Books 13, 14 and 15/60

Okay.

So I'm really digging The Stand, and I'm not putting it down for awhile or anything. However, it is 1,100 pages long, and I like to feel like I'm making progress, so I'm going to tackle a couple shorter books while I'm still working on the one larger one.

I'm told real readers do this sort of thing all the time.

Second note: I'm making a change to the list, because the cheapest I can find a copy of Fool's Gold by Doug Tjaden for is $27.00 plus shipping. For a book that it didn't really look like I was going to be able to get into anyway...maybe next time.

Replacing Fool's Gold will be Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden. I need to be reading this anyway, since I'm currently in rehearsals to perform in it. Plus, it's a great, great story of renewal and redemption. And those stories are always my favorites. Interestingly, this was not considered one of Burnett's better stories at the time of the author's death, and now it's possibly the best-known thing she's ever written and is often considered one of the best children's books of the 20th century.

Go figure.

The second mini-book I got with my Power Card today is Powers, a graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis. I really enjoy Bendis' work in the mainstream blockbuster comics (specifically his stuff with Secret Invasion and New Avengers, so it will be cool to see what he did with his "own" stuff, since this is a creator-owned property, I believe. Basically, it's kind of a detective story set in a world where super-powers are fairly common, though not omnipresent. Should be cool.

The third and shortest entry in this list-within-a-list is Georg Buchner's play Woyzeck. I know nothing about it going in other than that it's German, and I really don't know a lot of German theatre. Also, the playwright died before he finished it, so if there's an ending to the translation I'm reading, then somebody else wrote it for him. And, unlike certain tales of Tolkein, there isn't one definitive posthumously-written ending; apparently various editors and translators have taken a stab at it.

Fun.

All right, that's what I'm up to. Stand, Secret Garden, Powers, and Woyzeck. Awesome. Reading is cool, kids.