Reading Personality & Chris Cleave

I’m fulfilling my jury duty today, which actually only involved checking in with the clerk at the assembly room and informing them of my teaching duty at Berkeley. The teaching entails that I have to be excused from jury duty in the event of a prolonged trial. I wrote part of this post while I was waiting at the juror’s room, where the city and county of San Francisco thoughtfully provides free wifi.

One of the ARCs in line is Little Bee by Chris Cleave. The book is inspired by the author’s own experience—he went to a concentration camp by mistake. As a student at Oxford University he’d take any paid work during the vacation, so one morning he climbed into a minibus with some other casual laborers, destination unknown. The minibus dropped him into a crush of agitated people, pleading with him in half the languages on earth. Despair and confusion reigned. I’m looking forward to reading it.

I also want to introduce his debut novel, Incendiary, which was published in 2006 and has been adapted into a feature film. It won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award (tell-tale sign of a must read). When a massive suicide bomb explodes at a London soccer match a woman loses both her four-year-old son and her husband. But the bombing is only the beginning. In a voice alive with grief, compassion, and startling humor, Incendiary is a stunning debut of one ordinary life blown apart by terror.

According to Bookbrowse quiz my responses show that I am both a serial reader and an eclectic reader, which indicates that I both read widely and frequently.

“As a serial reader you’re loyal to your favorite authors, but as an eclectic reader you’re also open to new ideas and new writers, and are not wedded to a particular genre. That you manage to both keep up with your favorite authors and explore new writers indicates that you are likely to be what the research companies like to term a heavy reader.”

Curious now? Find out about your reading personality.