#MicroblogMondays 4: Wish I Was There
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I am reading Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, and I have to read it slowly because it sort of hurts my heart. I want it to be true. I want there to really be a magic college called Brakebills. And I want to go to Brakebills. And I want to meet Quentin. And I just really really really want to be there so badly that sometimes I need to put the book down and curl up in a ball and wish instead of read.
The last time I felt this way was with Harry Potter. And before that, Life of Pi. (I didn’t actually care if the rest of the book came true, but I desperately wanted to see the island with the meerkats, and it hurt my heart to not be able to go to the island of the meerkats.)
So what good book have you read lately? Something so good that it affected your whole mood?
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47 comments
That’s some synchronicity- I wrote about a book series I have been reading- the sharing knife series by Lois mcmaster Bujold. I don’t know that I want to live in that world, but I enjoyed the story!
I haven’t read a really good book for months – the last one I gave 5 stars on Goodreads was Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost and I read that (and blogged about it) at the beginning of the year. I’ve lost my reading mojo this year, and I’m trying hard top get it back right at the moment. Of course, I haven’t read yours yet.
I’m currently in the middle of Amitav Ghosh’s trilogy about the Opium Wars (on book II, River of Smoke). I’m not really even into historic fiction, but the imagery is so immersive and arresting that I’m hooked.
Thanks for including me in your Friday roundup last week! 🙂
i am finishing up david mitchell’s ‘the bone clocks’, and cannot wait for his next novel with more on horology 🙂
I can’t bear to be disappointed by a book so I read the same things over again. Terry Pratchett is especially good for this. But maybe I should take a risk and allow the possibility of disappointment in order to discover something amazing!
Oh…it’s been way too long since I sat down quietly with a book, too much restlessness (due to various reasons) in my head I guess. I really loved “Le club des incorrigibles optimistes” by Jean-Michel Guesnassia (but I think it’s already a year ago since I read it).
I am reading books at a ridiculous rate right now because it controls my anxiety about my PhD. I shouldn’t have time to read them, but if I don’t make the time, then I can’t get any work done at all because I get paralyzed, so it’s worth the time “wasted”. I’m mostly rereading old favourites over and over again, because they’re safe and they make me feel better (which is what I need from books right now), but I did just read The King’s Grave, which is about how they found Richard III’s body in a car park, and I really really enjoyed it.
I really liked The Magicians. But then the second book in the series kind of shattered all the things I love so much about reading fantasy and it took me a long long long time to get over it. But I had no idea (until just now when I went to look it up to see if it was the same book I was thinking about) that there was a third book in the series that just came out last month. So maybe there is hope for redemption after all. Off to put it on hold now…
. . .lost my reading mojo I can relate. The gambit toward getting it back is visiting the tried and true: mystery. Cornwell. Hasn’t helped much.
I will have to look into that book because I felt the EXACT SAME WAY about The Life of Pi and the Harry Potter series. The English teacher in me LOVES those immersive moments in literature, where I feel like I could live so completely in the book.
I SO felt that way about Harry Potter. And when I listened to the Artemis Fowl series too. 🙂
I really enjoyed Joshilyn Jackson’s book “Between, Georgia.” I listened to the audio version – yay long commute! – and felt like I was there. I really wanted to wake up and be in Between so I could be part of the family.
xoxo
Every time I re-read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” I have that feeling.
More recently, I was reading “Season of the Witch” by Natasha Mostert and was completely intrigued by the setting and the concept of technology blending with magic. I really wanted to sort of crawl up inside the book and explore all the nooks and crannies of it, all the stuff that isn’t actually written into the story but would be there if I could actually visit.
Hopefully this will get me back to blogging. Thanks for the idea Mel!
I haven’t read a good book in months, either! I feel like I don’t really have time to sit down with a book and if I have time to read it is a magazine or newspaper. Looking for some inspiration!
Okay, so I am going to be buying The Magicians ASAP. I am currently reading the third and final book in the Born Wicked series, and it is excellent. Next up is the final Thone of Glass book, and I can’t because I love that series. It’s a year of series books for me… and yet I can’t think of any thing I look back on as truly AMAZING like last year’s Sea of Tranquility and Fangirl.
