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Reading habits
I'm one of those readers who always has a number of books in the process of being read sitting around, and I was musing today on the major mental shifts it takes to switch between them. It's rare that I read a book all the way through in one sitting, and when that happens it's either because I've got a book by an author I really like and made the time to read it through or because it gripped me when I wasn't expecting it to.
These are all books that have been at least started, and don't include the untouched to-be-read stacks.
At home:
Dorothy Dunnett The Game of Kings (Only on page 60 or so and it's like pounding my head against concrete to get through, and I can't keep any of the characters straight, despite the cast list in the front. And who the hell's this "Pinkie" that every keep talking about?)
The Decoy Princess by someone-or-other. A book that I can't stand, which I usually have no problem abandoning, but it's one of those that I resent so much I now view as an opponent and I WILL NOT LET THIS BOOK DEFEAT ME. Although it's pretty close to doing so - I'm about 50 pages from the end, and the characters are all heading for the final confrontation, and it's again like pounding my head against concrete.
The Tale of Genji. 'Nuff said.
The Gossamer Years - another Heian diary by a court woman; from what I understand it's either the first or the first surviving of its kind.
There's several others, but I can't recall them offhand.
At work:
I tend to have several books sitting around on my desk, which I take to lunch or the ref desk with me. I have a bad habit of not actually checking out as many as I ought, so there's no record of where they are if anyone else wants them.
McFeely's Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? About the attitudes of and towards American women in the kitchen in the 20th century.
Don't Try This At Home, edited by Witherspoon and Friedman - an anthology of anecdotes from professional chefs about various kitchen disasters.
At the House of Gathered Leaves, edited by Mostow. A collection of various Heian diary fragments, with extensive footnotes that are longer than the diaries themselves. The first one, which I'm in the middle of, is a chronicle of a family whose head of household suddenly up and went to be a monk on Mount Hiei at the age of 23, leaving his wife and daughter, among other relatives, in total disarray and in various stages of grief (they can't even visit him, because Mt Hiei is forbidden to women). The diary/chronicle/whatever seems to have been an attempt by the family to explain what he did and why he did it. (His reasoning seems to have been that he always wanted to be a monk but Dad put his foot down and insisted he marry so as soon as Dad was cold in the grave, he took off and never looked back, but it's hard to say since he wasn't the one writing the chronicle, and everyone else is at sixes and sevens over the whole thing.)
Robert van Gulik's Sexual Life in Ancient China, which I pulled off the shelf to answer a question over on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
little_details and kept to read because, really, who wouldn't?
On the iPod:
I listen to audiobooks a lot, while drawing, while driving, while cleaning, etc. There's three I'm in the middle of:
Soul Music. I'm slowly working my way through Audible.com's entire Pratchett backlist. He's comfort reading and listening, and I like hearing the narrators' various take son accents and speech cadences.
Johnny and the Dead, Pratchett again. Read by Tony Robinson, who I love because he's Tony Robinson.
The Lost Painting by an author I can't be arsed to look up this second. It's a nonfiction book about the search for a lost Caravaggio painting.
And now that I've successfully killed enough time for the lunch rush to have passed, I'm going to lunch. Whee!
These are all books that have been at least started, and don't include the untouched to-be-read stacks.
At home:
Dorothy Dunnett The Game of Kings (Only on page 60 or so and it's like pounding my head against concrete to get through, and I can't keep any of the characters straight, despite the cast list in the front. And who the hell's this "Pinkie" that every keep talking about?)
The Decoy Princess by someone-or-other. A book that I can't stand, which I usually have no problem abandoning, but it's one of those that I resent so much I now view as an opponent and I WILL NOT LET THIS BOOK DEFEAT ME. Although it's pretty close to doing so - I'm about 50 pages from the end, and the characters are all heading for the final confrontation, and it's again like pounding my head against concrete.
The Tale of Genji. 'Nuff said.
The Gossamer Years - another Heian diary by a court woman; from what I understand it's either the first or the first surviving of its kind.
There's several others, but I can't recall them offhand.
At work:
I tend to have several books sitting around on my desk, which I take to lunch or the ref desk with me. I have a bad habit of not actually checking out as many as I ought, so there's no record of where they are if anyone else wants them.
McFeely's Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? About the attitudes of and towards American women in the kitchen in the 20th century.
Don't Try This At Home, edited by Witherspoon and Friedman - an anthology of anecdotes from professional chefs about various kitchen disasters.
At the House of Gathered Leaves, edited by Mostow. A collection of various Heian diary fragments, with extensive footnotes that are longer than the diaries themselves. The first one, which I'm in the middle of, is a chronicle of a family whose head of household suddenly up and went to be a monk on Mount Hiei at the age of 23, leaving his wife and daughter, among other relatives, in total disarray and in various stages of grief (they can't even visit him, because Mt Hiei is forbidden to women). The diary/chronicle/whatever seems to have been an attempt by the family to explain what he did and why he did it. (His reasoning seems to have been that he always wanted to be a monk but Dad put his foot down and insisted he marry so as soon as Dad was cold in the grave, he took off and never looked back, but it's hard to say since he wasn't the one writing the chronicle, and everyone else is at sixes and sevens over the whole thing.)
Robert van Gulik's Sexual Life in Ancient China, which I pulled off the shelf to answer a question over on
little_details and kept to read because, really, who wouldn't?On the iPod:
I listen to audiobooks a lot, while drawing, while driving, while cleaning, etc. There's three I'm in the middle of:
Soul Music. I'm slowly working my way through Audible.com's entire Pratchett backlist. He's comfort reading and listening, and I like hearing the narrators' various take son accents and speech cadences.
Johnny and the Dead, Pratchett again. Read by Tony Robinson, who I love because he's Tony Robinson.
The Lost Painting by an author I can't be arsed to look up this second. It's a nonfiction book about the search for a lost Caravaggio painting.
And now that I've successfully killed enough time for the lunch rush to have passed, I'm going to lunch. Whee!
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I've also recently finished Laura Shapiro's Something from the Oven, which is similar but focuses more tightly on 1950s America. She's got one about turn-of-the-20th-century America called Perfection Salad, which is on my list of books to grab after I finish McFeely.
There seems to be or have been a large domestic science course or program at TCU in the past, judging by the amount of kitchen science and cookbooks on the shelves here. Or the Acquisitions librarians don't like to pay for cookbooks for themselves and get the library to buy them instead, since there's a lot of recent ones on the shelves.
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It's a bad sign when you're praying for "Rocks fall. Everyone dies" to happen.
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I happen to love books about the art and antiquities trade, and have worked in a museum before, so it's fascinating to me.
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I keep getting the feeling that it'd work better if I had more of a clue about Scottish history of the time, but I know more about English history than Scots. Sad, because I'm Clan Fraser on my mother's side.
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Dandy, however, is a nickname for "Andrew." I was something like three-quarters through the book before that clicked.
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*makes note of "Dandy"*
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It will be even more interesting after I remember that Saiyuki is ostensibly set in ancient China while reading it...
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