What are you reading the week of 28 January 2012?

The 28th: Arnaldur Indriðason


Ismail Kadare

Colette

The 29th: Paddy Chayefsky

Romain Rolland

Anton Chekhov

The 30th: Judith Tarr

Gregory Benford

Shirley Hazzard

The 31st: Derek Jarman

Kenzaburo Oe


Norman Mailer

Zane Gray

The 1st of February: Reynolds Price

Muriel Spark

Langston Hughes


The 2nd: Thomas Disch

James Dickey

James Joyce

The 3rd: Henning Mankell

Paul Auster

James Michener

Gertrude Stein

I've written a long-overdue review, and not a nice one, of The Sheltering Sky in my thread...post #58.

Thanks for the great start, Richard! Langston Hughes is one of my favorite poets, if not my very favorite! His work reads like jazz sounds.

I'm reading Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth by Hilary Spurling, and enjoying it immensely! It's put me in the mood to re-read The Good Earth, or to read another of her many works.

Thanks for another good start, Richard. I've always liked that Gertrude Stein painting.

I'm a ways into Logicomix and about to start Mister Blue, based on the recommendations of Darryl, Caroline and Lisa.

Thanks for starting us off Richard. That is a great painting of Gertrude Stein - do you know who painted that?

I am about to finish up The Secret In Their Eyes by Eduardo Sacheri. I found it on the new fiction/new translations at my library. It is one of my favorite movies of all times and the movie (which won best foreign film Oscar in 2010) was based on this book. It is good (differs greatly in plot from the film), some very thought-provoking moments, and some really silly moments. Not a literary masterwork, but certainly one worth reading, especially if you have any interest in Argentina. But it still has one of my favorite characters of all times - Pablo Sandoval.

Thank you for starting us off Richard!

I'm reading my Early Reviewer Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints by Sam Brower. It's totally messed up. I knew the man is twisted but I really had no idea. Aside from the cringing it's very easy to read.

I also started reading Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design by Faythe Levine this morning. I'm in a crafty mood today and thought this would be a good way to get me going.

PaperbackPirate ~ Handmade Nation looks great! Going to the library now to pick it up! Thanks for the awareness - did not know that one existed.

>5 CarolynSchroeder: Carolyn, that's a Picasso portrait of Miss Stein.

And y'all're welcome for the minimal effort of starting the week's thread. I enjoy it, strangely enough.

I've FINALLY written my long-overdue review of A More Perfect Heaven, an Early Reviewers book I got two months late, but that proved to be very much worth the wait. It's in my thread...post #234.

Thank you Richard, I kind of figured, but was not sure ... those Paris folks all in the same place, same time, kinda thing.

Plus it's not the most famous style of Picasso painting, which leads most of us to pause and wonder if...but gadzooks, can you imagine a more grisly sight than a Cubist portrait of La Stein?!

I am still reading Crusader Gold.

I'm at the halfway point of Talbot Mundy's adventure story, Jungle Jest, set in the jungles of India during waning days of the Raj in the time between the World Wars. Very exciting, well-written yarn.

Joyce and Stein's birthdays are the 2nd and 3rd of February??
Great to know, I have modernism exam the 1st of February and we've discussed some of their work during classes so maybe I'll get an extra mark if I mention this ^^

I've currently pushed the "pause" button on my reading...unless I include the four articles I have to search and read for my reading portfolio by Wednesday :D

After that, I hope I can continue Wuthering Heights and I'd like to join a group read from the 12 in 12 challenge group of Great Expectations by Dickens

Last night I finished Thank You For Smoking, which I loved. Smart, funny, the best kind of satire. I've started The Poison Tree and I like it so far - only about thirty pages in. Later this week I need to start/finish Hunger Games for my book club. I've heard really good things about it, but I'm not really a sci-fi fan. I'm trying to keep an open mind, though.

I'm well into Daphne du Maurier's novel of impersonation, Scapegoat.

Thanks, richard, for a nice start to this week's thread. I have enjoyed setting up a new thread, too, it's not strange at all (unless we're both strange???). :D

I'm still reading Middlemarch, not because it's not good, but because it takes time and some focus.

