What are you reading?

[Urbanney]

Hey all you bookworms out there, what are you reading? I’d love to hear what kind of books you usually like reading and what made you choose the book you’re reading now.

I’m currently reading The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle by Lillian Faderman. I started it 2 years ago, but never finished so I’m restarting now. As a gay American, I think it’s important to know the history of the LGBTQ+ community and individuals in America, especially when I’ve grown up in a time where it’s become greatly more accepted. I don’t want to forget all the great people who allowed me to have the freedoms I have today. Also, it’s perfect for celebrating Pride month.

What are you reading and what made you choose it?

[MissSpearsSaysSo]

Harry Potter and old Star Wars novels, that’s it.  

[OnlyFacts]

“How To Ruin Your Career By Being Racist: The story of 2 Hit Wonder Camila Cabello” 

Ghost written by Lea Michele 

[Midnight]

Does reading Exhale count  ?

[Roxxy]

26 minutes ago, Midnight said:

Does reading Exhale count ?

I wanted that to be my answer but I read the OP carefully and it says "book" so... guess not. 

[Urbanney]

I guess most Exhalers aren’t fans of books? 

[Puppy]

I try, I mean I got books piled up that I was planning on burning through this quarantine and I still haven’t touched it. 

[AmorProhibido]

I'm currently rereading the Harry Potter books.  Though I'm also reading To Selena, With Love by Chris Perez and Lost Boy by Brent W. Jeffs, both for the first time. To Selena is obviously a book about Selena Quintanilla that's written by her widower. It tells the story of them getting together, their struggles to continue being a couple when her father wanted them to break up, and I imagine it'll discuss the aftermath of her death. Lost Boy is about the FLDS cult, in particular one family attempting to escape it all. Around this time last year, my best friend started reading Breaking Free by Rachel Jeffs, another book about the FLDS and after she recommended it to me, I've been reading all that I can find on the cult. It's just such a bizarre situation, it's like I can't quite wrap my head around what happened.  When I'm done with those, I plan on reading Neuromancer by William Gibson next. It's been sitting in my library/study for ages and I figured might as well since I'm stuck at home anyways.

[Pattycakes]

Handmaids tale sequel Testaments, the new hunger games book, just finished If it Bleeds by Stephen king was really good collection of short stories. 

[Mr. Cavill]

Just finished Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897). Marvelous read. Currently torn between the following: 1984, The Grapes of Wrath, Catch-22, The Kite Runner, and Fathers and Sons. 

[Marley]

[Marlean]

https://www.deankoontz.com/one-door-away-from-heaven-chapter-excerpt/

If you haven't read the book One door away from heaven by Dean Koontz  you have to read it now. He has many wonderful books. They're either gold or really bad, no inbetween. This is a gem. 

One door away from heaven: 

 The world is full of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle *****, and time can’t mend fractured hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

Currently, sunshine was Micky Bellsong’s medication of choice, and southern California in late August was an apothecary with a deep supply of this prescription.

 Tuesday afternoon, wearing a bikini and oiled for broiling, Micky reclined in a lounge chair in her aunt Geneva’s backyard. The nylon webbing was a nausea-inducing shade of green, and it sagged, too, and the aluminum joints creaked as though the lawn furniture were far older than Micky, who was only twenty-eight, but who sometimes felt ancient.

Her aunt, from whom fate had stolen everything except a reliable sense of humor, referred to the yard as “the garden.” That would be the rosebush.

The property was wider than it was deep, to allow the full length of the house trailer to face the street. Instead of a lawn with trees, a narrow covered patio shaded the front entrance. Here in back, a strip of grass extended from one side of the lot to the other, but it provided a scant twelve feet of turf between the door and the rear fence. The grass flourished because Geneva watered it regularly with a hose.

The rosebush, however, responded perversely to tender care. In spite of ample sunshine, water, and plant food, in spite of the regular aeration of its roots and periodic treatment with measured doses of insecticide, the bush remained as scraggly and as blighted as any specimen watered with venom and fed pure sulfur in the satanic gardens of Hell.

 Face to the sun, eyes closed, striving to empty her mind of all thought, yet troubled by insistent memories, Micky had been cooking for half an hour when a small sweet voice asked, “Are you suicidal?”

 She turned her head toward the speaker and saw a girl of nine or ten standing at the low, sagging picket fence that separated this trailer space from the one to the west. Sun glare veiled the kid’s features.

“Skin cancer kills,” the girl explained.

“So does vitamin D deficiency.”

“Not likely.”

 “Your bones get soft.”

“Rickets. I know. But you can get vitamin D in tuna, eggs, and dairy products. That’s better than too much sun.”

 Closing her eyes again, turning her face to the deadly blazing heavens, Micky said, “Well, I don’t intend to live forever.”

 “Why not?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but nobody does.”

 “I probably will,” the girl declared.

