Books: What have people been reading recently?

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Becca72
Date: 22 Jul 10 - 10:28 AM

Just finished "That Old Cape Magic" by Richard Russo. I enjoyed it and will be checking out his other work.

Now I'm reading "Last Words" by George Carlin and really kicking myself for never having seen him in concert when I had the chance.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Jul 10 - 10:56 PM

Just finished a newish one by Fannie Flagg called "Can't Wait to Get to Heaven." Another one of her wonderful Southern novels as good as, in its own way, as Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe. She writes so well and knows her subjects so well. This one is very funny, uplifting, and profound. I am recommending it to a lot of folks.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 05 Jul 10 - 01:14 AM

Hiero's Journey by Sterling Lanier and The Dresden Books as well.

Don

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Eiseley
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 10:08 PM

I've been voyaging with Captain Jack Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin. I have just embarked on the sixth voyage, this time aboard the Fleche, bound for England where I trust Jack will stop the unscrupulous silver-miner who has been encroaching on his goodness by nefarious subterfuge. Ah for the open sea in a twenty-four-gun frigate!

Eiseley

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Riginslinger
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 09:26 PM

"I consider Kingsolver one of our national treasures."

               Yeah, I like Barbara Kingsolver too.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 08:36 PM

Finished Scarborough's Godmother's Web and also, another, entertaining but not well written novel called Spirit Kills by an author new to me. It was written in 1995, so I suspect/hope his later books improved some. It was okay for a fast, summer read.:-) I've got an Anne Perry and another to go for this week, plus I have one coming which REALLY sounds good:

Forbidden Fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold stories of ordinary men and women who took extraor dinary measures, risking life and limb to be together. It1s the story of couples who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to defy the system that allowed slave masters to breed and sell people like cattle. Some broke the taboo against interracial marriage, putting their lives in the most severe peril.

In one remarkable story, a Georgia couple who fled slavery wearing multiple disguises sailed for England with bounty hunters and federal troops on their trail. A fugitive slave from Virginia spent seventeen arduous years searching for his wife. A Missouri slave fell in love with his white Mormon neighbor and escaped to Canada to be with her, putting pepper in his shoes to throw dogs off the scent at night and hiding in trees by day.

Betty DeRamus gleaned these amazing stories from descendants of runaway slave couples, unpublished memoirs, Civil War records, books, magazines, and dozens of previously untapped sources. Beautifully and compassionately written, this important book reveals a chapter of American history that is shameful but is about triumph as well as torture, achievement as well as degradation, and indomitable love as well as hate.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Amos
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 08:20 PM

I am just finishing Meetings with the Archangel by Stephen Mitchell, which is very funny in a sort of erudite way, and then will begin Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna. I consider Kingsolver one of our national treasures.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: mousethief
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 07:11 PM

The Color of Magic didn't even come close to living up to the hype. No plot, weak characters, lame jokes. Feh. Whatever it is that draws people into Discworld, I don't get it.

Next: Trilobite! Eyewitness to Evolution. So far, very well written.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Ron Davies
Date: 04 Jul 10 - 03:31 PM

The Guinn book also deals with how and why misperceptions are spread by the media.   In this case those misperceptions were a major source of entertainment for the public, and first helped Bonnie and Clyde, then turned against them. Both the positive and the negative slants were based on misinformation.

And the book has 55 pages of footnotes, including dealing in detail with the credibility of the author's sources.

As I said, the best book I've read in years.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Joe_F
Date: 03 Jul 10 - 09:33 PM

_What If the Moon Didn't Exist?_ by Neil F. Comins. Disappointingly, the author appears to have been ignorant (in 1993) of the most important service the moon performs for us: it stabilizes the obliquity of the ecliptic, thus guaranteeing fairly consistent seasons.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 10:05 PM

Been visiting my second cousins near Chicago...actually I am in Chicago now getting ready to go to an Irish Pub..Kitty O'Shea's in Chicago Hilton...anyway, Donna gave me two Holocaust books..one is about the Lebensborn? babies and one called Sarah's Key about a family taken from France to Auschwitz...which is funny..not funny..but I was just talking to someone about having been in Paris a few years back and seeing all these signs on these old buildings in back streets..this was the scene of ......the book was about the rounding up of Jews and putting them in a bicycle racing complex until they were taken further...

