Today’s Booking through Thursday question is:

What are you reading right now? What made you choose it? Are you enjoying it? Would you recommend it? (And, by all means, discuss everything, if you’re reading more than one thing!)

I’m at an odd moment right now, because although my brain would tell you that I currently have four books in progress, really, I’m only reading one of them actively. Usually I have a couple on the go at once, but after a summer of finishing several books a week (no, you wouldn’t know it from the pace of my review writing), I seemed to have slowed down.

The one book that’s being picked up on a regular basis is M.M. Kaye’s Sun in the Morning: My Early Years in India and England, which Karen gave me for Christmas two years ago. I’ve been dabbling in it all summer (hot days=India, in my mind, apparently), but hope to finish it in the next week. I am enjoying it and would definitely recommend it, even if I do sometimes find the author a bit crotchety.

A book I need to get back to soon is Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, which is at the end of its library renewals. This novel got great reviews, which led me to pick it up at the library when I saw it last month, but it’s slow in its first hundred pages and I’m not entirely feeling the love. I’ll probably give it another couple of chapters to see if it grabs me. (Since reading Michael Chabon, I’m now much more inclined to keep reading past my usual 50-page test phase if something’s gotten good reviews. Some people just aren’t really good at openings.)

My bathroom book was inspired by a spring swap package that included a canister of Zingerman’s tea. I recalled that I’d bought Ari Weinzweig’s Zingerman’s Guide to Good Eating: How to Choose the Best Bread, Cheeses, Olive Oil, Pasta, Chocolate, and Much More for Rudi a couple years back and his chapter on tea inspired me to read the rest of the book. I’m about to embark eagerly upon the cheese chapter, but having a resident in my bathroom has slowed the time I spend in there reading.

And, finally, an advance reader copy of A Tale Dark and Grimm, by Adam Gidwitz, is what’s being read at work. He’s woven a number of retellings of the authentic (and, thus, dark) Grimm stories into a cohesive whole (making Hansel and Gretel stand in for any number of main characters), with entertaining asides by the narrator, à la Lemony Snicket. The published version isn’t due out until November, so it’s okay that I’m taking my time with it (due more to my recent lack of lunch breaks than anything else). I think the book is clever and a nice addition to the fairy tale genre, so look for a review as we get closer to its launch date.

That’s it for me. What are you reading? Anything you’d recommend?

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender

From the jacket: “On the eve of her ninth birthday, unassuming Rose Edelstein, a girl at the periphery of schoolyard games and her distracted parents’ attention, bites in her mother’s homemade lemon-chocolate cake and discovers she has a magical gift: she can taste her mother’s emotions in the slice. She discovers this gift to her horror, for her mother — her cheerful, good-with-crafts, can-do mother — tastes of despair and desperation. Suddenly, and for the rest of her life, food becomes a peril and a threat to Rose.”

My take: We’re constantly asking people how they’re feeling. “How are you? How’ve you been?” We say it dozens of times a week. And while sometimes we want to know, usually the answer we’re seeking is the equally familiar, “Fine. And you?”

Imagine if every time you rotely inquired about someone’s emotional state, they told you in raw and intimate detail. Everyone, every time. You’d stop asking in short order.

Now imagine you didn’t even have to ask. People just randomly sprung this information on you each and every time you turned around. This is what happens to Rose one afternoon just before she turns nine. Suddenly, with every bite of food, she is privvy to the food handler’s most intimate emotions. Desperately sad? She can tell. Bored with your life? She knows. Furious with the world? Got it.

For an unknown reason, that is now Rose’s unfortunate special gift. She can tell from the smallest nibble of sandwich that her mother feels lost and that her best friend’s mother is full of overwhelming love. It’s just too much to handle and she starts forgoing homemade food in favor of vending machine fare and processed food — although she can eventually distinguish where the ingredients are grown and manufactured, usually there is little human contact to rub off on it — and raw fruit and vegetables.

She tries to explain to her family, but her parents write it off as a random oddity (maybe she has the flu?) and her odd, distant older brother has difficulty processing anything emotional, instead preferring the hard facts of science. The only person in her life who is sympathetic is her brother’s friend, George, who does some experimentation to validate her experiences.

Rose is going to have to figure out how to deal with this for the rest of her life — and how to deal with the secrets she learns about those closest to her.

This was a compelling read, although I won’t go so far as to say I liked it. Don’t get me wrong, the author was brilliant, the story was taut, and the novel deserves every single accolade it’s received. But its eventual ending took me to a dark place and that’s just not where I want my fiction to leave me. I recommend it, but caution those who, like Rose, ingest emotions to tread carefully.

Pages: 292

Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James

From the jacket: “When it comes to the laws of attraction, Payton Kendall and J.D. Jameson are lawyers who know the meaning of objection. A feminist to the bone, Payton has fought hard to succeed in a profession dominated by men. Born wealthy, privileged , and cocky, J.D. has fought hard to ignore her. Face-to-face, they’re perfectly civil. They have to be. For eight years they have kept a safe distance and tolerated each other as coworkers for one reason only: to make partner at the firm.”

My take: Ah! Boy and girl meet. Boy and girl passionately hate each other. Boy and girl have to spend lots of time together pretending to like each other. Boy and girl discover the passion was not hate after all. The end.

It’s a formula we’re all familiar with, but we always enjoy seeing how an author makes it his or her own.

Julie James does a good job with pacing and dialogue. And her main characters definitely have chemistry together. The story unfolds as the two of them discover that after eight long years as associates together, they will not both make partner as had been long assumed by everyone. Instead, only one would make partner, while the other will be expected to hand over his or her case notes and quietly and quickly disappear into the sunset. They’re neck and neck in their race, they’re told, and the final two weeks before the decision is made will determine the outcome. When asked to woo a potential client, the two nemeses will have to find a way to put their strong feelings aside to work together. And if they can do that, who knows what other crazy things will follow?