Last night I read Because of Winn Dixie and loved it! I highly recommend it.

I am enjoying a delighful little book The Sweet Dove Died by Barbara Pym, next maybe yesterday's acquisition The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.

Richard excellent start to our week. thank you. I am still reading The Forgotten Garden hope to finish it soon.

Started G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy and am reading, not without a little difficulty, Ferrol Sams' Run with the horsemen

After a long hiatus, I just finished Grave Situation by Alex MacLean and am about to begin Chasing Amanda by Melissa Foster.

At the risk of being pushy....just wanted to post this at beginning of the week so folks can watch it if they so chose.....

http://vimeo.com/35404908

I smiled...I cried...I loved it!

I've finished Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth by Hilary Spurling. I haven't read a biography of Pearl Buck before, so I hadn't realized just what a unique and fascinating person she was. This was a very interesting book, for sure.

Now I'm back to Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder; yet another good bio. I seem to be on a biography binge lately!

# 12 rocketjk: Jungle Jest sounds interesting.

Am currently reading Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years. I liked the first two diaries of his really much. but as he is getting older and still not becoming self-responsible and such I found him rather annoying. I liked that Pandora kicked him out! :D

I'm almost finished with The Chinese in America, Out of Mao's Shadow and a fairytale on LSD The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Still holding off on Shorty Rossi's book for a couple of more days.

Just started Wanting by Richard Flanagan. Don't know what took me so long to get around to it, very enjoyable so far. I love Kate DiCamillo's books.

I'm reading short stories by Don DeLillo: The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories

Hoping to wind up Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance, The Etymologicon and The Magic of Reality by the end of the month. Not only are they all cruising nicely towards their final pages but it would be another 3 books off my target of 50 BOMBS (http://www.librarything.com/topic/131522) for the year and a great start to 2012.

Ive got one more night of reading Do androids dream of electric sheep as ive very nearly finished it and then i'll be starting Flowers for algernon tomorrow.

#22: I loved Mountains Beyond Mountains ... am jealous of all the folks who got to see Dr. Farmer speak. A great man.

On that note, reading I Shall Not Hate by another great, humanitarian doctor, despite great odds, Izzedin Abuilaish. I have so many people in my life right now microcosmically depressed and angry about their lives (so much of which they just seem to choose to perpetuate), it has been bringing me down. It is balancing and inspiring to read about so many innovators, peace makers and people doing such enormous good. I think I will keep on this non fiction streak and see where it takes me.

I did finish The Secret In Their Eyes which okay to sort of good, differed greatly from the movie. It is the one instance I can think of where the movie was actually better ... far better.

#14> Beth, I read Thank You For Smoking earlier this month and enjoyed it as much as you did, and for the same reasons.

#22> bw, Yes, Jungle Jest is very interesting. It's essentially a very well written adventure story. Wholly engaging if you like that sort of thing. What's interesting is that it takes place sometime relatively soon after World War One and was written in 1932. So while Mundy speaks early on of the Raj being in its waning years (there is even one very brief, essentially off-hand, mention of Gandhi), that is only his own surmise, and probably not one that many British fiction writers would have cared to share in public at that time.

Just finished Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children which was a unique and very entertaining read. Next up: The Distant Hours by Kate Morton.

I'm just about finished with The Blood Stone by Jamila Gavin. Up next -- I want to finish How to Read a Book by Adler. I started HTRAB a while back, but got distracted. Time to finish it before I start anything new.

Still working through Middlemarch, but read (re-read, actually) Snow Dog this morning.

I also finished up the book of Exodus in my Bible.

And I renewed my other library books...

@21--thanks for that link--just awesome! I do hope they win!

#21 hemlokgang, thanks for the video, very much like The Night Bookmobile.

Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie

Just finishing and looooving The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal.

It's a personal story that encompasses generations of history, art, intrigue and evil. I don't want it to end.

Decided to challenge myself and read Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization.
We'll see how that goes by midweek...

Thanks Richard, for another great start to the week.

