What You're Reading the Week of 10 Mar 2007

Greyhead omitted 10th March so I've jumped in. Sorry, no picture this week.

amandameale, the second thread called "3 Mar 2007" is actually the one for the 10th, picture and all!

Is it possible to rename threads? Anyway...touchstones are moving too slowly for me to post my current books just yet.

Though why that should matter to me is unclear....

Let's try one more time...current library read is The Angel Tree by Alex Dingwall-Main...about the search for the world's oldest olive tree, and the effort to move that tree to a new life in luxurious Provencal splendor.

So far, so fascinating. The author has a chatty, breezy tone and that's hitting my eyeballs just exactly right.

For the past few days I've been totally immersed in Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, have only just passed the 650-page mark with about 200 more to go, and really can't believe how great it's been so far. I'd never read any Trollope before, and don't recall anyone ever having made a case for him one way or another for that matter, but am delighted to have rather accidentally happened upon such a spectacularly entertaining book, a richly-detailed Victorian 'baggy monster' that's just compulsively readable, and likely to become one of my favorites of the year as well.

LouisBranning, I think here in the states Trollope is generally not well known (as also Elizabeth Gaskell). Certainly PBS fans should recognize the productions of Trollope's works aired over the years such as: Barchester Towers, The Pallisers, and The Way We Live Now. Sometimes, this is the best way to introduce an author to a wider audience hopefully inspiring readers to run, not walk, to their local library or bookstore (PBS also has aired productions of two of Gaskell's novels).

I'd recommend his Barchester Chronicles which begin with The Warden.

LouisBranning: Another big Trollope fan here ... not only is he a very good writer, but he's also very consistent ... it's hard to think of any of his novels that have disappointed me ... I'm actually kind of surprised you haven't tried him before ... his series are quite good, but I'd particularly recommend The Bertrams, which is one of his stand-alone novels.

I'm still reading Perdido Street Station and Lisey's Story. I have had very little reading time this week. I hope to finish both of these over the weekend.

I am not familiar with Trollope, but after reading the above posts I'm very interested. I'll see if my local library has anything by him.

I just checked out a new book form the library, Mildweed by Jerry Spinelli. I've been practically in love with Jerry Spinelli since I read Mania McGee in 5th grade, and I'm already 60 some pages in. Also trying (!) to wait patiently on May 23rd for Maximum Ride 3 *(x})

I'm reading Montana 1948 and Water for Elephants both good so far. I love Water for Elephants I've never been so interested in the circus before.

As of 0000H GMT of March 10, 2007 , I have so far completed 12% if the book Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. I am reading this because it's going to be shown as a movie entitled "Shooter" here in my country.

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Mansfield Park by Jane Austen.

Currently halfway through And Quiet Flows the Don by Mikhail Sholokhov. My plan is to finish it this weekend and then start the sequel, The Don Flows Home to the Sea. I really like Russian history and Russian novelists. They have a certain melancholy that I find very appealing.

Yesterday I started Lempriere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk.

I'm reading The Eight by Katherine Neville

#14: I really loved The Eight. How are you finding it so far?

#11
xicanti,
I just bought that book, how do you like it so far?

I'm currently reading The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

#16 booklover79 - while I enjoy Austen's style, I'm finding that Mansfield Park has a different tone than her earlier works. It feels meaner, in a way, and I'm not sure I like it.

Purchased this book today and just started reading it:
Abide with me by Elizabeth Strout

I'm half way through This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson which is a fictionalised (but well researched) account of 1820s-1830s voyages to the south Atlantic and Cape Horn aboard The Beagle captained by Fitzroy with aboard Charles Darwin. I wouldn't normally go for something like this (and it's very long -600 pages plus) but recommendations from friends convinced me and they're proving right.

I finished Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now yesterday, easily one of the greatest things I've read this year, and a book that's managed to turn me into a huge Trollope fan nearly overnight. I've now decided to read the six novels known as the Barset series, and have already ordered the first three (The Warden, Barchester Towers, & Dr. Thorne), which I'm really looking forward to later in the year.