And we went through Postville Iowa, near where our great great grandparents settled. That was recently the scene of a great international story including traditional Iowans, Orthodox Jews and immigrant Guatamalens who were gathered in a raid and kept for some time in fairgrounds perhaps? There are books out about this...

And my cousin Tom gave me two books about creating communities in prison populations. One I am just finishing is called my Soul Cried out to me or something like that...I could never be a librarian because I can never remember the names or authors of books..I usually can remember the color or look of it though.

And I am right across the street from a beautiful public library in Chicago with huge copper wings on the roof...and a couple of blocks away from Barnes and Noble..and they still have the great chairs to sit in. So I was readiing how to control clutter books, which I just love, as well as other self improvement books..which I never seem to improve from but I do enjoy reading them. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: mousethief
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 09:51 PM

My stepdaughter and youngest son both read The Life of Pi and were less than thrilled. I'll probably give it a miss.

Finished the book on the Plague and am now reading Pratchett's The Color of Magic (first time).

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Ron Davies
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 09:45 PM

I'll plug the same book I was praising on another thread---the tattoo thread, to which it also had a connection.


The best book I've read in years.   And I read a lot of books--all non-fiction.

Go Down Together, by Jeff Guinn

Title comes from a poem written by Bonnie Parker predicting their end.

A sociological study of the really down and out in Texas in the 20's (farmers--including Clyde Barrow's father--who got caught in the US farm depression which hit 10 years before the official Depression:   "When World War I ended....American farmers went down to defeat with the Germans".   Totally illiterate, he wound up close to the very bottom of the economic pile, a junkman.

A dual biography of Bonnie and Clyde-- a whole long list of stuff in the movie is dead wrong (unsurprisingly).

A whodunnit, since you know it will end in bullets, but not exactly how it reached that point.

History that reads like a novel.

And on top of that, a great dry sense of humor:

"She hadn't divorced Roy, so she couldn't re-marry even if she wanted to, and besides, her boyfriend of the moment was an ordinary guy who clearly wasn't fantasy material even in Bonnie's rich imagination....And then, just like it might have happened in the movies, her tragically crippled former lover unexpectedly arrived to reclaim her. Clyde and Bonnie fell into a passionate embrace while her suddenly ex-boyfriend slunk out of the house."

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 07:44 PM

I also recommend Life of Pi.

Just reading Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's "The Godmother's Web." It's been years since I've read any of her books, though I've always loved her writings. I am definitely enjoying this one.

riginslinger, of all of Doig's book I've read, so far, Whistling Season is my fav., with his nonfiction House of Sky a close second.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: John on the Sunset Coast
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 01:34 PM

For fun--"Sherlock Holmes in America," an anthology of the master's cases in various major US cities doing his thing.

For a bit more rigor--"Understanding Genesis" by Nahum Sarna

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Ebbie
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 12:50 PM

My bedside book, currently, is 'The Bridge' , The Life and Rise of Barack Obama, by David Remmick. Well written and puts the definitive lie, as if we needed it, to the claim that records of certain years of his life are missing.

At the homeless shelter where I am making myself available for interviews, I have picked up two books from their crowded bookshelves. (I'll be taking them back- although I think my daughter might like the one so I may send it to her). One is an Anna Quindlen novel, 'Object Lessons'. It is well written with great insight into family dynamics, but events are sometimes– I can't think of the word right now- writing that projects upcoming situations? -I want to say 'telegraphed', but that is not the word- . Humph. Anyway, I will finish it.

