Book Lovers Club
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Finished two books this week:
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson was thought-provoking.
A Bad Day for Sunshine by Darynda Jones was entertaining but a bit too romance novel-ish for my taste.
So now I have three books on the TBR pile: Kellerman, Coulter, and Katz (sounds like a law firm LOL).
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Edit for top of page to add descriptions since my book list is on the previous page.
Half Moon Bay by Jonathan & Jesse Kellerman. Deputy coroner Clay Edison discovers that buried secrets can be deadly in this riveting thriller from a father-son team of bestselling authors.
Deadlock by Catherine Coulter. A new FBI thriller featuring Agents Savich and Sherlock.
The Daughters of Yalta by Catherine Grace Katz. The story of the fascinating and fateful "daughter diplomacy" of Anna Roosevelt, Sarah Churchill, and Kathleen Harriman, three glamorous young women who accompanied their famous fathers to the Yalta Conference with Stalin in the waning days of World War II.
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I enjoyed The Daughters of Yalta too.
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Must add " Daughters of Yalta" to my list. Thanks! In addition to loving all things Churchill and Roosevelt I'm fascinated by that Harriman woman. Big DC history.
Finished Sally Field's 2017 biography "In Pieces." Evokes compassion. Not the " best" writing but she wrote it and it's all her. I cliked it.
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I am reading a fascinating book called A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
The book is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Martha Ballard was a real midwife who kept a diary in which she recorded her work (in 27 years she attended 816 births and had the same infant survival rate that we have now) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. Through her research, the author fills out the social history of the times, the community and the people with whom Martha lived and lets us take a look at the lives of the ordinary people during this time. It is also a rare primary source from the female perspective from this period. I am finding myself getting very attached to Martha! (She was a mother of nine herself, so knew her business. I am well into the book, and so far she has only lost one mother AND baby, which absolutely shocked her, that did not happen on her watch.)0 -
Ruth, I have a close friend from Hallowell, Maine! I am going to buy that book for his daughter (who spent many happy summers there with her father's huge extended family). I am sure she will find it fascinating.Badger, I just finished Deadlock and have Half Moon Bay
ready to go - both are by authors I enjoy!0 -
Maybe she'll know some of the family names from way back then!
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Ruth - the Midwife books sounds fascinating. Thanks for the referance.
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A note so nobody is disappointed, Midwife is not a 'barn burner' but an account of every day life back in those times.
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Hey, Folks! I have been absent from here for a while. I have been busy doing nothing exciting, but getting some cleaning done. And doing some reading! Been some starts and stops, but finally read something good enough to report on. Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce is a quick paced, funny and heartwarming read about two women searching for a mysterious beetle. They encounter difficulties, man searching for them, storms and a pregnancy. After the story ends, the author tells a factual piece about how finding a picture helped her to write the main story. A feel good book that was also enjoyable to read.
Just stated The Bagman by Rachel Maddow. Who knew that Spiro Agnew was such a s__ t!
Take care
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Finished an old book I kept from my Mother's shelves "The Women in Gandhi's Life" by Eleanor Morton (1953). The author actually met many of these women & did prodigious research. It wasn't a fast read but was consistently interesting. I hadn't read any of his teachings or much about him since the 1960s. Very informative.
Then I needed something easy to pick up and read just a few pages before bed. Oh oh. Back to Ruth's picture. I picked up Kristin Hannah's "Winter Garden" (2010). Written well before the Nightingale. This is a story about a family told in two time periods - the WWII siege of Leningrad and apple growing in Washington. What a harrowing & heartbreaking time with Stalin making people disappear regularly & then everyone starving under the German bombardment. I was really sucked right in and was still reading at 6am this morning. Slept from 6a to 9a and have resisted a nap simply by standing in the kitchen cooking. I think I'll head to bed early tonight.
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Enjoyed The Daughters of Yalta especially having read Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz.
Deadlock and Half Moon Bay were both good books. The former had more suspense & plot twists; the latter focused too much on radical Berkley politics then & now.
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I like that, magiclight!
Thanks to everyone’s great book recommendations, I have many books on hold at the library. Thank you!