Right now I'm past a hundred pages in Jim Crace's rather uninteresting new novel The Pesthouse and will probably bail on it pretty soon, finding it just a total yawner. It's supposed to be another story of desperate survivors set loose in Crace's version of a post-apocalyptic America, but he not only seems to have gotten the tone wrong here, but the characters feel merely perfunctory, and the writing's been consistently undistinguished as well. Of course the whole thing positively pales alongside last year's Cormac McCarthy masterpiece The Road, and if I were Crace I would have kept The Pesthouse on the shelf for a few years, at least until the wake of McCarthy's post-apocalyptic powerhouse had subsided.

>20 LouisBranning: Louis, I started a book group off with Barchester Towers a few years back, Barchester is considered by some tp be Trollope's masterpiece (that was my selling point). Very few of this group had even heard of Trollope and were converted fans by the next meeting. They did have a bit of trouble sorting out some of the church dynamics going on at the time; this is why some introductions can be invaluable. And apparently, skipping the first book worked out okay (but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone).

>19 hazelk: Hazelk, we would welcome a similar posting on the "Boats, Trains & Plains" thread in the "Reading Globally- Fiction" group!

Not sure. I just finished a book and have a huge pile to choose from. Maybe The Thirteenth Tale only because it's my mother's and she wants it back eventually.

I love Trollope and I recommend reading his other books. I agree with the other message - start with The Warden. I didn't start reading Trollope until I found an entire set of his books at a book sale. It was a good purchase - great author.

"The Dalai Lama at MIT". Profoundly fascinating and delightful.

A member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers and it is reminding me of The heart is a lonely hunter. I am liking it and almost finished.

The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf
How To Read and Why by Harold Bloom
I'm in a literary criticism and essay kick.

And of course, I can't forget my romance novel for the week, Nauti Boy by Lora Leigh.

Hi: A new member( be kind). Mostly read scifi, naval, history & much et cetera. This week I'm finishing up Land of Snow and Mist by D. Doyle and J.D. MacDonald. Which, to quote its cover, is " an epic alternative history of dueling ships -- and the ultimate war of dark magic and destiny" It's set in the civil war and the writers use the cadence and language of the periond. It's interesting but not cataclysmic.

Finally finished Team of Rivals yesterday. Cried through the last bit as if Lincoln had been assassinated only last week. It was exceptionally good, I thought, bringing together things that have already been written about him and his presidency and the Civil War into one coherent whole and making the usually dull, dry (to me anyway) subjects of economics and politics not only palatable but exciting. I admired Lincoln immensely before reading this one but now agree with Goodwin that he was not only a deeply compassionate, wonderfully spiritual, and unusually forgiving man of the highest order but also a political genius.

Started Augustus: a novel by Allan Massie and, on audio, Artemis Fowl.

(Edited to add I'm the Vampire, That's Why for my commute read.)

I just started Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry. A Fine Balance was pretty much my favorite book last year, so time for something else from Mistry.

#27 - Hello, edding! Welcome to LT.

I just finished Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, and have started Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway.

I've been neglecting At Home in Mitford since discovering LT a few days ago and getting hooked. I needed something lighter after completing Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Mostly I read aloud to my toddler daughter.

Finished The Kite Runner the other night. I was pleasantly surprised by it; I really enjoyed it. Just started The Darling by Russell Banks yesterday.

I loved The Darling and hope it works for you, alleycat.

Three books this week:

Eat, pray, love : one woman's search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert as an unabridged audiobook (narrated by the author). Not too far along, but I like what I've heard.

Dance with Death by Barbara Nadel. Latest in the Inspector Ikmen series set in Turkey.

Walk Along the Wall by Hunter Davies. Story of his walk the length of Hadrian's Wall. The history gets a tad bogged down at times for me, but he's a good travel writer.

It's been a curse- and pirate-heavy week.

Read The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, Curse of the Blue Tattoo: and Under the Jolly Roger: by L. A. Meyer, all three based on hearing people talk about them on the LT boards, enjoyed all of them quite a bit, and never would have picked them up on my own. I also finished listening to Ptolemy's Gate by Jonathan Stroud - very engaging, and with a little more heart than I was expecting.