 “How’s that work?”

 “A little extraterrestrial DNA.”

“Yeah, right. You’re part alien.”

 “Not yet. I have to make contact first.”

 Micky opened her eyes again and squinted at the ET wannabe. “You’ve been watching too many reruns of The X Files, kid.”

 “I’ve only got until my next birthday, and then all bets are off.” The girl moved along the swooning fence to a point where it had entirely collapsed. She clattered across the flattened section of pickets and approached Micky. “Do you believe in life after death?”

 “I’m not sure I believe in life before death,” Micky said.

“I knew you were suicidal.”

“I’m not suicidal. I’m just a wiseass.”

 Even after stepping off the splintered fence staves onto the grass, the girl moved awkwardly. “We’re renting next door. We just moved in. My name’s Leilani.”

 As Leilani drew closer, Micky saw that she wore a complicated steel brace on her left leg, from the ankle to above the knee.

 “Isn’t that a Hawaiian name?” Micky asked.

“My mother’s a little nuts about all things Hawaiian.”

Leilani wore khaki shorts. Her right leg was fine, but in the cradle of steel and padding, her left leg appeared to be malformed.

“In fact,” Leilani continued, “old Sinsemilla — that’s my mother — is a little nuts, period.”

“Sinsemilla? That’s a . . .”

“Type of *********. Maybe she was Cindy Sue or Barbara way back in the Jurassic period, but she’s called herself Sinsemilla as long as I’ve known her.” Leilani settled into a hideous orange-and-blue chair as decrepit as Micky’s bile-green lounge. “This lawn furniture sucks.”

 “Someone gave it to Aunt Geneva for nothing.”

 “She ought to’ve been paid to take it. Anyway, they put old Sinsemilla in an institution once and shot like fifty or a hundred thousand volts of electricity through her brain, but it didn’t help.”

 “You shouldn’t make up stuff like that about your own mother.”

 Leilani shrugged. “It’s the truth. I couldn’t make up anything as weird as what is. In fact, they blasted her brain several times. Probably, if they’d done it just once more, old Sinsemilla would’ve developed a taste for electricity. Now she’d be sticking her finger in a socket about ten times a day. She’s an addictive personality, but she means well.”

Although the sky was a furnace grate, although Micky was slick with coconut-scented lotion and sweat, she’d grown all but oblivious of the sun. “How old are you, kid?”

"Nine. But I’m precocious. What’s your name?”

 “Micky.”

 “That’s a name for a boy or a mouse. So it’s probably Michelle. Most women your age are named Michelle or Heather or Courtney.”

“My age?”

“No offense intended.”

“It’s Michelina.”

Leilani wrinkled her nose. “Too precious.”

 “Michelina Bellsong.”

 “No wonder you’re suicidal.”

 “Therefore — Micky.”

 “I’m Klonk.”

 “You’re what?”

“Leilani Klonk.”

Micky cocked her head and frowned skeptically. “I’m not sure I should believe anything you tell me.”

 “Sometimes names are destiny. Look at you. Two pretty names, and you’re as gorgeous as a model — except for all the sweat and your face puffy with a hangover.”

 “Thanks. I guess.”

 “Me, on the other hand — I’ve got one pretty name followed by a clinker like Klonk. Half of me is sort of pretty — ”

“You’re very pretty,” Micky assured her.

This was true. Golden hair. Eyes as blue as gentian petals. The clarity of Leilani’s features promised that hers was not the transient beauty of childhood, but an enduring quality.

“Half of me,” Leilani conceded, “might turn heads one day, but that’s balanced by the fact that I’m a mutant.”

“You’re not a mutant.”

 The girl stamped her left foot on the ground, causing the leg brace to rattle softly. She raised her left hand, which proved to be deformed: The little finger and the ring finger were fused into a single misshapen digit that was connected by a thick web of tissue to a gnarled and stubby middle finger.

 Until now, Micky hadn’t noticed this deformity. “Everyone’s got imperfections,” she said.

“This isn’t like having a big schnoz. I’m either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they’re afraid of mutants.”

“You want people to be afraid of you?”

 “Fear implies respect,” Leilani said.

 “So far, you’re not registering high on my terror meter.”

 “Give me time. You’ve got a great body.”

Disconcerted to hear such a thing from a child, Micky covered her discomfort with self-deprecation: “Yeah, well, by nature I’m a huge pudding. I’ve got to work hard to stay like this.”

 “No you don’t. You were born perfect, and you’ve got one of those metabolisms tuned like a space-shuttle gyroscope. You could eat half a cow and drink a keg of beer every day, and your butt would actually tighten up a notch.”

 Micky couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been rendered speechless by anyone, but with this girl, she was nearly befuddled into silence. “How would you know?”

“I can tell,” Leilani assured her. “You don’t run, you don’t power walk — ”

 “I work out.”

“Oh? When was your last workout?”

