What Are You Reading the Week of 16 February 2013?

Kay Boyle (19 February 1902 – 27 December 1992) was an American writer, educator, and political activist.

The granddaughter of a publisher, Boyle was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and grew up in several cities but principally in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off. In later years, Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.

Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine.

That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from Brault, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of consumption).

In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together between 1929 until 1932 when, following their divorces, they married. With Vail, she had three more children.

During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. She wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day, among many other magazines; her first collection of stories was published by Harry Crosby's famous Black Sun Press. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women. Kay Boyle's short stories won two O. Henry Awards.

In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Nazism, but at that time, no one in America was listening. In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had two children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and in Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.

Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.

In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963.

Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College where she remained until 1979. During this period she became heavily involved in political activism. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In her later years, she became an active supporter of Amnesty International and worked for the NAACP. After retiring from San Francisco State College, Boyle held several writer-in-residence positions for brief periods of time.

Boyle died at a California seniors home in Mill Valley, California, in 1992. In her lifetime Kay Boyle published more than 40 books, including 14 novels, eight volumes of poetry, 11 collections of short fiction, three children's books, and French to English translations and essays. A comprehensive assessment of Boyle's life and work was published in 1986 titled Kay Boyle, Artist and Activist by Sandra Whipple Spanier. In 1994 Joan Mellen published a voluminous biography titled Kay Boyle. Author of herself.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in addition to her two O. Henry Awards, she received two Guggenheim Fellowships and was given a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Some of Boyle's novels:

Process (written in 1925, unpublished until 2001 )
Plagued by the Nightingale (1931)
Year Before Last (1932)
Gentlemen, I Address You Privately (1933)
My Next Bride (1934)
Monday Night (1938)
The Crazy Hunter: Three Short Novels (The Crazy Hunter, The Bridegroom's Body, and Big Fiddle) (1940)
Primer for Combat (1942)
Avalanche (1944)
A Frenchman Must Die (1946)
1939 (1948)
His Human Majesty (1949),
The Seagull on the Step (1955)
Generation Without Farewell (1960)
The Underground Woman (1975)
Winter Night (1993)

Story collections:

Short Stories (1929)
Wedding Day and Other Stories (1930)
The First Lover and Other Stories (1933)
The White Horses of Vienna (1935) winner of the O. Henry Award
The Astronomer's Wife (1936)
Defeat (1941) winner of the O. Henry Award
Thirty Stories (1946)
The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Postwar Germany (1951)
Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart (1966)
Fifty Stories (1980)
Life Being the Best and Other Stories (1988)

all text culled from Wikipedia

Table for 2 please. What time does it start?

Finished Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym and am working on The loved one by Evelyn Waugh.

Hi haven't stopped by in a while. Just finished The Seer of Sevenwaters by Juliet Marillier and started The Perks of Being a Wallflower really looking forward to it.

I've reviewed the charming first-in-series mystery Mrs. Malory Investigates in my thread...post #40.

We here in the US are having a long weekend, too! It's Celebrate Manitoba Day on Monday. A Federal holiday.

Ah, NovaLee, glad you're joining me in Losing My Mind I just finished it this morning. It's a bit overwrought and repetitious at times, but that's appropriate for a man writing about his own Alzheimer's Disease. It was the perfect accompaniment to Still Alice, and I'm glad I read it. I could feel his continuing and worsening frustration over his mental losses. Now I have to go and find his NPR interviews. One of the men in book club heard them and said they were pretty good.

So now I'm back to reading
On paper: Cutting For Stone and glad to be back with these interesting characters
On Audiobook: outdoors Insurgent which I should finish pretty soon
Indoors Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China once again, the Japanese don't come off very well
On Nook: Ape House and loving it

ETA and it looks like I'm going to have to check out some stories by Kay Boyle. Thanks for the lesson, Richard.

I am now reading a fascinating novel The Air We Breath by Andrea Barrett, the setting is 1916 in a TB sanatorium at Lake Tamarack , oh so interesting.

I love all of Andrea Barrett's novels!

I just finished listening to The Sixth Man and enjoyed it. Now for a laugh or two as I listen to a Stephanie Plum installment, Three To Get Deadly.

I continue reading Babbitt.

Should wind up on both Maggie: a Girl of the Streets and Rule Britannia today. Two wonderful reads.

I'm now reading Not Without Laughter by Langston Hughes. So far, his fiction is as wonderful and rhythmic as his poetry! This book is an African American coming-of-age strory set in early 20th-Century Kansas, and so far, it is a gem!

I nearly forgot to thank Richard for the terrific start to the week! I thought I knew a little something about authors and literature, but almost every week he finds a fascinating author that I've never even heard of! Sir, I much appreciate you filling in the gaps in my knowledge, even though it makes me feel like somewhat of an ignoramus!

I've just started on Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

I'm past the halfway mark on The Thin Red Line, and off to a quick start on Anatomy of a Disappearance. Still listening to Washington: A Life as well. During yesterday's run, the Revolutionary War got started.

I'm reading The 100-year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared. It's the perfect read for a relaxing long weekend.