Currently, I'm reading the last of the Bloody Jack Adventures, In the Belly of the Bloodhound:, and planning on starting listening to Black Swan Green by David Mitchell tomorrow.

>33 alleycat570: Khaled Hosseini has a new book coming out in late May, if you're interested. A Thousand Splendid Suns is another Afghan epic, it's already received starred reviews from Publshers Weekly and Booklist.

Finished The bottoms by Joe R. Lansdale over the weekend and now about 1/3 of the way through Always outnumbered, always outgunned by Walter Mosley.

I finished Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra yesterday in a Sunday marathon of reading (the pace and tension really picked up in the last third of the book). I had mixed feelings as I was reading it: enjoyed the beginning, towards the middle started feeling it was just a crime novel/thriller in an exceptionally rich and intriguing setting, then started appreciating the diverse and complex worlds Chandra was bringing to life and, in the end, felt he couldn't quite accomplish what he was trying to. But all in all, I enjoyed it.

Now back to an earlier time in India with J.G. Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur, and I've also started John Lynch's biography of Simón Bolivar (touchstone not loading).

Finished Donna Leon's Acqua Alta last night, and as always, enjoyed my brief foray into the dark side of Venice. Of course, reading any book from this series prompts an intense craving for Italian food - preferably a zingy seafood dish - and gelato, cravings which might prompt some experimental cooking this week...

Next up, I'll be keeping with the mystery theme but swinging back into nonfiction with Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak.

New LT participant. I'm halfway through Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. This is my first try with the Aubrey/Maturin series, but I saw and liked the movie last year. This was a serious violation of my "book first, then movie" rule.

I just finished The Pact: a love story by Jodi Picoult. I had started Abundance: a novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund about a week ago, so I've now going back to read it. Next, on my TBR tower is The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood.

I just finished The French Lieutenant's Woman earlier today and find it lingering in my mind, as the ending has left me wanting something more. It's one of those books that is going to take some time for me to wander through and sort out, I can tell that for sure.

Now I am enjoying my coming term holiday with something a bit lighter: much Terry Pratchett. I am starting off with Soul Music - more than halfway through already and loving it. After I've finished that I'll go straight to Hogfather and then Thief of Time. My friend has loaned me these books and given me a strict sequence to read them in!

#32. I love The Handmaid's Tale. I plan on reading it this month. I can understand about you needing something lighter. It's really invasive I think.

In honor of women's history month, I'm reading Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood right now. I've read it a couple of times before but I think it's such a great book that I often reread it.

I highly suggest that this be the first book by Margaret Atwood that you read - you'll be hooked

I am reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, which is an update of the Dracula story.

I managed to leave it at home last week so had to buy another book to read on the long train journeys I do round the country. This was 12 Books That Changed the World by Melvyn Bragg. Very disappointing, it read like a draft set of notes for one of his radio programmes. Did it make science and technology exciting and accessible as one of the blurbs say? No, it didn't!

Now have a long night alone in an hotel in Cornwall tonight and then a 4 hour train journey so plenty of time to read! So I hope to move on to The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth. This tells the story of one Ebenezer Cooke, a poet of little if any renown who is sent to Maryland at the end of the 17th century to take over his family's tobacco plantation, it covers so much historical and satirical ground that it is almost mind boggling. The novel treats historical figures with an irreverence that is refreshing (Captain John Smith is a frequent target); it piles on a seemingly endless string of coincidences, chance meetings and strange outcomes, going at such a rate as to put soap operas to shame; it plays games with identity and memory so as to make the reader question every assumption and second-guess everything, and all the while remains accessible and funny.

Currently reading: Where is the Mango Princess? by Cathy Crimmins, Insight meditation: the practice of freedom by Joseph Goldstein and still reading Black Echo by Michael Connelly
... happy reading!

Just finished Catalina's Riddle by Steven Saylor, the fourth I've read in this mystery series about Rome. Saylor's mysteries are consistently well-written, and I am growing to like the main character, Gordianus the Finder (a sort of private investigator) more and more.

