Top 3 books with unusual titles I'm reading/will be reading

“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
  ― Mark Twain

I have an absurd fondness for unusual book titles. I blame my parents, and Gerald Durrell. My parents blame my odd sense of humour. Which, quite frankly, is the pot calling the kettle black. Whichever it is, titles like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time are the Betty Crocker's chocolate icing on the cake that is my life. (I've never believed that you can't have your cake and eat it, too, because what is the point of cake otherwise?).  While I'm on the topic of Haddon's The Curious Incident..., I saw the movie of the play of the book (yes, stop and think about it, it's a little bit meta, really) on the weekend with friends (in Newmarket at the Rialto). FTW! I'll post about that at some point later next week. Today's post is a simple collection of 3 somewhat unusually named books that I'm in the middle of reading OR have on my to-be-read list. Go me.

Please note: I'm not reviewing these, simply listing what I'm going to read/am trying to read. After almost two years of not being able to focus enough to read (let's not even talk about the nausea and headaches that used to cause. That should have been a sign that something was off-kilter, but when the doctor suggested depression I seriously told him "I don't have time to be depressed! It must be something else!"), I'm taking it a day at a time just re-discovering books, and finding what I like. One day, I might actually review something. But for now, this works for me.

While I'm on the topic of unusual book titles, tell me the weirdest ones you've read! And check this list out but, be warned, it's NSFW (not safe for work). Or humanity, really: Humorous, Strange, or Downright Shocking Titles (Goodreads list).



(PS: My last post was a personal one because, hey, sometimes life gets personal. I'll probably have some posts that are like that, so I will tag my stuff so you have the option of not reading it should you so choose. Thank you all for your comments here, on FB, and on Twitter. I didn't respond to everyone because, honestly, I didn't know how to/have the words to, and this blanket THANK YOU is what I meant to say but couldn't. So, there's that).

2 A.M at the Cat's Pajamas by Marie-Helene Bertino
Madeleine Altimari is a smart-mouthed, rebellious nine-year-old who also happens to be an aspiring jazz singer. Still mourning the recent death of her mother, and caring for her grief-stricken father, she doesn't realize that on the eve of Christmas Eve she is about to have the most extraordinary day--and night--of her life. After bravely facing down mean-spirited classmates and rejection at school, Madeleine doggedly searches for Philadelphia's legendary jazz club The Cat's Pajamas, where she's determined to make her on-stage debut. On the same day, her fifth grade teacher Sarina Greene, who's just moved back to Philly after a divorce, is nervously looking forward to a dinner party that will reunite her with an old high school crush, afraid to hope that sparks might fly again. And across town at The Cat's Pajamas, club owner Lorca discovers that his beloved haunt may have to close forever, unless someone can find a way to quickly raise the $30,000 that would save it. As these three lost souls search for love, music and hope on the snow-covered streets of Philadelphia, together they will discover life's endless possibilities over the course of one magical night. [image: Amazon.com]

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami ; translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
A New York Times #1 Bestseller Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of  Pilgrimage is the long-awaited new novel--a book that sold more than a million copies the first week it went on sale in Japan--from the award-winning, internationally best-selling author Haruki Murakami. Here he gives us the remarkable story of Tsukuru Tazaki, a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. It is a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages. [image: Amazon.com]


The invention of exile : a novel by Vanessa Manko
Austin Voronkov is many things. He is an engineer, an inventor, an immigrant from Russia to Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1913, where he gets a job at a rifle factory. At the house where he rents a room, he falls in love with a woman named Julia, who becomes his wife and the mother to his two children. When Austin is wrongly accused of attending anarchist gatherings his limited grasp of English condemns him to his fate as a deportee; retreating with his family to his home in Russia, they become embroiled in the civil war and must flee once again, to Mexico. While Julia and the children are eventually able to return to the United States, Austin becomes indefinitely stranded in Mexico City because of the black mark on his record. He keeps a daily correspondence with Julia as they each exchange their hopes and fears for the future and as they struggle to remain a family across a distance of two countries. Austin becomes convinced that his engineering designs will be awarded patents, thereby paving the way for the government to approve his return and award his long sought-after American citizenship. At the same time he becomes convinced that an FBI agent working for the House Committee for Un-American Activities is monitoring his every move, with the intent of blocking any possible return to the United States. Austin's and Julia's struggles build to crisis and heartrending resolution in this dazzling, sweeping debut. The novel is based in part on Vanessa Manko's family history and a trove of hidden letters that serve as a kind of inheritance-letters from a grandfather she never knew. Manko uses this history as a jumping-off point for the novel, which deals with themes of exile and invention and explores how loss reshapes and transforms lives. It is a profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home. [image: Amazon.com]

My comment: I've just started reading this and I was excited to get my hands on it. Sometimes, you just get a good feeling about a book.