What are you reading?

Kingdom Come - J. G. Ballard

Bird by Bird- Anne Lamott

Just starting The Cuckoo's Calling, which JK Rowling published under the name Robert Galbraith.

The Wishbones - Tom Perrotta.

I really liked Election but I'm having trouble getting into this.

Still trying to slog through UNDER THE DOME, Stephen King. We have the miniseries set to record, started watching that. . . the book is nothing like the movie.

Neither thrills me at this point. IMO, the miniseries is trite, formulaic. The novel is tedious. Why am I subjecting myself to such hell?

To borrow from my mc: Because you're an idiot, you idiot.

Just finished The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman.

Totally enjoyed it.

This morning I finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, probably better known as the novel the movie Blade Runner is based on. The novel and the movie are so different, and yet sometimes eerily similar, with what seem like entire scenes copy-pasted from one medium to another.

I just finished up books 1 and 2 of the Divergent series. I loved book 1, but book 2 lost me for a while. The writing isn't spectacular, but it's a good story.

I'm reading The Famished Road by Ben Okri and listening to an audio of The Count of Monte Cristo. It's fascinating experiencing these completely different, yet highly praised books, at the same time.

Started reading The Moon Is Down by Steinbeck today. I'm already halfway through, it's really short. Which disappoints me; it seems like it has potential to be a much longer work. But I get it was distributed as Allied propaganda to occupied resistance movements during the war, so size was probably an issue.

Dipping my toe in a new-to-me genre. Reading Stolen Prey by John Sandford.

Zima Blue by Alastair Reynolds

Pegasus Bridge - Stephen E. Ambrose

Revolutionary Road by by Richard Yates

Dork Diaries and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Also sort of reading Wonderstruck by Brian Selznik. It's not really my cup of tea. Mostly I'm reading it all for research...

BUT I just finished The Shifting Price of Prey by Suzanne McLeod and loved it. (It's urban fantasy set in London, and the fourth book in the series.)

Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane

Highly recommend, btw.

Notes of a Dirty Old Man - Charles Bukowski

Buffalo Lockjaw, by Greg Ames

Lanark - Alasdair Gray

Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz - his writing is incredible. Picked it up after The Paris Review's interview in their Summer 2013 issue.

Also picked up 20th Century Russian Poetry again after reading their Pasternak interview from 1960... I'll never forget my first reaction to Marina Tsvetayeva's poetry...

Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle.

I gave up on Under the Dome. I just can't do it. I'm disappointed and irritated. I can't help but feel that King was really self-indulgent writing the thing, putting in whatever he wanted, going off on tangents. It's not a sharply written, well-told story. The book is over a thousand pages long because it's bloated with incidental crap, imo. I can't abide that.

Maybe I'll give it another go sometime. Glutton for punishment and all that. Or maybe it's a sign that I should stop reading other peoples' stuff for a while and finish writing my own.