Whatcha Readin'?

Books I'm Reading

• The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them, by Elif Batuman. Scholarly and funny as all get out. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
• My River Chronicles: Rediscovering America on the Hudson, by Jessica DuLong. Writer learns to drive a fire boat, the John J. Harvey. (Free Press, 2009) 

Books I'm Taking to Share with My 1st Grade Friends Tomorrow

• The House in the Night, written by Susan Marie Swanson and illustrated by Beth Krommes (Houghton Mifflin, 2008)
• Cool Dog, School Dog, written by Deborah Heiligman and illustrated by Tim Bowers (Marshall Cavendish, 2009)

Book Junior Claims Made Him Itch

• Killer Ants, written by Nicholas Nirgiotis and illustrated by Emma Stevenson (Holiday House, 2009)

Book Junior Read Over Winter Break

• Toxic Waste, by Peggy J. Parks (Kidhaven Press, Thomson/Gale, 2006) 

Book That Looked Good To Me But Junior Is Ignoring

• Escaping the Giant Wave, by Peg Kehret (Aladdin Paperbacks, 2004)

Books I Finished Recently

• The Women Who Raised Me: A Memoir, by Victoria Rowell. The author grew up as a ward of the state of Maine, and went on to a dancing and acting career. Inspiring. (Amistad, 2008)
• The Three Weissmans of Westport, by Cathleen Schine. Social satire. Touching, and quick to read. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)
• Just Kids, by Patti Smith. About the rocker's long relationship with the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and about being a young artist in New York in the 60s and 70s. Plainspoken, fascinating. (Ecco, 2010)
• Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann. More 70s New York. A big-picture novel. Loved it. (Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2010) 

Book I Bought at Lemuria Books Because B & N Did Not Have It and I Couldn't Wait for the Long Hold List at the Library

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot. Dwight Garner, my new go-to guy at the Times, says it's "[a] thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty..." (Crown, 2010)

Book I Stumbled Upon Because the Author Rescued a Chicken in NYC and Reported It on Twitter (and Which I Look Forward to Reading)

• Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town, by Elyssa East (Free Press, 2009)

What are the rest of y'all reading these days?

Comments

[Christine]

I am reading How To train A Dragon aloud a chapter each night with my kids and I'm reading Kate Atkinson" When Will There Be Good News? to myself. I love and relate to your category "Books That Looked Good To Me But Junior is Ignoring."

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

Christine, I even put out the book in a can't-miss spot. Oh, well.

How to Train a Dragon sounds like a good candidate for a read-aloud here. Thanks!

[Kathy]

Thanks for the reccomendations - I wrote 4 of them down!!

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

You're welcome, Kathy!

[Kelly Fineman]

How did you like The Three Weissmans, which I understand to be a retelling of Sense & Sensiblity?

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

Kelly, since I live in Westport, I enjoyed the local color, as well as the humor, quite a bit. Schine grew up here, and certainly knows the setting. I wish I'd read Sense and Sensibility recently enough to compare the two books, but it's been a while. I can absolutely see The Three Weissmans as a movie.

[MJNNYC]

I'm reading "The Whale," by Philip Hoare. It's terrific. I'd have thought that after "Moby-Dick" there was nothing left to say about whales, but this is well and personably written, with loads of stuff about New Bedford and Nantucket (and, I'm hoping‚ Provincetown). I keep wondering what the author would think of the incident in Orlando. Free Tilikum?

[Susan (Chicken Spaghetti)]

I don't know that one, MJN. Sounds good. Have you ever been to the whaling museum in New Bedford? My parents went some years ago, and liked it.

[Jennifer@5 Minutes for Books]

I listened to Let the Great World Spin audiobook last month. So very good!

I'm going to tweet out that link to the "Gotta Keep Reading" song above. How cool is that!!