What Are You Reading the Week of 22 September 2012?

The 22nd: Rosamunde Pilcher

Elizabeth Bear

The 23rd: Baroness Orczy

Peter David

Pauline Réage

The 24th: Yves Navarre

John Brunner

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The 25th: William Faulkner

...what, you need someone else today? Pshaw!

The 26th: Mark Haddon

Jane Smiley

T.S Eliot

The 27th: Jim Thompson

Joyce Johnson

Roberta Gellis

The 28th: Marcia Muller

Prosper Mérimée

Tuli Kupferberg

Still working on Crouching buzzard, leaping loon. And Three men in a boat

Finished Escape from Camp 14 and started Three Weeks With My Brother and Kitchen.

Finished What the People of the Wilderness Used to Believe In by Oili Räihälä. This is a short survey of the religious and folk beliefs of northern Finland and Lapland. I got this during my recent vacation in Finland at a parkland that contains some prehistoric rock drawings discussed in the book.

Finishing up The Virgin Cure, a great historical novel set in 1800s NYC.

About to dive into The Coroner's Lunch after reading many raves here on LT.

I'm into A Land More Kind Than Home and it's turning out to be one of my favourites his year.

Richard: Is the author of The Girl Sleuth Bobbie Ann Mason? I'm also finding Girl Sleuth by Melanie Rehak and I want to make sure I get the right one.

Gracious! Baroness Orczy and Pauline Reage both born on Sep. 23. I'd like to put them in a room and see if they'd have anything to say to each other.

Right now I'm reading The Captain's Wife by Douglas Kelley. I'm a little over 100 pages in and enjoying it very much.

Next up should be They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Runaways and Renegades by Barbara Holland, and after that, Pirates! by Celia Rees, which is YA historical ficton about two female pirates. I think I'm on a theme, here, lol!

Pauline Reage is one of my favorite mystics, and Tuli Kupferberg is one of my favorite philosophers. If they were alive I'd celebrate their birthdays.

Robert

>8 NarratorLady: I'm reading Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, and I have to say...this is more fun than most novels I've read here lately, more lively in writing, and with a better plot!

Much happy. Yes.

I started The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson and am enjoying it so far

>4 rocketjk: rocketjk: That sounds very interesting indeed.

>10 bookwoman247: bookwoman247: Sounds that way LOL Nice to get into a groove.

The Well of Lost Plots arrived in today's mail; so, I'll be starting that tonight. Still reading At Bertram's Hotel and Reading the Wind.

Today is the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Happy Hobbit Day, everyone!

Thank you, Richard. I gave my sister the link to the Kindle edition of the Nancy Drew book. It's right up her alley.

Just finished The Cat's Table, which I liked a lot. Starting The 37th Hour because I read that the relationships among the protagonists were interesting and original.

I love Donna Andrews. Her books are hilarious!!! I have read all of them, except the latest that talks about what happens after she has her babies and brings them home. I know if Ihad to live my life like that, I would go nuts, but the things that happen are outrageous and so funny. I have to be careful I don't read these in restaurants as I tend to laugh and laugh.

I think that At Bertram's Hotel is one of Agatha Christie's best Jane Marple stories. There are many I know, but this is one of my favorites. It seems to contain a bit more suspense and mystery, it has a great storyline, and it definitely puts Ms. Marple through her paces to solve the mystery.

#12: Thanks Richard. I've ordered it from the library and look forward to it!

I see that Richard has added F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday to the queue on the 24th and what luck---I just started The Great Gatsby. I read it first as a college freshman, which was in the Paleolithic era, so I'm wondering how it will strike me now.

Happy Autumn Equinox everyone. And coincidentally, happy Elizabeth Bear's birthday. I've had her Carnival on my whishlist for some time. I guess it's time to get to it.
On paper I'm 2/3 of the way through Indian Summer: The Tragic Story of Louis Francis Sockalexis, the First Native American in Major League Baseball by Brian McDonald. Tragic is right. Anti-Indian prejudice and alcoholism combine to destroy a great athlete's career.
On Nook I'm enjoying The Awakening
Audiobook I'm about 2/3 of the way through a book of short stories by T. C. Boyle, Tooth and Claw. Some of them are great: the interconnected ones about the dog lady, Jubilation about a completely planned master community and the story comparing the death of a child with meteor's crash to earth really got to me.

