Book Lovers Club
Comments
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I just finished Elizabeth George's newest Inspector Lynley book - Believing the Lie. I find her writing totally engrossing - so many threads that she somehow ties together, and the people seem so "every day" real. I had been saving it for a "bad" day that I was spending in bed and it filled the bill. But of course I love the Brits (even tho she's an American).
Starting on A.S. Byatt's Possession. I'm reading for escape right now and it's working.
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Great picture! I want to read Z as soon as I have the time. It looks interesting.
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Destina, hit up the Pearl Street Mall and find The Boulder Bookstore and Peppercorn for cool kitchen shopping. Any restaurant will be fine! Got time for a close-in hike? Go up to Chatauqua and take one of the many trails up toward the FlatIrons. Lots of good brew pubs, if that's your thing. I would take a book to a coffee shop on the Pearl Street Mall and sit outside, read, looking at the flowers and all the people! Enjoy!
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Thanks, Anne! I will take some of your suggestions. How fun!
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I love this thread!! so many great book recommendations......so upon YOUR recommendations - I recently finished Wild by Cheryl Strayed - what a beautifully written and thought provoking book. So my question is: has anyone read her novel, Torch? I read a summary of it and it sounds like it covers similar parent/child ground - so I will read it, but I will let some time pass and in the meantime I will look for her latest book, Tiny Beautiful Things - gleaned from her Dear Sugar advice column! So, has anyone read that?
Currently I am finishing French Milk by Lucy Knisley. It is a graphic/cartoon/journal of her 6 weeks in Paris with her mother during which time she turned 22 and her mom, 50. Interesting that both books are much about mother/daughter relationships esp at the time the daughter is entering adulthood. This book has been funny and touching so far, I should probably be taking notes on restaurants and museums for my trip to Paris someday(hah - as if EVER) anyway, Lucy is a good writer and great cartoonist - however - I am having to actually put on my reading glasses so I can read some of her TINY comments.
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VR, it seems I've taken a page from your book of reading non-fiction.
Just finished Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. Great read - highly recommend. Trips to the supermarket will never be the same. On the waiting list for Gulp. Picked up a book of feminist sci-fi short stories: Sisters Odd: Curious Bedtime Tales, to read in the interim but nearly done already. Good thing I picked up a second book on impulse, from the teen shelf - How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous. Your students would probably like that one, Ruth.
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Ahhh...Badger...Just put a reserve on both books that you recommended! Regarding the Salt Sugar and Fat book's author, Michael Moss, he's mentioned in the book that I just finished reading. And speaking of youth shelf books, I just read the 48 page, The Mossad and Other Israeli Spies:
http://www.amazon.com/Mossad-Other-Israeli-Spies-Around/dp/1608182282
After I finished reading it, the DH put down the new John Lescroat AND Baldacci books...to read it as well!
Speaking of food books, after I read Gulp, I read The Food Police: A Well-Fed Manifesto about the POLITICS on your Plate:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Food-Police-Well-Fed-Manifesto/dp/0307987035
Excellent, Excellent, Excellent book! Will turn everything you THINK you know about food, UPSIDE DOWN! Written by an agricultural economist professor from Oklahoma, the book explains the hyprocity of "The Food Police." Reading the book, I was reminded of what U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "If you don't have 30 years to devote to social policy, then don't get involved."
Here's a column that the author of The Food Police, Jason Lusk wrote for Time magazine, Moss is mentioned in the article:
http://ideas.time.com/2013/05/06/viewpoint-the-new-food-police-are-out-of-touch/
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Charlaine Harris is winding up the Southern Vampire Mysteries - ie Sooke Stackhouse. here is a great review of the series/comparison to the tv series True Blood - no spoiler! http://www.salon.com/2013/05/16/so_long_sookie_stackhouse/
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Thanks Jelson..I was afraid to finish the series. But I think ill ne brave and try it! LOL
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I will definitely check out How They Croaked!
Went to Gatsby tonight. I thought it was very good and true to the book (despite the addition of some un-1920's era rap music
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I haven't had much time to read lately, but have kept up with the good recommendations from everyone! Still wading through Eric Topol's Creative Destruction of Medicine, taking time to research the science and chemistry that I don't understand.
Also couldn't resist taking a look at Gulp, downloaded the Kindle sample and will buy it later today. Just love the combination of quirkiness and factual information she provides! DH just finished The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar - an historical fiction novel of the last days of the Romanovs. I read this several years ago with a book group in Fairfax and loved it.