It will take me a few days to finish up Quality of Mercy but I intend to read The Twelve Tribes of Hattie this week.

Finished Blood Maidens by Barbara Hambly. Still not a vampire fiction fan despite the fact this was NOT badly written soft-core porn. The idea of the book was interesting and it was not badly written, it just didn't set off a spark with me.

Started A Feral Darkness by Doranna Durgin. This book has doggies in it. I like doggies much better than vampires.

I'm still reading Everything's Eventual by Stephen King and The Midwife by Jennifer Worth. I didn't get too much reading done this week because I kept falling asleep. Very tiring week but hopefully I can do some catching up on this long weekend.

>16 seitherin: I like doggies better than people.

Still reading The Noble Revolt: The Overthrow of Charles I. I'm going to be at this a while. It's an interesting book, but I really needed more background information on the events leading up to 1640 before starting it. I keep finding myself looking things up o Wikipedia to get some much needed context.

I finished Sarah's Key which I found disappointing and have started The Betrayal which I like so far.

First off, let me add my voice to the chorus of thanks to Richard for such a great way to start off this thread each week. I'm learning a lot about some authors that were previously unfamiliar to me.

I'm in the middle of Roberto Bolaño's The Skating Rink. After recently reading the author's magnificent and harrowing 2666, which took me a month to finish, I thought it would be awhile before I would dip into his catalog again. However, he was such a masterful story-teller I couldn't resist starting this brief novella while waiting for my latest Early Reviewer book to arrive.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Ten Years of the Claremont Review of Books

1 -- Why do you always highlight the most left-wing authors?

This week I will be attempting to finish Day after night and begin on White Teeth.

23 - I loved White Teeth - I hope you enjoy!

Nice author profile, Richard. I think I met Boyle once or twice very briefly as she was still at San Francisco State when I got there as a lowly Creative Writing grad student in 1986. Maybe at a graduate/faculty gathering.

#4> I'm glad you enjoyed The Free World. I recently read Bezmozgis' short story collection, Natasha, and liked it a lot.

I am still reading Out There in the Woods, a recently published book about a double-murder and 36-day manhunt through the deep woods that took place in 2011 very close to where I live in Mendocino County, CA, USA.

I'm so pleased that y'all enjoy the author profiles! I'm enjoying hunting up the profiled folks, and trying to offer a balance of men-to-women and famous-to-obscure.

>22 barney67: Because I am a left-winger.

28 -- Well, no one's perfect I guess.

Yes, lots of conservatives and religious people in the world to remind me that my work is never done!

#6: Richard, I just discovered the Mrs. Malory series last year on the recommendation of a friend. What a great find ... and there are so many books!

Reading John Guy's Thomas Becket: Warrior, Priest, Rebel which is very interesting and well written.

>30 NarratorLady: Nineteen of them! But the lady is 84, so I don't expect she'll give us any more. The fact that she first published a book after she was sixty makes me want to buy them all just to support the "late bloomer" artists of the world.

>31 richardderus: If I recall, the author was also a biographer and/or friend of Barbara Pym. And I wouldn't put it past an English lady who began to write at sixty to keep on going until the bitter end, so it may be 19 books and counting!

>18 richardderus: Richard, your comment made me wish LT had a "Like" button. Then I read >29 richardderus: and decided I simply must respond to say how much I agree with both.

Continuing the Hunter's Guild series with Archangel's Consort by Nalini Singh, and started Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger, a YA steampunk fantasy. Also rereading Tigana. All for Fantasy February.

The girl who played with fire And the trilogy of Swedish films is available on Netflix. I may have to watch.

>33 Storeetllr: Ha! Thanks, Mary!

My BIL and SIL both work at the Shipley School. While it is still an extremely expensive private school, I don't think it is a boarding school any longer (which it seems to have been when Ms. Boyle attended). Another author to add to my list!!! Thank you, Richard, for the weekly education! I really enjoy it.

I am still reading Adam & Eve and, while I can't say I love it, I am enjoying it a bit more than last week.

<33 Storeetllr even before I read your comment I was thinking the same thing.

Always love your profiles richardderus (although I'm (european) left wing too ;) *wink*wink*)

LOVE the thread start, Richard. Thank you again for educating me

I am about 1/4 into Part Four/Book Four of 2666 and still enjoyig it immensely.

21 ~ That Roberto Bolano book looks good too!. Savage Detectives is also on my Mount TBR and I hope to get to it by the year's end.

Starting Light Years by James Salter....a bit more than halfway thru In Praise of Messy Lives by K. Roiphe

I finished The Quest for Corvo, A. J. A. Symons' masterpiece, subtitled "An Experiment in Biography" -- a fascinating work, a detective story really as the biographer takes us along on his search into the life and work of his elusive subject, the brilliant eccentric English author Frederick W. Rolfe ("Baron Corvo"). I know my next book should be Rolfe's Hadrian the Seventh, the book that sent Symons off on his search, and I have ordered a copy, but I feel the need for a "comfort" read just now. Rolfe's life ended in Venice, and reading about the city reminded me that I haven't read a Brunetti mystery in awhile, so I'll read Drawing Conclusions next and perhaps by then the Rolfe book will have arrived.