You, more than anyone else, are responsible for the mile-high stack of to-be-reads on my nightstand/library list.
It’s been so long since I’ve had the chance to read a book, especially a good one. The good ones always affect me in some way.
The most recent book I finished was “The Gift of Wings,” a biography of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables, etc. Despite the joy she gave to so many, her life was not a happy one, and so I wouldn’t say the book left me in a happy mood — but it did give me a lot to think about.
Earlier this summer, I finished “All These Years: Tune In,” the first of a massive three-volume opus about The Beatles. I LOVED it and I cannot WAIT for the next installment! I reviewed both books on my blog:
LMM: http://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.ca/2014/09/lucy-maud-montgomery-gift-of-wings-by.html
Beatles: http://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.ca/2014/06/the-beatles-all-these-years-tune-in-by.html
Adding this to my library list!
I am thoroughly entrenched in the A Song of Ice and Fire series (Game of Thrones). There are lots of characters to remember and wade through, they are heavy books. However, I love them. I love the different world where some is based on reality and some fantasy.
There are storylines that made me start to love a character I once hated. This series has me reading at lunch, reading after the kids go to bed, listening to the audio book on my commute and during my long runs on the weekend.
I want to live in SOME aspects of that world. Rather, I would like to visit and tell Queen Cersei where to go and let Arya know what I know.
Love these books.
I just finished reading Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier for book club. It’s a book that I’ve known about for a long time, but hadn’t gotten around to reading. After the books that I have been reading for book club, this was a welcome change. It is a fascinating study of how two different women deal with their place in society at a time when women had very little opportunity or rights.
I am reading James Patterson’s “Private” again. Crazy I know. So feel-good, though!
I am having fun with MicroblogMondays, Mel! ♥
How I miss reading. Too much focus on work stuff at the moment. The one I’m currently flipping through is “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” by Sean Carroll. But how I love a good fiction.
I just re-read The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay and I think I loved it even more than the first time. It’s about a little English boy growing up in Apartheid South Africa who faces all kinds of adversity, but it’s wonderfully written.
And I also LOVE Microblog Mondays! I needed something manageable to get me back into a routine. Doing it with others is even better. : )
Most of my reading right now is just my Granta subscription. I am in love with the story “Arrival Gates” by Rebecca Solnit from the Spring issue. If you Google “Granta Arrival Gates” you can read the beginning of the story, but I have to say it didn’t grab me right at the beginning…it grabbed me about halfway through in the way that made me immediately go back to the beginning and read it again with new eyes. One of my all time favorites – Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” – was like that for me as well.
I miss reading. With work and the boys, by the time is have a few moments to read, I’m too exhausted to enjoy it. 🙁
I’m on the 8th Outlander book and not sure where I’m going to go after I am done. This series is epic and consumes my thoughts at times. I seriously day dream and dream about what is going on in their lives, where they are, how they are, etc. I LOVE LOVE the series (if I haven’t said it before).
I’m reading The Goldfinch and thoroughly enjoying it. Funny how different people value different things in books. My dad said it dragged so much he wasn’t even sure why he was bothering, and I was all: BUT IT WON A PULITZER.
I’m just finishing Sara Silverman’s biography & I really wish I could be her friend & hang out with her…but it’s been a long time since a book has effected me as deeply as you describe
I am SO glad to hear that you’re enjoying this! I have the first two books of the series waiting to be read. So that’s what’s up next in the queue, thanks to you!
After having a complete and public hissy fit about how much I hate Gone Girl (http://www.cynthiasamuels.com/blog/2014/09/18/gone-girl-i-wish-shed-kept-going/) I have returned to dystopia where I belong and am about 1/2 way through Edan Lepucki’s California. I’m liking it a lot but I loved The Handmaid’s Tale (profound and ain a different category of excellence but some of the same anxieties) and Divergent and The Giver and The Hunger Games too. I’m kind of in the same place as Mel only opposite. I wanted to go to Hogwarts but wandering around in these troubling worlds is also satisfying somehow. I wish I knew what that “how” was….
I recently read Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (she’s the author of bestseller Gone Girl). I really liked it, but it’s dark.
Oh, I haven’t been able to sit down with a good book in a long time! I miss reading!
