Book Lovers Club
Comments
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I've been in a paranormal universe for the last couple weeks. Christine Feehan ' s books. Not everyone cup of tea but extremely old for mindless getaways! LOL read 20 of them in a row. Talk about escapism. Reality is too hard for me right now. Did go to see the last Hobbit movie today. I may reread Lord of the Rings next.... for about The 50th time! LOL Much over and Happy Reading
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I take my escape/fantasy with a touch of humor and I am not ashamed, don't you be ashamed Moonflwr912!!
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - and of course any of their own book series
Jasper Fford -esp his Thursday Next series
Gail Carriger's The Alexi Tarabotti series
Walter Moers Zamonia series - I just finished The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear - totally insane, jaw dropping, mind-blowing imagination with illustrations - very entertaining
The Phantom Tollbooth and of course the Wizard of Oz series (why not!!)
Tom Holt's own books and then he has also written several Mapp and Lucia books - which are sequels to a series by EF Benson about a 1920's? socially striving British couple prone to mishaps
Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat
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I am going to re-read all the Hobbit/LOR books & then do a marathon re-watching of the movies. Love, love, love both the books & the movies. I am nuts over them! Moon, I had tears in my eyes at the end of the Hobbit because I was so happy that I had lived long enough to see them completed.....crazy!
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Not really a fantasy fan yet read Bone Clocks by David Mitchell a few months back and have Cloud Atlas at the ready. A real departure of my usual solid fiction (which I'm shaking up this year- change is good!). Now reading The Narrow Road To The Deep North, by Richard Flanagan. Getting bit of an education in well, depth of humanity actually.
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Though I didn't read the book, I saw Cloud Atlas - or should I say part of it. Yuck.
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Sandra, your throwaway comment leaves me wondering. I'm not partial to a great deal of what is listed on this thread as recommended reading, hence, rarely post yet felt wanting to do so in that fantasy fiction topic had come up. I've not read the book either, although found the Bone Clocks to be masterfully written as far as paranormal adventures go.
"A half-read book is a half-finished love affair."
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas0 -
ditto on the LOR and Hobbit books and movies...
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Li lac, a lot of people prefer the books to the movies. Perhaps that's what Sandra meant. I'm pretty sure she didn't mean to dis your comment. Sandra is not that way! LOL, we really share what we feel about books (and movies from books)here. Some of us quite strongly! LOL
I am an outlier on this thread as most of my reading is scify and fantasy. I like the recommendation of books not normally in my genre. LOL. Not saying I will read all of them but occasionally one hits me. So feel free to recommend any you like that struck you as good.
Ruthbru, I too had tears in my eyes. Not just at the ending, but at the thought that it was my last visit to Middle Earth via movies. I will watch all the movies again because it seems just right! Of course some people don't like those mivies, but for me, Peter Jackson captured the FEELING of the books. So much was missing because otherwise the movies would gave been 10 hours lo g, but the movies made me laugh AND cry. I wish one of my favorite parts had been in the movie. When Aragon and Legolas are looking at the ground when the Rohan riders are burning the orc bodies at the edge of the forest and trying to puzzle out the cut ropes and Lembas crumbs "It could only have been our Friends here, only a hobbit would have have thought to sit in the midst of a battle to eat a snack". Just such a small scene of many. LOL!
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Not judging Moonflwr..just wondering. Not important actually. Scifi and fantasy is huge here in Britain with Terry Pratchett as the much loved Discworld national treasure. I understand what you said earlier. It's a kind release in the midst of the grief and worry and pain- when life if difficult to escape into reading as it truly nourishs me.
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Lilac - duplicating what Moon said. Post whatever strikes your fancy. We are all different and can learn so much from other's reviews. Really we don't judge what someone else is reading (especially Sandra). We're just glad there are still people in the world reading & we have people to share with & discuss. I've tried to learn not to be a reading snob even if I don't personally read Danielle Steele. (OK, OK everyone - don't jump me if she's your favorite - kudos for reading)
I just re-read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, written about her life & reactions the first year after her husband died. I liked it as much the second time. Now reading On My Own: the Art of Being a Woman Alone by Florence Falk. I started it a couple of years ago but put it down. "At some point over the course of the average American woman's life, she will find herself alone, whether she is divorced, widowed, single or in a loveless, isolating relationship..." It shows the wonderful empowering force that solitude can give us and looks at the difference between alone & lonely. Also encourages women to nurture themselves & not just everyone else. My best friend's husband just died after they'd been together 55 years since she was 14, so I hope to refresh my brain so I can be the kind of friend she needs now.
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Minus...funny that you are reading Joan Didion. Eula Biss mentions her essay Goodbye To All of That in Notes From No Man's Land. My friend loves her writing. Me? Meh. Believe me when I say I have questioned myself on occasion why I fail to get her. My friend and I have had a number of discussions about Didion. She feels much like you. IDK.....
