Ooh, look. Another post.

This time, just to update on my reading and the "100 books" goal... which really doesn't look like it'll be fulfilled. Hmm.
Oh well, doesn't mean I have to stop reading. Hahaha.

I have really and truly run out of shelf space. The books are piling up on my room desk now, which I don't really use, since my cousin is using my room, and we all study/work in the upstairs common area, anyway.

My mum remarked to me on Monday:
"Gerri, the books on your table.. reaching the ceiling already, you know."

To which I replied:
"Which is why I keep saying I need more shelf space, what."

But what she's saying is just an exaggeration; they're not reaching the ceiling. They're only halfway there.


Anyway!

The Reading List as of today:
1. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire (completed 28th January)
2. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (compiled in one book), by Lewis Carroll (completed: 16th January)
This is listed as book 2, even though it was finished earlier, because Wicked was started first.

3. After the Quake, by Murakami Haruki (completed: 12th February)
4. I Am Number Four, by Pittacus Lore (completed: 16th February)
5. The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (completed: 18th April)
6. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, by Tsutsui Yasutaka (completed: 28th April)
7. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick (completed: 19th May, while on the plane back from Japan! :D)
8. Flowers For Algernon, by Daniel Keyes (started: 28th April. Still reading. Oops.)
9. Plainsong, by Hosaka Kazushi (completed: 2nd June)

This book was kind of an impulse buy; I remember walking past the Japanese Literature shelf at Kinokuniya and the cover just catching my eye. The cover really is as plain as it looks in the picture - I'm not sure if there're other covers, but this is the one that I have.

The story inside is no grand masterpiece, but a meandering telling of the just-slightly-short-of-mundane life of our protagonist and the friends who randomly stumble into his life and just... stick there. The protagonist is someone not too different from the average person on the street; someone who did reasonably well in school, landed a respectable job, and lives comfortably enough within his means; with no great destiny, and simply going about his life from day-to-day. But those happenings of his day-to-day life do make for a heartwarming story. :)

Give it a try if you have a day when you have nothing to do, and you have the time for a quiet sit-down. :)


10. The Grass is Singing, by Doris Lessing (completed: 31st July)

To be honest, there isn't anything to *like* about this story. How does one like a story about how a person slowly loses oneself in a sucking downward spiral that hits a new low everytime you think they might've already hit rock-bottom?

But even though that's the way it is, it's still oddly compelling; even though you wonder how the characters can carry on the way they are, how everyone can be so blind as to believe in their racist sentiments, and you know that it does not meet a happy end, you're compelled to finish it. At least, I was. Maybe it's partly morbid fascination, and partly a sort of schadenfreude.

It's not a happy story. But it still is a good one.


11. The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (completed: 16th June)
12. Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins (completed: 18th June)
13. Mockingjay, by Suzanne Collins (completed: 23rd June)


Yes, it's the Hunger Games trilogy. I decided to jump on the bandwagon and see what everyone was raving about, since my sister came home with the first book, borrowed from one of her friends, and she seemed to go through them pretty quickly. I was a little curious about the series, since the movie was making such a big thing of it, and since my sister was reading through them so fast, I figured they should be pretty easy reading and that I should be able to get through it even faster.

The story is good; exciting and well-paced, with vivid descriptions (of feelings, sensations, scenery, people, injuries and decimated landscapes all alike). It falls into its cliched moments sometimes - ah, young love and all that - but it's very absorbing.


14. The Good Terrorist, by Doris Lessing (started: 6th August)
I picked another Doris Lessing book off the shelf after finishing The Grass is Singing. I think it was the first thing that I saw when I opened my bookcase, haha.

And yeah, Flowers for Algernon still isn't completed yet. Sigh.
Because that's the bedtime-reading book, and I tend to read a lot of other things on my laptop instead at night, into the wee hours of the morning, by the time I actually crawl into bed, I find I don't have any time for actual bedtime reading. If I did stay up any longer to read in bed, I might not be able to wake up for work.

... Then again, I might still wake up; my brain might carry on sleeping, though. :p

And Flowers for Algernon is written in a diary-entry style that I find kinda difficult to stay with... it bores me a little after a while. But, oh well; shall stick with it - have to finish it now that I've started it, anyway - and maybe things will develop more as it goes on.