April 2020: What are you reading?

What 1001 books are you reading during these unsettling, pandemic days?

I'm still reading Anniversaries: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl and a bunch of non-list books.

Next up is H(a)ppy, also reading The Girl in the Tower for some escapism.

I just finished a non-list book My Struggle Book 6 by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It was exhausting but ultimately very rewarding. I started the series back in 2016 and I feel a big vacuum now that it is over.

I'm going to try to get back into Anniversaries again. I stopped reading some time near the holidays last year.

I also want to finish last month's group read Sometimes A Great Notion and then move on to The Last of Mr. Norris.

I just started Cannery Row which I tried to get the group to read to no avail. It has a great first line:
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.

And the rest of the first paragraph is equally good.

I picked the worst book to read during this pandemic because why not read Clarissa and be bored to tears? Good grief, just find her a third option to marry and we can skip the rest of this nonsense.

I'm also reading Oliver Twist (loving it) and Canticle for Leibowitz (nothing like a good dystopian book to scare you even further right now).

>6 Yells: - Well, that helps me leave Clarissa alone for another month!
I have just started The Glass Bead Game, the introduction was a bit dense, but once into the meat of the book, it is good. Not sure how I would describe it. I studied another of Hermann Hesse's books for A Level, which prompted the class as a whole to say on repeat Ich hasse Hesse! Every so often I wonder if I should give the book another go.

I finished my mammoth non-list book and have started Pepita Jimenez and The Golden Notebook.

I picked up In Cold Blood and am finding it very easy to read, extremely well done.

I'm also reading The Golden Notebook but I think it will be slow going.

I am reading The City Primeval which is satisfyingly undemanding and distracting. Then I guess I'll be on to War With the Newts. After Mr. Norris Changes Trains I needed something not from the 1930s, which is such a specific voice. Elmore Leonard is definitely satisfying that need for difference!

Finally finished The Water Margin today, which took me ages to read. I've started The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle now... I don't generally care for Murakami, though this one has been OK so far. I'm waiting for the magical realism to kick and and kill it for me though.

Really missing my public library right now!

I am still working on The Water Margin, it's the perfect book to pick up, read a chapter or two and then set aside for awhile again. I expect I will be reading this one for quite some time but that's ok as I am enjoying it.

I'm enjoying the heck out of David Copperfield, and I'm going to be at it a while because I'm going to savor it.

>14 MartinBodek: I loved David Copperfield! Definitely my favourite one so far.

Still working on Clarissa - I'm almost at a point where something might actually happen. Also finishing up The Jungle and The Good Soldier

Raced through The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and almost done with In Cold Blood.

I've been doing miserably with my 1001 books reading this year. I've only read 2 so far. And I started The Golden Notebook and I just don't think I can currently manage it - seems like too much work for my mental state at the moment!

I am trying to get a group read of La Reine Margot together for May in the Category Challenge. All are welcome - check out the thread if interested.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/319411

>18 japaul22: That is very tempting! I was going to read Tarr for the shortest title challenge, but La Reine Margot would be a LOT more fun. I wonder if I could get through both?

<19 Please do! Group reads are so much more fun with more people.