I finished A Buyer's Market, Volume 2/12 in Anthony Powell's magnus opus. I'm enjoying it more and more.

Now I'm reading The Lions of Al-Rassan by Guy Gavriel Kay for Fantasy February and 150 pages in I am totally hooked on his universe.

I also started Keeping a Nature Journal by Clare Walker Leslie when I need a little breather from the harsh reality (and seemy underbelly of humanity) of 2666. I am an artist and getting certified in botanical illustration, but I think it is a lovely book or anyone who is drawn to create (drawing, painting, writing, recording, photography, etc.). I picked it up at my local arboretum book store today (which is a treat of the senses in itself).

I finished The Paris Wife and liked it a lot more than I thought I would at the start.

And I'm almost finished with The Deep Blue Good-By, John D MacDonald's first Travis McGee book and I'm very happy that there are so many more to read!

On audio, I just started My Beloved World, Justice Sotomayor's autobiography.

Just finished The End of Your Life Book Club - it hasn't sunk in enough for coherent thought yet beyond "Wow".

I'm still reading Somebody Else's Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage, which is still very good, but today I started Nethergate by Norah Lofts as well. I think that I actually read this book before, but years and years ago, so it's like reading a totally new book for me! :)

Keep on keepin' on, Richard!

Finished Tell the Wolves I'm Home - it was OK. Started The Children's Hospital which so far, is very interesting.

#5: I loved The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Looking forward to the DVD.

I just finished Behind the Beautiful Forevers. I think I am the only one who wasn't blown away by it. I felt it dragged and more often than not put me to sleep. But I felt pressured by all the hype to finish it.

Finished Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? and Gift from the Sea, both good and with food for thought, somewhat surprisingly on more similar themes than I would've guessed.

I've now started Moloka'i and 24/6 (no touchstone).

I discovered Black Majority amongst the bibliography of a Great Course on Colonial America. The book is a scholarly, well documented description of Black culture and life in South Carolina from its founding to ~1740. During this time Blacks provided both skilled and unskilled labor, significantly contributing to the colony's success. As a scholarly book it was sometimes dry but interesting, nonetheless.

I finished Out There in the Woods: The Day-by-Day Account of the Extraordinary 36-Day Manhunt for a Double-Murderer on the Northern California Coast by Stephen Sparks and Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman. This is a self-published, recently released work detailing the harrowing 36-day search through 400 square miles of extremely dense forest for a dangerous, mentally disturbed man who had already murdered two people. This all took place in Mendocino County, the rural northern California county where I live. My review is on the book's work page and on my 50-Book Challenge thread.

>42 CarolynSchroeder:: I know what you mean about needing an occasional break from the relentless nature of 2666. I'm a big fan of Bolaño's writing, but that one gets quite intense in the fourth part. However, I stuck with it and I was glad I did.

I've discovered Ted Bell with his book Hawke. First in the series. I'm loving it and don't know why I hadn't found Mr. Bell before. Hawke has managed to push aside everything else I was reading bits and pieces of! :)

#31
All this talk about how long an author can write reminds me - I just noticed that Robert B. Parker has new book out in the Virgel Cole and Everett Hitch series. I think the title is Ironside. Or something like that. But how can this be. Didn't Parker die a few years ago?

Got Hunger games in a book swap and started it. Am also reading A game of hide and seek by Elizabeth Taylor and am finding it very good Chicklit.

Started Cold Mountain, but am having a hard time continuing.

Read Midnight as one of my TIOLI and ROOT challenges, and am going to tackle Red Storm Rising.

(22) @deniro wrote - Why do you always highlight the most left-wing authors?

Because he can. This isn't The Green Dragon where politics and religion are verboten.

While I do appreciate richard's efforts, it might be interesting to have a variety of authors highlighted again. :)

#56 I had such a hard time with Cold Mountain that I didn't finish it.

~ 52/browner56 ~ I will for sure finish 2666 and I cannot even say I'm not enjoying it, because I really am - surprisingly so. It's just it is so REAL, like all capitals real, about what makes humans tick, but in some bad (scary, newly understood to me) ways ... and I'm a Buddhist, so I just need a little "love" interlude since I'm halfway. But there IS love in that book too, and some real beauty. But I really do see suffering in a new way, like how people suffer, and we label them certain ways, when we really don't know another's story. It's a powerful piece of literature. Maybe in some ways I am slowing it down too, because it is so much information, it's a bit of overload. I feel like I'm being educated to a faction of the world I was clueless about.

re: left wing, right wing ... but isn't it about the writing? I mean, you could also find ways to separate out anything Richard has chosen (race, religion, gender, country of origin, etc.), but I'd prefer to focus on why we are all here ... the writing and the reading ... and all the authors have been damn good ones.

>59 CarolynSchroeder: And Kay Boyle will NOT disappoint on the writing front!

