2 posts tagged “june 2009 reading”
I was just browsing through the several [_____ is good] pages, and I was mightily surprised to see my name under the [life is good] heading. Aww, shucks--I'm honored. Thank you very much to whomever thought my June reading wrap-up was interesting enough to feature. Seeing that made my day, which up until this point included nothing more exciting than a trip to the commissary.
I suppose one could call my whim to post each month's reading list a New Year's Resolution for 2009, in which case I've been better about keeping up with this one than any other resolution I've made. It just struck me that I've already got half a year's worth of reading recorded here. Counting the couple I've finished so far this month, that's thirty-four books, mostly novels, most of those science fiction or fantasy, most of those rereads from my not inconsiderable collection of paperbacks.
The preponderance of rereads could owe something to the fact that, for the first time since getting married and starting the string of military moves, most of my books are on shelves rather than squirreled away in disintegrating cardboard boxes. Drawing from on my own sagging bookshelves, I have curled up old favorites worn from countless readings and rererereadings, and I have rediscovered books read once and then relegated to the backwaters of my library. It has been such a pleasant experience that I feel fully justified in adding who knows how many pounds of tightly packed books to our household goods allowance.
I doubt that even the most loyal reader is as fascinated with my own reading choices as I am, but I do think I will keep up with my monthly bookish blatherings. I'm looking forward to looking back, come January 2010, on a year of geeky, quirky, not-at-all-literarily-impressive, yet thoroughly enjoyable pleasure reading.
Aside from the fifth book in Naomi Novik's "Napoleonic Wars, plus Dragons!" series, my reading in June had a distinct theological bent. Karen Armstrong's A History of God is as good as I remembered it for following the development of concepts of deity in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The two Lois McMaster Bujold novels on my list deal with a thoroughly fictional world with a richly developed religious life in which five gods are worshipped by the orthodox Quintarians: the Mother of Summer, the Father of Winter, the Daughter of Spring, the Son of Autumn, and the Bastard, god of all things out of season. Finally, Many Waters finds twins Sandy and Dennys (minor characters at best in the previous books of the series begun with A Wrinkle in Time) thrown into the middle of the pre-Flood society from whence Noah sprang. It was a much stranger read than I remember it being when I was a kid, probably because I now have the religious studies background to scratch my head at some of the veiled allusions.