I seem to be lost in a few too many books this week. Library overload - somehow my holds got away from me.

I'm enjoying all of them - Susan Hill's The Betrayal of Trust, 22 Britannia Road, Flights of Fancy: Birds in Myth, Legend, and Superstition, and Stewart O'Nan's newest, The Odds.

>16 fuzzi: fuzzi - Because of Winn-Dixie was such a charming book!

Finished a re-read of The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It reminded me why I prefer the Sherlock Holmes stories to the novels. My full review is here,

http://www.librarything.com/topic/130815#3205978

Nice simple mystery going A Test of Wills by Charles Todd

On the last disk of On Basilisk Station by David Weber the audiobook that I have in the car

Finished The Magic of Reality, The Etymologicon and Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance, a clutch of fascinating books. Now moving on to The Fifth Queen by Ford Madox Ford.

And then, thanks to NarratorLady (#37), I think it's going to have to be The Hare With Amber Eyes. I started this one several months ago but found the beginning hard to get into and wasn't really in the mood for it so back it went onto Mount TBR but it sounds as if it's worth the effort so I've moved it to the top of the pile.

I am really enjoying Longleg by Glenda Adams.

About half-way through Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie. So far, fanatastic! It reads like a novel and even though you know the ending, there is a certain suspense through it.

I am close to finishing Bird Cloud by Annie Proulx. This is a memoir worth reading. Still plugging away at Oh the Glory of It All. This one isn't worthless, but not as good as Proulx and other memoirs I have read in the last year. I am also reading Clash of Kings on my Nook and finding it hard to put down. In my purse and reading while commuting is London Match by Len Deighton. This is the third in this series and I think it will be my last of the Bernard Samson books for awhile. I have other things I want to read and besides must finish the Karla Trilogy of John LeCarre. I can't believe that LeCarre's books in that series are forty years old. They sure keep me interested. As do the Deighton books, even if they aren't as old as the LeCarre books.

I just started The Observations this morning, thanks to some wonderful LT readers recommendations, and am really enjoying it so far.

Started reading Unfinished Desires by Gail Godwin last night.

#21 - Thanks for posting that link, Hemlokgang, what a wonderful film!

I will be starting Great Expectations this week, and I am also going to be reading White Nights by Anne Cleeves.

After finishing 1Q84, I decided it was time for some trashy historical fiction. So The Virgin's Lover by Philippa Gregory it is!

Hey, everyone! I just finished reading Graffiti Moon by: Cath Crowley. My review for that book should be up on my blog in about a week at The Muses Circle.

I am now reading Pure by: Julianna Baggott!

Mia at The Muses Circle

Posted a very belated review of Property by Valerie Martin..ostensibly for ORANGE JANUARY/JULY....but everybody's welcome:

http://www.librarything.com/work/12846/reviews/72425286

;-}

I just finished Doc by Mary Doria Russell. It was excellent- she is the author of The Sparrow and even though I really had no interest in Doc Holliday, I decided to try it because she is such an amazing writer. She had me spellbound- highly recommended.

Just started The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

hemlok thanks so much for that video. I loved it and I bookmarked it too so I can view it again.

>44 mlpicou: mlpicou: I loved Catherine the Great too when i read it a few months ago. Massie writes beautifully.

>46 seasonsoflove: seasonsoflove: I just finished The Observations a couple of weeks ago and loved it. I'm waiting for her new one from the library Gillespie and I.

>52 ellenflorman: ellenforman: Doc was in my Top Reads of 2011. Russell's writing is just so lovely. You should also try her A Thread of Grace.

I finished Daphne du Maurier's The Scapegoat and loved it. I'd say it's on a par with Rebecca. Now I'm reading Bleak House by Dickens.

Couldn't find The Hare With Amber Eyes (obviously tucked away in the back layer of one of the bookcases) so I got started on Gillespie and I. Oddly, I wasn't that crazy about The Observations but this one is far better and I'm engrossed.

#55 I thought The Observations was a bit flawed but there was a lot of potential so have high hopes for Gillespie and I.

