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Beer Good Foamy has a list of recent and current readings, and it looks like fun.

I think, for the first time in my life, I get why my friends are always "complaining" that they have more they want to read than they have time to read! (Note: and why the hell does LJ remove my line breaks?)

Already Read

I'm starting with Warm Bodies, even though I've finished it, because the book is amazing! If you've seen the preview for the movie version, you know that it's about zombies becoming more human and about a zombie falling in love. There's a theme about striving to be more, to do more than merely survive, which I strongly related to. I'll probably be posting about this one in more detail at some point. It's that awesome.

Winds of Fate and Winds of Change: I'm rereading a number of the older Mercedes Lackey books. Not sure why, but I have been tearing through them.

Girls at War, a short story collection by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe. The stories aren't bad but they didn't draw me in that deeply.

Next up is Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. While this book does go into the psychology of memory, and I'm always up for psychology-themed books, the science isn't anything new. She's just relating psychology I already know to Holmes without giving any advice on how readers can learn to focus their minds. It's more along the lines of “this is what you should be like” without telling you how to get there.

City of Bones is a young adult novel. Sometimes I like them but other times they just seem sort of stupid. This book falls into the latter category.

Currently Reading

I don't recall why I took out Save the Cat, a book on writing, but I'm finding it's advice on loglines, which are one-line descriptions of the story, and on titles quite useful.

Hugh Howey's Wool, while not as awesome as Warm Bodies, is pretty good, but I apparently don't have much to say about it.

The Creative Habit, by the dancer Twyla Tharp, provides essays and exercises on creativity. I've already found some of her early advice useful: perform a ritual before you start writing. My new at the start of writing ritual is to recite a poem.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is another excellent novel. This is from the start: Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder. I am exactly halfway up. The floor of the bookstore is far below me, the surface of a planet I've left behind. The tops of the shelves loom high above, and it's dark up there—the books are packed in close, and they don't let any light through. The air might be thinner, too. I think I see a bat.

Another psychology book, The As If Principle, has an unexpected premise: that emotions follow behavior. And it supports that premise fairly well.

I'm reading The DASH Diet for Weight Loss because my doctor wants to me DASH – I have high blood pressure – and this is the most recent DASH book my library carries. The recipes don't look that great but the information is good and it provides a vegetarian version of DASH. Not that I'm a vegetarian but it's nice to have available.

I haven't gotten far into The Age of Miracles, although it is interesting and I do intend to finish it. Basic plot: the rotation of the Earth is slowing. I have no clue where this story is going to go.

I'm maybe one-quarter of the way into The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. A man, Harold Fry, learns that an ex-coworker, a woman he hasn't seen in twenty years, is dying of cancer. He decides to walk from his home in southern England to where she is, way at the top northern end of England, and that this will save her life. The conflict has been lightly touched upon: a son that won't talk to his parents, a suggestion that Mr. Fry had an untoward relationship – one that hurt his wife – with this woman. It's quite lovely.


Making a Living Without a Job. There is a "I so need a new job, one that doesn't make me want to jab knives into my arm" theme or subset to this list. This is a pretty good career change book.

What I'm Going to Read

More Mercedes Lackey when the library gets it to me. I'm focusing on the events around Talia's lifetime, which bring a bunch of different cultures together to fight off the big bads and to save the world from the echoes of ancient mage storms.

Creativity for Life provides advice on having a creative career. I'm not sure this one looks all that useful which is why I started with Tharp's book instead.

Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception which is another changing your career advice book. From the back: Art is who we are and what we do and what we need.

And pickamix has just recommended The Accidental Mind. So that's on hold at the library.