Flitting between Mary Boleyn and The Murder at the Vicarage (reread - but it was about 30 years ago so I genuinely don't remeber who 'dunnit'. I can normally figure out most Agatha Christies withing the first two chapters but I'm halfway through this one and don't really have more than a couple of vague suspects).

Halfway through The Orphan Master's Son an extremely well wriiten novel in of all places North Korea.

I'm reading The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips which is amusing. I chose it because there's a group at Reading Globally on here that is doing a theme read right now: Middle Eastern Literature.

I finished off the next Inspector Montalbano mystery, August Heat. I thought that it was a return to form for Camilleri. His two previous books were a little disappointing.

Next up is Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov.

Grrr. Posted this in the wrong list.

I finished and REVIEWED Tan Twan Eng's beautiful Booker nominated novel The Garden of Evening Mists. Continuing on with The Great Gatsby.

>27 brenzi: Terrific review! That book's coming up fast on my TBR.

Ditto brenzi. Looking forward to it!

I'm just starting They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades by Barbara Holland.

I'm looking forward to digging into this! It looks like a great compendium of mini-bios of such fascinating and diverse women as Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart, Gertrude Bell, Mata Hari, and on and on.

Just started Wonder by R.J. Palacio

I am really enjoying Wild Decembers by Irish writer Edna O'Brien, a few of my favourite books are by Edna House of Splendid Isolation and Down by The River.

I've written my four-star review of Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, about America's Sweetheart (before Emmylou Harris), over in my thread...post #182.

I read only half of your review of The Garden of Evening Mists because I was afraid I'd learn too much, but you made me put it on hold at the library (still over 600 holds on 50 Shades of Grey, 4 on The Garden of Evening Mists, love my library system) Unfortunately the love was decreased when I found that they don't have any copies of They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades, but I was able to get a real cheap used copy from BN. What a fine list this is this week.

I finished the depressing Indian Summer: The Tragic Story of Louis Francis Sockalexis, the First Native American in Major League Baseball. As Brian McDonald wrote Sockalexis's biography he also included US history of the time, the aftermath of the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War with the input of Hearst and Pulitzer, and most pertinently the rise of the prohibition movement. Watching the self destruction of Sockalexis you can see why people might think that banning alcohol would save lives. He had one wonderful season of major league ball with fans shouting Sockalexis, Sockalexis - Sock it to them, Sockalexis, then drank himself right out of a career. What a disease.
Now I'm starting My Two Moms: Everything I Needed to Know About Gay Marriage I Learned in Boy Scouts by Zach Wahls.

I just finished A Land More Kind Than Home. I finished it in two sittings. It was quite good. So now I'm on to One Good Hustle from the Giller longlist.

After a reading funk, and weeks without time to read (my commute changed from 3 hours on the train daily to driving my car and sometimes taking the train) I finally finished another book: Transition. Wow. I just love Iain Banks with an M. but without is good too :D
I started a collection of stories by Tolkien, how could I not with all that new movie material surrounding me :D

Finished the lovely Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea. I strongly recommend the audio version read by Urrea himself. I felt like I was listening to an epic poem!

Now on to Three Pines and Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny, and I continue listening to Swamplandia and reading the incredible Alexandria Quartet.

I have just finished reading the novel The Line of Beauty by author Alan Hollinghurst .

#38> How did you like Line of Beauty? I read it a couple of years back and found it quite good.

I am still working on Damned Good Show but will finish it soon. I am also reading Everything But the Coffee which is all about the Starbucks culture and really enjoying every minute of that book. I am listening to Red Herring Without Mustard the third in the Flavia De Luce series and this will be my last one of this series as I find Flavia a little irritating. I am sure that there are other mystery series out there that will appeal to me more than this one does.

I have a good start on IQ84. I am reading this one for two groups. There is a group read of it here on LT sponsored by Mark on his thread, and my book discussion group is also reading this one. Since it is almost 1000 pages I figure that I had better get cracking on it. The last book I tried to read with Mark is one I still haven't finished.

I am finally starting State of Wonder! That book has been in my TBR pile for too long.

I'm listening to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and rereading Fire from Heaven, the first in Mary Renault's trilogy on Alexander.

