Book Lovers Club
Comments
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in real life not so sweet. my mother's first love was aneise, I can't recall his proffession, but he was not a farmer which they forced him & his family to be at the camp. he died of pneumonia there in not so very a long time
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I've been reading alex delaware novels in preview. there's one on altenative medicine called blood test. some mis-information in the parts I've read so far. the novel I think was published some time ago
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DH just got the new Vince Flynn book, The Survivor. It is supposed to be excellent. Kyle Mills finished writing the book following Flynn's very untimely death and has been contracted to write two more books in the series....
I've been reading architecture and art books these last few weeks....nothing great to report. Later this week I plan on reading The Microbe Hunters. Don't ask me why I punish myself by reading these non-fiction books....
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Never said the treatment was sweet. You must read to the end of the book. "Sweet" that he found his Japanese girlfriend and presented her with "their" record. What was done to those in theinternment camps should never be repeated. Paranoia does some terrible things.
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I am about halfway through The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken. It's good history/family history/social anthropology. But mostly a very sweet story (with some dark family secrets) about a woman searching for her past through food. Very well researched and written. The author is Laura Schenone, whose first book was 1,000 Years Over A Hot Stove.
I like how she spins her story and as we move into cooler weather the descriptions of food feel very fitting. I recommend.
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I think the title 'Bitter and Sweet' can refer to the bitter parts of the story (interment, his relationship with his father, racism, loss etc.), and the sweet is the beautiful parts; the gruff but caring lunch lady, the lifelong Jazz musician mentor and friend, his loyalty to his wife, the evolving relationship with his own son, and of course, the reunion with his lost love. As in all life, there is both bitter and sweet.
I will have to look for The Lost Ravioli Recipes......any book with food in the title has to be good
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True Ruth but I wanted to make a point that the internment definitely was not sweet. It was one of many bitters. The book was well balanced between the sweet and bitter of life particularly for Japanese-American during that time.
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Here is a link for a good film about the internment camps, starring Denis Quaid. I can't believe it was filmed back in 1990. It seems like I saw it yesterday!
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A few books I have enjoyed recently----
Circling the Sun by Paula McLain
The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
The Garden of Happy Endings by Barbara O'Neal
And on my Ipad Kindle app, I am reading Finding Rebecca by Eoin Dempsey (I take this to Doctor's appts, etc. when I know I will be waiting for awhile)
jane
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Reading X by Sue Grafton and The Blue Zones Solution by Dan Buettner.
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Just read Laura Hillenbrand's "Unbroken" - World War II Story of Louis Zamperini survival, resilience and redemption during his interment as a POW. Difficult to read at times but learned a lot about that era as I was born in 1942.0
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Pheasant - I really liked the book but passed on seeing the movie.
Here's some of easy reading I did on my cruise: Hour of the Hunter by JA Jance (1991) This was before she started writing the Sheriff Brady novels and has a good deal of her personal history tucked in the story. If you like Jance, look up her book After the Fire: A Memoir in Poetry & Prose. It chronicles her graduate school problems & disastrous first marriage when she was actually teaching on a reservation.
I also read a book of short stories from the ship's library by Louis L'Amour - Lonigan. The stories were each selected & introduced by the author & the book was published the year of his death (1988). There's a nice tribute in the back stating that his wife & two children planned to carry on the tradition. His personal comment "I always think of myself in the oral tradition - as a troubadour, a village taleteller, the man in the shadows of a campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered - as a storyteller. A good storyteller."
Sad to report that the "ship's library" is now just two glass fronted cabinets with random books in no order and a sign that says 'only two books per cabin'. The last cruise I took had an actual "room" that was the library w/books on 4 walls. Sigh!!!
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Just finished "In the Unlikely Event" for my book club which meets on Wednesday. Read some negative comments about but must say I did enjoy it. Was a quick read. It will be interesting what the other members think of it.
Hmm, think my next book will be a serious read.
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I have just by chance (scrolling around Amazon) come across a most delightful novel. The Enchanted April, written in 1922, by Elizabeth von Armin. Four unhappy English ladies (strangers to each other) escape the dreary English spring by renting a small medieval Italian castle for the month of April (they find it through a newspaper ad appealing to "those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine". It is very Downton Abbey in tone and pacing. A really lovely story of unexpected friendship, travel, love and the surprising things that can happen when you take a leap into the unknown.
