maybe I should pick one

[kaigou]

Currently reading -- and yes, I do mean all of them --

Done Wrong — Eleanor Taylor Bland (mystery)
The Steel Remains — Richard K Morgan (fantasy)
Water Touching Stone — Eliot Pattison (mystery)
Havemercy — Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett (fantasy/steampunk)
The Hero's Walk — Anita Rau Badami (literary)
A Companion to Wolves — Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear (fantasy)

A chapter of one, a chapter of the next.

I'm thinking maybe I should pick one and stick to it. Most likely bet would be The Hero's Walk — a gracious and incredible and gorgeous work of poetic verse with a deep heart — but it also deserves to be savored, not chewed through or swallowed whole. So when I start getting anxious about sitting in one place for too long, I move to sit somewhere else in the room, and look, there's a different book right there.

Bad habit, I know, but a very old one.

Comments

[taithe]

Having skimmed through your previous post (sorry, brain is a little too fuzzy at this time of night to respond to it with any decent comments), I would like to mention that I've read Havemercy and while I liked it, the entire time I read it I was thinking of fanfiction. Whether it's due to the fact that I knew the authors were famous fanfic writers in the HP fandom eons ago, or whether it's more related to the issues you raised in your post, I can't say because it's been years since I've read it.

Ahaha I share your habit of switching places and books. Drove my parents crazy because there were books simply all over the house.

By the way, I wanted to thank you for the surprisingly comprehensive list of travelogues you provided in one of the comments. Off to scour the university's library in hopes that I find at least half of them on campus.

[kaigou]

Havemercy runs very close (so far) of being too clever by half, as CP would say. I'm not sure I'll stick with it, but it's a decent break (stylistically) from the other works. It can't come close to Badami's skill, but then, I think she's got a skill that few could really rival.

Two books on the list that aren't travelogues per se, but are returnee-stories (somewhere between memoir and returnee) -- are The Dervish House, where McDonald visits his family in Istanbul, where he was raised. The other is Odaatje's Running in the Family, which I'm anxiously awaiting on library-loan. I've read the first chapter already, and barely restrain myself for reading the rest. His family's from Ceylon, and he returns after a number of years in the West. It's big-family madness, from what I can tell.

I used to do up to ten books at a time, then started to pare down over the past decade or so. It's kind of nice to stretch my brain and juggle so many at once, again.