What I’ve Been Reading — September 2005

October 2, 2005


This article (the August 2005 version) has officially been published in Prime Magazine.

More on that later, though.

Books bought (actually, all borrowed):
An Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life – Amy Krouse Rosenthal
Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
Dry – Augusten Burroughs
A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
Tortilla Flat – John Steinbeck
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie

Books read:
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life – Amy Krouse Rosenthal
An Englishman in Paris: L’éducation continentale – Michael Sadler
Running with Scissors – Augusten Burroughs
Salt: A World History – Mark Kurlansky (not finished)
Dry – Augusten Burroughs

September, the first official month of my experiment in “reading the books I currently have on standby instead of buying new ones,” seemed to go by rather quickly. I hardly scratched the surface of the overflowing bookshelves in our dining room, instead choosing to read borrowed books (aside from one) all month.

In doing this, however, I’ve found that I have rekindled my interest in the library. I know, I know; how could I ever let the library become an overlooked vessel in my current literary mind? My answer to that: I don’t know. Somewhere along the line I started selfishly using the library to help me find a book, after which I left without so much as a “thank you.”

So I felt like a completely new person when I went to the library the other day to look. I simply browsed though the books. I enjoyed myself immensely; I found authors I had always meant to read and a series I had loved growing up. I had a stack of five books in no time, and knowing how I’d never get around to reading all of them, I smartly put some back – remembering where they were for a future visit – and left with three classics and a sequel: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, John Steinbeck’s Tortilla Flat, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and Augusten Burroughs’ Dry.

Before I get too far, though, let me tell you about the reading I did this month. I was nearly thematic in my selection of books – the four I actually finished were memoirs, in one form or another. When you’ve got as random a selection of reading material as I do, that’s about as close to a theme as I get.

My selection followed this path: Michael Sadler’s An Englishman in Paris was chosen because I was trying to read some of the books I’d purchased months ago. This led to Rosenthal, though the connection between the two is simply that I finished one book and the other happened to show up at the library that same day. Running with Scissors was read by Kerrie as I was tooling along through Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia, so I naturally was jealous and started it as soon as I could. I followed this up with the sequel, Dry, and kept myself content with just four books. Well, five if you count the ten pages I read of Salt while I was waiting for Kerrie to finish Running with Scissors.

Tags: Books, Literature, What I've Been Reading |

Comments

4 Responses to “What I’ve Been Reading — September 2005”

  1. sara on October 2nd, 2005 928 pm

    I feel so honored, I am now black marks on your fake wood pulp. Glad to hear you enjoyed the book, now you need to read Sellevision.

    Congratulations on the (almost definite) new job!

  2. Corey Vilhauer on October 3rd, 2005 1222 pm

    Congrats yourself — you are the first person to ever post on a “What I’ve Been Reading” post.

  3. Fresh on October 3rd, 2005 1129 pm

    Agatha Christie? Come on man! You had me up til there. I have also starte perusing the local libraries and have found quite a bit of comfort. I also could have gone back and checked out the Gunslinger books by Stephen King (which rule whole-heartedly in their own right) but I would not feel right in reviewing them 25 years too late. You know I love you greatly my friend, but lets have a literary fight!

  4. black marks on wood pulp » What I’ve Been Reading — The Best of 2005 on December 14th, 2005 116 pm

    [...] Augusten Burroughs — Dry (2004) — Reviewed September 2005 Never before have I found the demons of alcoholism more fascinating and, at times, inspiring than I did in Burroughs’s second memoir, Dry, the sequel to Running with Scissors. I indulged myself in Burroughs’ possibly exaggerated life through both books back to back, finding Dry to be a little more adult – and a little more believable. It also served to be a much more rewarding story than his younger exploits in Running with Scissors. Burroughs just has a way to make the most depressing life sound incredibly funny. Sometimes I’m wondering if I’m laughing because of or despite his hardships. [...]

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