Number one random want: More Reading Time, please. A vacation, proper go away to somewhere nice with a view and quiet reading time tacked on is on the top of the list. I am working on that one. My sister and I have been toying with the idea of taking the train from Omaha to Denver. The upside--approximately nine hours journey which sounds like an abundance of reading time. The downside--those hours are basically overnight. Lots of time to read or be idle, but would I just fall asleep? Too dark to look at the passing scenery anyway. This may end up like all my other travel plans these days--just a nice wishful thought.
My random wishes are, of course, authors and books I want to get to that I jot down in my little reading journal (which of late has been somewhat neglected).
I am reading a number of really good mysteries, but I wouldn't mind throwing in a thriller into the mix. So I picked up Ruth Ware's The Death of Mrs. Westaway. It has loads of accolades on the inside first page. Every newspaper and best of list seems to have given it five solid stars and says it is unputdownable. So that's okay. I start reading and find the narrator, Hal, sort of annoying. Is she going to be unreliable? Maybe. Not that I dislike unreliable narrators, but there seem to be so many of them in this genre anymore. Cowering women with little self-esteem. And I do get it, that is what makes the story suspenseful and tricky. But Hal just kept on and on in those first pages about how surely she (having just received a letter informing her of an inheritance) could not be related to the Westaways and their grand mansion.
So the book sits there and I think maybe I will wait to read it until I know I can get on with it properly as I suspect I would actually quite like the story if I could just get past those initial chapters. So, tell me, did you read it and love and and I should just keep going?
I am finishing a nonfiction so am in the market for a new one. I was thinking maybe a memoir or biography, maybe by a Japanese author or Japanese-American author--can you tell I have a book in mind? But I also have a library book that is about a scandalous Australian aviatrix who became embroiled in a murder trial. And there is a massive pile of other nonfiction books waiting for me, too. The problem, or rather the challenge is not to let myself overthink the task of book selection too much as I just end up agonizing and second guessing my choice.
In my handy little notebook I jot things down in now and again I have a little running list of authors or books I want to explore. At work I've been so busy ordering and receiving new books for the stacks I can't keep up and so many are crossing my desk that I wish I could take home and read now. In a few cases I have done just that. Or I read about someone and add her (more often than not it is a 'her') to my list. The list?
Anything Japanese for one. I will share my plans next week and you can imagine the pile of books I have already accumulated (photo to follow soon).
But then there are other authors I have bumped into lately.
A few whose work I want to explore? Both Eve Babitz and Lucia Berlin are high on the list and both have numerous books to their names or written about them. Eve Babitz who has written about Hollywood intrigues me. And Lucia Berlin whose short stories have gotten good reviews--as in--she was very underappreciated and you should really know her work, and so I want to.
Old standbys. I am ready to get back to Barbara Pym and Deborah Moggach. Which Pym is your favorite? I have read a small handful and of course I loved Excellent Women, but I really quite liked Quartet in Autumn and Crampton Hodnet. I have read a couple of books by Deborah Moggach--liked them so much I have probably bought just about every other book she has published with the idea I would work my way through her oeuvre. If you stop by her occasionally you might know I have an ongoing interest in books published or set in the 1970s and 1980s. Moggach fits the bill in some cases. I am always on the look out with a book set in that era. Maybe I need to read some of Fay Weldon's earlier books?
And then just at the top of my reading pile I have a few Jane Gardam books. I want to read Kamila Shamsie who won last year's Women's Prize. I have a few books by Suzanne Rindell that have managed to wiggle their way to the top of the TBR. Maybe get back to Celia Dale's domestic crime novels, and then more Georges Simenon. I have added another crime novelist--Elmore Leonard, who is not someone I would have looked at but the setting and era is right an Library of America has a boxed set of his classic crime novels, which makes me think he really is someone worth exploring. And then maybe it is time again to get back to Mary Russell?
Things to think about as I (hopefully) finish a couple of books this weekend (making room for a couple more new books). I find that if I am not reading a book I am often thinking about reading. Should I be worried about this?