 “Yesterday,” Micky lied.

 “Yeah,” said Leilani, “and I was out waltzing all night.” She stamped her left foot again, rattling her leg brace. “Having a great metabolism is nothing to be ashamed about. It’s not like laziness or anything.”

 “Thanks for your approval.”

 “Your ***** are real, aren’t they?”

 “Girl, you are an amazing piece of work.”

 “Thanks. They must be real. Even the best implants don’t look that natural. Unless there’s major improvement in implant technology, my best hope is to develop good *****. You can be a mutant and still attract men if you’ve got great *****. That’s been my observation, anyway. Men can be lovely creatures, but in some ways, they’re pathetically predictable.”

“You’re nine, huh?”

 “My birthday was February twenty-eighth. That was Ash Wednesday this year. Do you believe in fasting and penitence?”

 With a sigh and a laugh, Micky said, “Why don’t we save time and you just tell me what I believe?”

 “Probably not much of anything,” Leilani said, without a pause. “Except in having fun and getting through the day.”

 Micky was left speechless not by the child’s acute perception but by hearing the truth put so bluntly, especially as this was a truth that she had long avoided contemplating.

 “Nothing wrong with having fun,” said Leilani. “One of the things I believe, if you want to know, is that we’re here to enjoy life.” She shook her head. “Amazing. Men must be all over you.”

“Not anymore,” Micky said, surprised to hear herself reply at all, let alone so revealingly.

 A lopsided smile tugged at the right corner of the girl’s mouth, and unmistakable merriment enlivened her blue eyes. “Now don’t you wish you could see me as a mutant?”

 “What?”

 “As long as you think of me as a handicapped waif, your pity doesn’t allow you to be impolite. On the other hand, if you could see me as a weird and possibly dangerous mutant, you’d tell me none of this is my business, and you’d hustle me back to my own yard.”

“You’re looking more like a mutant all the time.”

 Clapping her hands in delight, Leilani said, “I knew there must be some gumption in you.” She rose from her chair with a hitch and pointed across the backyard. “What’s that thing?”

“A rosebush.”

 “No, really.”

 “Really. It’s a rosebush.”

 “No roses.”

 “The potential’s there.”

 “Hardly any leaves.”

 “Lots of thorns, though,” Micky noted.

 Squinching her face, Leilani said, “I bet it pulls up its roots late at night and creeps around the neighborhood, eating stray cats.”

 “Lock your doors.”

 “We don’t have cats.” Leilani blinked. “Oh.” She grinned. “Good one.” She hooked her right hand into an imitation of a claw, raked the air, and hissed.

 “What did you mean when you said ‘all bets are off’?”

“When did I say that?” Leilani asked disingenuously.

 “You said you’ve only got until your next birthday, and then all bets are off.”

 “Oh, the alien-contact thing.”

 Although that wasn’t an answer, she turned away from Micky and crossed the lawn in a steel-stiffened gait.

 Micky leaned forward from the angled back of the lounge chair. “Leilani?”

 “I say a lot of stuff. Not all of it means anything.” At the gap in the broken fence, the girl stopped and turned. “Say, Michelina Bellsong, did I ask whether you believe in life after death?”

 “And I was a wiseass.”

 “Yeah, I remember now.”

“So . . . do you?” Micky asked.

 “Do I what?”

 “Believe in life after death?”

 Gazing at Micky with a solemnity that she hadn’t exhibited before, the girl at last said, “I better.”

Excerpted from ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN by Dean Koontz Copyright © 2001 by Dean Koontz . Excerpted by permission of Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

[redacted statement]

I used to be a huge reader as a kid, but then smartphones came along and ruined my ability to focus on anything for longer than 2 minutes. 

[Towelney]

I recently finished Sarah J Maas’s new book, ‘Crescent City’ and the Hunger Games prequel, ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’

[Roxxy]

6 minutes ago, Towelney said:

and the Hunger Games prequel, ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’

I didn't know there was a Hunger Games prequel.

[autumngoodbye91]

I'm reading Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, who is pretty much my favourite author. It's kind of like a noir/detective novel set in 60s Los Angeles, only the detective is constantly stoned and there's loads of absurd, surreal stuff going on. It's super funny  and also interesting as it reflects on the political/historical context of the time (e.g. the Watts Riots, the origins of the internet,...). And it's so beautifully written 

[Britney'sBish]

 

It's fun and it's dirty, perfect for me!

 

I also wanna get this one...

 

Seems nice and shady, plus I've always thought Jay Manuel was ****.

[Britney'sBish]

22 hours ago, Urbanney said:

I guess most Exhalers aren’t fans of books? 

I mean, but I will read a Bish lol

[Sinned_88]

The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way To Live Well by Meik Wiking 

[redacted statement]

Last book I read in full was Lily Allen's autobiography, and it was excellent.  That was last Autumn, though.