Tuesday, April 10, 2018

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?


I've been through a few things lately. I read The Devoted, by Blair Hurley, coming out in August I believe and one I really enjoyed. It's a kind of coming-of-age book about a woman who's already an adult, who gets pulled into a relationship with her Buddhist teacher that is unhealthy on many levels, and is trying to break free.

I also read Good Neighbors, by Joanne Serling, about a woman whose high-strung frenemy has adopted a little Russian girl with unhappy results. The book has a very distinctive writing style which may be accomplishing some literary end but did not work for me as a reader.

Finally I finished The Last Black Unicorn and The Shape of Bones. So that's all good.

What am I reading now?

The Balcony, by Jane Delury, is a novel about an estate in France and the people who lived there over the years. Every chapter is about a different person, a different voice. I'm intrigued so far. I've read books like this before (especially thinking of Jenny Erpenbeck's masterful The Visitation) so I'm not exactly coming to the concept fresh. We'll see.

On the bedside table I'm into volume 4 of Osamu Tezuka's Buddha series and working my way through Mirror City, by Chitrita Banerji, about an Indian woman living in Bangladesh dealing with culture clashes and her mixed marriage (her husband is Muslim and she's Hindu). I like it a lot.

I haven't picked a new audiobook yet. Just not in the right
mood I guess. At the gym I'm reading Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden, which is searing and difficult but important. This is about the only known escapee who was born inside one of North Korea's prison camps.

I still have Six Four floating around but some of the reading I'm doing is assignment stuff so I have to backburner it until I get some breathing room on the reading I have to do.

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