Book Lovers Club
Comments
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http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/08/09/sit-by-me/
Tom...actually, I could understand why you might have thought Wilde said it! The above link verifies that Alice was, in fact, the one who is remembered for those words! I'm going to have to brush up on her because Ruth has me rethinking my thoughts about her...
BTW, Ruth, I'm finally reading Dead Wake! I've been very busy these past few weeks and I'm yearning to find some down time to read the book. I long for reading time!
OT...anyone visiting NY this summer....must get tickets for Hamilton and/or visit the Met and see China...Through the Looking Glass. The exhibit is spectacular.
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Reporting in that I did finish The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro and I really don't know what to say. It's a journey through Britain's mythical past with pixies, ogres and dragons looming large. I got a bit bored by swords and sorcery and felt flat at the ending. Strange, weird and bizarre comes to mind. oh well, next!
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justlearning how to manoever around this site. havn't read much here yet. to read suggestions mushrooms for health by ? marley. I made notes but they're not right here. best non fiction, not so aproppo but I did glean some info on frankensence (I think about that) today on a rereading of the 3rd vol of dale pendell's marvelous books on drugs. not pharms for the most part, he;s a botanist among other things & his interests lie there. back soon thr 3d vol is sub6titled tha poison pathy, so you get the drift
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best fiction: my list would be very different some years ago, but now: doris lessing's the cleft, & the sweetest thing
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abigail - welcome. I haven't thought about Lessing in years. I'll have to check it out.
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Another trip to the used bookstore today. Another 30 books for under $20.00. One more week before they close. I've now perused Science Fiction and Mystery A-G and R-Z. Still have the rest of the mystery section and the general fiction, not to mention the non-fiction. Everything is 75% off next week. "so many books, so little time..."
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the cleft is about when there was only one sex, female, impregnated by seal sperm in tehri swimming water. eventually "freaks" began to be born. read more there. the sweetest thing is in part an aids helpers story
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If any of you like Dana Perino from "The Five" on FOX News, I just finished her book "And the Good News IS...." on audio book. I have a hard time getting time to read and am loving listening to audio books in the car. I am encouraging my daughter to read or listen to this book. Great common sense career advice.http://www.amazon.com/And-Good-News-Is-Lessons/dp/1455584908
I am now listening to the "Autobiography of Henry the VIII" by Margaret George. Ever since I watched "The Tudors" I have been obsessed with Anne Boleyn :0)
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Love Dana Perino! Glad to hear it's a great book.
Got my next novel reserved at the library.....Kent Haruf's Our Souls at Night. VR II, also known as VR's mom has a reserve on it too. Looks like the reviews are wonderful! Can't wait to get my hands on it!
Abigail! Welcome again! I never read Lessing, but I will have a look at her works!
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reply vanished. 2nd try. forget her name & the name of her books, then found again by accident: story set in jerusalem & nyc about a woman given into an unhappy mariaqe then captured by the morals police & sent to ny as a domestic slave. read it many to several times still can;t remember title & author. read all her books, the last too political for me but all the rest very good
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OOOOh, abigail, that does sound very familiar! I may have read it twice too, I had just about forgotten all about it. I had read it, then loaned it, then found another copy i read and now I don't have that one anymore either. I hate it when that happens..
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& there's another similar story by a different author, about a man who dies of grief because the orthodox rules don't allow him to make love to his adored wife. a secret problem from infertility. fabulous story
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Hi- I am new to this thread, and have been lurking a bit. I'm still in chemo, so having concentration issues reading, but I keep lists of recommended books and sometimes splurge on six months of used, if I can find good ones. Have always been a voracious reader until lately. So don't let me disturb the conversation, just wanted to introduce myself.
Katy
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Hi Katy,, glad to see you over here!!Sandra: Love that sign!!
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Jackbirdie - welcome. We all love recommendations & reviews.
Sandra - great poster.
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Minus, thanks for the welcome.
You can know a bit about me from my 3 "favorite" threads. Aside from the directly bc ones, of course. Comfort dogs, gardening, anyone, and now this. Reading has been a life long love. My tastes have changed a bit over the years, but not much. I read novels, mostly, try to mix in some classics, but love mysteries too. I love good writing, and I have been know to quit a book after ten pages or less if the writing is bad. Life is too short (and even shorter than I realized) to read bad writing, IMO.. However, that is highly personal. I read some biographies, autoBs, and history. I recently picked up some of Basho's ancient haiku, used, one written more as a travel log than strict poetry.
I am not a snob. I will read pretty much any kind of book that is well done. I like cookbooks and gardening books too. David Liebowitz's My Paris Kitchen is a wonderful read if you like to cook and you like Paris. It's really mostly about his life after sadly losing his life partner and deciding to move to Paris alone and start over. Also, his book The Perfect Scoop, is the only book on making homemade ice cream you will ever need. I also like books on language itself, where words come from, that sort of thing. Good bathroom books just to pick up for a short read. Roy Blount, Jr. Has a couple of "alphabet" books that are funny and I always learn a little something. I adore Bill Bryson. Any of his books always make me laugh and think about things I've never thought of before.
Right now I am reading Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer. I find her writing very melodical, and her voice very refreshing, but her books do tend towards the lengthy, and as I mentioned above, concentration is not my long suit at the moment. I'm trying to kick a nasty pneumonia, and it would ordinarily be a great time for reading, but I can't keep my eyes open.
Thanks again for the nice welcome. I look forward to getting to know you all.
Katy
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Welcome! Katy!!!
