What are you reading the week of August 1, 2015?

My reading habits really lie outside the norm for most of the people in this group. I primarily read nonfiction. Finding an author biography every week that will be of interest to everyone is probably not going to be my strong suit. Every name that I came up with this morning had been used previously. So, I'm giving up on it for this morning in order to get the thread launched.

I'm going to read a few of Sherwood Anderson's stories. I got Library of America anthology of his stories months ago and I'm just now ready to take a look at it. My bedtime audiobook is Dollbaby by Laura Lane McNeal. I'm really just test driving it right now, so that's subject to change. I'm not sure I'm going to like it. I actually considered Love in the Time of Colera but I decided that I'll never fall asleep if I am listening and thinking that hard, so I'm reserving that book for another time. I'm still reading The Human, the Orchid and the Octopus by Jacques Cousteau. It rarely takes me so long to finish the book, but I've had Early Review and First to Read books that I had to finish so I set it aside a few times. I hope I'll finish it up this week.

Fred, it can be a non-fiction author, in my opinion! Speaking for myself, I like a good non-fiction recc!

I just finished the marvelous, Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey. Two great protagonists, and a romp around the world with socio-political commentary, passions, classism and reverse classism Excellent read!

Next up is Neverhome by Laird Hunt for listening, and I am beginning to read Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan for my neighborhood RL book club.

I finished up Particular Friends: The Correspondence of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn. Having read both of their diaries, I decided for completeness to read what remains of their letters to each other. This doesn't quite bring me to the end of my 17th century British History reading. I still have two or three more books on Mt. TBR that relate to the period.

For the moment, I'm picking up Her Smoke Rose Up Forever by James Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon). It's been languishing, partially finished, in a pile of books in my bedroom for the past couple of years. It's time to tackle the longer stories in the book.

I finished The Book of Unknown Americans and started Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips.

Finished Half a War by Joe Abercrombie. As a whole, I liked this trilogy.

Started the sequel to N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance trilogy: The Awakened Kingdom.

I finished, devoured, I should say, The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789 by Joseph J. Ellis. This is a wholly admirable history: fascinating, informative and very well written. Ellis is also the author of the very popular Founding Brothers. The Quartet is the story of the drive to move the 13 colonies away from the Articles of Confederation and into a more binding arrangement within a much stronger central federal government, a drive that eventually led to the creation and ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The four main drivers of that movement, the Quartet of the title, were George Washington, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. I haven't bothered posting a review on the book's title page, as a quick perusal of the reviews previously posted show that I've nothing new to add to them. But you can read my more in-depth thoughts on my 50-Book Challenge thread, if you're interested.

I'm now reading the deservedly obscure thriller, Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter. This is an attempt at a naughty erotic/psychological crime novel. It's mostly predictable, though, and not even all that naughty. Since Hunter is also Ed McBain, it's no surprise that the police procedural aspects are the best part of the story. It's a fast read, so I'll continue on with it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone else bothering with it.

I finished and loved Learning to Breathe by Alison Wright. I am now reading my July ER book (yikes, that was fast!) Marvel and a Wonder by local (Chicago area) author Joe Meno. So far it is great.

I finished yesterday The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and thought it okay, but wasn't thrilled with it. I had to use Wikipedia to understand exactly what the ending was, as it simply wasn't clear enough in the book.

Today I've not read much, but mean to finish The Tale of Despereaux before bedtime. It's been years since I've read children's literature - my youngest is 17 - so I'm enjoying the return to it.

I meant to start The Shadow of the Wind but got sucked in by teen angst instead. Will begin that tomorrow.

Reading towards the end of The Red and the Black by Stendahl. This is the Modern Library edition from the 1950s. Some of the pages weren't cut open yet, so it's been amusing doing that while reading. The story is also amusing, now that (I hope) all of the major character names have been introduced.

And just now at the beginning of Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald. I'm very happy that I have most of this book to read, and also that there are two more novels of hers I haven't read yet.

Finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. Wow!

Started The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve.

I'm halfway through Jeffrey Lent's novel, A Slant of Light, and enjoying it very much. His prose is beautiful. He seems a master of the story's time (right after the Civil War) and place (Yates County, in the Finger Lakes region of New York). The characters are compelling and the mystery at the heart of the story has me hooked -- I can't imagine sleeping until this one is finished.

I began today with a look back at a couple of books by author Paul Horgan (1903-1995) who was born on this day. My recent reading of Kendall's Narrative of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition reminded me of Horgan's biography of Lamy of Santa Fe, so I spent some time looking back through its pages. Then I reread favorite passages from his beautiful novel about growing up, Things As They Are.

40 pp to go of The Narrow Road to the Deep North and I am devastated by this whirlpool of a novel, caught in a vortex of POW brutality and civilian heartbreak following Richard Flanagan's prose as he writes toward the inexorable end that is not the end.

Then I'm punishing myself with the desperate stories of four damaged souls whose tragic loves and rending betrayals are revealed in the most poetic sentences, being read to me via the CD recording of Cristopher Cazenove, who once upon a time seduced me through the TV when he played Charlie Tyrrell in "The Duchess of Duke Street." Read the HC, saw the movie, now listening to Ondaatje's The English Patient once again.

I've got to find something lighter but don't have anything like that lined up in my TBR pile. Mai Jia's novel, Decoded, about an autistic math genius recruited into Unit 701 as a cryptographer in the Chinese intelligence agency is next. More betrayals on the horizon, more shattered trust.

But what writing!

#11
I loved The Sparrow. I found it to be very thought provoking.

I am on vacation and brought four books with me to read. So far I have read about 100 pages of Mari Sandoz's biography of Crazy Horse: Strange Man of the Oglalas. Since I am traveling through Crazy Horse country it made sense to read that one first.

>2 JackieCarroll: Oddly enough, I'm expecting my own copy of the Library of America Sherwood Anderson any day now. I like the few stories of his I've read such as "The Egg" and "I'm a Fool", but I've never read Winesburg, Ohio.

>15 lansingsexton: I'm expecting Women Crime Writers: Four Suspense Novels of the 1940s. I'm really looking forward to that one.

>16 JackieCarroll: I wasn't aware of these new Library of America volumes. I'm a film noir fan and the film versions of Laura and In a Lonely Place, as you probably know, are both outstanding examples.

Finished Little Bee. What an excellent book. It's not a mystery in the normal sense of the word but the book keeps one in suspense as to what happened before and what will happen. A touching drama with multitude of quotable insights some even humorous while dealing with serious realities of life and death.

>14 benitastrnad: Have you read the sequel to The Sparrow? I picked Children of God up yesterday and I plan on reading it as soon as I finish one of the other books I'm reading. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm not expecting the same kind of wow I got from The Sparrow.

>17 lansingsexton: if you didn't get the subscription customization form for the new releases you can fill one out in the MyAccount section of the website. When I saw the women crime writers books I couldn't wait and order them in advance.

I finished Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter. Although it did get a bit better as it went on, my perceptions didn't change significantly from my comments in post 7 on this thread. All in all, not really worth the time. Hunter is better known by his pseudonym, Ed McBain. I recommend sticking to those books, which are fun.

Next up for me will be Continental Drift by Russell Banks.

Thanks Fred for starting us off!

I thought both The Sparrow and Children of God were outstanding, very rich and thought-provoking, but they didn't stay with me. I read them at least 15 years ago and don't remember a thing.

I'm often bemused when someone describes as "unforgettable" a book they read or movie they saw last week. I wonder if they'll still say that in six months.

Currently I'm in the sixth Harry Dresden novel, which is forgettable (and that's okay), and, on the serious side, The Girl with Seven Names, part of my ongoing reading thread about North Korea.

