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Two books I'm really enjoying right now!

I liked Swamplandia! by Karen Russell last year, so I decided to pick up St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves to balance out the non-fiction I'm reading right now (The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World). Her short stories are so much better than Swamplandia!, which makes me super excited about her new short story collection coming out next year, Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Stories.

I'm almost done with - it's really cool! :-)

Finished which I liked and am now reading which I heard about on NPR books as well as the Guardian books podcast and so decided I needed to read it.

I'm just beginning The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli for my November book group. It takes place in 1975 Saigon. Helen Adams, an American photojournalist who has fallen in love with the country she doesn't want to leave, is in a race to get out before the North Vietnamese roll in. 3 pages in and I'm hooked. Remarkably, Soli, who spoke recently at our public library, had never been to Vietnam when she wrote the book but somehow through her extensive research got it just right.

Hi all - haven't been posting much or reading enough either, but I thought I would chime in before November is over! This month I have read , and I'm about 1/2 done with , and I'm just starting .

I enjoyed Tana French, although it seemed so long - probably about 60% through, I kept thinking, "why am I not further along?". I had not read it previously because I heard there were complaints from people that it had a cliffhanger and I wanted to wait until the next book came out. But I didn't really feel it had a cliffhanger. Unresolved questions, I guess. I plan on reading the other books in the series as well.

I am reading Room, by Emma Donoghue for my book club, and Stephen King's 11/22/63.. Will still be reading Stephen King in December.. It is over 800 pages on the Kindle and I am not quite halfway through.

Finished & I liked it a lot & I am now reading

I'm still reading Little Fuzzy (by H. Beam Piper.) It's a 129-page novella and even though the premise and dialogue are interesting, I'm struggling a little bit with it. Ewok-/Furby-like beings are discovered on an industrially colonized planet and the point of the story seems to be exploring what human sentience means. The science and technology are a bit dated and clearly an influence on George Lucas film, Return of the Jedi (Star Wars, Episode VI.) Piper's writing is very simple and straightforward so it's not exactly taxing my brain cells. But I'm finding myself easily distracted from the book, letting it languish with 50 pages to go while I go read other things! I need to just commit to finishing it off this week-end :-/


I read the romance novel, The Marriage Mistake (Marriage to a Billionaire series #3; by Jennifer Probst) this week-end. Great sex scenes; but improbable premise in that wealthy and attractive people in the 21st c do not seem to realize that all sorts of things have happened on the past 60+ years or so in that that you really needn’t be held hostage to 19th c morality. Really, is there a 21st c situation in which you *have* to get married anymore?


I found The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (by Barbara Robinson) laying around the house (to be more precise, I picked it up off of the floor while cleaning up for Thanksgiving) and for some reason, it called to me! It's a children's book about how the troublemaking Herdman children manage to take over their school's Christmas Pageant and amazingly, imbue the play with true meaning. I had never read it before; but apparently it's something of a Classic Christmas tale and it has even been made into a movie. I loved it! It's charming without being cloyingly cute :-)


I also read The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt (by Caroline Preston.) This is the story of a young and ordinary woman in the roaring and extraordinary 1920s! She has romantic adventures and meets interesting literary people; but the novelty of the book is that the text is presented as captions on scrapbook pages. It's surprisingly effective and engaging as a storytelling device, to be able to see the artifacts of Frankie's life and interpret some of the material from our own POV. You can read the book in a couple of hours; but you'll probably want to go back and linger over some of the pages :-)

Next Up:


The Infernals (by John Connolly)

Continue to struggle with Ulysses. The Master and Margarita on audio which is taking sometime because I need to be alone to enjoy it.
Last night I read, in one sitting, The Sense of an Endingwhich I really liked. I have now moved on to The Buddha in the Attic. I suspect I will finish it before the day is through.

I'm so verklempt!

This book is on the one hand, a great trip down memory lane, and on the other hand, an open-eyed visit to the sausage factory. As an longstanding fan of Marvel Comics, I can't separate myself from my fandom enough to be able to tell you what this book can say to a non-fan. But to me, it brings back a lot of memories of characters and creators I've grown up (and into middle age) with. These characters and stories have been the backdrop of my life since, as a young DC fan, I first picked up the odd Marvel issue that always had "CONTINUED NEXT ISH! 'NUFF SAID" at the bottom of the last panel.

I love the razzmatazz energy of Sixties Marvel, led by wildly imaginative artist/plotter Jack Kirby, extrovert/huckster/scripter/editor Stan Lee, introvert libertarian Steve Ditko and the rest. I also love the current era of wide-screen panels and smart, savvy dialogue. But perhaps my favorite era was the anything goes era of the early seventies, in which superheroes, swamp monsters, vampires, werewolves, demon-possessed motorcycle daredevils, blaxploitation private eyes, spacemen, kung-fu masters, and jungle lords all vied for attention and interacted with one another.

