Green Room - Week 14 - Day 13

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

I have a stack of books from the library to read.

I started out reading a couple at a time, as usual. But now, all my attention is on one of them.

Something about it just cleared the decks of anything else.

When was the last time that happened to you, and what was the book?

***

Contestant Only voting is still happening UNTIL TOMORROW: http://therealljidol.livejournal.com/756961.html

So you had better get to reading/voting!!

Comments

[n3m3sis43.livejournal.com]

What book is it?!!

[kandigurl.livejournal.com]

Yes, this, I MUST KNOW.

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

[rayaso.livejournal.com]

Happy birthday to eternal_ot!

[eternal-ot.livejournal.com]

Hey..thanks rayaso...hope you have a lovely day yourself..:)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

The book I'm currently reading is for the book club that malruniel11 and I are in, and it has currently cleared the decks of other books on my Kindle. The book is "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" by Lisa See. It's very good - it is about the life of a young girl in 1830's China, Lily, and her "same-same" (laotong) best friend, Snow Flower. It is really fascinating!

I have read, I have voted, and I am caffeinated. It's a pretty good morning!

[banyangirl1832.livejournal.com]

I need to get on those last two things. :)

[malruniel11.livejournal.com]

That doesn't happen often to me, as I just keep reading multiple books no matter what, but the last book I had those sort of feeling about is the same as roina_arwen, only I forced myself to put it down for a bit and read something else, lest I read it too fast and too soon in the month and not remember it for book chat next week! This is "Snow Flower and the Secret Fan" which I believe Ro suggested for the book club months back and has finally made it to the top of our pile. I find it fascinating to learn about early 1800's Chinese culture from the point of view of Lily as she grows up. I read half of it in an hour on July 1st, but knew I needed to wait until a little later to finish it to keep it fresh for book club. It's in my purse for babysitting tonight - I'll finish it then!

[banyangirl1832.livejournal.com]

Snow Flower is my favorite of Lisa See's books, but Peony in Love is also top notch. I went on a Lisa See binge a few years ago where I read all her books in about six months, and they kind of blur together after a while, but Snow Flower was special because I read it first.

[anyonesghost.livejournal.com]

I don't know that that ever happens to me, unless when I'm in the middle of writing a novel. In which case, other books pretty much cease to exist until I'm done or on break.

[banyangirl1832.livejournal.com]

Yes - Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I blitzed through it in 24 hours, I basically did nothing else but read. I can't tell you the last time that happened before that book! Fangirl, by the same author, did that for me too, a little bit, but I took my time with that one - only three days, or something. I really want to grab Landline, her latest, but I have to wait until payday on Friday.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I looked up "Eleanor & Park" on Amazon since I've never heard of it before, and decided to order the Kindle edition - it looked really cool! Thanks for the rec!

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

That experience is the reason so many of us read voraciously. That's the high of the addiction, eh? I try to insure that this happens at least once a month, so I chase a lot of dragons...

One of the last books I read that staggered me was Sarah Hall's "The Electric Michelangelo" about the life of a tattoo artist in the early 20th Century. It was prose poetry and every other paragraph was a suck-breath moment.

I read by...author, or subject. In small groupings. This is a way to amuse myself after decades of simply choosing titles for no discernible reason. Earlier this year I read every novel I could find about conjoined twins and "The Girls" by Lori Lansens was a deck clearer.

[banyangirl1832.livejournal.com]

*screams* the Electric Michaelangelo is one of my all time favorite books ever. God, the language in that book. It's just so sensual and heartbreaking and seriously, guys, go study that book. I want to write like that.

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

I much prefer to read only one book at a time. On only one instance that I can recall did I have more than one that I was working on simultaneously. For me, it probably means that I found neither book very compelling. I am far more likely to be sucked into the black hole of a good book and have serious trouble putting it down.

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

I prefer to read only one book at a time as well - otherwise plots and characters will get confuzzled, unless they are wildly different books!

[dreamsreflected.livejournal.com]

Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess) memoir "Let's pretend this never happened" did that to me awhile back. A few years back when I was really broke and my internet got cut off for several months I all but devoured my local library. Made me realize just how much reading I do online on a daily basis.

[mac-arthur-park.livejournal.com]

I lost most of a day and a half with that book!

[gratefuladdict.livejournal.com]

I always read only one book at a time. If I get distracted and start something else, it typically means I'm not going to meander back to the first book at all.

