Average Girl Reads

As I mentioned in my last Sunday Salon post, I've been overdue for new spectacles. Well, I got my first pair of bifocals a week ago and I am still trying to get used to them. Wearing bifocals requires a change in the way I read. I'm not accustomed to looking through the very bottom of my lenses, so I end up making weird faces when I try to read a book. Also, when I put my glasses on first thing in the morning I seem to focus on the blurry section where the two different prescriptions meet, so it takes a few seconds to remember that these are not my old glasses. However, I am glad to have that bottom section when I am trying to read the small print on a pill bottle!

So what has my reading week been like? Well, I am still working my way through the Sookie Stackhouse series; I finished All Together Dead yesterday. There are other books in my bedside stack, but you know me with a series. I like to read it straight through if possible. This means my blog will be rather dull until I finish the next two books.

What will my upcoming reading week be like? Besides my time spent with the vampires of Louisiana, I want to do some clean-up on my book lists. This is the week that I plan to compare my list of books that will soon be added to my local library's collection to my Goodread not-at-my-library list. There is a delay between when the library announces that they will be adding a book to their collection and when it is actually available for circulation. I've been making that list for a while and I'm sure that some of the first books must be available by now and can be added to my TBR list now.

I haven't done much reading since my last Sunday Salon post, other than some short stories in e-book form. Two weeks' ago I had my eyes examined and learned that I need bifocals. Unfortunately, my insurance doesn't pay for one-hour vision centers like WalMart or Vision Works, so I am still waiting to get my glasses from the little independent shop in town. This will be my first new pair of glasses in almost 10 years. Getting a glimpse in the office of what it will be like to see clearly has taken away my desire to struggle through the small print of the books on my bedside table. Since I can increase the font size on my computer I will be sticking with blogs and such until my new specs come in.

CURRENTLY READING: Definitely Dead, the next book in the Sookie Stackhouse series. My library has it available for download, so I won't miss a beat in devouring the series whilst I wait for my glasses.

Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

Genre: vampire fiction
On my TBR list?: Yes

Book 4 of an ongoing series (

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This fourth book in the Sookie Stackhouse series picks up shortly after the events in Living Dead in Dallas. Sookie is introduced to even more supernatural beings that she thought were part of late-night movies up until now. Bill, the vampire who introduced Sookie to all of this, doesn't figure prominently in this book. There was so much going on, however, that I didn't really miss him.

I like the way Harris continues to branch out and show that there is more to the underworld of Sookie's community than we saw in the first book. The author shows us the qualms that Sookie has about some of the tasks she has to perform, as well; she doesn't just get used to all the crazy situations she gets thrown into. I don't think that a fan of the first three books will be disappointed.

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Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh

Genre: stunt memoir
On my TBR list?: Yes

Although I classified this as a stunt memoir, it isn't quite in the same category as a book like Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen where there is a definite beginning and end. This book is a little more like gonzo journalism without the fictional aspects. After attending a Christian music festival with a distant relative, the author decides to investigate various aspects of Christian pop culture. He visits various towns and meets Christian authors, bookstore owners, musicians, and comedians.

The best part of this book is the interviews that Radosh does with various people involved in different areas of Christian pop culture. It was interesting to see that most of the radical Christians don't think they are THAT radical. I especially liked the passages where he talks to Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. PTL was big when I was a teenager, and my younger sister even worked at Heritage USA for a brief period. I enjoyed reading about how Jay turned out after all of that.

As a Christian myself, I think it is a good idea to find out how non-Christians see us sometimes. This book provides a perspective on that. There are some dry bits where he shares statistics or goes over the differences between different strains of Christianity, but I would still recommend this book to my Christian and non-Christian friends alike.

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Yes, today is my birthday and I am spending it reading. I didn't read as much as I expected over the holidays, so now I have a stack of books that may go back to the library unread if I don't get on the ball. Luckily, several of them are light novels or knitting books that I can just flip through.

CURRENTLY READING: "Dead as a Doornail" by Charlaine Harris. I want to watch the TV show based on it (True Blood) but I don't want to run the risk of spoiling the later books. It is hard to resist the show, though, when I keep hearing so many good things about it. So I am trying to zip through this series as quickly as possible.

TBR List: My goal for 2010 isn't so much about reducing the number of titles as it is clearing out the old ones. As I said in my 2009 round-up, I have 24 books that have been on my list since 2008. I want to either read them or eliminate them by the end of 2010. I think that should be manageable.

Other than that, I will go back to adding books to my list with abandon. I had stopped for a while, but I don't see any sense in that now. Since none of these books are actually in my house, I think seeing how high my "total of books read" can get is more impressive than how low the total on my TBR list is.