What Are You Reading?

- from Susan

Unlike, “What are your three favorite books?" this is a fun question to ask or answer, both as a reader and as a writer. It used to be fairly easy: look at the stack next to a person’s bed. I’ll start there:

Incognito: The Secret Life of the Brain, by David Engleman (author of Sum, an inventive and moving series of small stories about the possible forms of an afterlife)

The Orientalist, by Tom Reiss, the biography of a man caught between his fantasies of an old and attractive concept of “East” and the war-shaped realities of the 20^th century

The Years of Rice and Salt (for the second time), by Kim Stanley Robinson, a rich, compelling alternate history based on a “what if?” – what if the plague had killed almost everyone in Europe, leaving a political, geographical, and economic hole to be filled?

Bird by Bird, by Annie Lamott, because I’m always reading Bird by Bird

Murder Misdirected, by Andrew MacRae, a fellow board member of SinC Norcal, because it looks like fun

Anarchy and Old Dogs, by Collin Cotterill, whose crime fiction tales of Dr. Siri Paiboun, the only coroner in the sloppy, sorry world of communist Laos are funny in the way “Waiting for Godot” is funny

But that’s not my complete TBR stack These are among the two ten-foot bookshelves’ worth waiting to move to the bedside table:

This summer, headed to France with a present of books for my friend, I was faced with space issues in my suitcase, so I bought my first e-reader. Now there’s a virtual stack there too:

Dead Broke in Jarrett Creek, by Terry Shames

Criminal Intent, by Sheldon Siegel

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler

Killer in the Cloister, by Camille Minichino

Lawrence in Arabia, by Scott Anderson

Treasure Hunt, by Andrea Camilleri

The Family Way, by Rhys Bowen

The Housewife Assassin’s Handbook, by Josie Brown

And there’s always this to fall back on, should I find myself looking for a good piece of crime fiction to read (other genres are shelved elsewhere in the house). 

I don't think I'm crazy, and I know I’m not alone. We People of the Book all have stashes of reading material that will take us through every crisis and feed us for our lifetimes. And  because I'm always looking for more good books, I hope blog readers will chime in. There's always room in my house and on my TBR list for another book!