Entirely too long of a post

It's unfortunate. Because I really WANT to like this book. But I've not made much progress since the last post or we last spoke. Think I am only around chapter five in part three. I'm just not highly motivated to read this and when I do read it, I find I don't get far before my mind wanders or I drift off to sleep. Don't know where you are, but I don't have much to "chat" about tomorrow night on our regularly scheduled chat.

For the benefit of our mythical (or perhaps would-be?) readership: Part two was titled "Gatsby" and it was all sort of an interesting juxtaposition between the morality of the story and the culture of Iran. Some of the students in the author's class couldn't distinguish between the morality of Fitzgerald and the morality of fictional charters in the story (Gatsby et al). And - further extrapolated - the morality of America (which they believed was ever-so-clearly represented by the world of Gatsby).

Now we're at the point in Iran's history where things are basically getting worse for any thinking individuals, and especially women. The author and her colleagues ultimately get fired from the university where they teach, after they have essentially stopped all classes. Last night I was reading a bit about how she is beginning to to feel "light and fictional" as more and more freedoms are taken away from her and I tried to imagine what that would feel like. I don't know that I really can imagine it properly. It's just so completely alien. When I try to imagine it - being told by my government how to dress, how to behave - my reaction is utter indignation. And I think I would leave. But would I really? Leave my home? Move to another country? I don't know.

So anyway. That's what's up with this book for me at the moment. Meanwhile, I'm eager to get back to The Amber Spyglass, and I downloaded a bunch of samples to my kindle after reading the NY Times book review last weekend AND stopping in B&N Friday night. They are:

My Name is Will by Jess Winfield
The Shack by William P young
Boomsday by Christopher Buckley
and... just added:
Candy Girl: a Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody.

I downloaded that last one based almost solely on the first line of the book. How can you NOT want to read a book that opens like this: "Nobody comes to Minnesota to take their clothes off... " C'mon. That's a good opening line.

Hmm.. so to be fair I feel I now need to post the first lines of the other three:

Will: "Willie sat in the back row of a blocky white minibus, his hand cupped around the enormous psychedelic mushroom hidden under a denim jacket laid too casually across his lap."

Shack: "March unleashed a torrent of rainfall after an abnormally dry winter." This is actually the first line of chapter one. There is a foreword too, but I don't think that counts. Although I just read it and it is: "Who wouldn't be skeptical when a man claims to have spent an entire weekend with God..." That's pretty good.

Boom: "Cassandra Devine was not yet thirty but she was already tired."

OK so those are my suggestions for our next book. I'm open to comments, questions, additions, deletions, etc. Or votes from the fans. HA!