Finished A Time of Gifts yesterday and made a start on Between the Woods and the Water today, although I was disappointed to learn that Patrick Leigh Fermor never actually completed the account of his fascinating journey across Europe.

Am now about three quarters of the way through Paradise Lost.

I am more than mid-way through A Clash of Kings but taking a bit of a Westeros break and am 100+ pages (and will likely finish tonight) the superbly awesome Finding Ultra by Rich Roll. An amazing story of human transformation. He's a fellow lawyer, vegan, sober person and distance athlete ... so I just seem to resonate with his words.

#39 The Line of Beauty has Excellent writing. I like the way the novel tackle the issue of AIDS and how the politics of the 80s deal with homosexuality with prejudice. The author is really good in describing the material richness of the society life and how it criticizes the shallow joys of the people the lives in it. English is not my first language so I had to have my dictionary at all time with me, there's so much vocabularies that I have learned while reading this novel.

I finished Tolkien's wonderful fairy tales (a collection of three) and started some fluff, Bridget Jones' Diary next.

I finished Damned Good Show by Derek Robinson. This is an unsentimental expose novel along the lines of Catch 22 that deals with the early years of the British bombing campaign against Germany. This title was the third novel published in the author's RAF series, but it was the second in historical order. I found this one to much more subdued than the second book in this series, Good Clean Fight, which I also read this month, and so liked the former mentioned title better than the later. The people were more understandable, but still it was very apparent that the author held a very critical view of the RAF conduct of the air war in Europe, especially from 1939 - 42. The notes at the end of the book were very helpful in understanding the difficulties of training bomber crews and teaching them to accurately bomb cities in order to be effective. The question of accuracy is one that is still controversial among historians and military history buffs. It is clear from what the author says that the RAF relied on crews with inferior training as well as planes that were just plan crap. (This is also backed up in the historical record.) The prevailing view today is to romanticize the crews and the planes from WWII, but the author makes it clear that the equipment was not the best, and that there was little effort made on the part of bomber command to halt operations until better machinery could be procured. The result was a horrible loss of life and talent early in the war. It is also clear that RAF Bomber Command relied on the pluck and dash of its human capital to carry the day. Neither the crews, the planes, or the rest of humanity gained anything by using this kind of thinking. While the idea of this book is good, and it makes an enlightening read, the execution is only average. I would recommend the Bartle Bull Anton Ryder books over these.

I finished, loved and reviewed Finding Ultra and am back to A Clash of Kings (good, but dragging a tad).

>47 benitastrnad: benitastrnad: Because of the determined, almost criminal refusal of Nevil Chamberlain and his government to recognize the inevitability of war with Hitler's Germany and the resulting lack of preperation and funding, Britain was caught with almost no trained Army or RAF personnel and very little materiel. It's a miracle they could get bomber's manned and off the ground. Even once a war footing was recognized, training and production of necessary things like rifles and bombs went at a snail's pace because Chamberlain didn't want to alarm Hitler. And the naval and military side were mishandled. It wasn't till Churchill became PM that any kind of serious war effort started. A good look at pre-war Britain and the struggle against Appeasement is Troublesome Young Men.

Yes, most stories about WWII Britain are romanticized, but maybe they have to be for the British to be able to cope with that terrible period of their history. If America hadn't entered the war Britain, incredibly brave and gallant as she was, might very well have succombed in the end.

Last night I finished Reading the Wind. It looks like NLS doesn't have the third book, The Wings of Creation. Oh well. I'm not heartbroken.The Silver Ship and the Sea and Reading the Wind were pretty good but not riveting.

Finished The Well of Lost Plots last night/this morning and will start Something Rotten tonight. I'm getting slightly bored and impatient, but am prepared to carry on. As a writer myself, I find the Well and all that goes on there thought provoking

I am reading The Snowman by Jo Nesbo and A Hunger Like No Other by Kresley Cole.

Forgot to say earlier that on finishing Reading the Wind last night I picked up Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy .

I'm not sure if it's a book hangover (from the wonderful The Dog Stars) or work stress that's keeping me from reading and concentrating on any of the good books I've got going. Or maybe I've got too many books going...whatever, I've started The Bartender's Tale, Everything Matters! and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. All are keepers.

