Just finished: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Murakami is a crazy crazy man. Though I've always found dual narrative tales to be awkward and confusing, Murakami tells this one with extraordinary ease, intertwining the title character's modern-day Oedipus myth with the story of a man named Nakata with the superhuman ability to talk to cats. Kafka is unusual in that it's a sci-fi/fantasy tale told in the voice of a writer of literature, let alone one whose eloquence is so pronounced that it remains unharmed even after translation from Japanese.

Currently reading: On Beauty by Zadie Smith. I had purchased this book a month ago after having seen it on every "Best Book Ever" list to ever exist, and though I only just began it today, I can already see why Smith's writing has achieved so many accolades. On Beauty is a modern-day adaptation of E.M. Forster's Howards End, whose protagonists are an educated, upper-middle-class black family from the fictional college town of Wellington, MA (Smith's thinly veiled nod to Cambridge). It's the kind of book that would have been doomed for the category of "cliche social commentary" from the beginning were it not for Smith's colorfully descriptive (though never pretentious) writing style, adding just the right amount of poetic flare at just the right times.

Planning to read: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...again. Let's face it, reading about Molly Weasley kicking Bellatrix Lestrange's ass is the kind of thing that just bears plenty of repeating.