I rarely remember what a book is about, even one I read last week. But I do very often remember how I felt about a book I've read. I expect The Sparrow will be one of those books.

I've just finished two novellas set in N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance mythos: The Awakened Kingdom and Shades in Shadow. I liked the former much better than the latter.

And I've just started Children of God.

I finished Mary Doria Russell's Epitaph, her follow-up novel to Doc. I quite enjoyed it but liked the first book a bit more. She's such an outstanding writer that that's a mere quibble. Since the shooting and death of President James Garfield played a part in Russell's book I decided to follow up with Candace Millard's Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Medicine, Madness and the Murder of a President which I happened to have sitting on my shelf. I love when one book leads to another:-)

I finished Jeffrey Lent's A Slant of Light. The beautiful prose begs to be read aloud, something I found myself doing from time to time. At the end of each chapter I had the sensation of waking up, coming back to present-day from western New York in the 1860s. I will miss the characters and that feeling of place and time.

Next up: Penelope Fitzgerald's At Freddie's

I just finished Marcus Aurelius's Meditations before going on a vacation for a week and I'm still reading Discovery of Witches. This year, I started working my way through Joseph Brodsky's reading list to help fill in some gaps in my "classics" reading. So this week I'll be starting Either/Or.

Hello, I'm a Ed McBain Fan. I have a lot of his book but I've never read any Hunter's books

I'm reading a hodgepodge of books right now: Salvage the Bones, Fat Girl Walking, Letter to a Future Lover, Harvest Poems, How to Walk, and One Thousand Gifts. My fiction read definitely gets top priority, in part because I need to finish it for book club, but I have all the others in the mix for different times of day. No wonder it takes me so long to finish my nonfiction reads!

#28> Hunter wrote (he died in 2005) quite a few books and screenplays under his own name, as you probably know. I guess the most famous was his first, The Blackboard Jungle. I haven't read any of the others. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if many or most (or all!) were better than Criminal Conversation. I've read one or two of the McBain books, I think, and those are fun.

I finished and reviewed the blech ER book Marvel and a Wonder by Joe Meno ... which I'm trying hard to shake out of my head. I should have known the horse on the cover would be a subject of cruelty, though I hoped not ... but oy. I would have tossed it in recycling if not for the promise to read it completely and review it. Oh well, they cannot all be hits. There will be misses. I'm still grateful I get to review new books.

So now onto Wave, a memoir by Sonali Deraniyagala.

Mrs. Dalloway was excellent, easily my favorite of hers that I've read so far. Next is a mystery, Marriage Can Be Murder.

I've just started Silence by Shusaku Endo.

For my audiobook, I'm listening to Emma and reading the commentary for it in Bitch In a Bonnet: Reclaiming Jane Austen From the Stiffs, the Snobs, the Simps and the Saps (Volume 2) by Robert Rodi.

>24 seitherin: Enjoy Children of God! It puts such a different slant on the events of the first book!

>27 johnxlibris: You have my admiration! I have had Meditations sitting half finished on a shelf for several years (ever since it was the selection for my real life book club).

>16 JackieCarroll: & >17 lansingsexton: If you are fans of women crime writers you might want to take a look at Elisabeth Holding, she wrote Blank Wall: The Innocent Mrs. Duff. It is actually two novels in one volume. The suspense in Innocent Mrs. Duff was almost unbearable for me. I never read the other one because I wasn't sure I could take it! She was a very good writer!

I've just finished Fingersmith and I am glad I stuck through the sights and smell of Dickensian London because it was a great and unusual read. I can see where people would hate The Paying Guests after reading this one although I really liked The Paying Guests and still do. Both novels have that quality of plotting where it's like being on a roller coaster and you can hear the clank of the cars as you go up and you just know that drop is coming. Pretty amazing plotting and fantastic, flawed characters. I think someone else on this thread used the roller coaster analogy for her novels and what an apt one it is!

