Reading? Still Sexy: Books Part IV

[Pearl]

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier

Very good! It brought me back to junior high science class with its talks about fossils, ammonites and so on. I learned a lot while being entertained. The book also revealed a lot about class and gender issues in the early 1800s, which was shocking since we live in a more freer world now.

 

[corianderstem]

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

I struggled with the first chunk of this book, then really got into it, and then struggled with the last chunk.

I think it would have helped to have at least a little more knowledge of India's 20th century history. There were times when I was struggling to balance concentrating on the historical information and keep on top of the characters and plot.

I had this problem - although to a lesser extent - with Vikram Chandra's Sacred Games last year, although even with those moments of being a bit lost, I felt more engaged with the story and characters.

 

[kramwest1]

I'm cheating and bought 2 of Thomas Friedman's books on CD cheap off EBay.
I don't have a ton of interest in reading them, but I hear so many references to The World Is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded, that I figure I need to be up on them.
I'm hoping to spend every second of listening to them on a treadmill.

 

[JCOSTER]

Just finished Water for Elephants. If you love animals you'll like this one. Theres also a movie in the works with Robert Patterson.

Also read Racing in the Rain. Dull

Now reading, Keith Richards Life. 1st chapter is a pissa!

 

[WildHoneyAlways]

Thanks for the suggestions Martha. That's the kind of stuff I was looking for.

I just started Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It's his account of what happened on Mt Everest in May of 1996. I've been a couch mountaineer for years but have never picked up this book.

Can anyone recommend any of the other Everest, K2, or other true story climbing books?

 

[corianderstem]

My parents had Into Thin Air lying around their house some years ago, when I was home for a visit. I finished that sucker in one afternoon - just could not put it down.

I've never read any other Everest/climbing books, but I really like the other books Krakauer has written (haven't read the Tillman one, as it doesn't interest me as much).

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

I've heard so many good things about Krakauer's books, I need to start checking them out. I do want to read that Tillman one, that whole situation sounds incredibly fascinating to me, though I have a feeling I'll be rather angry by the end of the book.

I still have yet to pick it up, but I ordered the book about Cleopatra by Stacey Schiff a while back-heard her talking about it on TV and it sounded quite interesting.

I've also been skimming through another book at work when on break that I want to pick up, "1001 Songs To Hear Before You Die". Some of the stories surrounding the songs are pretty neat. Lot of the usual suspects, but some nice surprises in there, too. I've already heard a good deal of the songs listed in there, I noticed .

I don't have a ton of interest in reading them, but I hear so many references to The World Is Flat and Hot, Flat and Crowded, that I figure I need to be up on them.

We got that book a couple years back for my dad. We still have it around here somewhere, I'm curious to check it out myself sometime.

Angela

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Theres also a movie in the works with Robert Patterson.

Pattinson.

 

[Just_Boy]

Return to paradise by James Michener.

 

[corianderstem]

Name All the Animals by Allison Smith

Very good memoir about how the death of the author's brother affected their close-knit, religious family. Grief intertwines with her coming-of-age story.

 

[IWasBored]

James Michener.

:shudder:

 

[martha]

Jefferson and Southwestern Exploration: The Freeman and Custis Accounts of The Red River Expedition of 1806, edited, with introduction and epilogue by Dan L. Flores.


Well, they're no Lewis and Clark, but they were still interesting.

Flores did a nice job of putting this expedition in context, particularly in terms of the peculiar boundary issues of the southern part of the Louisiana Purchase. His annotations, introduction, and epilogue were quite interesting and informative. His specialty appears to be Red River Valley history, and since it's more South than West, I didn't have much experience reading about that area.

Apparently it would've killed him to put a modern map of the Red River into this book, because there wasn't one. I know it's Locals Only, but I downloaded and printed one off the Internets, so the jokes on him.

 

[corianderstem]

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane

Boston post WWI, talk of Bolsheviks, striking policemen, family, politics, corrupt cops, race relations, immigrants, and Babe Ruth.

Completely and utterly loved it.

 

[JCOSTER]

Pattinson.

Thanks! Don't follow him at all.

 

[IWasBored]

i picked up juliet, naked with a couple other books today, because apparently i am easily talked into ridiculous things like 25-mile drives past the closer barnes & noble to the one, well, 25 miles away. oh, did i mention it was sleeting? it was snowing earlier, before i left the house, but spitting frozen rain by the time i got up to hadley. yeah, the roads sucked. but i finished up the last batch of r.a. salvatore and needed more drizzt. my dungeons and dragons nerd buddy (because i'm starting to think if he said hey, we should go jump off this bridge! it would sound like a good idea), it was all his idea. so in addition to the legacy of the drow and cleric quintet anthologized collection whatever you wanna call them, i picked up a copy of that. probably needed a break from fantasy world, anyway.

well, so far the dead shark pictures coming in for the photo exhibit part was cracking me the fuck up. hell, that's probably what i've enjoyed about hornby in general. flawed characters that are so wrapped up in over-analyzing everything, thinking too much, and for whatever reason find themselves in a place where they feel like they have to re-examine every single life decision they've ever made up against absurdness that ends up being way funnier than it should be.

