Books Books Books

I may have mentioned before that I'm a reader.

Wiki pageBooks, books and more books, magazines, blogs the back of a cereal box.... if it's there I'll read it. Last year a friend sent out a challenge to read as many of the Orange Prize long list as possible before the short list was announced. I took up the challenge and read some very beautiful and heart wrenching and gut gnashing books; many that will stay in my mind and whose stories will become a part of my personal mythology (Jamrach's Menagerie I'm looking at you) . I'm thinking I may just have to have a go at this year's long list when they announce it in March.

I'm a little embarrassed to say this but up until last year I'd become stuck in a little rut of reading. I'd found a circle of writers who I read and re-read and then maybe read again. Adding an author here or there and then including them to my rotation. Tolkien, Pratchett, Gaiman, Gibson, Lackey, Tepper, Ondaatje, Atwood and Coupland are all well worn and traveled worlds in my private library as well as in my local public library and I know that I'll take their paths many more times to come. Last year I read so many new and new to me authors that some of them have melded together into a melange of plots characters and landscapes. My circle of authors grew with the additions of Miéville, Wynne Jones and a few others who are escaping my still addled Mommy Brain.


So what am I getting at? Where am I going with this? Well, I just thought that I'd like to share a few of the books I've got in my diaper bag, on the bedside table and sitting on the edge of the couch right now.


Starting with one of my Good To Go To Authors; Douglas Coupland's All Families Are Psychotic  is in my diaper bag. I've been reading it when I wait for the Peanut to be done for school and the Bean has fallen asleep. It's a story about a very dysfunctional family who has come together to watch the daughter who is an astronaut be launched into space. So far it's told from the point of view of the Mother and the Eldest son who both suffer from AIDS. I find Coupland's books always make me think outside of the story. 


On my Bedside table is Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible a twist on the super hero comic book. It's a novel told from the point of view of the Super Villain Dr. Impossible and Fatale the newbie member of his defunct nemesis super hero group reformed after the disappearance of the worlds most powerful super hero Corefire. This is a re-read for me since I saw it on the shelf at the library and could remember reading it sometime in the last two years but couldn't remember anything about it other than I had enjoyed reading it.

Stacked on top of that is Heather B Armstrong, better known as Dooce' It Sucked and Then I Cried I'm laughing out loud and nearly peeing myself with this one. The episode in the first part of the book where she eats the Pizza to bring on labour springs to mind. I made the husband drop what he was doing and run to the bedroom to read it.

In addition I have books on deck to read including the Bio of GNR guitarist Slash (in between when the husband has it to read). What are you reading? What would you recommend? Want to read one that I'm currently in and compare thoughts when you're done?