P.S. I submitted my Microblog Monday post accidentally with last weeks url! I don’t know how to erase it! It’s #49. It shouldn’t be there. Sorry!
I liked The Goldfinch – and I especially liked that another book I read shortly after reading that one referenced the same painting. But my memory is so bad these days, I can’t remember the name of the second book (and I had to scroll up to remember the name of The Goldfinch!). I’m reading The Silkworm right now, and while these Galbraith books irritate me in strange, indescribable ways, I still want to keep reading them.
I just finished The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles, and it made me want to revisit some French classes, because I’m sure the story was much better in French.
Oh, and I also just finished The Golem and The Jinni – and I really liked that one too. I finally finished The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince. That was pretty cool, because it was fascinating AND that world did exist.
I didn’t really like the characters in The Magicians – something about them rubbed me the wrong way.
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I read a “real” book, or even what book I’m more or less reading on my Kindle.
I miss reading. A lot.
I read “The Painted Girls” by Cathy Buchannan in 2012 and it was phenomenal. Highly recommend. There are some other books I read recently that were revelations in that they were set in Hawaii and reminded me of home somewhat, BUT they didn’t really dig in, you know? I found them really problematic in a lot of ways so I can’t really recommend.
I haven’t had a lot of time to read lately, I’ve been far too busy.
But I did start listening to the Harry Potter audio books read by Stephen Fry. I thought I truly loved these books until I listened to Stephen Fry read it, but now I know real love. It’s like a new book but I already know its awesome. When I crochet, I listen to him tell me a story I love and it makes me happy.
I’ve just finished reading “The Husband’s Secret” by Liane Moriarty for my book club this month and it was really good – it was one of those stories that keeps you intrigued till the end! Would recommend it!
I should just save the post and all the comments for the time when I don’t know which book to read next *g* I’ve read a lot of Jojo Moyes novels recently. Some were fantastic and the others were quite good as well. I really enjoyed the last one I read “Ship of Brides” about the 650 Australian women who were transported to England after WWII to start their lives with the British husbands whom they met (and married) during the war. I never heard or even thought about those marriages to begin with and it was wonderful to read about those brave young women who left behind their whole world (families and such) to start a new life half-way-around the world. And in 1946 that really was more like a whole wide world away.
I now started “The Last Dragonslayer” by Jasper Fforde, which is YA fantasy novel. Very entertaining so far, like most of Ffordes books.
I love Stephen King but last year picked up a Justin Cronin, everything he’s written is fab-u-lous, seriously. His Passage Trilogy is what caught me (still waiting for the third installment) but The Summer Guest made me a fan of everything else he wrote.
Recently read, “The Orenda” by Joseph Boyden. By the end of the book I felt like I was IN the book, living with the characters and my heart was pounding at the end. Was hard to get into another book after that – book hangover I guess it’s called.
“If you’re happy and you know it …” snap your fingers….bop your head….
Love The Magicians. The Magician King after it is also fantastic. Just read Wonder. Gorgeous.
So happy to link up..Hoping to meet lots of like minded bloggers 🙂 And congratulations on a wonderful idea
A book that really moved me recently was ‘Green Vanilla Tea’. I’ll be reviewing it soon on my website.
Incidentally, I’ve been meaning to add a review of ‘Life From Scratch’ which I enjoyed immensely, Melissa. I will and soon. 🙂
I don’t remember the last time I was so wholly engrossed in a book, sadly enough. But I can remember one such book from my childhood (which I recently saw someone reading while at the airport — “Hitty: Her First Hundred Years.”) I think I want to get it, and re-read it, all these years later.
I just read his book “Codex” – I loved it! I also just finished “Dance is a Contact Sport” – which about the spring 1973 season of the New York City Ballet – and it’s really interesting and engaging and a good behind-the-scenes look at a ballet company and hardly dated considering that it’s a 40yo piece of non-fiction.
I just came back to this post to look up what book it was you were loving so much, so I now plan to start the magicians tonight! I also wanted to tell you I just finished the third book in the Throne of Glass series and I am so in love with that series it hurts a little. And as a fellow book reader, I know that is the best recommendation I can give 🙂