I am also reading a warm, comforting, mother of a book titled 'Amazing Grace' by Kathleen Norris. I don't often read 'religious' books but this one is different. Norris is a searcher who has found what she needs. It is especially interesting to me because I am trying to understand my own daughter's simple but strong faith. (Where she got it, I dunno) I think she may like to have this book in her library.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: theleveller
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 10:37 AM

Currently reading Christopher Hill's 'Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution' - a bit on the dry side, which is unusual for Hill - and also Harry Fletcher's 'A Life On the Humber', recommended by Tom Bliss, which is really enlightening and makes you realise what a hard life people led at the beginning of the 20th century.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 10:08 AM

I've just finished the first three books in the Twilight saga - great easy reading - I've just ordered the paperback of the fourth book, due out in August.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 09:30 AM

"Just finished The Life and Death of St Kilda - Tom Steel - the story of a remote island off the Outer Hebrides, its people and the loss of their way of life as travel to the island became easier."

Read it too, jacqui - and, just by way of a bit of one-upmanship - been there, seen it, fell in love with Hirta and especially Boreray and The Stacs. Village Bay is a powerful, spiritual place - once visited, never forgotten.

A wonderful, magical group of islands inhabited by Soay sheep, thousands of seabirds, and the almost-tangible souls of long-gone St. Kildans.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 09:21 AM

Just finished a wonderful autobiography of the writer Paula Fox called "Borrowed Finery". Reread To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, a truly grand book. Am now reading Master and Commander by O'Brian and am really enjoying it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: number 6
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 09:11 AM

"Beatrice and Virgil" by Yan Martel

This was a book I received as a Father's Day gift ... and a wonderful gift it is.

I also suggest another novel by this writer ... "Life of Pi"

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Becca72
Date: 02 Jul 10 - 08:40 AM

"Why We Suck" by Denis Leary

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: mousethief
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 07:33 PM

Just finished 26th reading of LOTR. Now reading In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death & the World It Made. Fascinating stuff!

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 07:27 PM

The 19th Wife

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Wesley S
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 06:42 PM

"Columbine" by Dave Cullen. A chilling account of the high school shootings in 1999. Just about everything I remember hearing about it in the media was wrong. And some of the cover-ups that took place were just plain shameful. Highly recommended. Esp if you are a teacher.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 05:42 PM

Still Lark Rise to Candleford

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Big Ballad Singer
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 04:49 PM

I just finished reading "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex" and am currently into "The Irish Republic", a comprehensive history of the struggle for Irish Independence up to and including Collins, DeValera and the beginnings of the IRA.

The book on the Essex was a fascinating read and really eye-opening as to the circumstances and events that made whaling not only a lucrative and dangerous business but also a prime and fertile ground for folk tales and songs. I highly recommend it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Neil D
Date: 01 Jul 10 - 04:18 PM

"Azincourt" by Bernard Cornwell

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Riginslinger
Date: 27 Jun 10 - 08:26 AM

I really like Ivan Doig. Read "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" sometime back. Love regionalists in general, actually.

    But right now I am reading "The Mission Song," by John Le Carre.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jun 10 - 12:02 AM

Ivan Doig's "The Whistling Season"...excellent.

"Skeletons on the Zahara" by Dean King. A true account of Americans sailors shipwrecked and sold into slavery in West Africa in 1815. An extraordinary journey, the book combines much of the memoirs of two survivors, the captain and the master.

Reading another Doig right now: Dancing At the Rascal Fair. Quite good.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 22 May 10 - 03:57 PM

Just finished House of Sky which will be one of my all-time favourites and revered books. The quality of writing, intricate and lyrical expressions and truthful relating without getting overly-sentimental is of a rare and unique quality, imo...as the Chicago Sun-Times said, "Doig is to be considered the premier writer of the American West," and then some, imo. THIS is the book I wish I'd had enough material to even attempt when it came to working my dad's stories into a book. I could never match the ability of expression as Doig, though, so there ya go.

