I’m getting a lot of reading done.

Book

Author

Genre

Status

Notes

Life of Pi

Yann Martel

Fiction

Finished

Now I know what to do if I’m ever stuck in a boat with a tiger.

Pastoralia

George Saunders

Fiction

Finished

“When you poop and it takes a long time and you are on the clock, do you ever see us outside looking mad with a stopwatch? So therefore please stop saying to us: I have defecated while on the clock, dispose of it for free, kindly absorb the expense. We find that loopy.”

These is My Words

Nancy E. Turner

Historical Fiction

Finished

Ok, the Arizona Territories were rough. But were they so rough that in the course of 10 years a young girl would go through two husbands, three Indian battles, the witness of several murders and a rape, and kill five people herself?

Points of View: An Anthology of Short Stories

Various

Fiction

Dabbled enough

Arranged by narrative distance.

Paradise Lost

John Milton

Poetry

Partway through Book III

“Meanwhile upon the firm opacous globe/ of this round world, whose first convex divides/ the luminous inferior orbs, enclosed/ from Chaos, and th’inroad of darkness old,/ Satan alighted walks.”

Natural History

Dan Chiasson

Poetry

75% complete

The Elephant: “How to explain my heroic courtesy? I feel/ that my body was inflated by a mischievous boy.”

Viper Rum

Mary Karr

Poetry

25% complete

I picked this up because I liked her essay on poetry and faith. The poems themselves are sometimes as interesting. Good title though.

The Heavenly Man

Brother Yun

Autobiography

40% complete

A persecuted leader of the underground Chinese church. Lots of good stories, though some seem deliberately organized to resemble famous bible stories.

In Search of the Old Ones

David Roberts

Nonfiction

finished

One man’s search through the Southwest for traces of the Ansazi. It’s too bad he takes cliff climbing, archaeology, cowboys, politics, and the clash of cultures past and present and threads it with such a holier-than-thou tone.

At the Crossroads

Charlie Peacock

Nonfiction

Finished

A musician and producer addresses the culture of the Contemporary Christian Music industry. The beginning is really boring but I especially like the chapters on lyrics: the absurdity of having a list of six or ten easily recognizable vocabulary words that make a song “Christian” or not.

100 Classic Hikes in Arizona

Scott S. Warren

Nonfiction, Travel

Dabbled

Awesome pictures! Only 1 hike tested and approved so far, but anxious to test more…

The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought

Marilynne Robison

Nonfiction, essays

10%

Family, Darwin, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, the McGuffey Readers, etc. I love her fiction. We’ll see how she does here!