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Just finished Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes. She's written a history & commentary about how & why America "took over" the Hawaiian Islands. She starts with the first boat load of New England missionaries in 1819 and takes us through today. She makes some fascinating comparisons with America's "take over" of the Indian lands, and goes from Martin Luther King to Teddy Roosevelt to Dole to the Pilgrims to whaling to the California gold rush. I like her writing & will definitely be looking up some of her other books.
One of her sources is Isabella L. Bird's The Hawaiian Archipelago, 1875. That's been on my list for awhile. Bird made some amazing voyages for that day and age, especially for woman.
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Minus Two..Don't miss Sarah Vowell's Assasination Vacation....Chester Arthur makes an appearance in her book....and if you read Destiny of the Republic...he's mentioned as Garfield's successor. Most folks don't know much about Arthur, but I think he's worth knowing more about....considering the fact that he too was once a President!
Regarding Eric Topol's book...I know it's a difficult book to get through...When I was reading it, I felt like I was learning a new language...By the time I finished reading it, I felt that that new language took me on a journey into a glimpse of the future. A future where, one day soon, everyone will be speaking with that new language. Reading the book also helps me now understand the meaning of many news and journal articles that ONLY speak about genetics. Not since I learned Statistics in college...have I learned so much. I hope you get as much as I did out of the book!
Will be picking up at the Library today, How They Croaked....
Reading, Drunk Pink Tank now....Similar to Freakonomics:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k4VDF0YRRs
http://www.amazon.com/Drunk-Tank-Pink-Unexpected-Forces/dp/1594204543
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Just finished Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute - author of On the Beach, A Town Like Alice and No Highway among other books). It was written in 1960 and it reminds me of two books reviewed here within the last year - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed out the Window - in that it is an unexpected adventure - filled quest by a middle-aged or older man which brings self-awareness. The book is set in the mid 1950's England. a mild-mannered columnist for a hobbyist magazine called Miniature Mechanic is named trustee of his sister and brother in law's estate and guardian of their orphaned daughter and is duty bound to recover a container of valuable jewels lost when their yacht is wrecked in the South Pacific.Leaving England for the first time, with little money, he is helped by the many engineers who are fans of his miniature machine plans featured in the magazine You meet many interesting characters and learn much about engineering, aeronautics, commercial transport, how to sail different vessels, life in post-war Britain, the lumber industry of the Pacific Northwest. No sex and no adultery!
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I picked up a wonderful book at my first visit to our local library yesterday. I went to fiction and started with the 'A's. I actually picked the book by it's cover and it's turned out to be wonderful. It's called Unsaid, written by Neil Abramson. It's uncanny how I picked this book and as it turns out it's about animals, love, and in small part, breast cancer. On the back cover are comments one of which is from Temple Grandin who really liked it. That endorsement in itself kind of gives you a bit of a sense of the story line. I do not want to spoil it by my description.
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How did miss this thread? I couldn't read during chemo (too exhausted) but I am back at it now. I use my Nook to borrow constantly from the library. I've written down so many books from this thread. Thank you.
I am a big Sharyn McCrumb fan and loved the Rosewood Casket, along with many other of her books.
I've read all of the Sookie Stackhouse books. Quick and entertaining read.
Just read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet. Hilarious.
Very similar to Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel. Have to say this was my favorite.
I will be back to this thread bit don't think I can keep up with you all. :-)0 -
Marple - some of my happiest hours were browsing the fiction shelves in alphabetical order during my son's weekly hour of math tutoring at a neighboring community's library. I often chose books based on their covers - and the summary on the inside flap!
Gritgirl - you have listed many of my favorite authors. My favorite Christopher Moore book is Lamb, not having ever read the new testaments, it was my first introduction to the life of Jesus. I was so charmed I shared the book with my former Christian Brother now Religion teacher at a Catholic School - brother - in - law and he loved it too.
Seeing the authors you like, I recommend Tom Holt and Ben Aaronovitch.
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Jelson. Thank you so much for the recommendations.
When I was in elementary school, they had a book ordering program where we'd order books, and they'd be delivered to the school in a couple weeks. The day those books arrived was the best day of the year for me. Better thrill than anything.0 -
gritgirl I remember with great fondness the book mobile in elementary school. It was one of the highlights of my childhood!
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I like my magic, vampires and werewolves with a lot of humor. So, I also recommend:Gail Carriger's Alexia Tarabbotti novels - starting with Soulless. I have just started Hounded , the first of the Iron Druid Chronicles by Kevin Hearne - in which a 2100 year old Druid book store owner living in Phoenix, has to deal with ancient and peculiar gods, goddesses and assorted immortals.