This, near the end of the book, took my breath away and pierced my heart: Split the tongue of the silence that beats in you when you first know that a parent is dying, and it will begin to recite everything unsaid across a lifetime.

Just started on Ruled Britannia. So far, so good.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: GUEST,Charmion's brother Andrew
Date: 22 May 10 - 03:42 PM

Niall Ferguson's economic history, _The Ascent of Money_, and Chris Wattie's account of 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, in Kandahar in 2006, _Contact Charlie_.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 21 May 10 - 02:42 AM

Reaching onto the collection of book-ends of the family history.

Having wrapped up all grandfather's history books,pre-1900....
Currently in the middle of great-grand-dad's copy of
McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader (2nd Ed) 1857

Most pleased with the Welch example "The Well of St. Keyne" a copy
of which and multi-format tune is in the Digital Tradition.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

The marginal notes and morality are as valid today as then. And humor is timeless.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Rowan
Date: 21 May 10 - 12:40 AM

Millenium Trilogy, starts with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Definitely a series worth reading! I saw the film of the first in the series the other night and recommend that people read the series before viewing the film. The film makers do an excellent job of keeping the necessary elements of the plot so that it makes a good film, even though they change details of how the element works, but a lot of the richness of the book is lost. They also throw in repetitions of a scene that properly belongs in the second book.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Cats
Date: 20 May 10 - 05:32 PM

For a bit of light relief and good fun try 'Katy Carter Wants a Hero' by Ruth Saberton. It's a chicklit so not what I would normally read but made me laugh out loud. You'll never look at lobsters in the same way again and it will make you wonder what your vicars wife does when she's not being a vicar's wife!!!! Long Live Pinchy!!

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Shanghaiceltic
Date: 19 May 10 - 06:18 PM

Stieg Larsens Millenium Trilogy, starts with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Excellent set of books with some good twists and turns. Pity he died shortly after publishing the last in the trilogy.

Simon Schammers History of England, nice fresh look at English History.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 19 May 10 - 09:18 AM

I'm a Patrick O'Brian fan, and am almost ready to begin again his Master and Commander series, all twenty books of it. Wonderful!

But for "what I've been reading recently", I just finished O'Brian's great non-sea novel, Testimonies.   

O'Brian had written and published one earlier novel, when he was fourteen or fifteen, which showed some of his abilities which were to blossom so greatly later, but Testimonies was his first novel as an adult (that is to say "grown up", as opposed to erotic) writer. It's marvelous.

Testimonies is told in segments of narrations out of the mouths of various characters in the overarching story, each telling, in the words and personality of that character, and from that character's knowledge of the story facts, so that you get a sort of simultaneous overview of what's happening. O'Brian does this very well.

Mr. Pugh, the protagonist, is a middle-aged scholar and writer, retired from the Oxford University faculty after receiving an inheritance, who takes a house in Wales, where he expects to work on his book on medieval literature. You see his gradual acclimatization to Welsh culture over a period of time, including falling in love (mutually) with the wife of a neighbor (but with no adultery).

Without trying to set out the plot development in details, I'll just say that the whole thing eventuates in a tragic ending, with the lady either poisoning herself or being poisoned by her family.

For lovers of fine novelistic writing generally, as well as O'Brian fans in particular, I cannot recommend this novel highly enough.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:58 PM

There are some rave reviews of his book, too, Art...check if out: Click. You two certainly bear a family resemblance..neat photos of him on google.

Maryanne, kewl!

Ebbie, ah, I understand. In case, may I recommend A Lady's Life in the Rockies? I also have her one abut the Yangtze Valley and Beyond, but haven't tackled it yet. If you go to the author page Amazon has for her, you will see she was an intrepid explorer mostly on her own as a "proper" Englishwoman in the late 1890s.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: maire-aine
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:28 PM

Hey, Kat. I'm also a Fidelma fan. I've been reading that series for years.