Also, now that I'm done reading and voting, can I just call out a few people who blew me away this week? This is by no means an exhaustive list!

miintikwa
barrelofrain
rayaso
bleodswean
fodschwazzle
suesniffsglue

[bleodswean.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[flipflop-diva.livejournal.com]

I barely ever read more than one book at a time. It makes it easier for me to delve into the world I'm with if there aren't others on the side. Also, I tend to forget more when I'm juggling more than one. Sometimes I've stopped books to read others sorry Game of Thrones someday I will finish you, but that's a different kind of thing ;)

[banyangirl1832.livejournal.com]

Oh also also I need to recommend this book here - "Falling in Love with Natassia" by Anna Monardo. Christ, that book. It's a tome about a teenage violinist who tries to kill herself and the adults involved in her life and how they're responsible for messing her up and also it delves into the adults' personal lives and the language and sentences and word choice are all top notch and you'll hate all the characters at one point or another and you'll love all of them at one point or another and someone please just read this book.

[ryl.livejournal.com]

The last book I "cleared the decks" for was John Scalzi's Redshirts and it was not for a good reason. I just wanted to get the damn thing over and done with. I mildly disliked it when I was reading it, but now that I look back on it, I hate it more and more.

So for a palate cleanser, I'm rereading To Kill A Mockingbird which is the greatest American novel. I have to make myself take breaks so I don't read it too quickly. It must be savored, like a summer's day.

[elledanger.livejournal.com]

The last time I got like that with a book was last summer when a good friend recommended 'Turbulence' by Samit Basu. Amazing story about superheroes based out of India, and so engaging that I couldn't put it down. I finished it up in two days, which was the first time in a very long time that I'd been that engaged with a novel.

I heartily recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in adventure/sci-fi type things. (Also the sequel is out very soon!)

[adoptedwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm so behind on all my reading. LJI and other books. There's never enough time.

In other news, I woke up and found a hornet in my bed! I think the cat killed it. I slept thru the whole thing. Good kitty! (See icon)
AW

[aimercat.livejournal.com]

good kitty

[i-love-freddie.livejournal.com]

I feel like an awful person for saying this, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to vote this week. I am just beginning to come out of a major depressive episode and having to read every entry and pick 30 out of all of them is just more than my brain can handle right now.

Going have one more shot tomorrow evening but... not hopeful. :(

[aimercat.livejournal.com]

1. love your icon. i'm hoping to catch We Will Rock You while it's here in LA
2. I'm sorry you're depressed.
3. Maybe just randomly pick 35 & pick 30 out of that. If you're not up to that, randomly pick 30 names out of a hat and let fate decide who gets your votes. Sure you probably didn't read them, but you could have fun with it.

[halfshellvenus.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely a multiple-books-at-a-time reader, and because I usually have a gym/house/bedside book at minimum, there are usually at least 3 going at once. Unless one of my on-hold hardcopy or Kindle books becomes available, in which case more gets added.

I rarely give up on books, so if I'm slogging through something it'll usually just move to the background but I'll eventually finish it unless it has to go back to the library.

The last book to take over my "Must finish right now!!" impulses was (I hate to admit this) "Divergent." It was far more interesting than I expected, and more than just a "Hunger Games" retread.

Past candidates? Well, let's just say that some of the Harry Bosch mysteries that I read for the first time in the past year have done that. Also "More Than This" and "Poe," both of which were YA novels. Same for many Neal Shusterman YA novels.

[whipchick.livejournal.com]

I also enjoyed Divergent :) And watched the movie on the plane and thought that was quite good, too!

[teenagewitch.livejournal.com]

I am currently reading The deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon and loving every minute of it. Even though it means that I have two books that are due tomorrow at the library that I can't renew that have not been read and the book I am currently reading doesn't go back until August 4th.

[sarcasmoqueen.livejournal.com]

I'm absolutely someone who has to read one book at a time, otherwise I get confused...

On a separate note, I posted a general comment to anyone who has (or will) comment on my entry this week. I'm having issues with comments, so I wanted everyone to know that I am reading them.

On a different separate note, I read ALL the entries and voted! Yay me!

Ok, I'm done. Hope everyone is having a better day than me!

[eska818.livejournal.com]

I usually read two or three books at a time, not including whatever anthology I might be slogging through also at the same time, but in the last week or so, the only book I read (because it was the only one I wanted to read) was Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi. Her name popped up here a few weeks ago, but I didn't want to pay 30 dollars for the new release, so I picked up two of her older paperback novels, and I haven't been disappointed so far.

[ashgaelsonaria.livejournal.com]

I usually read one book at a time.
I did read Watership Down in three days once.
Lately I read ebooks because I can adjust the text size.
I picked up a cheap tablet called a nextbook and its working okay to me.

[reckless-blues.livejournal.com]

Difficult to say. Don't respond much to art, and I always got more out of games and films. Hard to find something that captures my interest these days ... Maybe The Cyberiad (Stanislaw Lem) or Mariette in Ecstasy (Ron Hansen). Though I can easily remember the most intense times ... that was The Brothers Karamazov and Prisoner of the Caucasus (Vladimir Makanin), bar none.

[aimercat.livejournal.com]

mine are almost always acting books.

Self-Management for Actors 4th edition is at the top of the pile, but only after i finish my re-read of the 3rd edition since they are rather different but some of the older info is still useful.