What I’m Reading: January

This has been a good month for reading. I finished Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, the author’s first novel. I thought The Buddha in the Attic was fantastic, and so I wanted to read more. In both books she doesn’t name characters. In Buddha multiple characters are represented in the story (the women who come from Japan to American to get married). In When the Emperor the mother, daughter, son, and husband remain nameless, while other characters are named, even those who play minor roles. I love that style and all that it says about the experiences of the characters/people she’s writing about (Japanese and Japanese-Americans around the time of World War II).

Ben Mezrich’s Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History was an entertaining telling of how and why Thad Roberts stole moon rocks from NASA. I finished (for the whateverth time) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. And of course, I’m still reading The Count of Monte Cristo.

I’ve recently finished reading Wendy and the Lost Boys, a biography of the playwright Wendy Wasserstein. While reading the book was transported to New York, and it took me a few minutes to remember where I was–and then a few more minutes to get over the disappointment of having been interrupted during my reading.

I’m currently reading The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. I saw one of his books on someone’s bookshelf and thought this would be an excellent time to read one of his books. Also, my brother is a fan of his work. I’m sorry to say that I’ve only ever started one of his books (Snow) and then had to return it to the library before I could get too far into it. It’s been great to read the book and know how to pronounce the Turkish names and places and to also learn more about the culture. I’m thinking I’ll have to return to Snow soon and read it as well.

Also, I’ve put up a virtual bookshelf that appears on the right-hand side of the blog (through Shelfari). The books on there are a bit out of order, since I recently added a bunch of books I read ages ago, but soon it’ll reflect what I’m reading now.

Next up will be The Magicians by Lev Grossman.