Maryanne

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Art Thieme
Date: 18 May 10 - 10:12 PM

Right now I am reading my brother Richard Thieme's latest book. Called MIND GAMES, it is ostensibly science-fiction, but if you are one of the many who think life is everywhere, and that THEY have been coming to visit us for a long time, these short stories will absolutely fascinate you! Google on his name. You might be amazed!

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Ebbie
Date: 18 May 10 - 09:21 PM

kat, nothing against novels - and I do read some - but there is so much nonfiction that I haven't gotten to yet that I rarely seek out fiction.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Rowan
Date: 18 May 10 - 08:12 PM

A TV series Travels with a Tangerine", based on "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta" was recently broadcast on Oz ABC. He certainly got around.

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 May 10 - 06:09 PM

Another series you might enjoy, Ebbie, is the Marcus Didius Falco novels by Lindsey Davis. Satirical, historically accurate, they are great reads with all kinds of everyday minutiae not normally taught about ancient Rome...what the ordinary people lived like...written in such a grand and fun style. I highly recommend them!

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 18 May 10 - 08:13 AM

Currently on Dervla Murphy's "Through the Embers of Chaos: Balkan Journeys", a travelogue-cum-history about former-Yugoslavia at the end of the 90s, after the NATO bombings. Very insightful, but difficult reading because of the tiny print in the John Murray paperback.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: CET
Date: 18 May 10 - 05:39 AM

As is my wont, I have a clutch of books on the go. Beside me as I type is "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta" by Ross E. Dunn, about the Moroccan scholar who left his home in Tangier in 1325 to do the hajj to Mecca and ended up travelling all the way to China. He didn't return to Tangier until 1349. I picked that up in the bookshop of the Smithsonian Institution Natural History Museum a couple of days ago. Also acquired during our current holiday in the U.S.: "Island of the Sequinned Love Nun", by Christopher Moore and "And I was There" by Admiral Layton, who was Nimitz' intelligence chief throughout WWII, about the breaking of the Japanese codes.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 May 10 - 01:41 PM

Becca - I don't know why I find Parker's prose so compelling, but it is good news that there are still a couple of books in the process.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 May 10 - 01:25 PM

No, I haven't read that series, kat. Thanks for the link. I'll see where my tastes take me next.

Something fascinating in the Cahill book is that he goes back to when Rome was in decline and shows by their own writings and actions that they didn't even know it. And he brings in Augustine, and shows how drastically he veered from being the sensitive thinker to becoming the Father of the Inquisition, eventually bringing in the undereducated empathic Patrick who arguably showed the Irish how their traditional way of life could blend and morph into the mores of Christianity.

I haven't been home much lately so I haven't finished the book yet but the end is approaching. I'm going to be sorry to finish it.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: jacqui.c
Date: 17 May 10 - 12:26 PM

Just finished The Life and Death of St Kilda - Tom Steel - the story of a remote island off the Outer Hebrides, its people and the loss of their way of life as travel to the island became easier.

It was a fascinating look at a completely different way of life, one shaped over may years by the coming of religion and one that was still, in many ways, tied the the feudal system as late as the 19th century.

Just started The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins.

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recently?
From: katlaughing
Date: 17 May 10 - 12:00 PM

Ebbie, are you familiar with the Sister Fidelma series? If you click on Fidelma's World, you can read the author's explanation of the way it was in Ireland in the seventh century...talk about enlightened!

I loved Year of Wonders, thank for the recommendation. I am in the middle of House of Sky...I wish I'd had that much material to write about my dad; it is an incredible book...so beautifully written.

Next in my pile is Ruled Britannia..can't wait to start it.

So, thanks to Mudcatters I keep getting such great books to enjoy.

Forgot, I also just finished the two most recent in the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency. I love those books!!

Subject: RE: BS: Books-What have people been reading recent
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 May 10 - 10:32 AM

In reading How the Irish Saved Civilization, for the first time I understand something of how and why Patrick was/is? so revered in Ireland. As I said, fascinating stuff.