Also, what’s the weirdest book you have in your stack right now?
I have 6 books, 2 are being read (Ready Player One and Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be).
The weirdest one is “Guide To Hallucinogenic Plants” from the 1960’s.
I picked it up at a book sale for 50c because I thought it might be worth something, and I was also trying to show my husband that wormwood is an hallucinogen. We were buying a hostess gift and ended up looking at absinthe, and I was like, no, my book say it makes you see green fairies!
My husband has literally 20 books on his side! He is a stacker-organizer.
I am very uncomfortable if I don’t have at least four “on deck”. I HATE getting caught without something good to read or that feels like the right “next book” (and I am never sure which one that is until the exact moment I need it). I am struggling a bit with this – I just moved, and my new library has FINES (I know… but the old one didn’t…) so it is harder to hold them until they feel right.
My stack is a little dull now – I think “The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court” by Jeffrey Tobin (got it for Xmas from my kids) is probably the only odd one – written prior to the latest events of course. But I love Tobin’s writing on SCOTUS.
On the nightstand, one. Which is a comfort reread.
On the piano, which is the go-to for “I have a couple of minutes when doing work in the kitchen and could read something,” one. Often, this is a library book, but I happened to purchase this one. It’s a “literary” work.
On the radiator cover, which is where the Incoming pile is, 5 lightweight paperback mysteries that I’ll take on a plane sometime, 8 more serious novels that have been waiting for me (good news! I recently finished two out of this pile), two sci-fi things my DH has been pressing on me, one book that’s the second in a series D2 liked as a teen and I said I’d give a try even though I didn’t like the movie version of book 1, and a copy of “French In Action,” which I keep promising myself I’ll finish even though I’m not taking the class any more.
And 3 on my bed.
And 6 on the floor next to my bed.
I don’t even want to talk about the ones on my dressers…
Currently reading:
-The Body Multiple (book about multiple ontologies)
-Closer to Freedom (women and movement in the slave south)
-The Black Child-Savers (juvenile “justice” in the progressive era)
I wish I had some “fun” reads going but alas… nope
My nightstand is a stack of books. Mainly fantasy novels, a lot of Terry Pratchett, Philippa Gregory, Robin Hobb, a Bookman mystery, and because I’m trying to figure out my son, “That Crumpled Paper was Due Lest Week”, “The Science of Good Cooking”. It’s just a hodge podge.
Just finished rereading Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin–love that book!–, and Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. Simultaneously reading The New Jim Crow, City on Fire, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and the latest New Yorker. Done with the latter, have to pick one book to concentrate on.
I’m pretty particular about my reading habits. Almost exclusively, one at a time. If I go to the library to borrow, I might check out a couple - or if I go to my favorite used book center I might have a couple “ready”. But only one at bedside at a time. I adore books and reading. But I don’t adore clutter.
Pet peeve: people who brag about how many books they have in their stack to read. I know someone in particular on FB who will take pics of the book binding with the titles all stacked up. Great. You have A LOT of books. I’ll be impressed when you read them. It doesn’t make you a more voracious reader or more well read to have a stack out for viewing. In fact, it might indicate that you choose books and never read them! Sigh.
(^^ above pet peeve not reflective of this thread - I’m going to assume you all read your stacks. )
I have nine books on my nightstand, two of which I’m currently reading, Elena Ferrante’s Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay and The Golden Compass (for the YA book club I’m in). Both are very good. The others on my nightstand are books I’ve either started to read but never finished or are books of short stories that I pick up every so often. I also have at least another 10-12 books lying around that I’ve either read parts of or want to read, including several books about autism (Neurotribes and In a Different Key are the two newest ones, but I have several others about autistic kids going to college since my daughter is a HS senior on the spectrum). I also have some Mary Oliver poetry books, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and a book on mindfulness. Oh and right now, I also have two library books, Room (which I just finished) and I’ll Give You the Sun, which I was thinking might be my choice for the YA book club. Nothing particularly weird, but probably more autism-related books than the average person.
About half a dozen, several about SCOTUS. One is a Rehnquist biography, “The Partisan”, that I keep putting off and one is “Gideon’s Trumpet”, and the other is “Forcing the Spring”, the story of the marriage equality cases from 2013 . I teach in a different discipline, but my undergrad major was political science and in the guise of “if I knew then what I know now”, I wish I had pursued a terminal degree in political science and specialized in teaching about the Court. Too late now, but it sure does occupy quite a bit of my reading. @intparent, you should enjoy Toobin’s “The Oath.” I agree about his writing. In fact, loved his New Yorker article on Scalia just out this week.
I alternate the non-fiction with lighter fiction - John Grisham, Adrianna Trigianni, etc. Just finished Bel Canto by Ann Padgett a week or so ago. Need some good escapist fiction right now as that part of my stack is played out right now.
On my dining table, where I use my computer, Reading Lolita in Tehran for the Parent Cafe book club, and The Middlesteins, which I’m a couple of chapters into. On the Kindle, A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk, halfway through, and Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, on deck for later. Close at hand, Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, bought at an airport and started on the plane. Way too many beginnings right now!
The weirdest has to be a thick tome of sociology, The Americans, copyright 1969, which I picked up from my neighborhood’s “little library” on a pole in someone’s yard.
None. With my aging eyes and bifocal lens requirements I sit in a recliner to read. I’m a finish one book before starting the next type. The pile of library books on the dining room credenza varies (finished books get moved to another side table there- a convenient place in current just the two of us house). I like fiction and can finish some in one day (it may mean getting to bed far too late- but can’t stop and wait to see how it ends). I also read the nonfiction books H gets that appeal to me. We culled books when we moved a few years ago and I don’t usually buy books because once I’ve read them I’m done with them. I would rather make a large donation to the library and borrow books. One criteria on our list of must haves for where to retire was a good public library system.
My husband calls it a credit card with a screen attached. He has a point.
The weirdest one is NYPD Red 4. This series is absolute trash, and I don’t usually read trash. But for some reason I’m inexplicably attracted to this particular series. I have all four books on the aforementioned Kindle.
I have a big stack on my bedside table, but I never read any of them because I fall asleep if I try to read in bed.
A couple of weeks ago I realized I needed to reshelve my books, and in so doing I was disgusted to discover how many I hadn’t read or read since college. As a result I pledged to read a book from a day for the next year. In order to keep up the pace I’ve had to intersperse some less usual choices with my standard novels and non-fiction books.
(Note to self: Rereading “Ethan Frome”, about the most depressing book ever written, about a man trapped in a Northern New England town in the dead of winter was not a good choice on a weekend when the mercury dropped to -11 fahrenheit.)
The strangest book was “With Bertram in Africa” a 130 page children’s book written in 1939. I got it from my grandmother’s house when I was a child, and it is amazingly sexist and racist, to wit, “‘Ah’s a stowaway,’ said the little black boy. ‘Name ob Gumbo-Chicken Gumbo-and Ah’s half starved, Ah is! No eatments fo’ fo’ days.’” It’s fascinating as a bit of sociology.
Doesn’t anyone like me like to just read a good chick lit books every once in a while??? - not romance, CHICK LIT. Or actually I call it FAMILY LIT. Books about family dynamics in lite-version.
I usually have at least 3 or 4 but I’m at my mom’s and can’t be bothered going to the library here so I’m just raiding her bookshelves. Right now I’m reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time” about FDr and Eleanor. It’s excellent.
@abasket, I’ve tried to read chicklit - even have a cousin who writes in that genre - and I couldn’t make it to Chapter 2 of her first book.
