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It’s Monday….What am I reading?

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it's monday

Well, poppets. My alone-time is ripe for reading and I’ve got quite the pile on the go.

In paper:

  1. I started Nassim Taleb’s Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorderin audiobook on my road-trip to Montreal last week. It was so compelling, and I so badly wanted to see the diagrams, that I stopped at a Scarborough Chapters in the pouring rain and ran in and picked it up, along with his previous book, The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility”  (and maybe one more dated journal that will REALLY help me get organized this time.) Taleb has been accused of being a blow-hard, full of himself, and insulting to the finance and statistical communities. That may be (and, um, is), but he’s one smart cookie, and we mustn’t be guilty of argumentum ad hominem when we consider his writing. I have a lot of thoughts running round my brain on this one, but they haven’t settled down yet, so perhaps when I’m finished I’ll devote a post to it.
  2. I’ve just started Bee Season by Myla Goldberg and it promises to be a good, quick read. I have always shied away from watching spelling bees (either in real life or in movies/tv because the drama seems too much (seriously) but that’s just my lot. I think I can handle it in a book.
  3. I’ve put down Wife Dressing: The Fine Art of Being a Well-Dressed Wife because it’s a big heavy hardcover, but I think I may dip in to it again this week while I’m relaxing.
  4. Next novel up will be The Silent Wife which I found at Value Village when I returned a non-functional appliance and had to take something in exchange immediately. I’m really trying not to buy anything I’ll only read once, but I’m human.

In digital format:

  1. I finished up a re-read of The Dinner by Herman Koch last week as it’s this month’s book club selection. I think that the discussion should be excellent as there is much to mine in this slim novel about family relationships, criminality, and story-telling.
  2. I’ve been dipping in to Getting Results the Agile Way: A Personal Results System for Work and Life, billed as a simpler version of the extremely popular but massively difficult-to-implement Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. In my retirement, I find myself with a million small things to do, and some larger projects with lots of steps and I’m not very good at actually accomplishing the things that I should be able to. It’s sort of a forest-and-trees type problem.
  3. I’ve been reading some Edgar Allan Poe short stories as part of a Goodreads discussion group and have been running hot and cold on them. Some are interesting and compelling, and some seem endlessly dull. But I’m glad I’ve been reading them as it was something of a gap in this fairly well-read gal’s literary life.
  4. Next up will be The Stranger’s Child by the wonderful Alan Hollinghurst. I’ve read his novels The Swimming Pool Library and The Line of Beauty, and both were extremely engaging.

In audiobook:

  1. I may continue listening to Antifragile in audio (above), or move on to….
  2. …Herzog by Saul Bellow. I’m not sure why I requested this from the library but it was ready for downloading before I left on my trip, so I’ll give it a go. I really wish the library had a spot where you could note what exactly made you ask for a book. I must put these things into Goodreads and make my notes there.
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