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A great 'language' book is Eats Shoots and Leaves. If you enjoy word play, it's all about how punctuation & phrasing can change the entire meaning. For example, what if the book isn't about the bamboo that Koala Bears eat, but we add commas - Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Hmm, somebody dead on the floor after dinner.
Just finished Isaac's Storm. I like his books but I probably enjoyed this one even more since I spent many days poking around Galveston and learning about the people, the city, the history & the storm. I used to love going down in the winter after the beach swimming days were over. Now that they have several cruise lines, it's never really quiet anymore.
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Minus...I'm sorry to hear that Galveston no longer retains its peacefulness. Having read Isaac's Storm, I long to visit the town...after reading Devil in the White City, I followed up with a visit to Chicago. Having read Isaac's Storm years before Katrina struck, I was in a heightened state of despair before the storm made landfall. I sometimes wonder why books like Larson's and Robert Caro's aren't required reading for newly elected politicians....
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VR - you can still find some quiet moments, but you do have to plan around cruise ship embarking & returning - which is usually a weekend. Sometimes I like to be there weekends to see something at the restored 1894 Grand Opera House. But I can fudge and get a quiet day or two if I'm not trying to include an event. And I love walking on the beach in the winter. (hmmm, guess I should say winter here is often 80 degrees at Christmas)
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Minus- isn't Padre Island around there somewhere? I was there years ago during the off season..it was very nice. A different kind of beach experience. Wouldn't want to be there during Spring Break, though! Doh!
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yes. isn't kingsolver wonderful. & a good love story on that one as I recall
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minus...despite having visited Texas numerous times and having loved it, I somehow haven't had the opportunity yet, to visit Galveston. It is very high up on my bucket list. Regarding the weather, the younger DS lived in Austin for 8 years and experienced its drastic heat (40 consecutive days of temps over 100 degrees), ice storms and flash floods!
I'm still reading Larson's Dead Wake. It is about the sinking of the Lusitania. Unlike his other books that made me want to visit the places he has written about, this time, Larson has done a good job of making sure that a cruise ship vacation will NEVER be on my bucket list!
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Minus Two, if you and others go crazy about the misuse of correct grammar and punctuation these days, you might enjoy "Between You and Me," an account of a copy editor at The New Yorker. She is the kind of person who loses sleep over whether to change a comma in a well-known author's submission. There are some amusing stories that grammar fanatics would like, but it also sinks into a punctuation guidebook, well-written but sort of dull. Not for everyone, but as a lifetime writer and editor, I enjoyed it.
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With Dead Wake, it was even more disturbing to me because they could actually SEE the Irish coast line.
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hi all and welcome Katy. I couldn't read anything complicated during chemo either. Couldn't track the plot from page to page so gave up and read magazines & chick lit (think Mary Kay Andrews - Savannah Blues, Little Bitty Lies, Hissy Fit).
Halfway through Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer, a personal account of the Mt. Everest disaster in May 1996. Well-written and compelling, it kept me up last night until midnight and will finish today.
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there's another disaster true story about a plane crash in the sierras, only 1 was left alive something like that. small plane. the woman girl left alive walked out east, kept seeing buildings, halucinating them, found a real thermal hot pool & cleaned up. finally got to nevada. I've told this plot recently, I hope not here0
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Badger - funny, I was thinking about Into Thin Air as I read VR's post about Dead Wake. Really allows you to experience the journey. Also makes me want to dig out & re-read The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger about a fishing boat trying to get back to Glouchester from Georges Bank in 120 mph winds and waves ten stories high. And Linda Greenlaw's book The Hungry Ocean - a 30 day swordfishing voyage with Linda (the captain) and her 5 man crew, working 21 hour days.
VR - you can see I am an ocean nut. I'd usually go on any ship or boat any time I have a chance. But I haven't read Dead Wake yet so we'll see. Let me know when you come to Galveston and I'll drive down & meet you for dinner. One of my favorite used book stores 'lives' there - tall stacks of books, comfortable chairs and a cat.
Wave Whisp - I'll look for that book. Funny coincidence about punctuation- I glanced at one one of the headlines in today's paper before my eyes were fully open and here's what I saw: Why Giant Pandas have to eat, poop all day Only with sleepy eyes I didn't see the coma after "eat" & boy was that a quick wake up. I'd never heard of pandas eating.....well you get it.
JackBIrd - Padre Island is a couple of hours to the South of Houston. Since you're from Oregon, you know the REAL ocean. The Gulf is usually just a shallow pond - no rocks, no waves, no drama - and I long for the Pacific.
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Abigail- yes Kingsolver's writing is so lyrical to me, sometimes I just get lost in the cadence, or the turn of a phrase. Then I have to back up to where I first started daydreaming and start again! In this book, the way she intertwined the almost sinful sexuality of nature in Spring with the the love story is skillful. She manages, without ever becoming tawdry, to convey riotous lust in a very socially acceptable, almost chaste, way.
Badger- thanks for the welcome and solidarity re: chemo reading. I read Into Thin Air. Haunting and definitely a page turner.
Wave Whisperer- Between You And Me is on my nightstand right now. Haha. Next in line if I can manage it in my condition. I bought it partly because my mother was like that. About spelling, and correct word usage and pronunciation as well. I have memories of her getting up from a swishy family holiday dinner (she was also very accomplished in the kitchen) and bringing back the Great Big Dictionary and correcting us in the spot. Lively discussions often ensued. One helluva woman.
I am so glad I have met you ladies. I adore you all already, having been lurking and reading back posts, I feel I know you a bit. I love talking about reading!
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