Sasha Wants More

Whoa, February. You were a particularly craptastic month, in real life. In the LaLa Land that is my reading, well, you kicked ass. Then again, I was sick loads this month—earning my first [too long] stint in a hospital, complete with IV drip—and that, haha, just prevented me from reading more. Boo. Still, you had your awesome moments. As record, these are the books I read this month [as usual, the links lead you to the post of my thoughts about the book]:

1. Release, by Beth Kery.
2. Young Hearts Crying, by Richard Yates.
3. Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, by Grace Paley.
4. Seven Years of Highly Defective People: A Guided Tour of the Evolution of Dilbert, by Scott Adams. Okay, this was an awesome book. I love Dilbert and his world, and what I especially loved about this book is that it has Adams’ annotations on characters, scenes, and strips. Also, I am just waiting for a dog I can name Dogbert. [I wanted to name this blog Bookbert, but I figured only seven people would get it, haha.]
5. Sunflowers: A Novel of Vincent Van Gogh, by Sheramy Bundrick.
6. What Now?, by Ann Patchett. With many thanks to my awesomez friend Petra for lending it to me one whiskey-laden night. Her mom’s awesomez too, by the way, as the book’s a grad gift from the elder awesomez to the younger one.
7. What Remains, by Carole Radziwill.
8. The Believers, by Zoe Heller.
9. The Highlander’s Stolen Bride, by Melanie George. I had high hopes for this book—I mean, it’s about Highlanders, come on. But, well, it just didn’t do it for me. Too, hm, too mediocre and it had too many moments of ridiculousness (and not the good kind).
10. Sweet Persuasion, by Maya Banks. Whoa, Miss Banks. I’ve decided that the whole romance with Submissive women thing just don’t appeal to me anymore. I’ve found myself disagreeing too passionately every few pages or so, and laughing at the OA hero.
11. What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Carver.
12. Mr. Cavendish, I Presume, by Julia Quinn.
13. Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs, by Molly Harper.
14. Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men, by Molly Harper.
15. Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever, by Molly Harper. Great series—funny, with an awesome storyline and great narratives, and funny. Didn’t put up a post about the books because, well, I was sick at the time, and I figured I wouldn’t be saying much to add to the discussions.
16. Jane Bites Back, by Michael Thomas Ford.
17. Postcards from a Dead Girl, by Kirk Farber.
18. After the Workshop, by John McNally. This is an awesome book. So awesome, I still need a few more days to figure out how to share how awesome it is, how to even verbalize to myself and this reading journal how mind-wee!ing a read this is. So, well, wait, as a review is definitely in the works.
19. What the Duke Desires, by Jenna Petersen. Not as good as I’d wanted it to be, but I’m still hopeful for the rest of the series.
20. Cleavage, by Theanna Bischoff.
21. How Could She?, by Dana Fowley.
22. PS, I Love You, by Cecelia Ahern. My goodness, but this wasn’t a very well-written book. But it served its purpose: to dispel the downer I’d felt from Fowley’s brave memoir about her horrifying childhood.
23. Breakfast with Socrates, by Robert Rowland Smith.

My favorite reads—those that will definitely make it to my Top Reads 2010 list at the year’s end—would have to be #02 - Young Hearts Crying (because y’all know I’m nuts for Yates), #11 - What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (because I am as nuts for Carver), #17 - Postcards from a Dead Girl (awesome debut novel), #18 - After the Workshop (yes, I know I need to get that post up). Though I enjoyed a lot of Grace Paley’s short stories, the collection as a whole didn’t wow me as much as I’d wanted it to, and I feel bad about that (boo). Also, top romance read of the month would have to be #01 - Release, and most challenging read would hafta be #08 - The Believers, and #23 - Breakfast with Socrates (just because it’s about philosophy, haha).

That brings my 2010 Reads list to: 22 (January) + 23 (February) = 45. Oh yeah, I can do Math, boo-yah.

Am currently reading A Perfectly Good Family by Lionel Shriver, and will probably follow it up with Maritta Wolff’s Sudden Rain. I need to get back to the Domestic Realism track, as it’s an old love. Also, for March, I figured I should get started on reading more books by Philippine authors. I mean, of those 45 books, not one is by a fellow countryman? That just signals Sasha Fail. Also, I want to finish more of those short story collections on my perpetual Currently Reading list. I suppose Chekhov should make an appearance in this blog in a few weeks’s time.

I have blabbed enough, and all for a list. Happy March, everybody!

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How was your month?

sunnysideupeggs:

Dear Sasha,

Please do start that bookclub. Let’s drink some coffee together, maybe eat some cake. That would be awesome.

Love,

Lea

Overwhelmed by the response to my book club entry. Hi, friends. Hello, strangers.

Really. I wrote that because I’d been daydreaming about it for a long long long time, and I just put that note out there because, well, I don’t know. Shooting for the moon and all that, haha.

But people actually want this. My goodness. This thrills me to no end.

Let’s start that bookclub. We will drink coffee and maybe eat some cake. I warn everyone that it will be awkward, but, well, why not?

Okay, now I have to be organized and shite, hahahaha. Not my strong point.

Who wants this? Also, taking a poll over at Facebook, haha.

Oh my goodness.

ewilcox:

“In my onion, citizens of the United States should attend to what ando how is the federal tax money spent.”

1. What?

2. I am extremely taken by the phrase “in my onion.” This may enter my daily speech patterns.

3. But it’s still not as good as the time a student turned in a paper on The Great Gatsby with every instance of “Fitzgerald” auto-corrected to “Fingered.”

I am now force-feeding my daily speech patterns with in my onion.