Friday Fun is a group post from the writers of the NHWN blog. Each week, we’ll pose and answer a different, get-to-know-us question. We hope you’ll join in by providing your answer in the comments.
QUESTION: What fiction are you reading right now? What made you pick these titles? Are there any fiction books you’ve recently abandoned?
Lisa J. Jackson: Interesting that the question implies we’re each reading more than one novel at a time – do we all do that? I don’t like that I have multiple novels started – must mean that some aren’t holding my interest! I won’t say I’ve abandoned them since I do feel I’ll get back to them. Anyway, the one I’m currently reading in bits and spurts is Charlaine Harris’s From Dead to Worse. It’s been in my TBR pile for over a year and I just dug it out a week or so ago. I have several J.D. Robb novels to get to (haven’t started any of them). I’m a huge fan of the Dallas series, and these are part of that.
Wendy Thomas: When I was a clinical microbiologist, if there were so many bacteria in a culture that it was impossible to accurately count them, we’d indicate this by using the notation TMTC (too many to count.) That’s kind of the way I am with fiction and non-fiction books. I have books tucked all over my house, waiting like old friends, for me to continue our conversations. Current fiction includes: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker. Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, and I’m in the process of re-reading The Power of One by Bryce Coutenay (if you haven’t read that one you absolutely should.) I didn’t get a chance last week to tell what non-fiction books I’m reading but that list is truly TMTC! 
Deborah Lee Luskin: Because I’m neck deep in writing a novel, I’m not reading novels right now. Instead, I’m reading the slim volumes of poetry and flash fiction that have piled up on my bedside table. Inspiring, restful, spare.
.
.
Julie Hennrikus: I am supposed to be reading Wolf Hall for my book club. It is on my Kindle, waiting. I know I will like it, but haven’t had the focus to dive in yet. Instead I am looking at Julie Hyzy’s Fonduing Fathers. I like her White House Chef series, and think that it would be a nice distraction. And Hank Phillippi Ryan’s book The Other Woman is begging to be read.
.
Jamie Wallace: I am SO with Lisa and Wendy! I used to be a monogamous reader – one book at a time. These days, I’ve become a bit more wanton in my reading habits. Like Wendy, I have a house whose nooks and crannies are filled with fiction of all kinds in all stages of being read. Some have only had their covers cracked and a few first pages read. Others are mellowing in the halfway done space. A few are lingering on table tops and chairs even though they’ve recently had their last page turned (usually, if I’ve made it that far, with some regret). The current crop include the following titles:
- Igraine the Braveby Cornelia Funke – Recommended by friends as a good girl power book – finished & enjoyed.
- Chime by Franny Billingsly – Recommended by a friend and just started.
- The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay – I started this one in the summer and put it aside, but it’s been calling to me recently.
- Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones – I heard Jones speak at Grub Street’s Muse conference last year and, although it wasn’t the type of thing I’d usually pick up, I bought her book. I’ve been enjoying it both for the story and for the quality of her writing and her characters.
- Sabriel by Garth Nix – The first in a trilogy, I’d read this before, but recently “read” it again as an audio book. I enjoyed it so much that I bought the other two books in the series (also on audio). Nix creates a world rich with history and magic, and the story is one of humanity and mystery intertwined. Dark, but so delicious.
- The Cat Who Wasn’t There by Lillian Jackson Braun – There are some books that bring comfort in the chaos. This series by Braun has always been that for me. I am enjoying them even more as audio books, incomparably read by the dashing George Guidall.
The list goes on and on … and that’s a good thing.
P.S. In case you were wondering, audio books are not cheating. 
Susan Nye: I usually read one book at a time. I recently was forced to do a little juggling, so in the past day or two … I finished The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay and The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom. The Power of One was a re-read and one of my favorite books of all time.The Kitchen House was for book club. It was good but not wonderful. The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh is next on our list.
I’m reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
I gave up on Lluis Llach, Memoria de Unos Ojos Pintados because it was disappointingly sentimental. About to start Angry White Pyjamas by Robert Twigger, which I got my son for Christmas and he is passing back to me highly recommended- but it is not a novel!
