Book Post!

I feel like the posts in this blog can be categorized into 3 different themes: things seen & done while traveling, my thoughts on gender & sexuality theory, & my desire to return to the middle east. The last two probably look like contradictions to most people, but human beings are complicated creatures, aren't they? In an effort to have less polarizing pieces of my personality put on display, however, I thought I would make a more traditional blogpost.

So! The books I'm reading:

I was looking through the science section of my local used book store, and this struck my fancy, so I bought it. However, it was clearly written before Sacks' brilliant The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. I read that book in the 8th grade, and while I remember struggling with certain words and scientific concepts, I remember it as ultimately being a very engrossing reading. The subject matter in this is also extremely fascinating, but also very hard to sometimes understand, especially with footnotes that sometimes last a whole page several times in the middle of each chapter.

It only took me 7 months and several stops & starts, but I finally made it to Book 5 of George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Fire & Ice series. And even now, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the series. While reading A Game of Thrones, everyone around me was struck by how much I was continually complaining about how the characters' actions were all fairly predictable and stupid. I also felt like Ned Stark was just too one-dimensional. But as the series has evolved, so too have the characters. I find I cannot stop wanting to know how things turn out for them. It's a little hard to judge this book on its own, since it's essentially A Clash Of Kings: Part 2 (as the two books are concurrent), but now, every time I pick the book up, I'm struck by how absorbing it is.  Either I have the book version of Stockholm syndrome, or these books are getting better and better. In addition, I'm learning a lot of archaic Scottish and Old English words thanks to Martin's vocabulary and my kindle's dictionary; it will be amusing to see if any of these ever end up into my conversations, because I already find myself accidentally sounding like I'm from a different century (I really need to up my reading to talking ratio).