There are plenty of memes that want to know all about your book history and your all-time greats and your grand ambitions, but let’s focus on something more revealing: the books you’re actually reading now, or just read, or are about to read. Let’s call it The Immediate Book Meme.
1. What book are you reading now?
The Striped Ships by Eloise McGraw
Brother Andre by Jean-Guy Dubuc
Blessed, Beautiful and Bodacious by Pat Gohn
2. What book did you just finish?
The Carpet People by Terry Pratchett
Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter
3. What do you plan to read next?
Voyage to Alpha Centauri by Michael O’Brien
4. What book do you keep meaning to finish?
Les Miserables
The Reed of God
5. What book do you keep meaning to start?
The list is too long to type, biographies of T.S. Eliot and Rumer Godden and a whole pile of comp copies of books that Dom keeps bringing home from work but I just can’t find time for.
6. What is your current reading trend?
Buying biographies of favorite authors and not reading them. Opting instead for light juvenile fiction and genre lit.
Also, more generally, not making much time in the day for reading but satisfying my itch for story with the books I’m reading to Bella.
1. The child that books built by Francis Spufford
The story of Charlotte’s web by Michael Sims
Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks
2. Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
The faith club by Ranya Idliby
3. Alone together by Sherry Turkle
Michael Morpurgo: war child to war horse by Maggie Ferguson
4. The rocking horse Catholic by Caryll Houselander
5.The portrait of a lady by Henry James
6.Ordering too many books from the library then not finishing them until I owe a fine.
Stephanie, some intriguing titles on your list: I’d never heard of any of the ones in your #1
#4 sounds interesting too. Maybe I’ll tackle it if I ever finish Reed of God
About #5. I think I’ve given up on trying to like Henry James.
#6 describes me too.
So many people are reading Terry Pratchett. I need to check him (her?) out!
Faith,
If you like clever fantasy, you definitely should. He’s very funny and insightful. Though The Carpet People isn’t one of his best. It’s a novel he wrote when he was 17 and then re-wrote years later. The Discworld novels are where I’d start. You can find reviews and rankings here: https://www.goodreads.com/series/40650-discworld
This year I made a vow to re-read all the books I’m assigning to four discussion groups. So far, so good. I just finished Emma and Strong Poison (both due next week).
But then i opened my big mouth and promised to read all the books the middle school students wrote about in the essay telling me why I should have included their choice of book in the reading list for the year. Sigh. So… I’m reading Ender’s Game and Stormbreaker and Kisses from Katie and The Dragon and the Raven and four other books, hopefully all by Sunday so I can pick one to really add to the list. Thank goodness I have already read The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings (4 kids wanted those).
As to books I mean to read and don’t, they tend to be history that sounds interesting and then ends up being dull. Most recently, America’s Great Game, about Kim Roosevelt, his cousin Archie, and US spying in the Middle East. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Only I had it from the library for five weeks and couldn’t get 100 pages into it. Right now I have one out on Burke vs. Paine, which I think sounds great… but who knows if I’ll get to it.
Oh well. Sometimes I know when to quit. After my third start of reading Crime and Punishment with the English and Russian texts side by side, I did give up.
Plenty to read when I retire, I guess.
That does seem busy. I’m curious to see what you think of Ender’s Game. It’s one of my favorites ever since I read it when I was in college. The other one’s on your students’ list I don’t recognize (other than the Tolkien of course.) We need to get together again soon and chat books etc.
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Thanks for playing, Melanie! I love reading everyone’s answers because it seems like they give a better glimpse into someone’s personality than your standard “greatest hits” list.
And I’m so pleased to see Cruel Beauty in your book pile. 🙂
It’s a great meme, Mrs. D. Previously I was trying to do something similar once a month to keep track of my own reading; but I like the thoroughness of including the books you’ve been meaning to get to and the ones you can’t seem to finish.
I just noticed the picture was at the bottom of the post and not the top. And that I didn’t even try to include any of the poetry books I’ve been browsing through in my meme lists. But you can see several of them in the pile. And none of the homeschooling books made it in either. That would almost be a second entry in the meme.