2012 Reading List

I've been lucky so far. I haven't picked any duds to read. Finally ran in to a challenge, but not a ud. Molokai had me in tears. Frequently. A Walk in the Woods had me laughing out loud on the subway. Frequently. The World According to Garp had me turning pages and raving about it. Frequently.

Currently working on both Undaunted Courage, a biography of Lewis and Clark by Steven Ambrose and Fifty Shades of Grey, by E.L. James (had to see what the fuss is about!) While I don't usually read more than one book at a time, these are so wildly different there is no confusing the plot lines or characters. Let's just say one is a "to school" read and one is a "from school read" and leave it at that ;)

I can't remember the last time that I read a historical biography, but I'm fully enjoying the exercise of reading a new genre. I am constantly consulting maps, looking up words, and rereading to figure out wtf just happened. At points, I'm reminded of Infinite Jest simply in that I want to put it down and say to hell with this whole book, let me get my hands on an US Weekly. IJ was a huge milestone for me as a reader because I didn't scrap the billion page, footnote riddled project and the gratification did come way later* in the book. In that case, it may have come in the days after finishing it, when I was still stewing on everything. Point being, I didn't put it down and I'm glad that I didn't. Undaunted Courage just got really good. I'm 40% through the book and it just got really good. Lewis and Clark have been living off of meat for two years, everyone is sick, they ran out of whiskey and have just figured out how huge the Rockies are. And it is October. They are about to be seriously f-ed, yet Lewis is intent on saying that he presumes the road ahead will be a good one until it proves otherwise. They are the original long term, budget travelers.

Up Next on the Reading List:
Wild- Cheryl Strayed (SO EXCITED about this one)

The Hunger Games Trilogy

Seabiscuit- Laura Hillenbrand

Letters to a Young Chef- Daniel Boloud
Gifted Hands- Ben Carson
Visit From the Goon Squad- Jennifer Eagan
97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Families in One Tennement- Jane Ziegelman
The Art of Fielding- Chad Harbach

The first three of those are physical books, so I plan to read them before we head out in August. While we are gone though, I'll be reading those puppies on my Kindle. Let me know if you want to borrow Kindle editions or have any recommendations. I LOVE book recs.


*The shoot out scene on the front of the Ensor House is still probably my favorite scene.