Musing Mondays: What I done been reading

This week’s Musing posits several questions so they’re presented separately.

What are you reading right now?

I’m just finishing Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith.

Why are you reading what you’re reading? Pleasure? For review? Something else?

I’m reading it for pleasure because it made the Man Booker Prize longlist, it’s set in Stalinist Russia and seems to have garnered fairly good reviews.

What did you recently finish reading?

The book just prior was Marty Beckerman’s Dumbocracy, the review of which was posted Sunday on Blogcritics and here today.

What do you think you’ll be reading next?

Either The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten War by Asne Seierstad or The Forever War by Dexter Filkins. I picked up both at the library late last week and which I read will depend on which “feels right” at the time I pick them up. (As an aside, Joe Haldeman evidently is not happy that Filkins’ book carries the same name as Haldeman’s novel, which won the Hugo Award in 1976 and was scheduled for a new reissue early next year.)

What was the best book you read this month? Why?

Marilynne Robinson’s Home. Her prose style and storytelling abilities are simply superb.

What was the worst book you read this month? Why?

The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead by David Shields. It seemed Shields couldn’t decide if the book should be be a collection of facts and figures, a look at aging ala Mary Roach or a memoir. Thus, it came off as muddled and directionless and I gave up about one-third of the way in, something I rarely do.

Marilynne Robinson, Home