Book Lovers Club
Comments
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I so love this thread and I love my public library. I just put in requests for a bunch of the books on this thread.
In terms of recommending:
Tell No One by Harlan Coben
The Bernie and Chet mystery series by Spencer Quinn. Written from the perspective of Chet the dog and very fun.
The Matthew Scudder mystery seris by Lawrence Block
I do like my mysteries. Just read The Supremes at Earl's All You Can Eat. Was incredible.
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Gritgirl... I hope you don't mind me clarifying for other book lovers that The Supremes at Earl's All You Can Eat, while "incredible" is NOT a mystery...
Wrapping up Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings... Debating whether she out did herself this time.... this one is up there with her acclaimed book, The Wife....hmmmmm...0 -
voracious: Let me know what you think of The Interestings when you finish. I recently added it to my list after one of the women in my bookclub mentioned it.
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Vr. No problem at all
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Happy page 100 everyone! ♥
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Yes Badger - good catch. Happy 100 pages & thanks to everyone for continuing to post recommendations.
Voracious - have you read Last Call: The Rise & Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent? I read a review in my Bookmarks magazine & it sounds interesting. And maybe a good discussion of how causes sweep over people.
I've been trying to catch up on 2 years of back magazines, including The Atlantic and Bookmarks. Magazines seem to keep my current "chemo brain" engaged. So far I've written 15 pages of really small entries in my journal of books I absolutely must read. Well over 100 now. And some I should read over - like The Good Earth that I haven't read since high school. That doesn't even count all the great recommendations from this thread.
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Minus....Interesting that you mention Daniel Okrent's book. I am familiar with it and it's been on my list to read. I did take a brief look at it at the library. You may recall, following the Jason Blair scandal at The New York Times, Okrent was hired as The NY Times first public editor. I think he is a brilliant writer and a brilliant person. I don't use the word brilliant often. From time to time, I refer back to some of his ideas. If you read the book, let me know how it is.
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Finished Z. Would definitely recommend it. It's a novel but written through Zelda Fitzgerald's eyes. I don't want to say too much and give anything away, but it put her life in a perspective I had never even thought of before.
edited to add that it makes me want to do some research & reread Paris Wife, which is about Hemingway & his first wife (both of whom are featured in this book too)
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ruth: My good friend and fellow member of my book club read it and also compared it to the Paris Wife. She also really enjoyed it. This month's book club selection is Tender is the Night. I'm looking forward to read Z after re-reading Tender.
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Just finished Wolitzer's The Interestings. She is among the finest contemporary authors. The book was especially interesting to me because her characters and I are very close in age. Campers, when her characters meet, takes us on their lives' journey through today. I met my husband in camp at a very tender age and our life together parallels the characters' lives. So, for me, the book is extremely relatable. Wolitzer, whose mother is also a fiction writer, clearly gets her writing prowess from her talented mother. It's also clear that she grew up in a home where stories and words were extremely welcoming... Would love to do lunch with her and Anna Quindlen. Dessert would include Joe Queenan and Geoff Dyer!
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Minus....and other book lovers....Please forgive me for dwelling on Daniel Okrent for a moment. I often refer back to this piece that he wrote during his tenure as the first public editor for The New York Times. This article that he wrote has made me a better reader. In it he discusses opinion pieces....One often wonders and asks themselves after reading an opinion piece in which the reader disagrees..."How do they get away with that?" Here is what Mr. Okrent wrote almost a decade ago and I think it is as relevant today as it was when it was written....
"THE PUBLIC EDITOR; The Privileges of Opinion, the Obligations of Fact
By DANIEL OKRENT Published: March 28, 2004IT sounds like a simple question: Should opinion columnists be subject to the same corrections policy that governs the work of every other writer at The Times? So simple, in fact, that you must know that only an ornate answer could follow.
For the news pages, the rule is succinct. ''Because its voice is loud and far-reaching,'' the paper's stylebook says, ''The Times recognizes an ethical responsibility to correct all its factual errors, large and small (even misspellings of names), promptly and in a prominent reserved space in the paper.'' But on the page where The Times's seven Op-Ed columnists roam, there has long been no rule at all, or at least not one clearly elucidated and publicly promulgated. When I began in this job last fall, I was told The Times considered the space granted Op-Ed columnists theirs to use as they wish, subject only to the limits of legality, decency and publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.'s patience. Columnists decided when to run corrections, and where in their columns to run them.
But several days ago, editorial page editor Gail Collins handed me a memo in response to my inquiries. (You can read it in its entirety at www.nytimes.com/danielokrent; look for posting No.22.) Less a formal statute than an explanation and justification of practice, the document lays out the position of both Collins and her boss, Sulzberger, who bears ultimate responsibility for hiring and firing columnists. Collins explains why columnists must be allowed the freedom of their opinions, but insists that they ''are obviously required to be factually accurate. If one of them makes an error, he or she is expected to promptly correct it in the column.'' Corrections, under this new rule, are to be placed at the end of a subsequent column, ''to maximize the chance that they will be seen by all their readers, everywhere,'' a reference to the wide syndication many of the columnists enjoy.
But who is to say what is factually accurate? Or whether a quotation is misrepresented? Or whether facts are used or misused in such a fashion as to render a columnist's opinion unfair? Or even whether fairness has anything to do with opinion in the first place? Can you imagine one of the Sunday morning television screamfests instituting a corrections policy?
