A Friday Book Post

I'm working very hard to make it one novel read for each week of January (it is still January, right?) for NaJuReMoNoMo.

This time round, something completely different. I'm reading Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brien. I'm just barely off the first chapter and it is bounding along very smoothly. It reminds me of the adventure novels I read in my youth, that just carried you along. There are 20 novels in the series, so this 'could' be a candidate for my new favourite novelist. At least it would take me a while to run out of his books.

I also picked up an Amy Tan novel, The Hundred Secret Senses. Buying books at a used bookstore does limit my choice of authors, but it cuts costs wonderfully and I came up with two things I think will be great. The Tan will be my 4th book, if I make it past the third.

Along with these, I came a cross a history book of the popular readable variety (directly opposite to the usual dusty history tome), How the Scots Invented The Modern World. It is always a delight when you can find a history book which is readable, and very enjoyable, and this one looks like it will be. Time enough for it in February.

The bookseller said my taste was pretty eclectic. I suppose when I look at the things I've read over the course of my lifetime, my selections can be viewed as eclectic. How can you grow both as a reader and a person if they are not? There will always be reading that will be safe reading, reading like the Laura Ingalls Wilder books of my youth, that are a comfort to read rather than an adventure. There will always be reading for safety when my real world feels a little off kilter. But I hope that at least some of my reading is just to learn, just to know, just to go somewhere different.

If it wasn't about learning and growing, it would be like knitting with only one yarn, year after year, never tyring something new. Eclectic reader, eclectic yarn person. Good enough for me.