Just started The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, not sure if I like it yet...

Also, in time for Opening Day, I am reading a baseball novel I've been meaning to get to for over a decade now: Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris.

#42 and #46, we'd love to hear what you think of the Atwood novels over on the Atwoodians Group if you'd like to post there...

I'm afraid all my other reading is about to come to a halt, whilst I devour the latest Reginald Hill book, Death Comes for the Fat Man.

Just finished Acorna's Triumph by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, and am about to start Blind Eye by James B. Stewart.

The Angel Tree was a very enjoyable read. I am always up for interesting microhistories that seem to proliferate like bunnies these days. Thank you, Dava Sobel, for popularizing the genre with Longitude (weirdly the touchstone's inaccurate)! I loved that book. And Cod and Salt and The Book on the Bookshelf and....

Ahem.

Now reading The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly. Wonderful weirdness to read the history of books/literary works that we can never read because the only copies are lost, or never written, or just mislaid.

I am reading, enjoying, devouring The book thief. It's such a beautifully written book...

I also just started The Memory Keeper's Daughter and am only about 5 chapters in. Also reading All over but the shoutin', I am taking part in a One Book One Town committee. We get to read eight books and choose which one the town will read. So I'm exciting because all of the choices for us to read are ones that look great.

#45. Yes, The Handmaid's Tale was really thought provoking; I definitely need to purchase my own copy as I will want to revisit it.

Currently reading The Palace by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and plan to follow up with another novel set in Renaissance Florence, possibly I, Mona Lisa or The Birth of Venus.

Spin Cycle by Ilsa Evans

I finished reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and was basically sucked into that bok within the first page. It was bone chillingly frightening, eery and heartbreaking. I could not wait to find out the ending and at felt really let down by the ending - but upon reflection I can see why she ended the book the way she did - a very good read.

I am now reading Fury by Salman Rushdie - just a few pages in and so far it is interesting

keren7, even though I don't think Oryx and Crake is one of Atwood's best novels, I still enjoyed it very much, and have never hesitated to recommend it either.

I went ahead and read another 50 pages in Jim Crace's new novel The Pesthouse just hoping it might somehow get a little better, but it didn't, so I bailed on it after 200 pages and was very glad I did.

Right now I've got about a hundred pages left in Upton Sinclair's 1906 muckraking classic The Jungle, a book I've meant to read for forty years. As you might expect given its time-frame, there's a bit of clunky writing found here and there, but even for all of Sinclair's soci-political heavy-handedness, this crude tragedy played out by immigrants trying to survive life in the horrific Chicago Stockyards of the early 1900s remains strangely riveting and a book that's been almost impossible for me to put down.

I just finished The Schreber Case by Sigmund Freud and bought Bruce Catton's Trilogy The Army of the Potomac. The Freud book was short to help catch up on my reading after War and peace the Catton trilogy is old but should be a good read. I have also picked up Don Quixote on the recommendation of a friend. The bookseller told me that it was the basis for most comic writing since it was written including A confederacy of Dunces which is on my TBR list.

Just starting The Big Time by Fritz Leiber ... neekeebee (#49): if you get a chance, let us know how Bang the drum slowly is ... I can still remember tearing up when I saw the movie!

I'm coming to the end of War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. I'm really enjoying it. I live and work in London and keep imagining what it would be like to suddenly see a Martian emerge from behind Tate Modern!

I'm reading One Flew Under the Cuckoo's Nest by Ami Amara. It's involving and moving with a good pace.

Reading Fool Moon by Jim Butcher, the second in the Dresden Files series. Much better (and darker I think) than the series, which I gave about half an episode. Good fluff reading about a wizard in the big city solving mysteries. Also finally got around to The world is flat by Thomas L. Friedman (it just stopping being on hold at the library by one patron or another). While definitely still a good look at globalization, it is already starting to feel dated, while only published in 2004.

Boy by Roald Dahl an episodic autobiography of his first 21 years. For me it is too sketchy and all the school boy stuff too unpleasant, but I was curious.