Finished The Shadowed Sun and started The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, both by N. K. Jemisin.

I started my ER book January First by Michael Schofield last night

So, I finished up Full Dark, No Stars on Monday. I really, really enjoyed the book and have placed it on my keeper shelf. I immediately started Shades of Souls Passed: True Accounts of Ghostly Encounters in Madison County, New York which took me a day to finish. I had received this book from the author for review. It was really good!

Remember me yodeling about Knockemstiff, y'all? And The Devil All the Time? I think all of y'all ought to slide on over to this blog to read an interview with Donald Ray Pollock, perpetrator of the books.

He's right interestin'!

I'll be starting Pirates! by Celia Rees, a YA historical fiction about two female pirates. Too bad I missed reading this for Talk Like a Pirate Day!

ETA: I finished They Went Whistling: Women Wayfarers, Warriors, Runaways, and Renegades by Barbara Holland, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The bios were mostly fascinating, and I liked Holland's snappy sense of humor and critical analysis.

I finished West from Appomattox which I found interesting. The author describes the political developments of Victorian America developing the thesis that the political concepts and conflicts of today were formed then. On the one hand were the individualists personified by the cowboy, on the other "special interests" who insist that the playing field is not even.

55, Shades of Souls Passed: True Accounts of Ghostly Encounters in Madison County, New York has no touchstone because it is not catalogued in LibraryThing. You could try putting it in your library.

Robert

I did put the book in my library, Robert. Maybe it takes time for it to be picked up by the Library Thing catalog, or something? :) Thanks so much for your help. :)

It seems to take time to be accessible to the touchstones, but I looked for it in Your Library and didn't see it there. I did not search your Read But Unowned, where I notice it is now, but I did search LibraryThing.

Shades of Souls Passed: True Accounts of Ghostly Encounters in Madison County, New York. I have forced it here by putting the work number and two colons before the title in the brackets. Now we can each hold our breath as I hit Post Message and watch to see whether it appears at the upper right of the thread.

Robert

I'm reading my ER book City of Women about Berlin in 1943 when it was, mostly, a city of women. About a hundred pages in, it's getting to be a page turner.

Robert, thank you so much! :) And now I know how to do it for myself, yeah! :) The touchstones seem to be working just fine.

#62
I want to read City of Women and have been watching the reaction to it. It seems to be very enthusiastic on the positive side. I hope you enjoy this one.

Meanwhile, I am engrossed in 1Q84. Already there are plot twists and I am only 90 pages into the novel, so I am putting other things on hold while I concentrate on this book.

I stalled on a couple of my at-home books so instead have turned to a reread of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Finally watched the miniseries starring Alec Guinness last weekend, so I'm enjoying the book even more with that fresh in my mind. Meanwhile, my bus book is a John Dickson Carr mystery entitled The Four False Weapons.

Finished Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck this evening. Should have been a New Yorker-length feature, not a book.

Still reading Some Assembly Required, and have started The Warmth of Other Suns.

Finished the marvelous The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny. Great narrator just enhances the wonderful eighth Inspector Gamache installment. I teared up at the end!

Now to finish listening to the so-so Swamplandia and the lush Alexandria Quartet.

I finished Bridget Jones' Diary which was fluffy enough :D. Next up is Rocannon by Le Guin.

#67
I am going to have to break down and read that Alexandria Quartet. I keep putting it off because I think it will take too much time, but I need to just do it. I also probably need to read the Cairo books by Mahfouz. I might learn something about a part of the world about which I know so little.

I've reviewed the infuriating The Obama Hate Machine, a detailed account of the Rich Red-Meat Right's vicious and insanely untruthful attacks on the president, in my thread...post #112.

I am reading Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton. 140 pages left to go. I think it's a great book. Nothing like I've ever read before with the whole out of body experience going on. It's quirky, fun and suspenseful. I have no idea who the arsonist is. And I won't tell...

allow me to jump in ;)

I'm currently reading 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I've actually been reading it for a while, mainly on my ride home :)
I haven't been reading adult books for a while (I'm usually in YA :D) so it's a good change ;) I love the book, and I'm enjoying it so much :D

So on Monday, while I was reading Shades of Souls Passed: True Accounts of Ghostly Encounters in Madison County, New York, I started reading the prologue of Coroner at Large although I suppose I really got into the book by Tuesday. So far, it's really a very engrossing book and I find it extremely interesting! :)

Okay, I had to Pearl Rule one. Keeper of Light and Dust just, well, just...it couldn't...I...go read my review...Orphans thread, #196.