I just finished reading This Land Of Snow by Anders Morley, an American who skied most of the distance from British Columbia to Manitoba. Now I am going to read Reading Behind Bars by Jill Grunenwald, a prison librarian.
Good night, everyone, and have a pleasant Sunday!
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Picked up three more books at the library yesterday for myself. I'll include the goodreads URLs in case you want to know more about these books.
1. The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline. In 19th century London, a young woman is seduced and impregnated by her employer, sent to Newgate Prison, then exiled to Australia. Based on true events. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49397137-the-exiles
This author also wrote Orphan Train which was very good. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15818107-orphan-train
2. The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs. A young woman inherits her mother's bookshop in San Fran and learns about her family and herself.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48613318-the-lost-and-found-bookshop
3. The Nemesis Manifesto by Eric Van Lustbader, an action-packed international thriller. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52380917-the-nemesis-manifesto
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ruth...i most humbly disagree. The DH and VR both love reading....however, one of us, is very good at cleaning out the attic and most things that collect dust. Early on in the marriage, VR realized that throwing stuff out was going to be a problem. DH gave VR “permission” to clean out the attic, so, VR obliged. At the end of the day, most of what VR put on the curb was back in the attic.....
Forty two years of dancing around one another....DH tries to slip stuff into the house while VR tries to slip stuff out....
E.B. White said it best....
“A home is like a reservoir equipped with a check valve; the valve permits influx but prevents outflow.”0 -
Sounds like you make a good team! I have more problem getting rid of pictures than anything else.
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Been on and off these boards since initial diagnosis in 2006 (14+ years now cancer-free!) but embarrassed to say I've never shared any of my favorite authors or book titles on this thread. Can't really say why I've been silent. Maybe because my reading is almost 100% fiction...it's all about escaping into a good story to block out the world around me...and I didn't think my suggestions would be diverse enough to most. Anyway, I decided to go out on a limb and put a few of my favorites out there today that may perhaps help someone else disappear into a good book for a few hours (or more!).
Some favorite go-to authors are: Harlen Coben, James Grippando, Lee Child, Jodi Picoult (her current "The Book of Two Ways" is the first that I really struggled with; finished it but it is my least favorite of anything she's written), Liane Moriarty, Jennifer Weiner, John Grisham, Kristin Hannah, Greg Isles, John Lescroat, David Baldacci, Shari Lapena, Greer Hendricks, Michael Connelly, Michael Palmer, Elin Hilderbrand, William Bernhardt, Gregg Hurwitz, Michael Koryta, Robin Cook, Alice Feeney, and when I'm in the right mood, Jeffrey Deaver, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and Michael Crichton. Also enjoy Jonathan Kellerman, Sandra Brown, Karin Slaughter, Lisa Scattoline, Lisa Gardner, and Elizabeth Berg.
A few books I've read recently (or not so recently) by authors other than those above which made an impression on me:
In An Instant – Suzanne Redfearn (read in 2 sittings this week)
This Tender Land – William Kent Krueger
The Vanishing Half – Brit Bennett
I Know This Much is True – Wally Lamb (HBO Miniseries with Mark Ruffalo – Outstanding!)
Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens Moore
The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
A Nearly Normal Family – M. T. Edvardsson
The Woman in the Window – A. J .Finn
Sarah's Key – Tatiana de Rosnay
Before We Were Yours – Lisa Wingate
The Supremes at Earl's All You Can Eat – Edward Kelsey
Dream Daughter – Diane Chamberlain
The Orphan Train – Christina Baker Kline
Just started what appears to be a fantasy-type read, The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig. So far, so good.
Hoping to be more involved sharing books/authors in the days ahead!
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hi sundance, welcome! I've read and enjoyed many of the books and authors you mentioned. Several are on my TBR list.
The Exiles was so good I read it in a day. The Lost and Found Bookshop was sweet and also a fast read. Now into The Nemesis Manifesto which was written by someone who was writing sequels to Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne books. This book was going to be another sequel titled The Bourne Manifesto but he decided to cease channeling Ludlum and create a new (female) protagonist of his own: Evan Ryder. I picked it up on the strength of an endorsement by Lee Child on the cover, "Lustbader is an automatic buy-today read-tonight author for me."