I finished Daughter of Fortune yesterday. Enjoyable but not as good as House of the Spirits.

And now, for something completely different:
Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

(I haven't read a classic in a while)

#57 and #58 - I have Oryx and Crake in my mountainous "to be read" stack. I keep getting books from the library and I'm not making a dent in that stack. I have enjoyed the other Atwood books that I have read.

I finished The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay. Not perfect...there were a couple of loose ends that were a little too loose for my liking. But still, it was an enjoyable read.

And now I'm on to The Lying Tongue by Andrew Wilson. I've just started, but I'm hooked. It's set in Venice, which is a plus. Most of my reading these days is about Italy (tour book, history, novel, etc) in anticipation of our summer trip there!

I just finished reading Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson and while it was very long and a bit overwhelming at times, I really enjoyed it. (The book follows people in two different time periods, and generally jumps back and forth from chapter to chapter...a few times I had to remind myself if I was in the present or in the 1940s.) Even the mathematics and military speak that went over my head were okay because it gave a real sense of authenticity to the story.

Next will probably be Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey.

Just Finished Persian Fire by Tom Holland and have now picked up The Wars of the Roses : the soldiers' experience by Anthony Goodman.

Persian Fire was an excellent read

Hello, new member here. I've been doing research for a project I'm writing based a Shakespeare's Sonnets. So, I've been reading a lot of books about Shakespeare and his work. Currently I'm reading Steven Booth's Essay on the Sonnets. I just finished The Real Shakespeare by Eric Sams. Real Shakespeare is great for weeding out the facts from the fiction. That is if you agree with Eric Sams and his methods. I like most of what he has to say.

Having finished (& enjoyed) Mao's Last Dancer by Cunxin Li, I have moved onto to a couple of books which couldn't be more different:

- The Warden - Anthony Trollope (because a few LTers recommended it, as did Nancy Pearl :P) I'm reading the eBook from Project Gutenberg.

- The Grim Grotto - Lemony Snicket (for light entertainment).

I do love variety!

Now reading Revenge by Stephen Fry ... when you consider what a good actor he is (anyone see the recent film about making a film of Tristram Shandy?), it's not really fair that he's also a good writer ...

Just finished Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. Disappointing read.

#68, esotericspryte, have you read Neal Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle (starting with Quicksilver)? If you haven't, and you enjoyed Cryptonomicon, I'd highly recommend it. Very long, and sometimes a bit baggy, but worth the ride.

Trying to read Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope but work and life seem to be getting in the way this week. I'm really looking forward to some solitude and quality reading time on the weekend.

Still plugging along with Lawrence Norfolk's Lempriére's Dictionary. It's possible the bok is going somewhere! Whether it does or not, it's an interesting book. I can not for the life of me choosean author--Victorian or otherwise--of whom Norfolk remins me but someone--the book will expand into paages and pages of description of an event or a person, far beyond the needs of the story line. Not exactly a diversion, but not straightforward either.

I'm still working my way through Popeye Vol. 1: "I Yam What I Yam" by E.C. Segar (although I've kind of had that one put aside for a little while.

I've been listening to some old Star Wars related podcasts/online radio shows over the past few days and that's put me into a Star Wars mood, so a couple of days ago I started reading (Star Wars:) The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers. One of the early "modern" Star Wars novels (1993 to present), it picks up immediately following the events of "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi". (I'm actually re-reading this one as I read it back when it first came out in 1994, as well.) I plan to make my way from this point onward chronologically through the rest of the post-"Return of the Jedi" novels.

Finished Roald Dahl's Boy: tales of a childhood my current bedside book. Most nights I wake up and can't get back to sleep so I read. That way I get through most books that I am not studying when I read between 3 and 4 a.m. I wanted more, and so often he couldn't remember, and what he did remember seemed trivial - boyhood pranks and getting punished for them, the horrors of "public school" in England. Except for mentioning his source of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and discussing briefly at the end the rigors of writing fiction compared to the ordinary life of working for Shell Oil, not much redeemed it for me. In the paperback the photos are clouded and the facsimilie letters almost illegible.

