Thursday, May 03, 2007

What I've Been Reading

Kind of fell off the wagon for awhile there, didn't I? Well, at least I have been reading that whole time, though I haven't been blogging. So there's lots to catch up on.

The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason was great fun. As I'm sure many of you have discovered, it's very weird to read the novel of someone whose blog you read on a regular basis. And who lives in the same state that you do. I love books that have such strong heroines -- and it's amusing watching Victoria trying to be the proper Englishwoman that she is, while at the same time saving the world. And the next book in the series, Rises the Night, comes out in less than a month -- yeah!

I also made it quickly through E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime. I'd never read him before, so I wasn't sure what I was expecting. I would describe his writing style as staccato -- and I don't mean that in a bad way. Short sentences, sometimes just sentence fragments. The way the plot was laid out reminded me a little bit of Pulp Fiction. It was these seemingly disparate stories that all kind of melded together and made sense. It was an interesting take on turn-of-the-last-century America.

Then I finished the Lindbergh biography, which was fantastic. I'd wanted to read more about Lindbergh after he played such a central role in Philip Roth's The Plot Against America. Lindbergh was a fascinating character; he really was the first celebrity, yet he hated the attention. It was interesting to read about his famous flight across the Atlantic; today, air travel seems such a burden and inconvenience. It's nice to know that at one time it really was something amazing. What particularly interested me was Lindbergh's actions around World War II and the taint of anti-Semitism he carried his entire life. The bio did a great job of putting Lindbergh's actions in perspective; I felt better about him after I'd finished the book.

I'll save current reads for my next post.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I found some great fiction book reviews. You can also see those reviews in Fiction short story

Carl V. Anderson said...

I have a contest up for a Rises the Night giveaway that goes until tomorrow night (details in the last half of today's post). I will draw for it Wed night and Colleen will autograph it and send it off immediately...the winner may get it before it hits shelves!