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Book Lovers Club

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Comments

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited June 2011

    Laurie...Did you read This is Where I Leave You already and were planning on reading An Exclusive Love?

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited June 2011

    If you sisters also want LOL and fall off your bed hiliarious...READ GEOFF DYER!  Begin with Out of Sheer Rage and then if you enjoy it, read his latest, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition.  He's THE MAN!

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited June 2011

    Calvin Trillin is also sometimes HILARIOUS.    His novel, Tepper Isn't Going Out, a book about a man, a car and a parking spot in Manhattan....what can I say???

    Likewise, his book, About Alice...a slim memoir about losing his beloved wife...left me in tears.

    Also, THE MAN!

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited June 2011

    Joe Queenen is also another hilarious writer....

  • ktym
    ktym Member Posts: 673
    edited June 2011

    I'll have to get An Exclusive Love, that sounds very good

  • Unknown
    Unknown
    edited June 2011

      I love books that make me laugh out loud so will look into some of the above mentioned.  I have been home from work for two days, just feeling sort of crappy, so sat in the sun and did some reading.  I finished Twilight and was surprised that I actually liked it and  want to read the next one to find out what happens with Edward and Bella.  Yesterday  I started  reading Pawley's Island which is just a book I picked up at a yardsale awhile back..... so now I want to go to Pawley's Island.  That is something I do...I read about places and then think I need to go there.  John Grisham got to me Memphis.

  • barbaraa
    barbaraa Member Posts: 3,548
    edited June 2011

    I love Janet Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum series. I LOL on every chapter at least once.

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited June 2011

    Marybe...Sorry to hear that you aren't feeling well.  Regarding visiting places after you've read about them, I ran off to visit Chicago after I read Erik Larson's Devil in the White City.  There's something special about visiting a place that you've envisioned and you appreciate the backstory of the ground you are standing on.

    I live in New York and never tire of it when I read stories where the backdrop is New York.  I also enjoy reading architecture and history of New York books.  Whenever I walk or drive around the city, I drive my family NUTS because I marvel at EVERYTHING about the city.

    James Michener is also one of those authors that breathes life into the areas he bases his stories on.

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited June 2011
    One more thing...my friend is angry at me because it's MY fault that she stayed up until 1 AM last night to finish reading An Exclusive Love.Innocent
  • Laurie08
    Laurie08 Member Posts: 2,047
    edited June 2011

    Voracious- I haven't read This is Where I leave you yet.  But I am going to request it at the library on Friday.

  • ginadmc
    ginadmc Member Posts: 183
    edited July 2011

    Here are the book selections I chose from the O magazine summer reading recommendations. They are all still on request at my library

    Conquistadora - Esmeralda Sanitago

    Sister - Rosamund Lupton

    Untold Story: A Novel - Monica Ali

    What Alice Forgot - Liane Moriarty

    I'm still working on A Law of Similars, it's just been a busy week and I hope to have some extra time this holiday weekend.

    Gina

  • ktym
    ktym Member Posts: 673
    edited July 2011
    Just finished Secret Daughter by Shilpi Gowda.  Total tear jerker, I couldn't put it down
  • ruthbru
    ruthbru Member Posts: 47,688
    edited July 2011
    Just finished an excellent book The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. It is written through the eyes of Ernest Hemingway's first wife Hadley. After I finished the book, I googled; all the main incidents, characters etc. are from real life. It really makes you think about the price of fame and ego.
  • Laurie08
    Laurie08 Member Posts: 2,047
    edited July 2011
    ruth- I read the same book The Paris Wife about a month ago and I enjoyed it too.  It got me interested in trying to read more about Hemingway....but I haven't done it yet!
  • saralmom
    saralmom Member Posts: 216
    edited July 2011

    I just finished The Paris Wife today!  I liked it - great beach read (I read it on the beach all weekend!) and like Laurie08, now I want to read more about Hemingway, and maybe more of his writing.  Especially thinking of looking at A Moveable Feast as the author of The Paris Wife says that she referenced it for her book.  

    I read This Is Where I Leave You last week.  Very funny and easy read. 

    Starting Suite Francaise tonight.  

  • ruthbru
    ruthbru Member Posts: 47,688
    edited July 2011

    I loved Suite Francaise!!!

    For The Paris Wife readers, here is what happened to Ernest & Hadley's son Bumby:

    John "Jack" Hadley Nicanor Hemingway (October 10, 1923 - December 1, 2000) was an American writer and conservationist. He was born in Toronto, Canada, the only child of American writer Ernest Hemingway's marriage to his first wife Hadley Richardson. He would later gain two half-brothers from Hemingway's second marriage to Pauline Pfeiffer. Jack was named for his mother and a noted Spanish matador Nicanor Villalta y Serris, whom his father had grown to admire in the year of Jack's birth.[1]

    Nicknamed "Bumby", Hemingway spent his early years in Paris, France, and the Austrian Alps. Gertrude Stein and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, were his godparents.[2]

    He served in World War II as a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a United States wartime intelligence agency formed during World War II-and the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency-working specifically with the French Resistance. In October 1944 he was wounded and captured by the Nazis behind their lines in the Vosges, France.[3] He was kept as a prisoner-of-war at Mosberg Prison Camp until April 1945.[4]

    Following World War II he was stationed in West Berlin, Germany. Hemingway married Byra L. "Puck" Whittlesey on June 25, 1949, in Paris, attended by Julia Child and Alice B. Toklas. The couple had three children: Joan "Muffet" Hemingway (born 1950), Margaux Louise Hemingway (1954-1996), an actress and model, and Mariel Hadley Hemingway (born 1961), an actress, entrepreneur and writer.[4] Puck died in 1988. Margaux died of a barbiturate overdose at age 42.

