Saturday, May 24, 2008

What are you reading?

Before leisurely summer reading is here, I would like to know..what are you reading? Or what are you reading this summer? Maybe we can have a "summer Masquer book club".

Of course, I just finished reading (over 30...less than 100) YAL books for a graduate class (didn't read the book Liam is reading, though). Because I created a fiction Bibliography for Elizabethan England (Shakespeare as a character, the plague, the fire of London, the politics of Queen Elizabeth, religous persecution ...you get the point), I read Gwendolyn Brooks Year of Wonders (story of the plague). One of the best books I've read in a long time. I'm drawn to the morbidity and grossness of Elizabethan England, but this book sucked me into moral dilemmas - when the gates of the city you live in are closed off due to the plague - do you stay, do you try to get out? Do you help anyone. And the ending- rocks my socks.

Book list #1:
Year of Wonders- Gwendolyn Brooks...please add on.

7 comments:

LisaBB said...

A modern gothic.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
You can solve the mystery. I got sucked into this dark and brooding novel. Pure mind pudding, but so thick and rich.

Lara said...

I am really no help here. I have put aside my literary education to read whatever a 10 year old leaves laying around the house. That, and Magic Tree House series with Gretchen.

GalenK said...

I'm reading What to Eat by Marion Nestle. This was chosen to follow The Omnivore's Dilemma which should be required reading for anyone who eats (!!!). Next will be In Defense of Food.

Son of J said...

In addition to still reading a lot of Plays and drama books, my favorite Author over the last six years has been Stewart O'Nan. Snow Angels was awesome. As was Night Country and A Prayer for the Dying (my first O'Nan). But right now, as I just received it for Father' Day, I am reading Last Night at the Lobster. This will also serve as my beach reading next week in OCMD.

CatherineCZ said...

I just finished I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe. I'd never read any of his stuff, but this was quite a vacation page turner - and made me so glad we went to college when we did!

Constance said...

well better late than never-
So far I've read Stephenie Myers' The Host and the third in her vampire love trilogy, Eclipse. Her series Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse are "teen readers" so Harrison and I both read them. I cannot wait for August when the
4th in the series comes out.Also read: One for the Money by Janet Evanovich, Abarat by Clive Barker, A is for Alibi by Icanno Remember, Twisted by Jonathan Kellerman and I'm starting Black and Blue by Anna Quindlan.

chrom said...

Well, Constance, obviously I'm the slacker English teacher when it comes to absorbing words. I spent two weeks correcting English teaching portfolios- Julius Caesar, Anne Frank, Oedipus, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Sawyer (great laughs)- the classics (jeez - you think there would be some new classics)- but talking about literature w/ other bibliophiles made me dust off my copy of Middlemarch for some unknown reason. I'm really into it.