I am reading Around the House and In the Garden still but almost done. It is a lovely, meditative memoir.

I've got Confessions by Kanae Minato from the library which seems very good and I always love an unreliable narrator in my novels. I'm only a few pages in. I've also picked up an ancient Victoria Holt, King of the Castle.

Thanks Fred for starting us off! I don't necessarily need an author bio at the beginning but I'm lost if the thread isn't up for the week. How would I be able to add more books to my lists??

Reading Shining at the Bottom of the Sea by Stephen Marche. It has a good conceit (an anthology of the literature of a fictional country), and each selection has a different tone. My bedtime audiobook is Sons of Wichita by Daniel Schulman, with which I am almost finished.

I'm really enjoying High Fidelity, my first Hornby (why has it taken me so long?).

On audio, I think I'm going to listen to Sarah Vowell read her Unfamiliar Fishes. I listened to it a couple of years ago and loved it.

>34 enaid: I loved Fingersmith. I still need to read The Paying Guests.

>34 enaid: Thanks for the suggestion. I like both film versions of The Blank Wall, but I wasn't familiar with the author. I'm currently reading Alan Judd's interesting and sympathetic biography of Ford Madox Ford.

I finished Dexter's Final Cut by Jeff Lindsay and Loving Day by Mat Johnson which were both good Now I. Reading Dietland by Satai Walker,The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom , Tumbleweeds by Leila Meachem Dexter is Dead by Jevf Lindsay and The Making of Major League by Jonathan Knight

I finished Penelope Fitzgerald's delightful At Freddie's. I love how wisely and touchingly she writes about the children you meet in her books. Reading this book, I thought often of the line in Offshore in which Fitzgerald says of an eleven-year-old girl: "The crucial moment when children realize their parents are younger than they are had long since been passed by Martha."

Now I'm reading Molly Antopol's story collection, The UnAmericans, Astrid Lindgren's Seacrow Island, and I've added Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling to my small stack of books from which I read a poem, chapter or segment each morning to start my day.

>39 mollygrace: The UnAmericans has been on my TBR shelves for well over a year now. I'll be interested to hear your thoughts when you finish.

>25 brenzi: Destiny of the Republic is superb. "Enjoy" is not the right word for it, but I found it fascinating.

A few weeks ago, I borrowed the e-book edition of The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins. I was only able to read 25 pages by the due date. Amazon describes the book as Neil Gaiman meets Joe Hill. Having read both authors, I have to concur that based on the few pages I read, this is indeed a very dark, weird and disturbing horror and fantasy book. Some reviewers have had difficulty in pegging the writing to a specific genre. I decided to borrow this book again, the impetus being that even though the plot is very weird and unconventional, there is a certain something that piqued my interest. I may find this is a very talented debut author or I was just a rubbernecker along the way.

Edited for gross grammatical errors!

I just got my copy of Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami, which consists of the author's two first novels repackaged into a single new volume. I've finished reading Hear the Wind Sing and it was quite enjoyable, particularly for what it signaled about the writer that Murakami has become.

I finished the LTER book, For Exposure. I have an interest in small publishers but none in the horror/sci-fi genre so the people mentioned were all unknown to me. I found the book to be mildly entertaining although I tired of the tales of drunken conference party revelries. It did give some insight into the difficulties inherent in publishing. Obviously one does it for the love of it

Finished Children of God by Mary Doria Russell. Liked it almost as much as I liked The Sparrow.

Started City of Echoes by Robert Ellis.

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell
Can't put it down!

Finished listening to the so-so Neverhome, and finished reading the informative, well-written Under the Wide and Starry Sky.

Next up for listening is Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, narrated by John Malkovich.

Next up for reading is my RL Book Club selection, A Well-Tempered Heart by Jan Philipp Sendker.

Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami. Very exciting to finally have these available in the U.S.!

Finished City of Echoes by Robert Ellis. Liked it better than I thought I would.

About to start Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner.

New thread is up over here