Currently reading

Over there to the right, I have a list of what I'm currently reading. (I don't know how to put little icons of the book's cover. I have so much to learn about technology, and it'll probably never happen.) Anyway, that list is going to be out of date all the time, since I usually have three or four books going at the same time.

I just finished The Conversations of Dr. Johnson. It's an excerpt from Boswell's Life of Johnson. The part excerpted is, you got it, the conversations. I think that's enough said, don't you?

Amazingly, the Dr. Johnson book wasn't nearly as boring as the other one I have listed: The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud. I read it because of all the rave reviews. I have since concluded that all the reviewers must have been smoking the same drug, because I hate this book. It's pretentious and over-OVERwritten and every single one of the characters make me want to hit them over the head with a mallet.

Not to put too fine a point on it. Anyway, my recommendation is: don't read it. I have only gotten halfway and I won't read the rest--it's a waste of time I won't get back. I rarely abandon books, either: they have to be REALLY bad.

I'd never abandon the book I read this weekend: George Pelecanos's The Night Gardener. I'd heard of this author but never read him (I'm new to the current mystery/crime novels) and boy, was I hooked. Fast pace, totally believable including an ending that doesn't neatly tie everything up in a perfect package yet still feels satisfying, great characterization, AWESOME dialogue (definitely rated R, which doesn't bother me, but just so you know.) I'll be looking for more from Pelecanos.