I'm reading The Sisters Brothers and am surprised how much I am enjoying it.

I finished Crusader Gold, and started an ARC, Partials by Dan Wells.

I am not reading it but gave my ARC of Lehrter Station by David Downing to a friend. She has been reading the John Russell WWII series because I recommended them so highly. She just finished Potsdam Station and can't wait to read what happens next. Both she and I highly recommend these books. The books give some insight as to what the German public was thinking, and how they were living, just before the war and during the war. I hope this new book continues to do that for the post-war years when Germany was an occupied country, as I think it is one thing that sets the books apart. When she finishes reading Lehrter I will be reading it. It comes out in March and I hope that those of us who like this series will help it sell well.

One more comment about Lehrter Station - the sales rep who gave me the ARC asked what I thought of the new cover. I don't like it as well as the previous covers. The first four books in the series all showed a picture of the railroad station from the title with the title of the book set in a distinctive banner. This one doesn't do any of that. I liked the other covers as it gave the reader a sense of what the atmosphere of the station was like at the time the story is set. I know it was branding, but I liked it. This cover is too much of a departure from that atmospheric cover.

54 Brenzi - I have read Thread of Grace and really enjoyed it as well. I willbe keeping my eye out for future books by Mary Doria Russell!

I'm reading Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates for my book club. So far it's easy to read.

I finished and have not yet reviewed The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making (wonderful for sophisticated younger readers or adults, cautionary, realistic and inspiring - not a black and white children's book), Out of Mao's Shadow (very informative), and The Chinese in America (which gives a history of both China and America and shows the many ways we've tried to control people of Chinese descent even if they've been here for generations, and why they want to be here rather in China). Now I'm reading A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and am completely enjoying it.

(58) Zoo Station by David Downing was a recommended book from someone here on LT. I tried so hard to get into it, but I just did not like any of the characters and finally gave up.

Maybe another time I'll be more inclined to read it. :(

#56 I just loved The Sisters Brothers it had a magical flow to me, a very special way that the brother narrated it.

I finished The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton and rated it 4 stars. It was an excellent read and I recommend it for those who are intrigued to see how "good" people become criminals and their motivations for doing so. The art of cracking safes was really interesting too.

I'm now reading The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly.

I just finished an early copy of Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear (out at the end of March). It is just as good, if not better, as the rest of the series.

Finally getting to Shadows on the Gulf. Very interesting book.

# 56. Kirsty. PS I can recommend Doc by Mary Doria Russell as a great follow on with the western theme, about the same era.

I just finished Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I liked it, but it's not my favorite Krakauer book. I loved Into Thin Air, I couldn't put it down.
Now I have just begun House of Mirth, my first Edith Wharton.

I finished Partials and am writing my review now. I started The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham which I am enjoying immensely.

I finished A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and thought it was excellent in the way it described language and the mindset of a Chinese immigrant in England. Then to finish my month of China I read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress which had surprises everywhere, and alas a cringeworthy dental work scene. We need no more of those in either literature or film. Speaking of which, the authors of both books also work in film. Now, while I'm listening to another book on China, this time about its economy: Waking Dragon: The Emerging Chinese Economy and Its Impact on the World, I fill full to the gills of reading about it for the moment, so my next book at last is Four Feet Tall and Rising.

Finished Measure for Measure, one of William Shakespeare's lesser known plays. It was much darker than I expected.

My review is here,

http://www.librarything.com/review/81427053

Or my 75 Books Challenge thread,

http://www.librarything.com/topic/130815

#67 Excellent, thanks for the recommendation.

I started In the Company of Others by Jan Karon yesterday

I finished Jungle Jest, a fun trio of interconnected adventure stories set in 1920s India, written by British author Talbot Mundy. More details on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

Today I'll be starting Real Grass, Real Heroes: Baseball's Historic 1941 Season by Dom DiMaggio. Joe's brother, Dom DiMaggio was an outfielder for the Red Sox that year.

I finished The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo: powerful, disturbing, beautiful stories, all of them.

Now I'm reading Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta.