I'm reading Playing With Fire by Gena Showalter. Paranormal romances are candy for my soul :-)

I'm reading In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce. A really nice look at where India is now and how it got there, with tons of great anecdotes. Very thoughtful and of the moment.

At the same time, I'm reading My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. Fascinating thriller/romance set in medieval Istanbul.

rogerdavid, I just read the new Everyman's edition of Dahl's Collected Stories this year and loved it, and also recommend Jeremy Treglown's exceptional Roald Dahl: A Biography from 1994.

During the last 20 to 30 pages of The Jungle, I thought Upton Sinclair managed to go just a bit overboard, giving his characters free rein to rather aggressively tout the advantages and benefits of socialism at some length, but despite this side-stepped burst of pure textbook propaganda at the end, it somehow didn't dilute the effect of this powerful novel that's never been out-of-print since it was first published in 1906.

(I thought it especially interesting that even though large segments of The Jungle had been serialized in the socialist magazine Appeal To Reason to a great deal of notoriety, Sinclair's book was rejected by every publisher of the time, due understandably to the book's rather blatant anti-capitalist message of course, and so Sinclair decided to publish it himself. With the backing of Jack London, Clarence Darrow, and others in the burgeoning socialist movement, he began advance selling his novel, and amassed $4,000 in just a few weeks. Doubleday took notice, agreed to publish it at once, and both editions appeared simultaneously in Feb. of 1906, becoming an instant bestseller. Sinclair went on to have a long career, published 90 books, and even won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1943 for his novel Dragon's Teeth, but nothing he wrote ever eclipsed the success or had the societal impact of The Jungle.

Right now I'm 75 or so pages into Matthew Sharpe's startling new novel Jamestown and so far I'm "dazed, glazed, and amazed", laughing on nearly every page, and haven't had this much fun with a book in a long time.

LouisBranning: Re The Jungle, have you also read Fast Food Nation? Doesn't seem like that much has changed in 100 years or so ...

Exactly, Kromes.

I am working through a novel called The Time it Takes to Fall by Margaret Lazarus Dean. It is about a family living in Florida at the time of the Challenger crash. It was highly recommended by one of the book review sources I routinely read (Library Journal maybe?). Only about 20 pages in..

Hi,
I just finished Thirteenth Tale and really liked it. I love to get lost when I am reading and I felt that way while reading this book. I am now reading true believer, so far (chap 2) so good.
Have a great day :-)
Marlene

I started Stormy Weather a novel by Paulette Jiles set in the oil field business in East Texas and Oklahoma during the depression and the dust bowl.

#74, cabegley, I haven't read anything else of his, actually, but in the back of Crypto there was a short preview of Quicksilver, and I do plan on reading it and the others.

Today I started An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books by Wendy Werris. This one and The yellow-lighted bookshop : a memoir, a history, which I read recently, would likely be finalists in the LT "Name a book everyone can agree upon" category ... IMHO that is.

Well, I've finished Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, a beautiful book about a gypsy orphan living on the streets of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland. Very, very sad, but beautiful and touching nonetheless. I've been a fan of Spinelli since Maniac McGee, and this is another great read by this author that can write across the ages.

Starting Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty, author of the award-winning The Year of Secret Assignments, which I enjoyed very much. This book is a spin-off from Secret Assignments on the less focused-on character, Bindy Mackenzie. 137 pages in, and a great read so far! Very humorous!

>20 LouisBranning: Louis Branning: I got into a Trollope binge after reading the superb biography by N. John Hall. Started with the Barsetshire novels, and I do recommend reading them in order, starting with The Warden. That book and the following, Barchester Towers, are the most closely linked, although The Last Chronicle of Barset does go back to many of the characters in the first two books. Barchester Towers is hilarious. Yes, the intricacies of the church structure and politics were sometimes mystifying, but you get the gist of them well enough to enjoy the books. And you can always do internet search on the church to help explain things. Dr. Thorne and Framley Parsonage are very good also, especially the former, I think. The Small House at Allington I liked the least, as the main characters Lily Dale and John Eames are quite tiresome, but it's still worth reading for the much more interesting supporting cast. And then the Last Chronicle ties everything up. Also enjoyed The Claverings, which has a rather cynical take on society similar to that in The Way We Live Now.

