I Like to Read.

I just added another link to the side bar, What I'm Reading Right Now. I am always reading something. Here are some of my favorite books:

A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay
Where the Red Fern Grows - Wilson Rawls
Franny and Zooey - J. D. Salinger
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
The Year of Magical Thinking - Joan Didion
The Way We Lived Then - Dominick Dunne
As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
A Gathering of Old Men - Ernest J. Gaines
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safron Foer
The Known World - Edward P. Jones
The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
The Bone People - Keri Hulme
A Separate Peace - John Knowles
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol - Andy Warhol

If you haven't read any of these, I highly recommend them.

You can see from this list that I'm not really into non-fiction, philosophy, self-help. I do like history and especially historical novels – set in a real time and place but with fictional characters, and memoirs quite a bit. I will enjoy an occasional biography.

So you might realize that what's posted under "What I'm Reading Now" is a definite stray from my norm. It usually takes me between 1 to 3 weeks to finish a book depending on my schedule and interest. I started this one a week ago, January 11, and I am only on page 40.

A few of my friends and I have gotten in some pretty (fairly: uninformed) intense discussions about topics I could place under the collective title "2012". Aliens, Global Issues, Environment, Conspiracies, End/Change of the World, Spirituality. These kinds of topics always seem to end up totally relating to each other as we talk. There are so many different theories, and so whenever I hear or read something about It, I end up spreading the word around. I would give two of my friends credit for knowing more about what they are talking about than most people, while I fall in line with the majority in that we just like to talk about It and probably misinterpret and misrepeat as often as we get It right. We fall just slightly above the people who simply aren't talking about It at all.

So after a surprise discussion with another friend who it turns out knew something about "2012", I got myself and a few people this book she recommended.

Frankly, for me, it's like reading a text book – something I never enjoyed – with the exception that I am interested in actually learning about the subject. Plus, it's delivered a little autobiographically (at least so far) which I like. But there are a lot of references to things I don't know about and vocabulary I don't recognize slowing me down considerably.

This guy is putting into nutshells, into bags and into bushels A LOT of the things we've all been discussing. One friend even said, Don't think it was a coincidence you gave this to us all NOW. And it's strange because I know it is resonating with each of us differently and for different reasons but those are the same things tying us together. Coincidence?

So I am struggling through it, but I'm not going to stop until I've read the whole thing.

Also I'd like to point out that if I hadn't liked the design of the cover, I probably wouldn't have bought it in the first place.