I LIVE! (And I am in desperate need of some good book recommendations.)

[apple_pathways]

I went to the doctor, and the horrific lump on my forehead is well on its way to vanquishment. (Is that a word?) While it is an infection, it's not anything particularly scary like staph. They numbed up my forehead, drained the lump, and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. (Which I must take every six hours for a week. Any bets on how many doses I'll miss? Also of note: the warning label on the bottle says "DO NOT LIE DOWN WITHIN TEN MINUTES OF TAKING THIS MEDICATION". Um: WTF?! Before I Google the reason for the warning, anyone wanna take any guesses as to what will happen if I disregard the warning?)

So I walked around with a bandage on my forehead all day. Not necessarily because I needed it, but because the lump was particularly unpleasant-looking and I was doing society a favor by concealing it. I got to explain to every single one of my students today why I was wearing it (kids love talking about pus), but the most uncomfortable conversation came from the cashier at Kroger: "Oh dear, what happened?"

"Oh, I had to have a cyst on my forehead drained."

"Oh, my husband gets those all the time. As long as no one's beating you!"

Yeah, knock wood, right?

TOPIC CHANGE! So I am in a serious Book Slump. I can't remember the last thing I read that I just couldn't put down. I really, really need some recommendations or, at the very least, some Lovely Book Chat. So: any recs? Anything new that you've heard is good? Anything old that you've re-read a dozen times? What are you reading right now, and how do you like it? What's next on the list?


As for me, I am reading Armageddon's Children" by Terry Brooks, which I suppose I'm enjoying, but I'm more than 100 pages in (of out approximately 300 or so) and it still feels like the author is setting things up. (It's the first book in a trilogy, so that may be why. Although I prefer series where each book is more-or-less self-contained, and could be read as a stand-alone story.) The world-building is majorly creepy, which I enjoy, and there are some interesting characters. We'll see how it turns out.

I'm also reading The Metropolis Case, the debut novel of Matthew Gallaway. It sounds like a good read: if I can just get into it. Amazon.com has this to say about it: "In his ambitious debut, Gallaway jumps backward and forward in time between two cities, spiraling in on four characters connected by music: Lucien, an opera singer coming-of-age in mid-19th-century Paris; Anna, an opera singer reaching the height of her career in 1960s New York; Maria, an extraordinarily promising young singer but a difficult student; and Martin, an aging lawyer whose love of music might save his life. The ties between them are at first so tenuous that readers may wonder when, how, or if their narratives will converge." This is the point I'm at in the novel. :P

And I just bought this:



It's been awhile since I've devoted myself to a good romance novel, and this series by Madeline Hunter looks good. I've read some of her other books, and I like the way she manages to weave the romance into a larger historical plot.

SO: rec me some books, please and thank you! I can't believe I've gone this long without getting excited about a book...

Comments

[apple-pathways.livejournal.com]

The Hunger Games is very good! Definitely a page-turner, and nothing too complex to slow you down. AWESOME characters, but I'm still interested to see if anyone else had the same little niggles with the writing style that I did. (I'll stay tuned, I suppose!)

Yeah, the heartburn/acid reflux reason occurred to me only later! I just think it's funny the strange warning labels they'll slap on medications without explaining them at all--often seemingly at random. I've been taking one prescription for 10 years, and every so often they'll slap a new, non-sensical warning label onto it. (Perhaps when they run out of the "Do not drink alcohol while taking this medication" labels?)

Gah, I did NOT devote the proper time I should have to that post on femininity! Everyone had really interesting stories and explanations for how they felt they fit into the gender spectrum, and I just ran out of time to reply thoughtfully to everyone! I swear, someday I am going to turn all of the meaningless research I've done on this journal into a book. :P

[alias-amy.livejournal.com]

Oh no, just to be clear, I never got around to posting my response to your post on feminity -- but it was such an interesting question I kept thinking about it and thinking about it and wanting to post, and before I knew it I'd composed a long comment in my head. But by the time I got to my computer it just seemed like your post had been so long ago and you'd gotten such interesting responses already, there just wasn't any point in my adding to it! So you don't owe me a response at all!