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Have to say I didn't like and didn't finish How They Croaked. Yes it was a teen book but IMHO writing style was overly simplistic and faux-hip. Got through King Tut and Cleopatra and gave it up. Ruth & VR, hope you like it better than I did. Perhaps I should add that I didn't like and didn't finish Twilight either, due to its "See Spot Run" feel.
Someone lent me Vince Flynn's first novel Term Limits and it's so good! My first book by him but definitely not my last. Just picked up Transfer of Power, his second book. (I like to read in order.) Also (finally) borrowed Ken Follett's Fall of Giants. I figure maybe the third book will be out by the time I get through books one and two of the trilogy.
gritgirl, I remember that! The Scholastic Book Fair, right? Loved it too.
Still on the waiting list for Gulp.
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Vince Flynn is among the DH's favorites! Finished How They Croaked. Okay. Picked up a few facts.... Read Saving Wright: The Freeman House... Terrific book about Frank Lloyd Wright, The Freemans and the preservation of the home. Went to a lecture on Frank Gehry last week... Getting my architecture fix....
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Read Joe Queenan's Closing Time. It's about his youth & growing up. He didn't have a good experience but he persevered. His writing is amazing - as Voracious promised.
Enjoyed John Hart's Iron House about two orphans who are separated and live VERY different lives. Mob ties and some violence if that bother's you.
Trying to catch up on my "Atlantic" magazines since I'm a number of months behind. Always a couple of good James Fallows pieces and other interesting artlcles. This magazine makes me think.
Anybody know who I might call to refresh some books that were left in a non-vented building for too long? They smell pretty bad but one is a book about the early space program that is (quote) "the only book my son ever cared about" (un-quote). I thought I might try something like a fire restoration place? Any other ideas?
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I just googled how to clean musty books and found variations on placing the books in either a black plastic bag with an open container of baking soda or placing in a paper bag with baking soda sprinkled on the books. Here is one page on how to clean your books in general, with the musty book entry at the bottom. If you read through how to clean your books, what with special erasers, soft cloths and petroleum jelly, stuffing the musty ones in a bag and leaving them for a while doesn't seem like much effort at all! If you try it, do tell how it worked for you, I have a bunch of musty books in my basement.
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I just finished reading A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki and I highly recommend it. It's an unforgettable story written in beautiful prose. I loved it. I'm also excited for Khaled Hosseini's new book, And the Mountains Echoed. It's going to be a great summer for reading!
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Jelson: Thanks for the link. Yes, I'll the ideas & let everyone know. It's a 'coffee table' size book so I'll try the plastic first before I start taping paper bags together.
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I am an avid reader and love to read to quiet my mind. Since my diagnoses sometimes this is the only thing that helps me to briefly escape the world of cancer. Will list some of the books I've read soon. Meanwhile thanks for starting this thread.
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Badger, I've read every one of Vince Flynn's books, as well as all the ones by David Baldacci , Lee Childs, Jo Nesbo, Elizabeth George and now am gorging on one Deborah Crombie mystery after another, usually one a day! Also read all the Kurt Wallender series... He's a /Swedish detective, can't remember author's name. Love mysteries!!!
Just finished also 'The Woman Upstairs,' recently out. Pretty good.0 -
Welcome Dwilli !!
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Wave....John Lescroat...Add him to your list if you have't read him! And Daniel Silva too. John Le Carre is also among the top spy novelists as well.
Welcome Dwilli....Can't wait to read your list of favorites!
Today I am finishing up a children's novel, The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook, written by my cousin, Joanne Rocklin.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Five-Lives-Our-Zook/dp/1419701924
She's an award winning children's author and I have to say, this latest book of hers is WONDERFUL! I can't put it down! Is VR a shill or what????
VR knows she's not the only one who thinks her cousin is a terrific writer, because every time she cranks out a book, she picks up another award. One of her best friends is Judy Blume...and another best friend of hers is Michael Chabon's mother! Too bad we live so far away from one another because VR would LOVE to be in her circle of friends!!!!!! VR will be seeing her in two weeks and can hardly wait to discuss her latest book! A few months ago we read together Joe Queenan's newest book, One For the Books. It was so much fun reading it together....we kept texting one another all weekend long...A cyber book club! She tends to read more fiction than VR, so she keeps VR in the loop of the world of fiction. We tend to enjoy the same films and of course, we enjoy the same family...so we never run out of things to discuss.... Nothing better in life than books, family and friends....and when those family members and friends share the same love for the written word....there's NOTHING better in life except for LOVE......0