I've finished Intimacy and started on The Dice Man which I have mixed feelings about right now.

stringcat3, thanks so much for the heads-up on the Hall bio of Trollope and will certainly check it out once I get through the Barset series. I'm planning on reading them in order and will get started when I finally get hold of The Warden, which should be here any day now, and am really looking forward to them all.

KromesTomes: Fast Food Nation is the book that convinced me to never, ever eat at McDonald's again. Or any other fast food joint, for that matter.

But if you prefer fiction, try My year of meats, by Ruth L. Ozeki. It's all about cattle farms and hormones and... truly scary. I've been moving towards organic everything since I read that book.

--> 94

I felt the same way after reading Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock. Fast food suddenly became truly scary!!! I haven't touched a Big Mac since reading it.

The Millionaire Next Door by J. Thomas and D. Danko. I'm nearly done, it is interesting.

I have been unable to read anything* for at least a month (health problems / busy problems) so decided to read something sensational and horrid to break my duck. Therefore, I am on page 300 of Helter Skelter, which is both ghastly and compelling. This fallow period has coincided with a book-buying spree, so my TBR pile is now overwhelming. :(

*not including things for school, of course.

#93 LouisBranning - My library called and they have a copy of The Warden for me. I'm picking it up this afternoon. I borrowed it in audio book form, but I'd rather read the book.

I absolutely loved the Barset sextet. However, "The Warden" contains little (if any) of Trollope's humour and sarcasm; think of it as a prequel, setting the scene and introducing the players. We don't meet Dr Fillgrave and Sir Lambda Munu until book #4.
Mrs Proudie is in a league of her own!

I'm in the middle of the delicious Patricia Ferguson novel, Indefinite Nights - positively edible.
Next is Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead and then Pete Dexter's God's Pocket.
After that perm any one from Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd; Penelope Lively, Passing On; and Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist.

How do you get your titles and authors to appear in blue on the blogs? Anyone?
I'm new, only got five books entered as yet. From a total of around 5,000 so unlikely to finish this year. Better get back to it. This is a great site.

Eily: Look at the text about Touchstones to the right of the message box when you're posting ... basically, you put single brackets (not parentheses) around book titles and double brackets around author names ...

>97 Hera: Hera. I know exactly what you mean. A reading funk definitely doesn't affect the same part of the brain that the book buying comes from.

#93 LouisBranning ~ If you can't wait til you get hard copies of Trollope's works, they are available for free in text/html form from Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/t#a324

hello all, I have just finished (yesterday in fact) Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling and I am reading Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen which I am almost done with.

Today I completed the entrancing and emotionally devastating Half of a Yellow Sun--thank you to all of the LTers who brought this book to my attention. The characters were so well realized, and I was fascinated by the history and social impact of this civil war. I ended the book and just sat, stunned.

Tonight I will start The Portrait by Iain Pears, which my brother-in-law lent me while I was reading The Instance of the Fingerpost, and I want to return to him when I see him this weekend. (Touchstones not loading.)

I finished Mansfield Park earlier today; while it had its good points, (foremost of these being Austen's most excellent writing style), I'm glad it's over. It took me entirely too long to read because the story was so. Bloody. SLOW.

Now I'm ready to begin To Light A Candle by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. It's about twice as long as Mansfield Park was, but I've got a feeling it's going to take me far less time to get through.

Ancient Wisdom, Modern World, Ethics for the New Millennium by the Dalai Lama

The Penelopiad} by Margaret Atwood, which I'm enjoying. It's a quick read.

Let's try that again:
The Penelopiad

Finished Devil in the White City by Eric Larson (it's about the 1893 Chicago World's Fair). It took me awhile to figure out how to read it. I started like I do most books, strapping myself in, baring my teeth and diving in. But, it's just not that type of book. Eventually I relaxed, found other thing to focus on, let this book just be a distraction. Once I did that it was a wonderful read.