Even her essay about abandoning NY, just doesn't do it for me. Perhaps because New York has and is and will probably always be my home? Grief? I think Laci Peterson's mother, Sharon Rocha's book, For Laci, which is STILL in print has resonated with me for many years after reading it. I recommend the book all.the.time! I don't think I could ever read it again....way, way ,way too sad. Rocha has only spoken publicly a few times since her daughter's murder. Considering she isn't a professional writer, nor a "public" person by choice, she appears to be able to express herself in such a becoming way....I wonder if Rocha has read Didion's work......hmmmmm.....
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Moon, too bad we don't live near each other, we could have a NERD-OUT.....stay up all night & have a LOR Marathon!
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i would LOVE that Ruthbru! Have you listened to the sound tracks? I loved them too. I have to get the Hobbit ones. That ending song by Billy Boyd is truly amazingly appropriate and tear jerking.
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Yes, and yes!
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As the late, great Sly & The Family Stone sang, "Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks." There's a reason why the library is full of different kinds of books. We like what we like. Sometimes we think we will like something, but find once we get into it that it doesn't appeal. My personal rule has always been to read 100 pages before abandoning a book - a rule I formed while trying to read Gore Vidal's books in my youth - but I find as I get older, I violate my own rule fairly often. Life is too short to waste a lot of time on something I'm not enjoying regardless of how many others have a different opinion.
My bookclub members frequently disagree about what we've read. I remember when we read The Handmaid's Tale. I didn't like it, some others loved it and a few were indifferent. I guess I just don't "get" Margaret Atwood. We just read Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement, parts of which I though were disgusting but I finished it. Several others put it aside quickly and a few really enjoyed it. After being together for nearly 10 years, and loving many of the same books (The Good Earth, The Shadow of the Wind, Atonement, Snowflower and the Secret Fan and many more) you'd think we would pretty much agree on anything, but we don't and fortunately we feel free enough to discuss how we feel without fear of disapproval.
That's the way it is here. Just because someone might not like a book I have on my "to read" stack, it doesn't stop me from reading it and forming my own opinions and I don't expect my review of a movie or book to ruin someone else's experience. Sing with me now, "Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks."
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That is one of the reasons I like my Book Club; we have such different tastes, so it gets me out of my comfort zone. Sometimes I am surprised and really like I book I would have never chosen for myself. We are a bunch of teachers (several who teach high school English), and are extremely honest (blunt) in our opinions, so you can't take in personally if the group doesn't like one of your picks. Another reason I like my Book Club is that it brings points of view to any book, things I might not have considered, so it opens up the book in a whole new way. The other thing I like about my Book Club is the really good desserts served (so even if the book is a bomb the evening is not wasted.
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Hi all! Ok, so along this line, can anyone enlighten me about Jonathan Tropper's 'This is where I leave you'? I there any redeeming value after the halfway mark? I've fulfilled the 100 page rule %) and just can not get into it! But I feel required to read it as it was a Kindle purchase. Guess I'll rethink purchasing any more of his work.
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Moni - nope, you're just going to have to either soldier on or toss it in the discard pile. Some of us loved this book & the movie - maybe even as a favorite for the year. Others of us didn't care for it at all and thought it a total waste of money. Pretty disparate viewpoints.
Sandra - I'm gonna sing since you know I'm an Atwood fan, but I can't remember the tune!!! Ah, Sly & the Family Stone - 'Everday People'. Found a cut on YouTube from Ed Sullivan in 1968. Oh the hair, and the gold wide leg pants and the boots!!! And an even better one from a fundraiser at Bimbo's 365 club in San Francisco - with hot pants. I'm dancin' in my chair (but not the streets... yet).
Ruth - love your new avatar haircut. Sure wish I lived in ND (am I crazy or what w/winter coming on??) Anyway, your book club sounds marvelous. Many of the people I know here will not open their minds enough to even consider something out of their comfort zone.
Thanks everyone for this thead!!!
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Minus, if you came to North Dakota in the summer you would love it. If you came right now you would be crazy .The low tonight is supposed to be 20 below! And the windchill right now is minus 37!
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It's pretty cold here in WI tonight too. But lovely. Here is Downtown
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Oh brrrrr. We actually only got up to 56 today, but we're having a cold front. (ok ok - I'm spoiled). Pretty town Moon.
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That IS pretty! Thanks for sharing, Moonflower!
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I read Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and got so much from it and have quite a bit of respect for what she went through. The duress of grief can be a hard read, little things that can emotionally paralyze someone were the things I found so interesting. No happy ending, it was well written reality that struck a cord for me. Good to know the impact remains on a reread.
Thanks MinusTwo yet it's difficult when a one word response is offered, whereby, definitive opinion curtails meaningful discussion. And maybe that is me, wanting to know what inspired or what let someone down in within the experience of a book they have read. In this household, we get four different Sunday newspapers and I scour the book review sections of each, listen to two radio book review shows and have two friends that I share books and feedback with. I also participate in World Book Night.
