all my friends are going to be strangers

I was idly glancing at the brief bio of McMurtry on the back cover of Terms of Endearment, not really expecting to learn anything because I've read about him before.

However, I had a little double take...Here's the bio:

"Larry McMurtry, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove, is the author of more than twenty novels, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays.  His reputation as a critically acclaimed author is unequaled.  Mr. McMurtry lives in Texas."

Say wha???  If you didn't pick up on what gave me a start, it's the claim that his reputation is unequaled for critical acclaim.  Really?  I mean, he got a Pulitzer and all, but really?  It just seems like a little bit of a far fetched claim for a mere book cover bio...

It wouldn't be a true new obsession if I didn't post three times in one day!

First of all, Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass is being made into a movie!  It's my favorite fantasy book from childhood.  (And according to my friends, big kids like it too...I've been meaning to re-read the trilogy myself to re-live the awesomeness.)  This should be fun.

In France, apparently they have book vending machines in public places, so you can buy a book 24 hours a day!  I've always wanted a 24 hour bookstore, just because I get bored in the middle of the night and I like to spend time in bookstores...But a vending machine?  Kinda takes the fun out of browsing for books, doesn't it?  Oh well.  I just thought it was kind of amusing to have book vending machines.  I'd love to see the reaction they'd get here in America.

I've been browsing through different book communities on livejournal.  There are communities that tout themselves as general book clubs, places for book reviews, places for book recommendations, or places for book challenges.  I guess the subject of "reading" is so broad that it's just hard to find your niche.  The problem though, is that all these communities seem to bleed together.  A lot of people belong to many different book communities and post the same entries to multiple communities at once...It takes away the specificity of each community's purpose, and it kinda just ruins the whole possibility of simply having a conversation about books, which is what I'm looking for.  Plus, it seems like there are way too many Dan Brown fans and way too many entries that go something like "Let's burn James Frey at the stake!  We don't like liars in America!"  I mean, c'mon.  Are these hicksville book communities?  I don't like liars, but lighten up.  It's just a book.  And if you enjoy it, hey that's cool.  And if you don't hey, that's cool.  It's not like he tried to say George Washington wasn't really a president or something.  Whatever.  I didn't really want to comment on the whole James Frey thing, because I'm not even all that informed on the subject.  Anyways.  I don't even want to join a stupid livejournal community anymore.  Because I have my very own lovely book blog!  And a kitty asleep on my arm.  Which means it is becoming increasingly harder to type as the arm goes numb.  So goodnight.

I'm currently reading Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry.  It's a part of his Houston Trilogy.  From what I can tell, it's not really a strongly connected trilogy (it doesn't have a continuous plotline through the whole series) but more just a group of three books that roughly follow the same characters and the same setting.  The second book in this trilogy is All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers, which is a book I really enjoyed.  Terms of Endearment is the third book.  (I haven't read the first...but I don't think reading them chronologically is really necessary, the books seem to stand alone.)

I'm having trouble getting into it a little bit because I really dislike the main character.  Actually, I could see myself growing to like her, but right now she annoys me.  However, all the young people in the book are characters from AMFAGTBS (ha, that's a long abbreviation) so it's nice to see some familiar faces.  Also, I love reading McMurtry write about Houston.  He romanticizes Houston more than anyone I've ever encountered.  Actually, has anyone even tried romanticising Houston besides McMurtry?  But yeah, he makes Houston sound like a cool place to be.  Which is a good book for me to be reading, seeing as I'm headed back there for at least another year starting in 2 weeks.

I guess you could say I'm a little bit in a trend of reading books about places where I live.  The last book was Devil in the White City, which was about Chicago.  It covered the 1893 World's Fair, which happened to have taken place just blocks from where I'm staying, so it made everything extra-interesting and relevant.  And now the Houston book.  I kinda like reading about familiar places...in a way it's easier to get lost in the book...Plus it's kinda fun to hear McMurtry describe a house in the neighborhood I used to live in and think "Hmmm, I wonder which house was his inspiration..."

Speaking of trends in book reading, I've been thinking about reading trends that people do on purpose.  For example, picking a theme or an author and only reading that particular subject.  Reading about the cities I live in kind of happened by accident, at least the fact that I am reading them back to back.  My friend Hayley (ahsweape) is currently on an Agatha Christie kick.  It's more than a kick, she's actually decided to read all of the Poirot books.  That's a big undertaking, even for quick reads like Christie.  Hayley seems more prone to doing things like that than me, she has several authors whom she's read their whole collection.  Anyways, I'm kind of jealous of that dedication, because frankly it sounds kind of fun.  I think I let myself get way too scattered; I get pulled in all sorts of different directions.  It would be kind of nice to say "I like Chuck Palahniuk.  I think I'll read everything he's ever written."  And that isn't even an example of a very big undertaking!  I've also been kind of curious to get pulled into some sort of series, perhaps a sci fi type series.  I love the Harry Potter books because it's a familiar world, but also a familiar world in which the same kind of conflict keeps getting advanced.  So yeah, that's another something I've thought would be fun to get into.  I used to get sucked into series and trilogies and things like that all the time, but in my old age I've somehow fallen away from that.  It's time I brought back such fun.

Anyways.  Perhaps when I get through a few books I'm dying to read on my "to be read" list, I'll pick some sort of theme or author.  Just for the heck of it.

Hello hello. This journal is mostly for myself, but I wouldn't mind if others are interested in reading as well. If you like the idea, perhaps you could make your own, and then we can be book-logging buddies!

Basically, I'd like to do a few things with this journal. First, I'd just like to keep track of what I've read. I seem to have trouble remembering what I've read and when I've read it. I'd also eventually like to keep track of my book collection, but seeing as my book collection is far, far away, I can't quite work on that yet. I'd also just like to be able to ramble about books I've been reading. I tend to want to do that on my regular journal, so this way it's just segmented off into a kind of "special interest" area.

I guess that all sounds very methodical and serious. I really don't wanna be one of those serious readerly types who think they always have to be reading something important. This is just meant to be a fun rambly log of what's going on in my reading world.

I tried to compile a list of what I've read so far in 2006. I'm sure I'm probably missing something. I've decided to include plays on the list. I know they aren't exactly books, but it's important to me to read plays, so plays are a part of this whole endeavor as well. Also, audio books are included too, just because they are still books I have "consumed."

Here it is, books I've read in 2006 (in no particular order):
1. "The Misanthrope", by Moliere
2. "Amadeus" by Peter Shaffer
2.  "Machinal" by Sophie Treadwell
3. "Buried Child" by Sam Shepard
4. "The Merchant of Venice" by Shakespeare
5.  "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" by Shakespeare
6. "Twelfth Night" by Shakespeare
7.  "Richard III" by Shakespeare
8. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
9. Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne
10. Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger
11. A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby
12. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
13. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
14.  "100 Saints You Should Know" by Kate Fodor

Probably the only things missing are the plays I read for play selection, but I scanned through those pretty quickly anyways, so they weren't absorbed too terribly much.

Lately I've been kind of a slow reader, mostly because I've been getting sidetracked by other things.  I've been doing lots of crossword puzzles.  And I've been feeling guilty for buying newspapers only for the crossword puzzle, so I've been trying to read the newspaper too.  And it is a long, slow process for me to read a newspaper.  I guess I'm just so un-informed about things that it takes me a while to absorb and comprehend everything.  Perhaps if I become more informed, newspaper reading will be faster.  Actually crosswords and newspaper reading are the only real distraction, but somehow they've been all-consuming.  Hmmm.