Next some Texas. I'm using The Mustangs as my introduction to J. Frank Dobie. The first few pages set a really nice tone, and not what I expected.

RE: Trollope Barsetshire series. There's a two-DVD set called Anthony Trollope's Barchester Chronicles from BBC Video (1982). It's based on The Warden and Barchester Towers. Excellent cast includes Donald Pleasence as Mr. Harding, Nigel Hawthorne as Archdeacon Grantly (my hero!), Alan Rickman in his breakthrough role as the delightfully smarmy Mr. Slope, Geraldine McEwan perfectly cast as Mrs. Proudie, and Susan Hampshire stealing scenes as Madame Neroni. ISBN is 0790715600, and it's also available from Netflix. Not an A-list adaptation, but certainly B+.

#103 - Avaland, I agree. Despite my current attention span being minimal, I can't seem to walk past a bookshop. I have a small competition running for my students where the prizes are book tokens. So I'll just HAVE to visit a bookshop today. I find that wearing sunglasses helps: the shiny loveliness of new books is less obvious and I might even get away from there without buying myself something.

Yeah, right. ;)

I have managed to dip into Loeb's The Greek Anthology (volume one) which is a wonderful collection of rather beautiful verses - all mercifully short, as befits my goldfish attention span.

cabegley #106, So glad you enjoyed Half of a Yellow Sun -- I recommended it so enthusiastically and so often that I was starting to worry people wouldn't read it/like it.

Not to worry, rebecca, Half of a Yellow Sun was a great one, and I've been recommending it a lot too.

right now im reading its a kind of a funny story
and the title pretty much sums it up if u like stories that have mixed moods, then i really recommend this book

>113 rebeccanyc: rebeccanyc, your enthusiatic posts got me to move it up in the TBR pile. It remains my top book for 2007 thus far, followed by Zoli by Colum McCann. I don't think the book can be recommended too much...

I'm reading Ngugi Wa Thiongo Petals of Blood
It's really hard going: I'd appreciate hearing some comments if it's worth keeping up the pace!

>113 rebeccanyc: rebeccanyc, I echo >116 avaland: avaland. Half of a Yellow Sun is now top of my TBR and -- oh happy day -- awaiting my pickup at the library.

I just have to race thru my current read, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, first.

I started Looking for Alaska while working out on my lunch break. It's great starting new books while I exercise because I know I'll be stuck there for at least 20-40 minutes with no interruptions!!

In this weekend's NYT Book Review Joshua Ferris's new novel Then We Came To The End gets a front-page rave review and this exceptionally entertaining book truly deserves every accolade. It's been one of my favorites of the year so far, and is most highly recommended to all.

I'm reading The Jungle it's one I've always wanted to read. Then I saw so much about it on here in the last I just had to pick it up. I finished Jane Eyre an loved it. I'm a huge Jane Austen fan but hadn't read all of the Brontes yet. I was cativated. I'm enjoying The Memory Keepers Daughter but haven't gotten too into it yet.

I just started The Blind Assissan by Margaret Atwwod yesterday, I'm about 60pgs into it and is very enjoyable.

>121 bookworm12: bookworm12. You might also like North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, another Victorian author. It's contains a love story which contains a little pride and prejudice of it's own.

I read For a Few Demons More by Kim Harrison and Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O'Neill

Both were reviewed by me and the reviews can be found at http://theliteraryword.blogspot.com/ for anyone who is interested :)

I'm taking a break from Anthony Trollope and am captivated by Blue Latitudes: Boldly going where Captain Cook has Gone Before by Tony Horwitz. I had read only his first book, Confederates in the Attic, which was equally engrossing (every wonder what makes those Civil War enactors tick? You should!). Blue Latitudes traces the route of Captain James Cook's Pacific voyages of exploration. Tony alternates current day experiences with fluid, empathetic summaries of Cook's activities and journals. Armchair travel at its most intelligent and engaging. (With apologies to Bill Bryson, who is funnier but not of so historical a bent).

I'll have to get a copy of the book that came between: Baghdad Without a Map.