(I looked up the author, Elizabeth von Armin, she apparently was quite a famous and prolific writer in her time. She had married a German count, who gambled away all their money and ended up in prison (which is why she started writing, to pay the bills). After his death, she was for a short time, the mistress of H.G. Wells, had an unsuccessful second marriage, was the mistress of someone 30 years her junior (when he later married, he insisted that his first daughter be named after her....I wonder what his wife thought about that!). So it sounds like a novel could have been written ABOUT her as well).
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Ruth- I never knew of the book Enchanted April, but there was a good "small" movie made by that name that must be the same. I enjoyed it. I will look for the book now, thank you. It is sort of a Room With A View kind of movie. Along those lines, the adaptation of Henry James' The Golden Bowl, is also very good, as is Tea With Mussolini. All in the same genre. Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, et al. Henry James in particular, for me, never goes out of style. His books always have some twists and turns, and he interprets and describes people's secret senses very well.
Just finished the Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken, by Laura Schenone. Great read. Family history, love story, personal search for authenticity, and food. Lots of food. History of how similar foods in various cultures, and the process of immigration, affected them, and came to be what we know now. Highly recommend. I'm now starting her 1,000 Years Over a Hot Stove.
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I too thought of the film Enchanted April Jackiebird and did not know it was a book. I liked the film, a super cast that includes Jim Broadbent and Joan Plowright.
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I looked it up, and the film was indeed taken from the book.
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Ruth- I downloaded Elizabeth Von Armin's complete works onto kindle for $.99! What a deal! Reading her seminal work now, Elizabeth in Her German Garden. Plus, last night just had to rend the movie Enchanted April again. Indeed, Joan Plowright is a treasure!
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Wow! I will have to look for that deal!
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Thanks Jackie. I just downloaded it. Very strangely, a book called Inhua Cidian (writtten in Chinese) came up as well. Did that happen to you? (I looked up on my account & it doesn't show up as being ordered. Weird!)
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Jackie, we will have our work cut out for us, Kindle tells me that we have 60 hours and 30 minutes of Elizabeth Von Armin ahead!
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No Chinese bonus book for me. 60 hours of great reading for under a dollar. I've already put the first book down once to just marvel at what she wrote. I just stared off into space....
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Many here have donated . Thank you !........Wandering around and cheerleading again
Donate today, make a difference directly in all our lives. By supporting BCO, we support each other. Thanks and Hugs
https://community.breastcancer.org/forum/110/topic/834331?page=1
Link to the mainboard donation page
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Anyone here read Linwood Barclay? Ive now got a Tap at the Window, but he keeps you on the edge of your seat
with his books Sierra
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does anyone here get Powell's (Huge bookstore, new and used, Portland) daily book review? You sign up and you get one each day in your inbox. I've gotten a lot of books to try that way. Of course, some categories don'tapply.
I sent in a book review on the Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken last week and they picked it! I won $60 credit. Feels like the lottery, haha.
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Wow Jackb - a $60 credit is nothing to sneeze at.
Read Thomas Keneally's Victim of Aurora about an Antarctic exploration in 1910. Kind of a slog but maybe it was me. Read Susan Isaac's Past Perfect, why Katie's now perfect life still won't satisfy her 15 years after she was fired from a CIA job. I had forgotten how much fun Susan Isaac packs into a book. Read her Compromising Positions years ago & thoroughly enjoyed.
Just finished Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi. It is a saga told by Trudi, a dwarf, about herself, family & friends living in a German country town & set all during WWII. The last lines are about how to tell/edit the stories "...what to tell first - though it hadn't happened first - and what to end the story with. It had to do with what to enhance, and what to relinquish. And what to embrace". Interesting since we all edit our 'stories'. Things I remember clearly are not the way my son remembers them. Of course, it couldn't possibly be me who's wrong (LOL).
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Wow, Minus! I had forgotten about Stones In The River. I read it years ago. Tough read, but a very highly regarded work.
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Back to history: Lincoln's Final Hours by Kathryn Canavan. It's a short 188 page history book that reads like a novel. It takes you through Lincoln's final hours from the perspective of numerous "ordinary and extraordinary Washingtonians" who witnessed and/or were affected by the assassination. It gives a ground eye view and a very real sense of what it felt like to be in Washington on that day. Really good!
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