Book Blogger Hop: What Are You Reading Now?

This week's question at the Book Blogger Hop, sponsored each week by Crazy For Books, what book(s) are you currently reading and why?  

I'm in various stages of a few different books right now.  I'm about halfway through an ARC of The Borrower, by Rebecca Makkai, which I'm reading for fun.  It's the story of a librarian who rescues/liberates/kidnaps (depending on your point of view) a child whose parents are trying to pray the gayness right out of him and who only let him read books that have "the breath of God."  It's a fun book that my Penguin sales rep, Karl Krueger, sent to me a few weeks ago that I'm just now getting around to.  This book will be published in June.  

And as I mentioned in a previous post this week, I'm still working on the ARC of The Tiger's Wife, which I'm mostly reading for work.  Our store is interested in booking her for an author reading once her book debuts in March. 

I also just started reading the new/forthcoming memoir from Andre Dubus III called Townie.  I wasn't such a big fan of The Garden of Last Days, but I think his book The House of Sand and Fog comes about as close to Greek tragedy as modern literature can get.  His new book proves him to be a wordsmith of the highest order, and just in the first chapter he's left me suckerpunched.  The book doesn't come out for another month, so I'm reading the ARC from David Goldberg, my Norton sales rep.  Dubus will be reading at my store next month, and I have to say, if you've never had the pleasure of hearing him speak, do yourself a favor and attend one of his readings while he's on tour.  He's handsome and engaging, yes, but he is also so erudite that he peppers his talks with so many literary quotations that he's a walking-talking Bartlett's.  And what's more, he's got that intense charisma so that when he's signing your book and speaking just to you, he absolutely makes you believe that in all the universe there's nothing he would rather be doing at that moment.