Re: Richard's choice of feature authors: They're not the authors I would pick, obviously: I'm a Canadian prairie gal, and Richard's an East-Coast American (among many other differences). But so far they've each and every one been writers I've never heard of before (and don't think I would ever have heard of otherwise), so Richard has broadened my horizons considerably with his choice of profiles, and I like it: Thank you, Richard!

Actually, everyone here broadens my horizons: I've read/added to Mt. TBR hundreds of books that I probably wouldn't have otherwise heard of, so thank you everyone! There have also, of course, been hundreds of books mentioned (including by Richard, including in his profiles) in which I have no interest whatsoever; no worries, no pressure.

Speaking of books I did pick up here, though, am thinking of turning my attention back to The Secret Book of Sacred Things, which got pushed aside last week.
Edits: And how dare I forget! Also reading Margaret Atwood's Year of the Flood.

Tonight I started Naked to Mine Enemies: the Life of Cardinal Wolsey by Charles W. Ferguson. The book is listed in 59 LT libraries, but there are no reviews.

#54 I don't know the author you cite though a quick check on Wiki tells me he did in fact die a couple of years back and has had one book (so far) published posthumously. However, death doesn't stop a lot of authors - either those with a large trunkful of 'lost' works or those with a band of followers chomping at the bit to continue the name. If you're in any doubt about this you only need take a look at the posthumous works of Virginia Andrews, written by an officially endorsed ghost writer yet still published under the Andrews name. Eeeeyuch! (Must say I don't take it as much of a compliment to any author if their style is so easily replicated.)

Re my own reading - I didn't get as much reading time as I'd anticipated over the weekend but I did finish Rule Britannia last night. This was Daphne du Maurier's last novel and one of her less-well-known ones and while I'd admit that it isn't up there among the all-time classics like Rebecca, The House on the Strand, Frenchman's Creek etc (some things just cannot be beaten), I still found it a most enjoyable read. As with so many of Daffers' books, I wish I knew what happened next and it's definitely going on the 'must read again' shelf.

Started In Search of the Rose Notes By Emily Arsenault which is very good so far.

#63
I was intrigued by the idea of posthumous writing that I looked some things up. One of the things I read said that Robert B. Parker left some extensive notes on several books and that were published after he died. The new Cole and Hitch book is called Ironhorse and it is actually written by another author. I don't think I will be reading that one because I want the books to be by the author. How can a new author have the same voice as the old one? And you make a good point when you said that if it is easy to replicate an author's style it isn't much of a compliment to the author. Wikipedia also said that the estate has decided to continue Parker's Spencer series and one other one with other authors. Dare I say this is all about money?

Regarding the left-wing literature discussion. I think that writing is a radical act. There was a recent author who said that writing makes us human. Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human More often than not that tends to be liberal because author's want to explore new ideas. There is also reactionary writing, but even conservative literature is full of new ideas and by definition that is liberal.

I think that Richard's point is to introduce us to authors that we may not have heard about and to get us to think about what we might be interested in reading. This last summer I read Out of This Furnace by Thomas Bell who today is an obscure author. My father had heard about him at a Czech club meeting because Bell was Czech. I very much enjoyed this book, and was surprised to learn that Bell was also considered a left-wing writer simply because he was in favor of labor unions and wrote about them in his novels about working class America in the 1900 - 1940 period.

Richard has made me realize that there are so many author's out there that I need to read, and I have so little time.

Richardderus, thanks for the research you do on the "author high-lights". I find it very interesting to see how others live(d) their lives. Thanks to you for bringing these individuals to our attention.

Add my thanks to george's, Richard.

Woo, I'm a bit late to the dance. I finished and liked All Roads Lead to Austen, Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, Tell the Wolves I'm home, and the latest Stephanie Plum, Notorious Nineteen. I've reviewed all but the last.

Finished A Feral Darkness and started Wolverine's Daughter, both by Doranna Durgin. A Feral Darkness was actually better than I was expecting it to be. A kind of rural urban fantasy. Involving deity intervention, time manipulation, and doggies.

I'm reading "Map Of Bones (James Rollins)" and put down "Red Storm Rising (Tom Clancy)" again and again...but I try to finish it.

Haven't checked in here in a very, very long time.
Not very active last year.

Anyway, just finished A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin. Book 5 in the series. Very disappointing. The first four sucked you in from the first page with intricate plots, complex characters, grand set pieces, hand wringing, tooth gnashing, and on and on.

This one took a few hundred pages to even get started. Then individual chapters would capture the series' energy, but it was never sustained.
Won't go into detail, because these books are too easy to spoil, but I will say... WAY TOO MUCH Denarys. Just a little of her plot goes a long way. WAY TOO LITTLE or no appearance at all of some far more interesting characters.

Also finished Zone One by Colson Whitehead. Terrific prose, but a plot that goes nowhere. Zombie apocalypse exposes the artifacts of a banal society. Kick that dead horse over and over for 300 pages and good writing becomes pointless.

Right now I'm picking through Best American Short Stories 2011. Not my favorite in the series, but there's some really good stuff in here.