I’m usually steeping in reading YA for the Flume Award or the Isinglass Teen Read Committee and since we look at 100+ books that are nominated for the awards by teens over the course of a year, the quality can be hit or miss. Right now I’m lucky to be following a rabbit trail of books with similar themes or structures to the YA novels I’m currently rewriting. I find this helps resolve issues that these authors must have also faced (e.g. time travel, family dynamics) and sets off ideas and possibilities in my own mind for how to work out my questions. Right now I’m in the middle of several books (I, too, usually have about 3 to 5 going at once, including an audio for my long commute) both YA and youth fiction as well as adult non-fiction — David Levithan’s Every Day; Ursula Poznanski’s Erebos: It’s a Game, It Watches You; The 39 Clues: Cahills vs Vespers 3: The Dead of Night by Peter Lerangis; and This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save us All by Marilyn Johnson.
Reblogged this on Book Covers and commented:
My friends over at NH Writer’s Network take a break every Friday to post an entry on what they’re reading. I love the idea of this since it’s an opportunity for cross pollination of title sharing.
I’ll include my comment but you can read their complete entry here:
http://nhwn.wordpress.com/2013/01/25/friday-fun-what-are-you-reading-fiction/
I’m usually steeping in reading YA for the Flume Award or the Isinglass Teen Read Committee and since we look at 100+ books that are nominated for the awards by teens over the course of a year, the quality can be hit or miss. Right now I’m lucky to be following a rabbit trail of books with similar themes or structures to the YA novels I’m currently rewriting. I find this helps resolve issues that these authors must have also faced (e.g. time travel, family dynamics) and sets off ideas and possibilities in my own mind for how to work out my questions. Right now I’m in the middle of several books (I, too, usually have about 3 to 5 going at once, including an audio for my long commute) both YA and youth fiction as well as adult non-fiction — David Levithan’s Every Day; Ursula Poznanski’s Erebos: It’s a Game, It Watches You; The 39 Clues: Cahills vs Vespers 3: The Dead of Night by Peter Lerangis; and This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save us All by Marilyn Johnson.
[...] Reblogged from Live to Write – Write to Live: [...]
I’m so busy getting into my blog and writing myself at the moment that I’m not really reading anything. I need to set time aside for reading really. I do read other people’s blogs and what they have written. I working on my own novel at the moment some of which I have posted on my blog. But then, I’ll stop and write a poem or a song or something. And lose track of what I wanted to write in my novel. I don’t know! Sometimes I feel like a chicken running around with it’s head cut off. I have so much I want to do. Deciding on what to do and where my focus should lie is the challenge.
I’m reading the second book in the Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan. It’s YA fiction and perfect for unwinding!
I’m reading Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion. My sister in law read it and liked it–and they are making a movie, so I thought I’d give it a read. I really like it so far! I’m also reading Mortals by Ted Dekker. He is one of my favorite fiction writers. Both are perfect for unwinding at the end of a busy day and stimulating my imagination for things I’m writing.
I’m nearly finished with Amy Tan’s ‘Joy Luck Club,’ in actual paperback format. The e-book that’s currently bookmarked on my phone is ‘Jane Eyre.’ I don’t know why, but I seem to be stuck on the classics when it comes to my phone. ‘Silver Sparrow’ by Tayari Jones has been on my to-be-read list ever since I heard an interview with her on NPR (nearly 2 years ago now, I think); thanks for sharing your opinion on it, Jamie–I’ll have to move it up. ‘Ingathering: The Complete People Series’ by Zenna Henderson will probably be next, at my husband’s suggestion.
My primary read right now is “A Tale of Two Cities” by Dickens. I am LOVING it, perhaps even more than “Great Expectations”!
But I am also (among other things) reading a short story every day this month. That has been quite the ride
I’m reading Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander in preparation for book club on Thursday.
Finishing up the last pages of Alice Sebold’s “The Almost Moon” which I have found to be morbidly depressing but reluctantly fascinating. In the beginning pages of Amy Tan’s “The Bonesetter’s Daughter” which I am very excited about because I’ve been putting that one off in favor of a few on the list of Kindle books I’ve recently purchased.
In various stages of reading the following:
Just After Sunset by Stephen King
A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
BlueBeard by Kurt Vonnegut
The Pilot’s Wife by Anita Shreve
My name is Laura and I’m a book-aholic….
The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje.
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Free Will – Sam Harris
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Writing some idea for a pastime on a bog standard guy. Re-reading 40 pages of my second of the three while I pick up the plot again after a break.
[...] a few ebooks thrown in on my Kindle. My print reading is split between magazines and books (both fiction and non-fiction). I prefer print books when the material is something I’m studying. [...]