From my bookshelf

My friend Tania recently blogged about what she's reading, so I thought I'd share what's on my nightstand/iPod these days.

The Girl With Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest: I finally finished the last book in the Millennium series by Stieg Larrson., which wraps up the adventures of Lisbeth Salander. She’s probably one of the most interesting, bizarre female characters in literature. While these books are page turners with great action and twists, the writing is kind of awkward. I wonder if something got lost in the translation. There’s a lot of techno babble and a few things that are hard to believe, but I think Lisbeth makes it worth the read.

A Game of Thrones: This is one I’ve been working on for awhile. I love myths and fantasty, so I love this story already set in an eerie kingdom, warring families, magic, backstabbing , legends and all that good stuff. It’s told from the points of view of multiple narrators, so the chapters are short and it’s been easy to read a bit at a time. But I do want to get it done before the HBO series based on it starts.

The Titan’s Curse: I am hooked on the Percy Jackson series. They are quick reads and I think the writing is pretty witty, mixing lots of references to Greek mythology and pop culture.

Middlemarch: I’ve always wanted to read this book, so I downloaded the audiobook version. I love how it had all the romance and quirky characters of a Jane Austen novel. But George Elliot tells a lot more about the politics of society of the time. I loved the characters – and there are a lot of them who live in and around Middlemarch – and all that gossiping. It’s a bit long, and some of the politics can get a little dull, but I love how it all ties together in a way that 19^th century English novels always seem to do.

Vanity Fair: After Middlemarch, I wanted to listen to another long British novel and I picked this one since I liked the movie version with Reese Witherspoon. And I love this one already. I love the narrator’s tone and the subtitle “A Novel without a Hero.” So while this has the same mix of social and history as Middlemarch, there’s revelry in the characters who would have been villains in Austen or Elliot. And that makes this book a whole lot more fun!