Monday, March 07, 2005

My reading pile

Now that the bar exam's over and I've caught up on the previous seasons of 24, I've got some time to kill. I figure I'll do some reading this month, especially since I'll be hitting the beach in a couple of weeks. I seriously doubt that I'll get to all of it, but here's my reading pile:

South Bay Blues by Pigeon John: This came in the mail today. It is a collection of poems by the best MC you've never heard. I'm not really one for poetry and picked this up mostly for the 8 song CD that was included with it.

Hollywood Interrupted: Insanity Chic in Babylon by Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner. I checked this out of the library. I've got a love/hate thing with Hollywood celebrities and this should just fan the flames.

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins. My brother got this for me for Christmas. He wrote in my copy that Robbins is his "favorite non-communist author." There are a lot of allusions to my small, whitebread hometown, so I'm looking forward to reading this book.

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I bought this unabridged 1,462 page edition a year or two ago, but found the sheer size of it a bit daunting. But everything I've heard about it says it's awesome and I enjoy a good revenge tale.

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Every couple of years, a book everyone loves gets passed around my extended family. This was such a book about five years ago. I received this as another present from my brother. "Quite possibly the best book ever," he says. That's a lot of hype, but I liked the movie a lot. So, who knows.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Yet another gift from my brother - sensing a pattern here? My brother's inscription from 1996: "OK this book is s'posed to be a 'modern classic' or whatever - a must-read for any mid-90s college kid. Personally I have not read this one but will as soon as you are done with it, K?" Better late than never.

Other books that I own, but have gone unread on the ol' pile: Winesburg, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson, Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson, A Pirate Looks at Fifty by Jimmy Buffett, The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.

And I'm really looking forward to a book that'll be published in April - Misfortune by Wesley Stace (that's the real name of John Wesley Harding, one of my favorite recording artists).

3 comments:

spydrz said...

Mmmm....monte cristo....ham, fried bread, powdered sugar, and just a bit of strawberry jam...

Panthergirl said...

Tom Robbins is such an original and hilarious writer. I was disappointed in the Dave Eggers book, frankly. I found it reallly self-aggrandizing (sp?). I just didn't like HIM which made it hard to like the book.

Micah said...

My brother absolutely loves Tom Robbins and I trust his recommendations, so I'm looking forward to being exposed to Robbins' work.

As for Eggers, I actually read about 1/3 of the book a year or two ago, but just stopped reading it for some reason (I suspect it was finals time or something like that). I'm not one to just quit on a book or movie, so I'll likely re-read it from the beginning. I remember it being okay, but it'll probably be the last one on my list that I tackle.