 

[kramwest1]

Has anyone read The Death Instinct by Jed Rubenfeld?

Sounds fascinating--A terrorist bombing on Wall Street in 1920.

The Death Instinct, Jed Rubenfeld, (9781594487828) Hardcover - Barnes & Noble

 

[bono_212]

I'm going to be reading this for a while, so I thought I'd just mention I'm on book two of Clive Barkers' Books of Blood. Really enjoying almost all of the stories so far, but Dread has by far been my favorite, and the only one that has actually made me a bit afraid. A fear of clowns and of losing my hearing will do that to a person.

 

[martha]

August Folly and Pomfret Towers, by Angela Thirkell

Two more novels set in Barsetshire, the fictitious county of Trollope. I loved these; Mrs. Thirkell was in top form. These are novels of the country life of upper class English people in the 30s. Her characters are complete people, and rarely is she judgmental of her them. Her writing is wry and sometimes worthy of a audible laugh.

 

[Reggo]

I just caught an obvious typo in Michio Kaku's Physics Of The Impossible. A book about theoretical physics by the cofounder of string field theory published by Random House. This hurts my brain. Or it proves that no matter how smart you think you are, Spell Check is still easily fooled by homophones.

 

[corianderstem]

The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup by Susan Orelean

Collection of articles she's written over the years about people from all walks of life: a 10-year old boy, a bullfighter, a taxi driver from Ghana, Fab Five Freddy, and on and on. Pleasantly entertaining.

The Likeness by Tana French

I didn't love it the way I loved In the Woods, but it was really good. Great characters, although the basic premise of the plot was pretty implausible. While it's not a sequel to In the Woods, it does focus on one of the major characters from that book and kind of takes off from the former's plotline. I liked it a lot but found myself missing the other major character from the first book.

If You Follow Me by Malena Watrous

American fish-out-of-water in Japan story, a young woman dealing with loss moves to Japan with her girlfriend to teach English. This was more melancholy than other American-in-Japan books I've read. It was good, but not great.

Read it on the flight home, one of those fast reads you can zip through in 4-5 hours because there's nothing else to distract you except for turbulence and the drink cart bumping your elbows.

 

[Carek1230]

I just started The East End by Alan Palmer-4 centuries of London history

 

[martha]

The Long Valley by John Steinbeck

Holy crap. I read this because I'm going to Salinas for Spring Break and I wanted to read some Steinbeck before I went up there. I somehow made it through a BA in Lit without reading him. Well, lucky me for those college years and the decades beyond. Jesus, what a horrible book. All the stories were filled with meanness, violence, and pretty pedestrian writing. If I have to read about gore and brutality and just plain meanness, at least give me some transforming language to make it worth my time. Ugh.


Summer Half by Angela Thirkell

After the banality of Steinbeck, it was such a pleasure to get back to Barsetshire and the gentle humor of Thirkell. I'm still reading these in order, although this one's slightly out or order because I had to wait for it to arrive from the UK. Colin Keith teaches at a boys' public school for a term (the "summer half" of the title). He finds he'd rather read law instead. There's romance, boys at school, and all sort of literary fun. I loved it.

 

[Dalton]

I just started reading The Hunger Games. Anyone else read it?

 

[Dalton]

East of Eden is the only worthwhile thing Steinbeck ever wrote.

 

[martha]

I'll have to trust you on that.

 

[kramwest1]

East of Eden is the only worthwhile thing Steinbeck ever wrote.

Red Pony flashbacks.

 

[Pearl]

Marie Antoinette: The Journey - Antonia Fraser

Very well written, quite sad at the end. I felt sorry for Marie Antoinette when I read about her trial, her imprisonment and her legacy in which she was - and still is - misunderstood.

Now onto a book I promised to read 10 years ago but only now am picking up: The Clan of the Cave Bear, book one of the Earth's Children series.

 

[martha]

Red Pony flashbacks.

Fucking. A.

 

[Dalton]

Just finished the Hunger Games trilogy.

While I understand the appeal of the story and even the characters to a degree, I can't help feeling a bit "meh".

 

[corianderstem]

Yeah, me too. I really loved the first book. Then the second was not as good, but I was still into it. I really was let down by the end of the whole trilogy. Each following book was lesser than the before it.