In the consciously cynical words of a retired Times editor, speaking for all the hard-news types who find most commentary to be frippery, ''How can you expect fairness from columnists when they make up all that stuff anyway?''
Of course they don't make the stuff up (at least the good ones don't). But many do use their material in ways that veer sharply from conventional journalistic practice. The opinion writer chooses which facts to present, and which to withhold....."
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Thanks Voracious. Really worth reading.
I'm still not reading heavy tomes. Found an author that was new to me - Aaron Elkins. He wrote several books in the 90's about a Seattle museum curator of Renaisannce & Baroque Art who has 'adventures' in Europe concerning thefts & forgeries of masterworks of art - the Chris Norgren mysteries. I've read A Glancing Light and Old Scores. Good stories made better by the museums & art discussions. Elkins apparently won an Edgar for one of his books in another series about a forensic anthropologist.
Have an old Perry O'Shaughnessy book to take to chemo #4 this week.
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Okay...I'm making a dent in my reading list... Yippee!!! Finished reading Phyllis Lambert's Building Seagram. Phyllis Lambert is the daughter of the late Samuel Bronfman, founder of Seagram liquors. She is the person, who at the tender age of 26, put together the team that would create New York's mid century modern masterpiece, The Seagram Building, home to the Four Seasons restaurant, where the term "power lunch" was born. I marvel at her ability. Likewise, she reminded me of Hilla Von Rebay, the woman responsible for picking Frank Lloyd Wright to design another New York masterpiece, The Guggenheim Museum. A wonderful book about it's creation was written in 2009. The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum.
What I find interesting about these two books, are the women who truly had the vision and energy to get these masterpieces built. Today, we take for granted these two buildings because there are so many newer buildings that are breaking all of the rules and being built. But the imprint of these buildings are reflected in newer buildings. While the architects today, like yesterday, receive all the praise for these buildings, had it not been for these two women, those buildings would never have been built and I wonder what the city would look like, had they not been such risk takers and visionaries...
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Ok. In fairness, I am reading Unbroken, and I am not liking it so far. Just throwing out another view on that book.
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Grit...No worries...so many readers loved Gone Girl...but I wasn't among them...and then there's The Bridges of Madison County that was on The New York Times best sellers list for YEARS! Another stinker IMHO. But that's why there are so many books out there for everyone to choose from, latch on to, enjoy or even dislike...
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Voracious,
I felt the same about both Books but thoughts was all alone in that. Just tried to read Canad by one of my favorite authors, Richard Ford. Don't know if it was me or this particular book but I gave up on it about 50 pages in!
Peggy0 -
Peggy.... I love most of Richard Ford's books...Canada is on my list...
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I haven't posted on this thread in ages but for all of you Khaled Hosseini fans, his new book will not disappoint. And the Mountains Echoed, is a very emotional story, written as personal narratives by told by many characters whose lives and relationships are interwoven. I admit that I am rather prejudiced in favor of anything about my beloved Afghanistan, though the entire book is not set there. If you liked his previous books, you'll probably like this as well.
Caryn0 -
Just finished The lost symbol could not put it down.Now have started Inferno.I am definitely a Dan Brown fan now.
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gritgirl I'm halfway through Unbroken and not liking it as much as I thought I would - or as much as others have said that I would. Hmmmm ........
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Sweetcorn - I read "My Year with Eleanor" last spring and loved it. I have been a big Eleanor fan since 1976 when I "discovered her" as a sophomore in HS.
MinusTwo - thanks for the Aaron Elkins recommendation. I love mysteries, and these sound like I would like them a lot.
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Chemo #4 tomorrow. I went to two Indie book stores yesterday to get prepared. One of them, Murder By The Book, has a huge selection of used books right now since everyone clearing out shelves to buy new books for summer. My good luck!! I got 8 or 10. I'll take with me: My new Atlantic magazine that came today, and
The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. Non Fiction. I'm loving this so far. About a grown son and his Mother with cancer and the book club for two that they form during her treatment. Wonderful tribute from the son. LOTS of great books & you can feel the joy of reading. Boston Globe: "..vivid testimony to the enduring power of books to create meaning out of chaos, illuminate values, and connect us with each other". He was speaking at the Brazos indie bookstore last night but I was stuck at the med center.
And just in case I run through those (with all the cocktails, my chemo is usually 8 or 9 hours), I'll throw in the Kindle with things I've been saving like Through the Looking Glass and Peter Pan.
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Oh - Page 100 CELEBRATION !!! What a great thread. Thanks to everyone.
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Yahoo, and a special thanks to konakat who started it all, and whom I know would want us to eat a piece of CAKE in celebration!
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Ruth- I couldn't agree more. Thanks to Konakat aka Elizabeth for starting this thread. She was an amazing woman.
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I agree...thanks Konakat! I also wholeheartedly endorse And the Mountains Echoed.
Patty0 -
Just got "And the Mountains Echoed" on my kindle. Have only read the first page, but liked it, which is the best way for me to tell whether I will enjoy a book!
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Chemo nurse loaned me her favorite book for tx#4 - Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson. The story of a lady w/the kind of amnesia that re-sets the brain every night so every morning she has to start all over learning about the 20 years she's missing. Good story & hard to put down.
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One of the DH's favorite thriller writers, Vince Flynn died this week of prostate cancer at the young age of 47. Deepest sympathies to his beloved family...
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VR - oh no! I just discovered Vince Flynn's books. Was looking forward to spending the summer catching up before #15 came out this fall. My condolences to his family, friends, and fans.
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