    He helped finish his father's autobiography, A Moveable Feast (1964)-his father's set of memoirs of his life in 1920s Paris-which was published three years after his father's death in 1961. Throughout his life, Jack Hemingway was an avid fly fisherman. He visited several of the world's best salmon rivers, such as the Norwegian Lærdalselva River. Hemingway also wrote an autobiography, Misadventures of a Fly Fisherman: My life with and without Papa.

    He died on December 1, 2000, at age 77, after suffering complications of heart surgery in New York City.

  • shannonW
    shannonW Member Posts: 17
    edited July 2011
    Just finished The Help. It was soooo good!! I was sad it ended. Read some excerpts to my daughters(10 and 13) which lead to an interesting discussion about the 50's and 60's and the
    South. Can't wait for the movie~already planned a GNO(Girls Night Out) to see it!
  • ruthbru
    ruthbru Member Posts: 47,688
    edited July 2011
    Loved The Help too. One of my all time favorite books.
  • vmudrow
    vmudrow Member Posts: 415
    edited July 2011
    Heaven is For Real, Sarah's Key, Shangai Girls - loved all of these.
  • AnneW
    AnneW Member Posts: 612
    edited July 2011

    THE PARIS WIFE is getting added to my Kindle soon!!

    I finished SOPHIE'S CHOICE, and it really blew me away. Fabulous book. Now I need to rent the movie, so I can see Meryl Strep as Sophie.

    Next up is PARROT AND OLIVIER GO TO AMERICA by Peter Carey. I've read about everything of his, and I love him.

    I agree, that Nora Ephron's I FEEL BAD ABOUT MY NECK will have you wetting your panties with laughter!

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited July 2011

    ahhh....From all of the activity going on at this thread it sounds like summer is in full swing and everyone is enjoying their "Summer Reading."  As a child, I loved when school let out and it was time for "Summer Reading."  Enjoy!Kiss

  • ktym
    ktym Member Posts: 673
    edited July 2011

    Loved Suite Francoise, Sarah's Key was good but hauntingly sad.  I definitely gravitate to books based on events during WWII or England anytime before the 1600's

  • Laurie08
    Laurie08 Member Posts: 2,047
    edited July 2011
    kmmd- Have you read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak?  It is set during WWII, great read, I loved it.
  • Maria_Malta
    Maria_Malta Member Posts: 667
    edited July 2011

    Hello, v pleased to have discovered this thread as I'm an avid reader too... I had a bit of difficulty getting into The Book Thief, but it grew on me, and really enjoyed it from about the middle of the book to the end... For those of you who enjoy books set in the war there is a novel called Birdsong by Sebastien Faulkes, set in World War 1 not 2, but it gives brilliant and vivid descriptions of the trench war and the camp hospitals in France 1914-1918.

    I vary the type of books I read depending on time of year and how much time I have available...and more recently, whether I'm recovering from chemo or not...week after chemo I go for crime or comedy so at the moment I'm reading the memoirs of a British comedian called Dawn French entitled 'Dear Fatty', but I imagine you wouldn't know her in the States...

  • wenweb
    wenweb Member Posts: 471
    edited July 2011

    Yes, Dawn French is on PBS as The Vicar of Dibley.  I enjoy her very much even though it's all reruns.

  • Linda-Renee
    Linda-Renee Member Posts: 16
    edited July 2011

    I'm delighted to find this thread - I also plodded through The Year of the Flood. I thought it was just me, so thanks!

  • msmpatty
    msmpatty Member Posts: 35
    edited July 2011

    Maria_Malta - Good recommendation on "Birdsong".  If you've ever wondered why WWI is remembered as such a brutal war, you'll know why after reading this book.  Absolutely harrowing.

    As for funny ... try Bill Bryson.  He mainly writes travel books, so if you are stuck at home this summer you can travel vicariously.    If you haven't read anything by him I'd start with Neither Here Nor There (travels in Europe), In a Sunburned Country (his take on Australia), or A Walk in the Woods (walking the Appalachian Trail).  All three are laugh out loud funny.

    Patty

  • Maria_Malta
    Maria_Malta Member Posts: 667
    edited July 2011

    Hello msmpatty..yes had heard of Bryson, but not read him, so thanks for recommendations.. will stock up!

  • voraciousreader
    voraciousreader Member Posts: 3,696
    edited July 2011

    msmpatty...Love Bill Bryson's books.  His last book, At Home, weighed a ton...was filled with tons of information and was a ton of laughs...Amazing how a person could make a topic so facinating.

  • vtellen
    vtellen Member Posts: 8
    edited July 2011
    My fiance brought A Walk in the Woods along to the hospital and read it to me on surgery day. I was actually laughing out loud even then. Talk about therapeutic! I have enjoyed Tarquin Hall's Vish Puri books. The Case of the Missing Servant and The Man who Died Laughing. The books are set in India and feature a likable PI. Fun and filled w/ interesting tidbits about daily life in India and yummy food descriptions. Vish is fond of eating! Also, would recommend The Help, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. When all this BC stuff first started going down for me, all I could concentrate on were M.C. Beaton's Hamish books. Little, simple "cozies" that don't take much thought but are still enjoyable. Probably because they are set in a little town on the coast of Scotland! 

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