I have just finished reading the novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by author Stieg Larsson .

I am reading East of the Sun by Julia Gregson and rather enjoying it!

The exams are over, hurrah!

And both The Stand and The Shining by Stephen King that I had ordered a couple of days ago arrived today (still pondering on how I'll be able to read The Stand...I can hardly keep the 1,320 pages in one hand :D)

And I borrowed Great Expectations by Charles Dickens from our school library for the group read; http://www.librarything.com/topic/131784
(the fact that the librarian seemed surprised that I borrowed a book out of my own free will and not because I had to study it for some assignment that was forced upon me distressed me a bit. Surely I'm not the only English linguist student there who also borrows book just for entertainment?). I also borrowed a book with ghost stories by Sheridan Le Fanu since I have a slight obsession with ghost stories and gothic tales from the 19th and early 20th Century.

And I still have to finish Wuthering Heights

And I have no classes next week

I'm so excited I don't even know where to begin :D

Mister Blue by Jacques Poulin was an excellent novel. I'm now reading Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

I've just now started A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, and just to make sure that I don't finish it before Dickens' 200th birthday on Tuesday I've also started The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty, which is okay, so far, but which I'm not yet loving.

#81..I know the feeling with The Optimist's Daughter !!

Message removed by author.

Started reading House of Mirth but then decided I'd really rather read The Custom of the Country, also by Edith Wharton. Also listening to The Night Circus.

Got distracted from The Immortal life of Henrietta Lacks, but will get back to it soon. Just bought The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and immediately became immersed. I'm at page 125, and only surfaced when the kids dragged me out because they required some parenting. I'm loving it, even though I know it can't end well.

In honor of the Dickens Bicentennial, I am starting David Copperfield.
I hope to finish by the 7th.

Still reading The Borgia Betrayal that I am enjoying but not loving. Then on to The Quest for Anna Klein by Thomas H.Cook, a suspense novel set on the eve of World war II.

After finishing Don't bet on the prince I've started Charmian, Lady Vibart by Jeffery Jarnol.

I wanted something lighter than Middlemarch last night, so I picked up and breezed through Irish Red, a fun reread. :)

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick and Cinder were both good, and I posted reviews on their book pages.

I finished The Fault in Our Stars this afternoon, then I went out for a long walk to clear my head. An absolutely amazing book, full of laughter and tears. It's definitely a keeper.

I'll probably start Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs after supper.

Oh, my wife has read Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and really liked it, so that may be the next one up for me.

She also has The Fault in Our Stars, but I don't think she's read it yet. I'll let her know about your strong and positive reaction.

#91 SylviaC: I recently read both The fault In Our Stars & Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, both of which I loved. I had never read John Green before but am interested in his other books now.

I think I probably should have waited until tomorrow to start Miss Peregrine, because it was rather difficult to switch over so soon after The Fault in Our Stars. They are very different books. But I am a little over halfway through now, and things are getting very interesting (to say nothing of sinister).

#92 Joe, considering your taste in books, I think you would probably enjoy them both.

#93 framboise, I'll be looking for more John Green books, too.

I finished Gillespie and I in the early hours. I can't recommend this one too highly. As I've said before, I wasn't crazy about The Observations by the same author though, by that, I didn't mean it was a terrible book - far from it, it just fell a bit flat for me in places. That certainly doesn't apply to Gillespie which had me enthralled from page one. It's a book that doesn't hurry itself and if you want an action-packed thriller it may not be for you but, to me, the steady pace just added to its charm. I won't say much about the story because it's a book that guards its secrets closely and I wouldn't want to be the one to spoil that but there is a treat is store for anyone who likes a slow, almost imperceptibly building horror/mystery.

I'm now rereading (for about the 500th time) The French Lieutenant's Woman, partly because it's a book that deserves a reread every few years and partly because it's on my list of 'possibles' for my dissertation. I'm also dipping in and out of Tales of the Celtic Bards and Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII's Discarded Bride.

I'm reading two books right now:

Middlemarch

and

A Christian Manifesto.

New thread here:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/132225#