Recent Reads

I recently finished The Gray House, after reading a recommendation of it on Reddit. It's a long (700+ pages) read but to me absolutely worth it, and one I'll read again. I just need to let it sit for a while. I do recommend it myself, but it's got some quirks that others might find annoying. Multiple, unreliable narrators, non-linear time, and some vaguely gruesome scenes. No torture porn, but some disturbing imagery. The characters also have nicknames (a few of which change over the course of the story) and they are all descriptive in some way. Some are pretty straightforward - Blind, Tubby, Ralph One - and some are more esoteric or have a more detailed backstory - Tabaqui the Jackal, Sphinx, the Bandar-Logs. If I go too much deeper into it, I'm afraid I'd spoil the secrets, and part of the pleasure of this (for me) was the pieces of the story falling into place. When things started clicking and making sense. What's a Jumper? Where's Below? This was the sort of story that made it hard to shift gears back into reality. I'd look up and look around, momentarily confused about where I was.

After that I needed a palette cleanser, so I turned to another unlikely recommendation, Flush: A Biography by Virginia Woolf. It's the imaginative biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's cocker spaniel, Flush. It was short and amusing. I have never read a lot of Woolf's work, Orlando in college and assorted short pieces. I tried reading Mrs. Dalloway some years ago but I should probably try again now that I don't have ex-husband badgering me about my choices in books. But I'm told it isn't just me - that novel is sort of hard to read.

I also have a strong urge to spend money, specifically to buy the Palette Mini-Series from Victionary. They have reissued Black & White, Multicolor, and Gold & Silver in new editions, and they're a good bit cheaper than getting one's hands on the original editions. I love art and design books and sometimes enjoy spending time just sitting around flipping through ones in my collection. I have books of art and painting, graphic design, comic art, illustration, and interior design that all feed into my visual sensibilities.