However, what I found eye-rollingly annoying was the story’s hook: Payton, a self-proclaimed feminist liberal vegetarian, finds herself spurning the nice guy public defender in favor of the guy who belongs to a sexist country club. I’m not saying that’s it’s not a valid choice — either in fiction or in real life — but just that it’s not one I find appealing — or sexy. And Payton is no Katharine Hepburn, able to make me love her characters even though all of her seemingly female empowering movies end with the traditional status quo untoppled.

I won this book and a gift card to Barnes and Noble in a contest at Stacy’s Place on Earth. It’s not my normal reading genre, but it was a convenient size for carrying in my bag on the metro and its story fit well with the read a few pages at a time type of reading my normal commute permits. Honestly, though, I liked it more than I expected to and found myself picking it up even at home. Worth a read if you have a few hours and want some book candy.

Pages: 291

This week’s Booking through Thursday asks:

Even though it’s usually a mistake (grin) … do movies made out of books make you want to read the original?

There are three situations where I have found that a movie inspires book reading:

1. The movie is coming out of a book I’ve been meaning to read but hadn’t yet gotten around to or that I know is based on a book that I’ll probably like. Usually I’ll hold off on seeing the movie until after I’ve read the book, which sometimes means it’s ages before I see the film. Running with Scissors was such a combination.
2. The movie was particularly good — and I’ve heard good things about the book. My recent foray into The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one such example. I’d also like to read Coraline, the movie of which I really enjoyed.
3. And the final category are movies based on books that I didn’t realize were books until I looked them up to do more research. The best (and possibly only) example I have is Helene Hanff’s 64, Charring Cross Road, a delightful epistolary story chronicling the author’s decades-long correspondence with a London bookseller.

How about you? Do movies ever inspire you to pick up a book — and are you usually glad you did?

Last week, I revealed you had correctly identified six of the ten quotes I gave you from some of my favorite books.

With some additional clues (some more clever than others, I admit), raidergirl3, Jenn, Rudi, and Grey Kitten correctly identified three more:

1. “My father had a face that could stop a clock.” — The Eyre Affair

3. “The year began with lunch.” — A Year in Provence

9. “It was a dark and stormy night.” — A Wrinkle in Time

The only quote no one could identify:

7. “I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine’s father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.”

My additional clue: When driving across the country to Tucson, you want to be very careful about picking up reptiles at rest stops. It just might change your life. [I later asked in the comments if capitalizing reptiles would have helped anyone guess, but the resulting silence suggests that no, that wouldn’t have been useful.]

The answer? The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver.

Admittedly, the opening line of the story does not have much to do with the rest of the book, but I was hopeful that the reptiles bit of the clue might trigger your recollection of Turtle, who enters the tale during a rest stop in Oklahoma.

Thanks for playing along, everyone!

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

From the jacket: “All year the half-bloods have been preparing for battle against the Titans, knowing the odds of a victory are grim. Kronos’s army is stronger than ever, and with every god and half-blood he recruits, the evil Titan’s power only grows. While the Olympians struggle to contain the rampaging monster Typhon, Kronos begins his advance on New York City, where Mount Olympus stands virtually unguarded. Now it’s up to Percy Jackson and an army of young demigods to stop the Lord of Time.”

My take: As the end of the Harry Potter series neared, a number of people mourned the fact that they’d never again have that amazing feeling of being able to crack open a new book in the series. I sympathized with the sentiment, even as I stood in line at midnight hoping for a fitting conclusion to a beloved series.

Obviously, though, I took it to heart. Although I was an early fan of The Lightning Thief and read the second book as soon as it came out, I slowed my pace down when I found out the Percy Jackson series would only number five. I didn’t read the third book until several months after it came out and the fifth book was imminent when I read the penultimate novel. But then I stopped. Sure, I’d periodically scan the library shelves to see if Book 5 was available, but I didn’t put in a request or anything like that. I just didn’t want to have the series end.

However, when I went to hear Rick Riordan speak this spring, he mentioned that he was working on a related series of books destined to take place at Camp Half-Blood. Knowing that even if the main story about Percy and Grover and Annabeth came to a conclusion that I didn’t have to leave the world behind made it okay to read the final book. Plus, my friend Shelley’s son, Daschel, told me that it was excellent. If you can’t trust an 11 year-old boy on the matter, who can you trust?

I picked the book up a couple weeks ago when I saw it at the library and have been saving it for a day when I had the time to immerse myself into Riordan’s well-crafted world. I packed it to take to the beach Saturday and finished it up Sunday afternoon before the concert.

It did not disappoint.

Filled with all the familiar characters from earlier in the series, we join Percy as he frets about how to stop Kronos — who’s taken over the body of demi-god Luke — before the Titan (the gods around before the now-familiar Olympic Greek gods took power) is able to return to full strength and destroy Mount Olympus and Manhattan along with it. A prophecy foretelling doom and a mission gone awry suggests the Oracle may just have known what she was talking about. Now Percy must embark on the most dangerous of all his quests — into the realm of Hades — in order to lead a hodgepodge army of demi-gods and woodland spirits attempting to prevent the ultimate destruction of the Olympic gods.

And if that’s not enough, the nearly 16-year old must figure out who he likes more — fellow demi-god Annabeth, daughter of Athena, or mortal Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who can see through the Mist that prevents most humans from seeing the supernatural.

It’s going to be a rough couple of days for Percy. But as Dasch promised, it’s so worth it.

Pages: 400