And more short stories. Blasphemy : new and selected stories by Sherman Alexie. Great!

#70.. It sounds as though you have a thing about short stories (like myself)!! I have a TBR steeple of these, and I still keep purchasing!!! My latest from Amazon is Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales by Yoko Ogawa.

@leehua, I've picked up Red Storm Rising for a challenge read (TIOLI), and as I read the first chapter, I realized I'd read that much before.

But it's going a lot better than Cold Mountain.

Just finished and reviewed The Thin Red Line. Added Tristram Shandy into the rotation.

Richard, it's so great to read your choice of authors. Carolyn, sorry about your mother. My reading experience varied sharply with these two books. The Afrika Reich that I so eagerly anticipated, proved to be just OK. Too much violence. But The Beggar's Opera by Peggy Blair far surpassed my expectations. A mystery, taking place in Cuba, this book kept me engrossed throughout. Just started A Dream of Daring, a novel about antebellum Louisiana.

Now reading The Uninvited Guests. I seem to have missed all the hype about this so have no idea what's about to happen and I suddenly realise how rare that is for me. Even if other readers don't give it away the blurb on the back cover almost always does.

Day two of Red Storm Rising, and I'm still enjoying it (although I got smart this time and have a 'score card' of who is who in the book, lol).

I just finised The Betrayal, which I thought was great and I am now starting The Snowman.

I started The Man In The vWoolen Hat by Jane Gardam and still working on The Twelve and Outlander; however Ivvve just become addicted to Downton Abbey and have been watching the first two seasons on Hulu which has cut into my reading time

I have started The Name of the Rose. So far it is very interesting, but I am only in far enough to have come upon one murder. I understand from the back cover that there are a total of seven. As my Latin teacher told me many years ago, "There's nothing as exciting as a good axe murder!"

#79 "There's nothing as exciting as a good axe murder!"

Oh, there is! As you'll find as you carry on reading. Great book!

#76
I read Red Storm Rising years ago - I think right after I read Hunt for Red October - and thought it was great. Those two books had me searching maps for days trying to find the Denmark Straits. Then I started looking at undersea maps of the Atlantic Ocean. Now I am desperately trying to find a way to take a vacation to Iceland. I don't think that Tom Clancy intended for them to be the impetus for vacations to Iceland, but that is the way it turned out for me.

#79. That remains one of my all time favorite books. And the movie with Sean Connery thrilled.

I picked up a copy of The Lost Gate - have not read anything by Orson Scott Card... Though I have read only a few pages I think I am going to like this book! :) Happy Tuesday all!

Finished Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich and Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, both good, and started The Greater Journey by David McCullough. I'll be starting Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman, too.

Yurk, missing for a while due to joint problems, glad y'all have liked the bios! Maybe next week I'll give another list.

>75 Booksloth: Booksloth: I read Uninvited Guests last summer and thoroughly enjoyed it for the same reason that you mentioned: I had no idea what was going to happen.

>84 jnwelch: Joe: Beware The Greater Journey as it spawns other endless reading. I'm reading The Education of Henry Adams right now and that was because I met H. Adams in that book and wanted to know more.

>85 richardderus: Richard: So sorry that your joints are aching. I'm sure the cold weather and falling barometric pressure don't help. Hope your reading can take your mind off your discomfort for a while.

I am 100 pages into The Twelve Tribes of Hattie but so far it has fallen very flat for me. I intend to finish it but just as a secondary book that I putt away at. There are too many other books on the TBR pile that are calling my name. So I think tonight I will start The Eagle by Jack Whyte. It is the last in a fairly long series that I have enjoyed and I'm quite certain that I will like (maybe even love) it.

@sebago, the first Orson Scott Card book I read was Ender's Game, which was for me a "can't put it down" type of read.

Finished In Search of the Rose Notes by Emily Arsenault, a quick and good read, especially when you're having bouts of insomnia. I enjoyed this one.

I agree with your thoughts on Behind the Beautiful Forevers. I couldn't find a plot. I stuck with it in the hopes a plot would evolve. I also got sucked into the hype, especially after I saw it on Bill Gates' reading list.

Haven't been around for a few days - absolutely snowed under at work and at home so not getting much reading done :o( what an interesting lot of books you are all getting through. Halfway through Doc and loving it.

#86 NarratorLady - I'm nearing the end now and not entirely sure I'm actually enjoying it. It seems very disjointed to me and full of thoroughly nasty people (not that that always stops me enjoying a book) but I'm still intrigued enough to want to stick with it to the end. It's such a pleasure to still have no real idea where I'm going.

I'm just starting Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin. I've garely cracked it open, so it's too soon to tell hown it will go, but already, it seems very interesting, so far.

#88 Fuzzi... will add that title to my tbr list! Thanks so much!

Now reading The Immigrant.

(91) @FionaWh, I loved Doc too! Now I've got a good friend reading and loving it as well. :)

@sebago, you're most welcome!

