what started out as a novel i felt invested in, ended as one that i could not wait to put down. overall, a disappointment.

shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon

you were right - i did love this book. i loved everything about it. it was mysterious, and surprising, and it dealt with one of my favorite things in the world...books. the attention to detail, deep thought, and passionate soul that zafon put into this novel were evident, and so much appreciated by this reader. i literally could not put this down. thank you, mr. zafon. what a well-rounded, beautifully tragic read.

well, was she?

was she pretty? by leanne shapton - graphic novel combined with poetic words. a rare gem, i must say. unusual and original. shapton interviews friends and acquaintances about their exes, weaving us a voyeuristic tale of love and life through epigrammatic vignettes and evocative line drawings (yes, that's from the flap copy). i liked it, and am waiting for her newest book to arrive.

I am a sucker for Kurt Wallander

I am a sucker for Henning Mankell's Kurt Wallander mysteries. In part because they have great atmosphere, and real characters and a hero who is not so much like a hero. There are always violent crimes, very violent at times, set against a stark dramatic picture of Sweden. I always imagine it cold, and dark and bare where he is. Wallander (detective with the police force in Ystad) is a great and complex protagonist. He seems deeply sad, he questions how he can do what he does, but he doggedly pursues the most daunting of criminals and always figures out the puzzle. I like him because he is brusque and real and doesn't really know how to have a personal relationship but doesn't stop trying. I just finished Sidetracked and I loved it. It was hard at any point to put it down. It starts when a young girl sets fire to herself in front of Wallander. The reader is perhaps even more affected because we have already been introduced to her in the prologue. What follows are a series of brutal murders by a most surprising killer. When Wallander apprehends the villain he stands in the rain and cries. There is so much humanity in him. Anyway, it was very very good.

perhaps there is room in my heart for...

....carlos ruiz zafon. i started reading the shadow of the wind this morning while waiting to go in for my first colonic. from the first subtitle page, i am in love and committed to this book...how poetic, how beautiful, and how tragic...the cemetery of forgotten books. more to follow as i dive deeper and deeper into this heaven...

the love of my life, john irving

my first book finished - the fourth hand by john irving -  admittedly started before june 1st, but finished late last night...i adore john irving, and i adore his writing. this book was conceptually much more out there then some of my favorites - it's about a reporter whose left hand is eaten by a lion while he is on assignment in india. he becomes the nation's first hand transplant...but the widow of the donated hand demands visitation rights. it was a bizarre read, but deep at the heart of the matter, a love story. funny, dark...ah, john irving, you have my heart.

Snooty French man learns life lessons

So... I just finished Artificial Snow by Florian Zeller. I read it twice - it's not very long - 115 pages - but you almost have to read it twice to get more of a feel for it. It is about a man who loved a woman and cannot let her go. They broke up ages ago and she has moved on but he can't. His fantasies alternate between getting back together with her in elaborate ways and killing her. He starts carrying a knife in case he runs into her. One of the interesting things about this book is that he could be just a bitter, sad guy going through a part of his life where he doesn't really feel anything and so thinks he needs to do something drastic... or he could be a sociopath. The line is kinda fuzzy. The prologue, dismissed as "Boring Prologue" is actually the end of the story, a looking back, something learned, redemption. But even the title of it shows you how self-absorbed and self-conscious the narrator is. Anyway, hard to describe I guess. Worth it though for some little bits of wisdom found throughout. Overall, an interesting character study.

okay maybe it wasn't a great piece of literature

i have just finished reading my first book of the competition. it is called, drum roll please, From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris. This is my 8th, maybe 9th book in the series. Even though it pains me to post this. I love them. They are silly and much like watching television but really fun and sort of addictive if you like that vampire shape shifter love story kind of fiction. which apparently i do. from now on though i promise much loftier reading.