What I'm reading now

Hi! Today was a Saturday, and although I didn't do the 10k words as promised, I did about 3.5k.
Here's what I'm reading this month:
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

This is a book I got in China (but it's a British book) and it chronicles the opium drug trade, and many lives that intertwined in the busy ports of Canton---and what happened when a man named Commissioner Lin stepped up to abolish the opium from China forever. It is related to the topic of my novel, and I do love the descriptions, but it is incredibly dense and it takes me a lot of work to get through it. But the cover! I think that is the most beautiful cover I have ever seen.

The Night Circus by Erin. Morgenstern

Funny story--about 9 months ago, my family was preparing to go to South Korea (on a connecting flight to Bali, our actual destination.)  In the O'Hare airport, I saw a copy of The Night Circus--and I wanted to buy it, because, well, the story sounded intriguing and the characters and oh!-- the cover was beautiful.
But it was an airport bookstore. And airport books are really expensive.
Now, a year later, I am reading it now, and I wish I had bought it nine months ago. No matter the price, it wouldn't have paid enough for the beautiful, illustrious descriptions, the mystery, the intrigue of the circus.
(Okay, you get this blog post's theme now--descriptions and book covers)
Plus, Erin Morgenstrn has done NaNoWriMo (The Night Circus was her Nano novel) and I love her pep talk.
And on her blog, in the archives, I stumbled upon a quote she had read;
"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
Beautiful.