I've gotten so many good recommendations here. :)

>86 NarratorLady: Thanks for the warning about The Greater Journey inspiring further reading, Anne. You're the one who inspired me to read The Greater Journey, so it's all your fault. :-)

"Having abandoned what Franzen called “the depressed literary inner city,” we have pushed out from the suburbs into even more discrete exurbs, our literature as ersatz as the McMansion subdivisions that riddle the landscape, our homes decorated with the inoffensive West Elm trappings of workshop fiction."

And so few see it as a problem. Where is the Erskine Caldwell, the Steinbeck, the Sinclair Lewis of this century? Katherine Boo? Hasn't got the chops. Hitchens? Dead. And neither is a novelist, a storyteller, a vivifier.

Full article: http://www.themillions.com/2013/02/detroit-fiction-escaping-the-suburbs-and-righ...

Arrgghh! Not a good day for reading mojo There's just a lot goin on, so I'm going to go with somethng really simple, Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.

I hate when life interferes with my reading!

#99> Well, he greatly simplifies the causes of Detroit's ruin, but that aside, at the heart of his essay is this assertion:

"Literature could not find itself in a better place from which to escape the confining and picayune interiority of the last half-decade."

So despair not, my friend.

I finished and REVIEWED Guy Gavriel Kay's wonderful historical fantasy The Lions of Al-Rassan and just like that I've got myself a new genre that I'm in love with. Not sure what I'm going to read next but possibly Cooking with Fernet Branca.

I finished day after night. Interesting tale of the struggle to deal with the aftermath of surviving WWII.

Started White Teeth, but the print is too small, and I need new glasses. Will pick up again after that. Started Never let me go.

After taking forever to finish Les Miserables, mostly due to my busy life rather than the size of the book, I have been picking up small books to get me in the groove again. Cupboard Full of Coats I enjoyed, sort of, in that it is not a happy book by any means. I plan to recommend it to my students after they finish Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I just recently finished. I am now about halfway through Leaving the Atocha Station and loving it. I really hope this one is meant to be funny because it is cracking me up.

Great books being read here, as always. Love it!

Benita, I owe you thanks twice: first, for the literature as rebellion comment (you're making me think!), and second for mentioning the Czech author. Reminded me of a review I read of Vladimir Krajina: a Czech resistance fighter who wouldn't carry a gun. (& went on to become a botanist and author the book linked to in the touchstone: librarything.com doesn't seem to have listed the biography). Just put on hold at the local library, and looking forward to it!

Finished the rollicking Three To Get Deadly, and moving on to listening to The Round House by Louise Erdrich.

Am reading Tigana, my second favorite Kay. (Most favorite is Lions of al-Rassan, which I plan to pick up soon, and may I say the anticipation makes me feel happy all over.) Though Tigana is a huge, heavy tome, even the trade paperback size, I'm taking it with me to read on my commute. So I was reading on the train ride home and got so into the story (it was one of the most intense scenes of the first half of the book) that I went right past my stop. Had to get off at the next station and double back.

Changed my mind. The Immigrant is back on the shelf for another day and I'm reading Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer.

I am embarking on the fifth and final Part/Book of 2666. This one is a lot easier going (like the first three).

Read and reviewed "Walking With God" by John Eldredge. I guess you would call it Christian self-help? Not my usual cup of tea, but I was glad I read it.

I'm so intrigued by all this talk about 2666. Is it really worth the time investment from the point of view of being a wonderful story or is it one of those "brilliant writing - you have to read this sometime in your life" books?

I don't post these here normally, reserving them for my own thread, but this room is so perfectly ME that I can't resist sharing it. I wish it was my own, and not some rotten undeserving rich person's!

113 - I understand your pain, richard -- and I'll bet the rich person had the decorator buy the books "by the foot." Probably hasn't read a book since third grade.

I'm not so sure in this particular case, mollygrace, since that library looks to me like it's got actual books, chosen ones, in it. They aren't all uniform and color coordinated, they're all different sizes...just looks like a reader's room. *I* am simply unbecomingly envious of the reader's ability to pay for a room as spectacular as this.

113 & 114 - I know where you're at. I saw a pic of a reading room the other day that made me want to start a revolution and overthrow the rich just so I could confiscate it and have it for my own. I bet they even take naps in those chairs. Covetting is such a wonderful sin.

115 -- I'm sure you're right, richard , it's just that intense envy makes me say spiteful things about people who can afford such splendor.

>116 george1295: I sin wonderfully, then. *covetcovetcovet*

>117 mollygrace: Amen, soul sibling, amen.

Thanks for the picture Richard. That is exactly the look I am trying to achieve in my new living room. I have one lipstick red chair, a rocking chair, and one old chair that I hope to get recovered sometime this year in a navy blue microfiber. And have a reading lamp by every chair so I can read or do needlework in whichever chair I plan on planting myself in for the evening. I do have one wall lined with book cases, so I am working on this room. Just give me time and I will achieve it.

And then post a picture? Please?

Have no way to post picture. No dataplan on phone. No digital camera. No scanner on computer. etc., etc., And since January 16, 2012 no TV. Hence all the time for reading and knitting and the need for a reading lamp and a comfotable chair.

