IN TRIAL: be back soon

100th Book of the Year!

Much to my surprise, I figured out that I have read 100 books already this year. I usually read about 100 in a whole year, so I am not sure why I am ahead of the game this year. A big part of it has to do with listening to more audiobooks, I know. After over ten years of working at home, I started working in a law firm again. Even though my commute is only about 15 minutes each way, that half an hour a day listening to a book adds up. Also, because I have been listening in the car more, I got in the habit of listening while I putter around the house making dinner and doing chores. So it could be the audiobooks. It could also be that I am not working actively on any major lists right now. After I finished the Modern Library list, I have been reading more randomly. It's not that the books I have been choosing are all light reading -- I've gone through Moby Dick and that very dense biography of John Stuart Mill in the past month alone -- but I haven't been wading through Theodore Dreiser or Henry James. Whatever the reason, I have enjoyed my 100 books of 2008 and look forward to three more months of reading before the end of the year. My 100th book? Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome. Part of my 19th Century reading jag. It's sort of a cross between Thoreau's A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and a P. G. Wodehouse novel.

Even better!

Bookforum.com just added my John Stuart Mill review to their system of telling people about things they might want to read. It's in the "monsters" paragraph at the top of the page right now, but here is the permanent link. How exciting!

I'm moving up!

My stock as a book geek is rising! My review of Richard Reeve's new biography of John Stuart Mill is the top review in the current edition of the Internet Review of Books. I'll post the review here when I get a chance.

List of the Day: Vacation Books

Oh, it is hard to come home from vacation! How nice it was to spend two weeks away from work, doing nothing but peeping at leaves, avoiding headlines, taking in the New England vibe, and reading the kinds of books that I store up for such trips:

Kane and Able by Jeffery Archer;

The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy;

A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane;

Absolute Zero by Chuck Logan;

To the Hilt by Dick Francis; and

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler.

These were all good yarns; all entertaining. Perfect for vacation.