My upside-down room has finally gained some sense of order, and I’ve repurposed an old lamp and ottoman into a comfy little reading corner. Right now I’m reading For the Life of the World, which is amazing and I cannot recommend it more highly. A great book for spiritual growth; Dad and I are hopefully going to be reading and discussing it together. I’m also reading Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World. It’s cute and sweet and cat-ish, all things that I love.

I bought the rabbit statue shortly after Rex died. It didn’t feel right not to have a bunny in my room anymore. Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Treasury is one of the many, many books that I’ve picked up recently and have not yet had time to read. Though if this rainy weather keeps up, I might just get down to reading them all.

My coffee table is covered in books, too. And speaking of the book at hand, I was hoping to go for a hike today: it’s overcast and drizzly, but the trees shelter hikers from most of the precipitation. Then I discovered that our local state park doesn’t open until Memorial Day. C’mon, we’re supposed to be New Englanders. Not wimps.

And now the only thing I need is…another bookshelf.

from the aforementioned ‘great-books-to-recommend-to-everyone’ pile…

Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One, which is about a young boy who grows up in South Africa wanting to become a boxer. It has rare quality among “historical” novels in that it doesn’t force the setting or the social climate in a contrived way, but rather creates a great story that is also an integral part of a specific time and place. I found myself captivated, and learned as much about South Africa in the mid-20th century as I did about boxing.

Shreve Stockton’s The Daily Coyote is a booked based on her highly successful blog of the same name. She tells the story of how she came to live in Wyoming and adopt the orphaned coyote pup. It’s absolutely engrossing and a relatively quick read, with photos of Charlie and the gorgeous Wyoming scenery scattered throughout. She makes living in a drafty one-room cabin in the middle of Wyoming while also rearing a wild animal sound kind of…exciting.

On a somewhat related theme, there was John Katz’s The New Work of Dogs, which is (not surprisingly) about dogs, but would be of great interest to dog owners and non-owners alike. Katz explores how our relationship with dogs has changed over the years, and while most Americans don’t keep dogs as working animals for a farm or otherwise, we do ask that dogs work: we ask them to understand, to reflect, to respond to, and to meet our social and emotional needs. We’ve gone past humane treatment to downright human treatment, a task which dogs are simply not equipped to handle, and the result is a nation of neurotic canines. Katz suggests that our increasingly isolated and individualistic society has bred this over-dependence on the emotional support of animals and explains why this is disastrous both for people, and for dogs. I won’t give the whole book away, but I’d highly recommend it to anyone and everyone.

And of course, there were the Terry Pratchett novels, of which I’ve read at least a dozen to date. What a wonderful treat to have a favorite author who is also highly prolific. I finished Wyrd Sisters in no time at all, and will shortly be reading the continuing story, Witches Abroad. On the other hand, Mort was left unread for a very long time; I wasn’t really getting into the story, but wasn’t ready to give it up. It paid off, in the end, when I finally connected with the novel and finished it in one marathon reading session.

The thing about Pratchett’s stories is that he relies on a lot of set-up, just enough sprinkled clues to keep you guessing, and a whole lot of exposition that pays off later in the story. So in The Last Continent, once of his longer and (if possible) more convoluted novels, all of that is well-worth the effort because when you get to the scene where the celibate wizards are trying to explain sex to the God of Evolution, it’ll be just about the funniest thing you’ve ever read.

I had been planning to write a post this week about my mountain of half-read and unfinished books, after realizing that I only ever finish about two-thirds of the books that I pick up to read. I’m not sure if that reflects my indecisiveness or a staggering inability to commit, but it’s certainly not because they’re not good books.

And then yesterday, we lost electricity for the morning, and with nothing much to do except sit and enjoy the silence, I saw an opportunity before me. I sat down and I finished three books.

First, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, which I found thoroughly enjoyable and as a bonus, it has given me the desire to write long letters in the British dialect. I received the book as a Christmas gift and I had only just gotten around to picking it up, due in large part (I admit) to my expectation of something slightly…schmaltzy. Maybe it’s the name: anything with ‘Sisterhood’ or ‘Society’ in the title tends to have a Lifetime movie feel to it, but not this book. It’s just smart and funny and absolutely captivating.

Then I took a to an entirely different genre, and finally finished reading The Orthodox Way. I started reading it months ago, and somewhere in that time, I just put it down and forgot to pick it up again. It’s an excellent book, and I have a feeling that I’ll be reading it over and over and over again in the years to come.

As for the last book I read, well, I’m almost ashamed to admit how long I’ve been working on it. I will say that it was also a Christmas gift.

In 2007.

And I’m almost equally ashamed to admit just why it took me over a year to read Barbara’s Kingsolver’s perfectly wonderful book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Because every time I did, I felt so darn convicted about the way we shop and the way we eat that I put the book down and wouldn’t touch it for weeks at a time. Some people lay out all their issues on romance novels and self-help books? I work out my issues through books on food.

But feelings of utter inadequacy aside, I did finish it, it was a great book, and I look forward to taking steps toward a better way of shopping and eating. Baby steps.

And now my unfinished book pile is down to just three, and my ‘great-books-to-recommend-to-everyone’ pile has grown some more. But that’s for another post…