Books I Now Want

I almost always read the NY Times Book Review on Sundays and find a bunch of books I want to read (I know other bloggers who do this, like Dewey, whose blog I always check to see if we're coveting the same things!).

This week there's a review of Ann Patchett's new novel Run, and you can also read the first chapter (a great feature of the Book Review). I have enjoyed everything of Patchett's that I've read, especially Bel Canto, but also The Magician's Assistant and The Patron Saint of Liars: A Novel. I really enjoy her style. As the review says, "she prefers nouns and verbs to crowded flights of lyrical adjectives and adverbs, and she doesn't dally excessively over a pretty phrase...small wonder, then, that her books tend to be such solid, weight-bearing constructions. The wonder is that they so often manage to be transportingly beautiful too."

I'm also happy to hear that one of my favorite playwrights, Alan Bennett, who wrote The History Boys: A Play and Lady in the Van, has written a new novella, The Uncommon Reader: A Novella. The NY Times reviewer didn't love it, but I think I'll have to check it out. Again, you can read the first chapter here.

There is also a review, by Pico Iyer, of the Turkish writer and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk's most recent book, Other Colors: Essays and a Story, a collection of essays and one story. I've never read Pamuk, but I'd like to at some point. I may start with his fiction, however. There is one section of this book called "My Books are My Life", and the review mentions that Pamuk has a library of 12,000 books--how great is that? Makes me want to read it...



And a reminder--don't forget to let me know if you want to put your name in the hat for my drawing for a copy of Alan Weisman's book, The World Without Us, by leaving me a comment on my last post (dated Friday, September 28th) before Tuesday at midnight, Pacific time.