Monday, June 23, 2014

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Well, I'm reading a ton of different books now. I didn't finish anything last week but I started a bunch of new books, which may be why I'm not really finishing anything. :) This week I vow to finish at least two of the books I'm reading!

I started Arimathea, by Frank McGuinness, and it's pretty amazing. It's set in Donegal in the 1940s, post-World War 2, and it's about the effect on a small town of a visit by an Italian painter who comes to paint the Stations of the Cross in the local church. The local priest arranges for him to rent a home from the O'Donovan family, and the painter's arrival makes all kinds of waves.

I also started Double Negative, by Ivan Vladislavic, a South African writer. It's about a man who becomes a photographer and returns to South Africa after spending some years living abroad. It's set during apartheid and after. Vladislavic is an important South African writer and I'm enjoying getting to know his work.

Finally, I started the audio version of John Waters' Carsick. If you read this book you must do the audio. He narrates it and it's just- well, it's hysterical. It's hilarious and raunchy and ridiculous.  You'll love it, if you like that kind of thing.

And I'm still stringing along reading The Line of Beauty, which I love and don't want to end. I said on Twitter the other day that when you've got a Hollinghurst book in one hand and John Waters in the other, everything else just seems dull by comparison. Boring and badly written is the exact way I put it and while that may be a slight overstatement, sometimes you read a book that brings such sheer enjoyment that you wonder how anything else can hold up. That's the case with these two!

And granted, they are two very different books. Beauty is depressing but gloriously written; Carsick is riotously funny, obscene and crazy and Waters' narration on the audio brings it to dizzying insane life.

What are you reading? See more at BookJourney.wordpress.com.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I just downloaded Carsick from Audible. You had me at raunchy and hilarious!