The reason I said "picked up books for myself" above is I'm getting books for my mom and MIL. Their libraries are not open yet and neither one drives for a curbside pickup so I get them books. My mom is a VR and will go through 5-6 books a week. She likes historical fiction, Christian fiction, and cozy mysteries but needs large-print books that aren't too heavy which is a challenge. Her latest kick is Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who ... series. My MIL isn't much of a reader but I've got her hooked on Jan Karon's Mitford series. I bring her one large-print book a week. She's up to #10 so only four more to go.
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Welcome, sundance! Like badger, I enjoy many of the same authors as you and read a lot of fiction (especially these days!). Keep those suggestions coming; I love finding new authors to read.
I am currently reading A Woman of No Importance. (I think this was one of Ruth's recommendations.) I started it this morning and cannot put it down! Virginia Hall was a fascinating woman and I am tempted to peek at the end to assure myself that she survives the war. I definitely recommend it.
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Just had to pop in and say how much I enjoyed reading, Just As I Am by Cicely Tyson. She is a fantastic writer, actress and Black woman. I had no idea her faith was so deep or her opinions of what Black life should be, but this book explained it all. She richly deserved all the awards, medals and tributes. If anything, read the final chapter. It is amazing.
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Current book is A Libertarian Walks into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (And Some Bears) by Matthew Holgoltz-Hetling. Heard about this book on a political website I frequent. Here's the goodreads link and description.
"Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear."
Next up is The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can Eat.
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Thank you for the welcome, Badger and JKL2017!
Read The Midnight Library (Matt Haig) this week and also Regretting You (Colleen Hoover). As it turns out, both books have a focus on life choices and regrets along with a fair amount of hope thrown in. So I guess that was my theme for the week. LOL. I enjoyed both books, even though each had some very sad passages. I guess The Midnight Library would be classified as a fantasy and it definitely had a darker background of the two. The main character decides to end her life by suicide but finds herself in a "special" library in between life and death where she's given an opportunity to select books from the shelves that will take her into a parallel universe where she can see how her life might have turned out if she had made different choices along the way. Not the type of book I would usually choose and can be triggering if suicide, mental health, and/or overdose are triggering issues for you. But it was a book that was ultimately about self-examination and hope, so I would recommend it. Regretting You is a mother/daughter story but also a story about relationships. It's told in alternating points of view by a mother and daughter. It's a story of love, betrayal, tragedy, grief, forgiveness, and ultimately, hope. The chapters are short and it's easy to keep going from one to the next. I won't include any spoilers but I literally had tears in my eyes reading the last few chapters. First book I've read by this author. Will definitely look for more.
PS: I'm a relatively new poster. Can't seem to make the italics icon work for book titles. Is there a trick to it? The anal side of me cringes not seeing them italicized. LOL.
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sundance, I had the same boggle about bolding and italicizing. Found out by chance that you have to click the formatting before typing the words you want bolded or in italics. Then click again when you want to stop the formatting. HTH!
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sundance - thanks for your comments. I will look up both books.
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Sundance, those books both sound great. I am going to log out & order then right now!
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Thank you for the formatting tip, Badger. As you can see from this font, it worked for me! Yay!!
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Adding to my list I Hotel by Karen Tei Yamashita (2010). "..an epic & expansive novel about San Francisco's revolutionary Asian-American movement of the 1960's and 70's." Anyone read it?
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Minus, I haven't read that book. Please let us know how you liked it.
Finished A Libertarian Walks into a Bear... very interesting. I believe in freedom AND paying taxes for public services (like the library!). Anyone here from New Hampshire?
Had checked out Tidelands by Philippa Gregory for my mom. Got it back from her yesterday and spent today reading it. Very good historical fiction! Gregory is known for writing about royals but this one focuses on the common folk and women in particular. Tidelands is book one in "a sweeping new series with the story of a poor, uneducated midwife named Alinor who is tempted by a forbidden love affair--but all too aware of the dangers awaiting a woman who dares to step out of the place society carved for her." (quote from goodreads) Book #2 is Dark Tides. Mom has that one and I am looking forward to reading it when I get it back next week. Then I will have to wait who knows how long for the next book in the series.
Now on to The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can Eat.
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