OIC

Reading Brandlucht by Erik Vlaminck. It's about Flemish and Dutch immigrants in Canada, and the way they hold on to the habits of the country they have left behind.

That is a lovely, lovely reading space, Richard. I dissent on this front though ... I think that could be done relatively cost-efficiently. I have a VERY small home and I have re-done most of it myself, often getting things from Re-Use It Centers, thrift stores, contractors that ordered wrong stuff, etc. and the like. Although it may not look that "modern" (those lights are probably expensive), you could come pretty close! That looks like a very small room.

You make a good point, Carolyn. If one has the ability, sweat equity can create almost anything.

#103--Enjoy Never Let Me Go. It is one of my favorite books that I always recommend to friends.

Finished New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans and the Remaking of Early America, by Colin G. Calloway for a book discussion. It gave me some new insights into the interaction between the indigenous people and the European settlers before the American Revolution, and how each group contributed to the America we know today. Followed that up with some lighter reading, Spirit Dances, by C. E. Murphy, and I'm now in the middle of Raven Calls, also by Murphy.

The room is great and I like the look of the chairs. I do think, however, they look uncomfortable.

Just started The Dinner by Herman Koch- it seems intriguing.

The book New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans and the Remaking of Early America sounds fascinating. It's going onto my wish list.

I'm with you, @Bjace: I'd prefer a soft easy chair, recliner, or perhaps a wing chair...

All this chat about shelves.....check this out...

Www.bookshelfporn.com

#128..I agree with you, the chairs do not look comfortable.

(big, longing, sigh)...

Me neither! No cable-TV, EVER (except when room mates needed a pacifier, and wanted to pay for it themselves!). Have been known to indulge various video games & movies (if they had never been a book)! I would love an entire WING set aside for a library, one day...
But I shall settle comfortably into the ragged chair, tucked away in a nook of the hall... Needlework stacked precariously to the side, with a warm light tucked in behind...
Apparently, I have slept here more than in my own bed! (even small dogs can easily reign over more than half a large bed!

I turned my dining room into a library. Dining room table is antique dark wood so I can pretend it's a library table. Just found your column and love it!

I think I might never leave the room, had I a room like that. Love the red of the chairs, not sure about the comfort, though the looks of the chairs might be deceiving.

>132 hemlokgang: Oh... so many visions of heaven! (Hell on bandwidth, though.) Richard, you've got a thread???

Just finished the rather disappointing Year of the Flood. Next up, probably finishing off Secret Book of Sacred Things (though I'm already pretty sure it'll only be 2-stars).

All I want is a room somewhere . . .

Really enjoying Whiter Than Snow by Sandra Dallas, another new author for me, she has been compared to Kaye Gibbons. The back cover says "putting down a Sandra Dallas book is nearly impossible", this I can believe (so far).

All these photos of beautiful libraries -- sigh. I'd settle for just having enough shelves for all my books, even if the rest of the place is a disaster and I have to sit on the floor. Puts me in mind of a favorite quote:

"I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves." -Anna Quindlen

I finished a Brunetti mystery tonight -- Drawing Conclusions -- beautiful book. Left me in tears. You should know I've been in love with Brunetti for many years -- I don't suppose I'm the only fan of the series who feels that way.

I also read My Brother's Book by Maurice Sendak.

Now I'm reading Elmore Leonard's Fire in the Hole -- a collection of his stories. The title story features another special interest of mine, Raylan Givens.

>140 hazeljune: hazeljune, Sandra Dallas is a local author for me and I've read most of her books and especially like her earlier stories. If you're interested in a recommendation for another, Tallgrass was excellent!

I'm reading Jennifer Haigh's newest (and wonderful), News From Heaven: The Bakerton Stories, and also Cover of Snow, which I wasn't sure if I'd continue but now I'm finding myself getting pulled into the mystery.

#139 I'm with you Jerry,

All I want is a room somewhere . . .

I'm just dreaming of the day I can put together any room to suit me, wouldn't have those chairs though, big old comfy arm chairs is more me, must have good lighting though, for reading, and sewing.

Yeah - dream on...

#121 Benitastrnad - no TV - bliss!

Finished Doc. Wow, just loved it. Nice to read something a bit different, and I really really enjoyed it. Bit sad it ended, but I guess we all knew that would happen.

# I believe there is a follow up from Doc it is still in the process of being written.

Yay looking forward to that :o)

#142 coppers..Thank you for the recommendation, unfortunately Tallgrass is not on my library chain list, however waiting for me at my local library is Bride's House.

I have something similar to this library. And I am, unfortunately, not rich. I has taken me 30 years to "build" it - without any decorators... But reading books is not about "cosyness". Reading could take place anywhere - on a laptop in a café, in a pub. Here in Sweden we have excellent libraries where one could study and read the "wisdom of our ancestors". And we can read, for free, everything - even if takes a week or two to get the actual book from our "Royal Library". Some of these libaries looks like the one on picture even!
The readingroom on the picture takes time to create. But ones achieved worth every penny of it.
But I think, being naive, that it should be a possibility for all booklovers to have - therefore I think it should be shared with others. A collection of book dont "do" anything if it is not available for people that needs cultural stimulation!
Free knowledge for all!

