Hobby Discussion Day 2: Reading

I'm proud to say that I have read more books in 2009 than in any other year. At first I thought my leisure reading time might take a hit when I quit my job and no longer had 90 minutes of train-commuting time to read, but in actuality I have much more of a desire to read for pleasure now that I'm not reading math books all day.

Here are some books I have read lately:

Well, since we last spoke, I finished Middlesex. Overall a good story, but for me I'm not sure it was the life-changing, eye-opening, amazingly-described-in-superlatives book that other people said it was. And I had a problem with the author's high-falutant vocabulary, some of which I didn't understand. And I like to think I have an average vocabulary.

But I liked Middlesex enough to see it through to the end, which is more than I can say for my next reading endeavor, Outlander. I wanted to like it. It's about time travel, which I like in non-geeky contexts. (To give you a reference frame here, Back to the Future would be a non-geeky time travel movie. Doctor Who would be a geekier version of the time-travel genre.) But I only got to page 25 of Outlander and realized I was not looking forward to reading it each night. And since it was a library book anyway, I just up and quit reading it.

Next I picked up the fluffiest, lightest chick-lit book you could ever imagine, Nora Roberts' Vision in White. It's the first in a 4-part series about these four women who live together in a big house and run a wedding-planning business that hosts weddings in the same house. Think of the female camaraderie of Sex in the City, with a lot of pretty, fun wedding details thrown in. Oh, and there's the romance with Mr. Perfect, complete with gratuitous sex details. Since this was a book about weddings, I can't help but use wedding-related metaphors to describe its fluffiness. Think of the fluffiest tulle dress and frothy cake frosting, and you have this book. Which is not to say I didn't like it. A book this light is good sometimes. Sometimes you don't want to think too hard, or be too saddened by what you're reading. This book was perfect to fill the completely frivolous niche. I have the second book in the series, Bed of Roses, which I think I will save for the next time I'm craving something light. It focuses specifically on the character who is the florist in the wedding business, so it taps into one of my other interests as well. It just might be perfect for one of those crappy winter days when you need some color in your life.

So, next the library came through with my requested copy of Jennifer Weiner's summer hit, Best Friends Forever. What I like about Jennifer Weiner books is that they're sort of a happy medium between completely unsubstantive chick-lit and serious, tragic novels. There's enough to make you think in there, but they're still pretty quick reads. But I'm only on like the third chapter, so I can't provide a review yet.

I believe after this I will read Superfreakonomics, the new follow-up to Freakonomics, which I loved. (Side note, one of the reasons I loved it is that I e-mailed the author at the University of Chicago and asked him to autograph a book for my uncle, who was an economics professor. The author wrote back immediately and said sure, come by anytime. I sent my husband because he worked at the U of C at the time.) Anyway, it looks like Superfreakonomics has gotten some kind of crummy reviews on Amazon, so perhaps I will be disappointed. I'll let you know.

After that foray into statistics (albeit pop-culture-related, way-more-interesting-than-anything-you-studied-in-college statistics), I'm thinking of going back to historical fiction. Anyone have any recs?