Reading lists

It’s not all Fringe and Bruce Campbell around here, you know. I’ve also been reading a fair amount, such as: (1) re-reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series - which starts out sooooo strong, then gets flabby and self-indulgent in the last two books (seriously: SPOILER the author writing himself in as a character? And then a self-aware deus ex machina to boot? C’mon) … plus I always cry ANOTHER SPOILER when Oy dies; (2) Short Girls by Bich Minh Nguyen – a novel (possibly slightly autobiographical?) about two Vietnamese sisters growing up in the American Midwest; and (3) Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 by David Petersen – the second in the gorgeous Mouse Guard graphic novel series.

And I’m currently reading: (1) The Dirty Life - which is not as titillating as it sounds, being an organic farming memoir by Kristin Kimball; The Foremost Good Fortune: a Memoir by Susan Conley – written by a former neighbor/grade school, etc., classmate of mine about moving her family to China, plus a cancer diagnosis; and (3) re-reading Knife of Dreams, Book 11 in the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, because I bought Book 12 and can’t for the life of me remember WTF is going on in that massive series so I thought I should remind myself before delving into the new volume. For what it’s worth, I’m not a huge fan of memoirs – I think it’s the introspective bits that turn me off; I much prefer biographies – but I like TDL for the farming bits and TFGF because it’s fun to read something written by someone I [used to] know. And dang, if Susan Conley doesn’t look exactly as young and gorgeous as she did when I knew her way back when.