Expelled

A fellow blogging writer said that currently he hates every word he writes and that is why he keeps writing. 

It strikes me as a very sensible and practical thing to do. 

I too, am not fond of my words these days, so I am getting rid of them, by flinging them from my mind onto the screen. Be gone, you bland, weak, imprecise, lame words!

On a different note: happy Vernal Equinox!

The TBR shuffle

Like every other book lover, I have a big To-Re-Read pile. It is pretty fluid, that is to say, I may think I'm going to read The Corrections as soon as I finish my current book, but I may decide to read Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince instead. 

Some of these decisions are totally pragmatic: when a book I put on hold at the library becomes available, I usually read it right away. Sometimes, the decisions are a lot more capricious. Say I planned to read Alice Munro's newest story collection but am feeling sadder or more introspective than usual, then I pick up Nick Hornby or Jonathan Tropper instead. Sometimes several people recommend a YA title but I've just finished 4 YA books,so I may read a few more chapters in my non-fiction pile, about parenting/mindset/fast and slow thinking/happiness. (For some reason, I don't finish a non-fiction book continuously as I do fiction so I always have several that are on-going.)

So lately this is how my TBR shuffle has played out:

• Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley because it recently won two awards, one of which is the Michael L. Prinz, and more importantly, because it became available from the library, with multiple holds after mine.
• Orchards by Holly Thompson. I met Holly last May in Singapore, at the Asian Festival of Children's Content, and have been meaning to read this book ever since. Now that it has won the 2012 APALA Asian/​Pacific Award for Literature (and I was the one who informed her first, by the way. Yes, very proud of my achievement, indeed.) I finally read it.
• Love in the time of Chorela by Gabriel Garcia Marquez because Domey Malasarn said reading it made him smile. I can always do with more smiles. Plus I'd bought it some 15 months ago and was getting tired of dusting it. 
• Next up: State of Wonder by Ann Patchett which I bought when it first came out, because that's what Jim McCarthy over at DGLM recommended to me. 
• Or not. I was walking past the YA shelves in the library and noticed brand new copies of Behemoth and Goliath sitting there innocently. Grabbed them both and ready to re-read my own copy of Leviathan, and have a Scott Westerfield fest! 

What about you? What are you reading now and why are you reading it? How often do you switch your books on your TBR pile?