It's forever alone month and I am reading...

I didn't enjoy Fante much at all. I think I'm at the stage of my life where hearing someone talk that way about women just makes me angry. Also, i don't think he's a good writer (Dan Fante) and it was preachy and he believes in psychics and it all just made me roll my eyes. He seems selfish and some of it seemed like big lies. It wasn't one of those books where the writer seems like arse hole with a good soul or great mind, he seems like just an arse hole. I couldn't appreciate it on a level of admiring his honesty and willingness to lay out his badness because it seemed very dishonest and as if there was a lot of laying blame on other people and taking the credit for loving his father more than the rest of his family by being by his bedside when he died and stuff. I'm getting pissed off thinking about it now.

Sigh. Now I'm reading what is so far a GREAT book called The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson. It's set in North Korea, it's quite a funny satire of the regime there at times and started with a brilliant loudspeaker announcement to bolster spirit. It's following a guy called Jun Do, dedicated to the cause. It isn't all a funny book, it's been quite tense and sad, too. Loving it! I think I recommend it!

I finished If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet?! (by Cynthia Heimel) in one day. It's a book consisting of essays, most of them just 3 pages long. Some were awesome, some were somewhat dated (The book was first published in 1991).

Overall I enjoyed it and it was a quick read.

Now I started reading Slam by Nick Hornby. So far so good, but I can tell this won't beat my favorite Nick Hornby Book - High Fidelity.

100 pages into Echo City by Tim Lebbon. It's my first book by him and I'm loving it.

mostly this week i'll be reading The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt. As I begin im lovin the old school prose style

My Dark Places by James Ellroy.

This is next for me! I'm really excited about it. I absolutely HATED his novel Ablutions and normally after I hated something that much I would ignore the author but Sisters Brothers sounds so fantastic. I've got high hopes!

I finally finished Grendel which I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm still reading The Maltese Falcon and I'm probably going to start Middlesex soon.

Finished Portnoy's Complaint and started The Screwtape Letters by C.S.Lewis last night.

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon.

Finished Slam by Nick Hornby. It got me hooked and I just wanted to keep on reading.

Will start reading 110 Stories, New York Writes After September 11, edited by Ulrich Baer tomorrow. Curious!

Just got my syllabus to Intro to Lit and that pretty much is gonna take over my free reading time not to mention 3 Anatomy books that I'm gonna be knee deep in. Insert a resounding Fuck somewhere in this post.

Jaz, could you please send me that syllabus if you have an electronic copy? One of my major regrets about this college is that we never studied literature.

Alright, thanks a lot.

Finally finished Seven Spanish Angels by Stephen Graham Jones. It was great. Highly recommended. Especially if you liked the style of All The Beautiful Sinners. Though Angels is much easier to read. (Either that or I'm a better reader now... ha)

Starting My Father's House by Ben Tanzer for LitReactor's Book Club.

Turns out I don't care for it at all. Returning it to the library today and getting other books.

Okay, don't worry, I'm not in a rush or anything.

I'm reading Marie Antoinette: The Journey, by Antonia Fraser.

Other Sides: 12 Webfiction Tales.

Not impressed so far, but its short, so I'll finish it anyhow.

I finally read Speedloader the other day: was pretty good. Except for ending on a seriously weak note.

.... Burning through the backlog before I start something big and new that I'll live with for months on end.

I was really excited to read Speedloader, and then the only stories I liked in it were Richard's and Nik's.

I know, right?

Still, kinda reassuring to me for some reason that the best were guys I would have read anyway.

The three other stories weren't suck-city - not like some hit-and-miss anthologies - but that last one... Friend of the editor maybe?

The last one was the editor's wasn't it?

I only finished it because I couldn't just read 95% of the thing lol.

Pfffft, you made me look. No, the editors of Speedloader were Sandra Ruttan and Brian Lindenmuth. The "author" of Crash & Burn (last story in the collection) is one, Jonathan Woods. His bio suggests that his story really ought not have so many homophonic misspellings in it.

I'm such a dick.

But I guess I'm right there with you. I even told Richard that I feel like his story and Nik's were the only reason to buy the collection and I felt bad for him being in it. haha

It's a compilation of interviews of James Ellroy between 1984 and 2010. Interesting, especialy for aficionados of crime fiction.

Owch.

I am reading hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world by murakami. Also Just finished The Blind Assasin by Matgaret Atwood. Amazing book.