You'll feel bad for a lot of the comic creators whose stories are told in this book. There's Kirby, who should have been a bazillionnaire, having created most of the characters who've made hundreds of millions for Marvel. There's Stan, who, although he did just fine financially, left the only thing he was ever good at (scripting and editing) in the early seventies and became an irrelevant sideshow barker, schmoozing with C-list Hollywood talent all through the 70s and 80s, until other, more connected and skilled negotiators achieved the movie dreams Stan had always coveted. Probably the saddest thing about Stan is his failure to appreciate the value of what he did. He still, at age 89, regrets not becoming a novelist or screenwriter. There were writers Steve Englehart, Doug Moench, Don McGregor, and Steve Gerber, who brought new sophistication to the comics of the seventies, but who (to a man) all got raw deals.

You'll sneer at the venal, clueless corporate raiders who asserted their whims on the company in the eighties and nineties, and nearly destroyed it, although they lined their pockets nicely on their way out, as such people do. May history forget all of their names. I won't name them here.

You'll nod your head in recognition at an example of the Peter Principle when Jim Shooter takes charge as editor-in-chief. He had always been a decent comics writer, but as an editor, he was a petty martinet who imposed storytelling rules that stifled creativity for years.

If you lived through the turn of the millennium as a Marvel fan like I did, you'll reluctantly give due credit to company president Bill Jemas, who though considered unlikable by most fans at the time, was probably responsible for the junking of the creatively stultifying Comics Code Authority, and goosed the company into being more adventurous with content.

One writer who gets short shrift in the book is Peter David, who maintained a high level of quality on the books he wrote throughout the mediocre eighties and nineties. A true unsung hero.

Today I started two books, both I have really been looking forward to reading. In print, , and on audio . I am having the hardest time choosing which one to focus on, they are both SO GOOD!

they are both great reads. I think the Glass Castle has one of the best opening scenes ever..
and Gone Girl..just gets better and better. There's a terrific
BOTNS Gone Girl thread..but don'e read it until you finish the book.

I just met my 2012 challenge by finishing The Roundhouse and it was really good. Also in November, I read Tell the Wolves I'm Home and Last Man in Tower.
I'm listening for fun to Nelson DeMille's The Panther and have just started reading Where'd You Go Bernadette..great read so far.

Nancy, I also just started Where'd You Go Bernadette ... and ended up reading well past midnight last night. I'm a little bit into Cinder, picked up due to comments on the site, and need to read The Report Card for a third grade class I'm helping with one afternoon a week. The latter will probably not made any "best" lists of 2012!

nancy wrote: "I just met my 2012 challenge by finishing The Roundhouse and it was really good. Also in November, I read Tell the Wolves I'm Home and Last Man in Tower.
I'm listening for fun to Nelson DeMille'..."

What did you think of Last Man in Tower? I'm about 3/4 of the way through and enjoying it so far.

Just finished reading Dog Gone It by Spencer Quinn. A fun mystery told from a dog's point of view, Chet helps his master, a private detective, solve a missing persons case. Chet is funny, consistently distracted, and fiercely loyal. And this book was a fun read at a time when I needed to relax during the holidays.

Just finished A Feast for Crows and about to go pick up A Dance With Dragons.

Blair wrote: "nancy wrote: "I just met my 2012 challenge by finishing The Roundhouse and it was really good. Also in November, I read Tell the Wolves I'm Home and Last Man in Tower.
I'm listening for fun to N..."
I really really liked Last Man in Tower...well worth sticking with it.
It reminds me of one of my all time favorite books, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry...wonderful characters in a plot that deals with
humanity (or lack thereof), family, friendship, politics, capitalism etc etc.

I just started I really enjoyed so I decided to read this book about the author's experience in Iraq before, during and after the war and the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Linda wrote: "Just finished reading Dog Gone It by Spencer Quinn. A fun mystery told from a dog's point of view, Chet helps his master, a private detective, solve a missing persons case. Chet is funny, consist..."

I read this book a while ago and found it quite enjoyable; glad you liked it, too.

I finished Assassins Creed: Renaissance by Oliver Bowden,Wild Cards #1 by George R. R. Martin, and Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey. I'm currently actively reading The Sandman Vol 1: Preludes and Nocturnals by Neil Gaiman.

i finished which i found to be an interesting lesson in the iranian culture.

i am 100+ pages into and i am quite intrigued.