The last book club I belonged to was comprised of women living on my street in London. A let down for me in that I was keen to talk about the book chosen and it was everything but that. At each of the book club meet-ups (every 6 weeks), three to four of the women said they did not read the book, it was crap to them, we were then hurried to state a brief synopsis of what we liked, the book then quickly became an after thought of why were there, and the evening went onto what my child did or said in school. My kid went to a different school, so not much for me to add on that point, if I wanted to at all. It was heavy on the social aspect and lean on insightful, literate discussion of the book we were to read. Hung in there for nearly a year and stopped attending. This book club was going on well before the two years we lived on the neighborhood and I assume it's still sputtering along.
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Liliac....I wholeheartedly agree that even a book that one didn't enjoy reading can still be a meaningful experience. I scour various Sunday book reviews and enjoy meeting authors. That said, I can sometimes be befuddled when I look at best seller lists and wonder what people find so appealing about certain popular books such as...The Bridges of Madison County (sorry Moon..and Badger..no offense to the great state of Wisconsin).
Interestingly, when Didion's book was published, Sharon Rocha's book hit the best seller lists at the same time. What I found so compelling about her story was despite her grief of losing her child and unborn grandchild, she had to rewrite her whole history with her daughter and with Scott Peterson, very, very publicly. What also sets Rocha apart is, like those of us who lost loved ones on 9/11, we are reminded over and over again in the media about the loss. Watching Rocha respond to the loss of her daughter while Peterson sat on trial was devastating! When I think of Didion, at least she could grieve privately,and with her gift of writing, was able to tell us about her pain. Rocha, on the other hand, had no gift for writing and yet with a ghost writer, was able to give meaningfulness to Laci's life. However, with that meaningfulness, she had the sad job of having to better understand the relationship that she had with her daughter, which was NOT the type of relationship that she previously believed she had.
Since reading Rocha's book, both as a daughter and a mother, it has been a slippery slope for me in trying to figure out how much to let my mother into my life. Whatever it is that I keep from her, I do it out of love. Likewise, I wonder what my daughter keeps from me. Does my daughter do the same to me as I do to my mother? SECRETS, I think define all of us. I think Rocha's book tells us all that you MIGHT think in life, you know your loved ones, but the sad reality that Rocha drives home is that you really don't. And once they are gone, you are left with missing pieces to a puzzle that will forever remain unknown.
I guess that Rocha's book is not only about grief, but it is also a cautionary tale that should make us all take pause in the assumption that we all think we know our loved ones, when sometimes nothing is further from the truth...
Regarding Tropper....If I didnt love the book, I would have stopped reading after 50 pages.💞
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BTW....Over the years I was puzzled by the fact that Rocha's book is still in print. I just realized that the book is included in many college classes in women's studies......hmmmmmm......
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Ruthbru and Moonflwr912 - just came across this on Reddit, several photos of the site in New Zealand of Hobbiton? click on the photo directly and you should get the album which was posted to imgur and be sure to click on the extras at the bottom of the last photo since there are actually 19 photos in the entire album. I included the comment thread from reddit because it provides more info, like what it is like to actually visit the site and how it is maintained. Knock yourselves out!
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Thanks!!!!!
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The bridges of madison county i have read about 3 times n watch the movie every time it comes on love it, n i cry everytime.
I read different things, true crime, Danielle steele, anne rule,n i have read a bio on Abraham Lincoln. Whatever i feel like. Never used to read but am trying to keep the brain going
Dont like the hobbit, star wars or harry potter
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Blondie, when it came out my girlfriends & I went to Bridges of Madison County together (and it STILL makes me cry too, although I still don't know why she didn't go looking for him after her husband died!!!). Anyway, at the end of the movie there was perfect silence in the theater. When one of my friends commented on that fact, another one (who shared voracious's opinion about the book/film) said, "That's because the women are all cried out, and the men are all asleep!"
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Ever since writer, Joe Queenan, mentioned in his hilarious book, One For the Books, how really bad The Bridges of Madison County was and that it measured as an example of a really good awful book, I became a rabid fan of his!
Speaking of crying, I read Sharon Rocha's book on a plane flight. I was sobbing so bad that the flight attendant asked me if I was okay.....I wasn't! Recently, a friend's 19 year old son committed suicide. Many of the things I learned from reading Rocha's book gave me strength to help her through her tragedy. From the first moments following her loss, I reassured her that she was a great mother and she would be an even greater mother going forward to her surviving children. Furthermore, I told her she would hear things from others that would make her feel that she had done something wrong in not "knowing" her son's feelings. I told her that Rocha had taught me that most of us truly do not know what our children are really thinking about. And if someone really thinks they are thisclose with their children....it is nothing more than an illusion....an illusion that makes us feel better, but may not be the true reality. Rocha's life was shattered and her grief was on display for all of us to see. My friend has expressed moving to get away from "this.". The difference between Didion and my friend along with Rocha, is that because Didion was a writer, she could write about her grief and choose to make her experience very public. My friend and Rocha never dreamed as mothers that their grief would become such public spectacles. I think it took a lot of strength and courage for Rocha to write her deeply moving book about her daughter...
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