I have stacks of Book Depository bookmarks everywhere; once upon a time, ordering from them was a weekly occurrence. I was thinking about this recently and feeling really bitter about the fact that Book Depository was retired. I used to get not just novels, but academic monographs, sheet music for music exams, those paperblanks journals I love so much, and art calendars. Their absence leaves an absence in my life. I always factor in delivery costs and they can be incredibly prohibitive so free shipping was a boon! Unlike these days when I have to spend a chunk just to get a physical copy of my own novel from Barnes & Noble!!
The past few years, most of my reading tends to happen on my iPhone or iPad via books I buy from Smashwords or Kobo. Some, I buy from Google Play but reading books from there are such a pain. I miss buying huge quantities of physical books; my physical impediments these days make me far less adventurous about going out to shopping malls (where most of my erstwhile regular bookstores are located). But in another way it’s probably a good thing because I’m desperately running out of shelf space in this cozy little apartment.
I’ve read eight books so far in April. Mostly this is because not only do I have an injured knee (to match my messed up spine), I now have a maimed left paw as well. How did this happen? Well, I was hobbling in the hospital to get my stock of meds and insulin; suddenly my left hand did a snap thing and there were veins prominent on it. The veins subsided but said paw has been very unhappy for over a week now, making typing and most physical things really difficult. I suspect it’s either RSI (which I’ve had off and on both during my PhD student days and in the period when I was practising music 3-4 hours a day) or carpal tunnel. I’ve been over-utilising my hands particularly when I was wheelchair-bound and then using the walking frame or cane. So, since I have not been able to practice music or do most of anything lately, I’ve been reading more during my downtime.
My left paw is slightly better today, so I’m amusing myself by blogging this month’s reading adventure. To protect said left paw from over-exertion, I’m copying and pasting first the list of books from my reading journal:
- The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop – Takuya Asakura
- The Accidental Malay – Karina Bahrin
- The Rainfall Market – You Yeong-Gwan
- Dragonflight – Anne McCaffrey (reread)
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (Neapolitan Novels #3) – Elena Ferrante
- The White Dragon – Anne McCaffrey (reread)
- The Story of A New Name (Neapolitan Novels #2) – Elena Ferrante
- Dragondrums (Harper Hall Trilogy #3) – Anne McCaffrey (reread)
I’ve been wanting to read The Rainfall Market for a couple of months now, so I picked it up on Kobo the other day to cheer myself up. I was so hooked on it and on discovering a whole slew of Korean and Japanese cozy novels translated to English that I picked up The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop next. I’m suspecting I’m embarking on a new reading adventure (out of many)!!.
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels are incredibly addictive and more relatable than I originally thought they would be. Something about the class struggle resonated with me at the same level as Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been moving between classes my whole life starting from being a latchkey kid in a broken home/abusive environment so I identify very deeply with the haunting feeling that somehow you’ll never be enough. Perhaps it’s that growing awareness of the faultlines beneath most interactions and what is often left unsaid. Food for thought, and very readable. Pity the HBO adaptation is not available in my HBO subscription. Regional?
Right now I’m reading Book #4 of the Neapolitan Novels, and Book #1 of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. After a tv series finale yesterday that pretty much wrecked me, I decided I’d better read the novels after all. And so far I’m really enjoying it. Very engaging prose. Suspect I’m going to be rewatching the series also because I cannot move on. I’m also still re-reading Robert Jordan’s Winter’s Heart and reading Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. Have not got around to the Julian May books and Patricia A McKillip books yet because I fell into various rabbitholes with the tomes mentioned in the paragraphs above. I’ll get to them and enjoy them when I get there!
That’s all for now. I’ll likely update by end of this month! Till then, I hope you all have many enjoyable hours of reading as well!
ps: If you’ve always wanted to read thick books but are either intimidated or are having a reading block, I posted a tip on my author blog that might help you!