At a dinner party the other night, our friends got to talking about the books they are reading (and writing). I was reminded of how enjoyable it is to get lost in a novel and informed by well-written nonfiction books. One lasting memory: The summer I was a young magazine editor in Cleveland, I spent my lunch breaks sitting on a bench in University Circle reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. (My previous blog post about that book.)
Earlier this year, I read The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. He’ll be the guest of honor, joining by Zoom, for the DCRI Reads book club next week. As a warmup, my colleague Jenny and I hosted a watch party of the movie My Own Country, based on Verghese’s memoir of his time as a doctor in Tennessee during the early AIDS epidemic. I also read that book in Cleveland—I was working at Booksellers before I got the job at Northern Ohio LIVE—and it shifted my career focus to medical journalism. (See this post, and this short article from Duke Today in 2009.)
Now I’m reading Moonbound, the latest novel by Robin Sloan. I even took it to lunch today, reading it in the Durham Food Hall as I ate a pizza.
I track my books through Micro.blog, which has a good Bookshelves feature. Find my reading list on Wan Smol Blog.
© Anton Zuiker