AAARG!

Last week was such a good week for blogging and I got a taste of what it would be like to blog consistently. I actually liked it. But this week I am having to put in lots of extra hours at work, so that I hardly have time to read, let along blog. Reading always, always, always comes first.

I am in the middle of three books:
1) A 1950 book by Robert Penn Warren called World Enough and Time. I loved All The King's Men and this one is also good but not quite as good, similar but different in setting and time. It is also long; 465 pp of small print. I am about halfway through. The time is early 1800s, the setting is Kentucky, it is a bit gothic, a bit like Dickens. The main character is having a hard time getting his life to work out and right now he is being tried for murder.

2) With Billie, by Julia Blackburn is a biography of Billie Holiday done in a sort of Studs Terkel style. The author collected transcripts of interviews done with people who had actually known or worked with Billie. This is no romantic whitewash of Billie's life as in Lady Sings The Blues. This is the raw stuff. If she hadn't been able to sing, she would never have survived and she barely survived as it was. But while it is not a happy smiley book, I like feeling as if I am getting to know this amazing artist.

3) Just started a few days ago: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading, by Maureen Corrigan, who is NPR's Fresh Air book critic. She makes her living from reading books, which has long been a dream of mine. So it is interesting to me from that standpoint and also because I am writing a book about reading myself. We are very different people but I like some of her ideas very well, especially about books that tell female-extreme-adventure stories. The book is very new. I got it off the New Book shelf at my local library.

What are you reading? Do you get as crazy as I do when life interrupts your reading time? Does anyone else read more than one book at a time? Post your comments dear readers. You will be read.