reading & listening: It's Bout of Books #35

It's bout of books week, so I'll sign up again.

What is this "Bout of Books" you ask? Here's what the organziers have to say:

The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 15th and runs through Sunday, August 21st in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional. For all Bout of Books 35 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

I usually sign up for this readathon, though I don't always wind up following through. The August readathon is especially bad timing for me, because it falls during the first week of classes at the university where I teach. These days are often taken up with meetings, student emails, and other business on top of the usual teaching stuff. However, I'll give it a go. My goal is pretty modest - I just need to finish some of the books I've started this summer. I've managed to start a bunch of books without finishing them and have gotten 4 books behind in my goal of reading 101 books by the end of the year. Looking at the list of "fun" books below, I'm guessing the problem is that none of these books are really thrilling me or I wouldn't have picked up a new one before finishing the one I'd already started, though I love Sandman and Paper Girls and started re-reading them while watching the new TV shows. I also have a book-club meeting on Wednesday night to discuss Stanislaw Lem's book His Master's Voice which I've been reading a couple of pages of every day in the morning before I start panicking about the on-coming semester. Now that all my syllabuses are complete, maybe I'll finally be able to immerse myself in it.

So here's my current stack of partially-read books, and I'll see how far I get during the week

for fun:

Stanislaw Lem, His Master's Voice

Grady Hendrix, The Final Girl Support Group

Alifair Burke, If You Were Here (audio)

Lisa Unger, Confessions on the 7:45

Alex Robinson, Tricked

re-reading, because of the TV series: Neil Gaiman, Sandman v. 1

re-reading because of the TV series: Paper Girls comics (I have these as single issues and re-read through issue 12)

for research:

Jean Hardisty, Mobilizing Resentment

Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar in Exile