Sunday, April 05, 2015

Not Dead -- Just Reading A Lot

I'm sure that some of you who may have been following my blog in the past have concluded that I have died. But I am very much alive!
It's really strange, but somehow I have just not been blogging much this year. I'm not even sure why.
For a spell there I was saying to myself that I am just working too much. That I am too tired at the end of the day. And it's true, the past few months have been real busy at my work -- but it has subsided lately, and still -- I just do not seem to be blogging about the things I am reading, or even about my daily thoughts as I once did. It's probably just a bit of phase I am going through, almost like writer's block.
But I have been reading some really terrific books, that's for sure. In fact, the first three months of this year I have read 15 books, which is a real lot for me statistically speaking, and given the fact that I am slow reader.
Here is a list of what I have read thus far in 2015:

The Gods of Gotham by Lindsay Faye
The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters
The Great Agnostic: Robert Ingersoll and American Freethought by Susan Jacoby
Gold by Chris Cleave
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
Under The Wide And Starry Sky by Nancy Horan
The Names by Don DeLillo
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
The Road to Wellville by T.C. Boyle
Talk Talk by T.C. Boyle
Native Son by Richard Wright
A Tale For The Time Being by Ruth Ozecki

Just this morning I started my 16th book, Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier and I am immediately immersed in it. Such terrific writing.
And in two more weeks I am on vacation! So… more reading. Uninhibited. 

And hopefully some blogging, too.
*****

2 comments:

Stefanie said...

You are doing lots of reading! Glad to hear it has been so good too. Also I am glad to know you aren't dead or at death's door.

Anonymous said...

I recently finished “Scenes from the Life of Mathias Almosino” by Isidoros Zourgos, one of my favourite and most popular modern greek writers (has sold more than 190.000 books.) Isidoros, who is a teacher, keeps writing different books and his rich language is most times poetic. His hero, Almosino, is a German-Jew doctor born in Basel who embarks a journey throughout Europe of the 17th century ( from London to Amsterdam, Petersburg to Venice, Thessaloniki to Istanbul) encounters 122 people (indeed!), re-discovers himself and finally becomes a Christian monk. Isidoros read 63 books in order to write this one, which deals with different themes from astrology to philosophy, and medicine to theology.
For my Easter holidays I want to read David Mitchell’s “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” and Michel Faber’s “The Crimson Petal and the White”. I said I want; it doesn’t mean I will!! Michel Faber who was born 13th of April 1960, shares his birthday with 3 giants:
SAMUEL BECKETT
SEAMUS HEANEY and
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS.
Guess who is going to get a birthday card? This is what old Beckett would have said to the author of “the Book of the Strange New Things”:
“You're on Earth, Michel Faber. There's no cure for that.”