Bookish Chatter | Book Chatter

Today is a very exciting day! It’s the opening round for The Tournament of Books! It took a really long time for them to update their site, but it’s all updated now and the first round between The Sense of an Ending and The Devil All the Time has been posted.

I’ve been aware of the tournament for a few years now and although I have enjoyed many of the books, and some have become favorites of mine (Model Home for example), I never read ALL of the books chosen. So far, I have read four of them (1Q84, The Marriage Plot, The Cat’s Table, The Stranger’s Child [DNF]) and I plan to read five more (Swamplandia!, Salvage the Bones, The Art of Fielding, The Sense of an Ending, The Tiger’s Wife). The others don’t really catch my eye. However, depending on what is going on I might chip away at the remaining seven.

If you are not familiar with this event, I urge you to check it out. Books duking it out for the win. Judges keeping it fun. I love this event! Stop by today to see who won round one! Oh, and later… there will even be a Zombie round where one book, previously eliminated…will be resurrected!!! Very exciting!

After being out of the reading world for what seems like forever, but in reality has only been ten days, I feel the need to push myself to get back into the rhythm of reading. It’s like that little known muscle you have in the back of your leg that you suddenly notice after falling down a million times when skiing. Well, that happens when “I” ski, anyway. I was reading during the show, but they were all DNF’s (did not finish) and instead of calling them out as such, I am just going to chalk it up to me and my scattered brain. If I can’t concentrate on the book in front of me, I’d rather not read. So in between the show, I watched The Big Bang Theory and The Wonder Years. Comfort viewing if you ask me.

However, I began to get the reading itch again this past Monday. Much like starting a fitness routine, I am easing my way into reading again and it feels good. I have been reading Then Again by Diane Keaton and The Technologists by Matthew Pearl. One is a memoir and the other has to do with the introduction of technology as a science in 1868. Both are fascinating and just what I need to get back on the horse, so to speak.

Now that I have those two in full swing, I plan to add my book club pick to the mix which happens to be my pick from last year, The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds. It is about famed nature poet John Clare’s stay in a mental institution. It’s fiction, but it sounds wonderful.

So that is what I am doing right now. Limping along, building up the muscles that atrophied during the week of the show. I can almost hear the theme from Rocky in the background. Almost.

Chatting with friends about books and life…