Swamplandia.....myeh.....now on to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.

Another one where I hollered "Uncle!": Superclass, review in my thread...post #133.

Reading The Garden of Evening Mists and am enthralled so far. It's short listed for the Booker Prize - although that's no reason to read it.

>68 divinenanny: divinenanny: Rocannon's World is very good. What am I saying? *Everything* by Ursula K. Le Guin is very good at absolute minimum. Much of her work is outstanding.

>70 richardderus: richardderus: You're a better reader than I am, Richard. Try as I might, I can't get through more than a few pages of any Right Wing book before major vomiting sets in. I commend your fortitude.

Still busy with Something Rotten.

The Righteous Mind - Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. Fascinating book about the psychology of beliefs and moral judgements.

>78 Catreona: Ha! I couldn't agree more. I am on an Ursula Le Guin collecting/reading spree after 'discovering' her when I bought A Wizard of Earthsea last year.

I finished Take Me Out to the Ball Game: A History of Baseball in America - Modern Scholar Audiobook. I loved it when Timothy Shutt talked about the philosophy of baseball or games in general or when he described why players did what they did and how history in general affected the game, but didn't care for the stats. Now, just 5 days late for her birthday, I've started Elizabeth Bear's Carnival. I do love feminist Science Fiction and this one is about gender identity, reproduction, space travel, sociology - really interesting.
I also finished My Two Moms which used to be subtitled Everything I Needed to Know About Gay Marriage I learned in Boy Scouts but now is subtitled Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family. Zach Wahls says he still values the lessons he learned while achieving Eagle Scout status, he still thinks Boy Scouts of America is a great organization in spite of its homophobia, so I'm not sure why the title change. Anyway, the first half of the book sounds like it was written by one of Mitt Romney's sons. Wahl is a conservative, religious (well, UU religious) over achieving capitalist who could write positive thinking motivational speeches for business presentations. Then he gets to his thoughts about marriage equality and he applies the same reason and responsibility to the topic that he does to working toward Eagle Scout status. In short, he does a great job that I don't think can be refuted. And his mothers sound like people out of a movie; they put as much effort and devotion into parenting as a venture capitalist does into making money. That boy is going far, I think.
So, having finished that on paper I've started Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes. So far, so good.

>78 Catreona: Thanks, Catreona, I am a little shaky in that effort just now. I really have reached outrage overload. I am worn out from screaming at my books.

>81 Citizenjoyce: I'm about halfway through Jana Bibi's Excellent Fortunes, Joyce, and liking it a good deal.

I've finished Pirates! by Celia Rees. It was pretty flawed, but I didn't care because it was great fun!

Now, I've finally got my hands on a copy of Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehax, which I'm going to start and I am really looking forward to, thanks to Richard's raves.

Finally broke my reading slump with a long overdue read of Farmer Boy.

I finished A Clash of Kings and am taking a breather from Westeros. Saw Garden of Evening Mists on the new fiction shelves and based on everyone's enjoyment here, decided to snag it. So far, I am loving it, but just a few pages in.

>84 fuzzi: fuzzi: So glad you got over your reading slump!

First Among Sequels arrived in today's mail, so I'll be able to go straight to it on finishing Something Rotten. That won't be for a while though. I'm barely a third of the way through Something Rotten.

I just finished reading Coroner at Large tonight and on a side note, apparently Thomas T. Noguchi was the partial inspiration for Jack Klugman's character of Dr. Quincy in the television show "Quincy M. E." which aired from October 1976 to May 1983. Coroner at Large was very intriguing to me and I enjoyed this book immensely! :) I immediately started Amy and Isabelle which, I think, is turning out to be an excellent book so far.

#87 Enjoy Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Stout, she also wrote Olive Kitteridge and Abide with Me, Olive was my favourite, all good reading.

Just finished a reread of Fire from Heaven, the first book of Mary Renault's Alexander Trilogy. Loved it as much as the first time.