Greetings to Richard from Mikael Therén in Sweden!

#113 et al - Wow! I had no idea LT was such a hotbed of snobbery! And they say it's we English who are obsessed with class envy. How do you know the 'rich person' (or, equally likely, a non-rich person who has simply chosen to spend their disposable income on their library rather than any number of other ways the rest of us choose) is undeserving? And why would any of you even want a room like this if it so obviously marks you out as being evil and not even literate enough to have read your own books?

About to start The Iron Lance by Stephen Lawhead I find his books highly fascinating. I can't wait!

I must also admit to "shelf envy", but not chaiir envy. If I could set up a proper reading room, it would have to have big, overstufed chairs!

But I certainly have been drooling over thoise shelves!

When I moved last September I purchased six bookshelves and had a local carpenter reinforce them so the shelves wouldn't sag. They line one wall of my living room. The room is rather small but every time I walk into that room I think it is so cozy. I then spent a whole lot of money and purchased the single most expensive item I have ever bought other than a car. I got a bright lipstick red leather Ekornes chair. It had to come all the way from the factory in Norway. It looks much like the chairs in that picture only with more chrome. I can't address the comfort or the cost of the chairs in the picture, but I can say that my chair is very comfortable. It was worth every penny it cost. And I thank God that the fools who broke into my house stole the damn TV and didn't touch the chair or the books. The greater fools they.

>152 benitastrnad:: I am sorry you were burgled. Perhaps if the burglars had been reader and valued books, they would have not ressorted to burglary in the first place, but would have made something of their likves. If it had happened to me, I would certainly share your relief aoout the books!

Maybe that is one more point in favor of paper books vs. e-readers. E-readers might be more tempting to thiieves, or might be lost, and if so, you lose an entire library!

#153 I'm not sure you lose an entire library, bookwoman. Although I don't own one, it's always been my understanding that the ebooks you buy (eg from Amazon) remain in your online account and can be downloaded again to another e-reader. However, it is partly the thought of leaving an e-reader on the beach or in a cafe and losing £100 or more (as opposed to the £8-ish I'd lose if I just left a p/b book behind) that has prevented me buying one yet.

#155, Booksloth, you are correct. I'm on my third Kindle and I've been able to download anything I've already purchased without any trouble. It's a little annoying, but it works just fine.

#141> Justified! Best thing on TV since The Wire, for my money.

(139)

...far away from the cold night air...

...with one enormous chair....

@hazeljune wrote I believe there is a follow up from Doc it is still in the process of being written.

Woo! Tell me more!!!

(149) @Booksloth, my thought was this: once you take the money away from the rich people, don't you then become rich?

And then others want to take it away from you because you're "rich"?

Silly, imo.

I don't want money, anyway, I'm content, and blessed: I have a decent job with enough money to pay the mortgage, keep my car running, my family fed, and buy a few books here and there. :)

True 'coveting' isn't a good thing: like envy, it makes you unhappy.

#152, Having a small, cosy room with lots of bookcases reminds me of the time my mother-in-law stopped in the library where I work, which at the time was in part of an old house. She asked me if the books didn't make me claustrophobic. Heck, no! They are like security blankets to me, I even used to take one to the movies (when I still went to the movie theater).

I have a comfortable chair, and a good reading light by the bed, but I don't have enough bookcases.

@BookyVT, none of us has enough bookcases!!!!

Or enough books....!

;)

Amen to that, 160 and 161! :) I finished reading Nethergate by Norah Lofts last night - it was not one of Norah Lofts' best books perhaps, but it was still very good in my opinion! Still reading Somebody Else's Daughter which is still very good, but because I'm used to reading a book in three to four days, it's so much slower than I would like it to be! :)

>148 MikaelTheren: Greetings to Richard from Mikael Therén in Sweden!

Greetings back, Mikael! I see you are a translator. I have an almost religious awe of people who make translations. It is beyond difficult, in my experience, to express one's own thoughts on a book, still less find and convey the author's thoughts!

No one has mentioned the little day bed that lurks behind the chairs. It appears to be in a dark nook, but could easily be lit, and voila! The perfect room.

I am currently reading Daniel Stein, Interpreter: A Novel in Documents and liking it very much. And I just enjoy saying the author's name: Ludmila Ulitskaya.

For the many European folks for whom it is already Saturday, 23 February, and for those in the Southern Hemisphere for whom it Blerchlesbonk, 99 Klinkschmuary or whatever y'all call it, the new thread is up.

#149 Absolutely agreed. Yes, there are a lot of things I'd like to have that I can't afford but that doesn't mean I have to despise those people who do have them.

coppers,

I just bought a copy of The Deep Blue Good-By by John D. McDonald last week.

He was recommended to me because McDonald is considered one of the best storytellers we've had in American Literature.

How was it overall and what were his strengths as a writer in reading that novel?

Marion