Louise wrote: "I'm almost done with - it's really cool! :-)"

Snow Crash is wonderful!

Finished Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother & Other Botanical Atrocities over the week-end - a nice addition to my new gardening hobby. Also finished up Drop Dead Healthy: One Man's Humble Quest for Bodily Perfection which was very funny. Never realized AJ Jacobs was such a scream. I'll have to read his other books.

I am having a month of re-reading some old favourites. I am starting with The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham and On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

I just finished "Call the Midwife" by Jennifer Worth. Her memoir is as good, or better, than the BBC series by the same name. Now I can't wait to get my hands on volumes 2 and 3 of her memoir of life as a midwife in 1950s East London. The degree of poverty reminds me of "Angela's Ashes", yet -- perhaps because of the babies -- there is hope and triumph of the human spirit in this book.

Eric wrote: "

I'm so verklempt!

This book is on the one hand, a great trip down memory lane, and on the other hand, an open-eyed visit to the sausage factory..."

Thanks so much for that great assessment. I had just b een wondering what was in the book when I thought about it for someone I knew.

I just finished The Chicago Way. It was a pretty straight forward crime novel. Nothing flashy but I enjoyed it. I am now reading Where the Heart Is in my quest to at least accomplish one reading goal of reading 12 books that have been sitting on my bookshelf. The other goals I will just have to chalk up to wishful thinking.

I found Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency in the new books section of the library yesterday. Oh happy day! It's going to be a good week-end.

I just finished Gone Girl. Wow. How doyou follow that?

Shannon wrote: "I just finished Gone Girl. Wow. How doyou follow that?"

Well since you (kinda) asked, I looked back and I followed it with The Sandcastle Girls. I gave Gone Girl 4 stars, and Sandcastle Girls 3 stars. Thinking back, I didn't have a hard time switching gears to Sandcastle Girls, so I think it was a fine type of book to follow it up... it just wasn't my favorite Chris Bohjalian book (The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast).

Amy wrote: "Shannon wrote: "I just finished Gone Girl. Wow. How doyou follow that?"

Well since you (kinda) asked, I looked back and I followed it with The Sandcastle Girls. I gave Gone Girl 4 stars, and Sand..."

Thanks Amy! (I must admit typing the name Amy is strange right now since I just finished Gone Girl!)

I read at the suggestion of a genre writing professor. Amazing. It is The Big Sleep meets a riff on the 1950s Red Scare wrapped in a graphic novel with stunning art. I am not usually a graphic novel fan, but loved this. Now I am reading again, at the suggestion of a professor.

I love your professor.

He's a tenured professor in the Ass-Kicking field.

BTW, the Blacksad volumes are very good.

Finished Time's Arrow, which was so interesting to read, I'm glad it was recommended. Also finished The Twelve, which I liked but didn't love. Too much jumping around in the timeline, too many new characters.

Starting to reread The Thirteenth Tale for book club (I'll have to find something with fourteen in the title to read next haha), and I'm also reading Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas on my phone. I'll be moving on to Christmas reading next!

A charming little play with a Twilight Zone-esque premise. A strange, charming old man shows up at a wedding and asks to kiss the bride. When he does, the bride and the old man switch minds, unbeknownst to the groom, who must gradually figure out what has happened.

The play has a lot to say about living life fearlessly. Enjoying your youth while you've got it. And it's a nice little love story. It starts out with some nice, funny, early-love banter between the young couple and by the end of the play requires the audience to think about the way they're living their lives.

Add me to the list of those who have read Gone Girl and been very impressed with the twists and turns the story took. Oh my goodness. I haven't been so immersed in a book for a long time.

Eric wrote: "

A charming little play ..."

Are you auditioning for the play? Who will play Meg Ryan? :-)

I may audition. I'm a bit over the hill to play the young lead. Maybe the old man.

Reading The Dog Stars and am astonished at how it grabs one. Gonna try the Blacksad books next. Who knows, I may learn something.

Eric, how large a stage is required for this play? It sounds like ideal subject matter for my theater group, but we're limited in our choice of plays because our ground-level 3/4-thrust stage is only a few yards wide.

You have to be able to suggest different settings. It could be done with a minimal set, but characters change costumes and move to different areas to suggest the passing of time and space. The character Peter is onstage throughout.

Great--we can do that! Thanks for the suggestion.

Callie wrote: "(I'll have to find something with fourteen in the title to read next haha) ..."


Hmmm... you may have just given me an idea of a reading challenge for 2013 :) BTW, started The Thirteenth Tale yesterday. Only 9%, but already drawn in!