Connie's comments (member since Mar 31, 2009)

Connie's comments from the Book Nook Cafe group.

November Reads

Into Thin Air - Jon Krakauer. First person account of the ill-fated attempt to climb Mt. Everest, during which several of the climbers were killed. Some of the background - the geology of the mountain and the history of Everest - weren't that interesting to me, but the human story is fascinating and heartbreaking. And now I have some small insight into why people climb mountains. I prefer hobbies that aren't likely to result in my death. B

Passing - Nella Larsen. I never would have guessed that a 114-page book written 80 years ago would end up being one of my favorite reads of the year. The story of two light-skinned black women who grew up together as children, and who, after years of not being in contact, reconnect as adults. One of the women "passes" for white and is married to a white man who doesn't know her secret. The other woman is happily married to a successful black physician, living the life of a well-to-do Harlem matron in 1929. When their lives intersect, there are unforeseen consequences for both of them. My book group chose this book and we had one of the best discussions we've ever had. Highly recommended. A

Name All the Animals - Alison Smith. Smith's memoir of the three years following the accidental death of her brother when he was 18 and she was 15. During that time, her close-knit family struggled to stay close and she herself struggled, not just with the absence of the brother she adored, but with her burgeoning feelings about her life, her religious faith, and her sexuality. I enjoyed this book more than I expected I would, although it tended to be a downer. But it was very readable and well written. A-

Bobby and Jackie - C. David Heyman The literary equivalent of the National Enquirer. Lots of juicy stories, rumors, speculations about whether or not RFK and Jackie were having an affair in the years before he died. About halfway through I decided I couldn't care less. In fact, I couldn't even remember why I checked the book out of the library. But then, I'm never sure why I read the Enquirer in the checkout line either. D (for dumb)

Although I'm not a fan of poetry, I remember reading this a long time ago and I always liked it.....


November

by Thomas Hood

No sun--no moon!
No morn--no noon!
No dawn--no dusk--no proper time of day--
No sky--no earthly view--
No distance looking blue--

No road--no street--
No "t'other side the way"--
No end to any Row--
No indications where the Crescents go--

No top to any steeple--
No recognitions of familiar people--
No courtesies for showing 'em--
No knowing 'em!

No mail--no post--
No news from any foreign coast--
No park--no ring--no afternoon gentility--
No company--no nobility--

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member--
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

September-October Reads.

You know I'm in a book slump when it takes me two months to read five books.

Heroic Measures - Jill Ciment. A short and sweet novel about an aging couple in New York who, within the period of one weekend, have to deal with selling their apartment, taking care of their sick dachshund and avoiding a terrorist who might be at large in their neighborhood. B+

Guinea Pig Diaries - AJ Jacobs. I still love Jacobs, but I had to struggle to finish this book. Instead of taking on one challenge, he attempts several here. He pretends to be his nanny and sets her up on an online dating site, he outsources all of his daily activities, he passes himself off as a celebrity at a red carpet event etc. I didn't laugh out loud at this book the way I have at his others, but that might have been my problem and not Jacobs'. B-

In the Sanctuary of Outcasts - Neil White. When White was sentenced to a year in federal prison for bank fraud, he was surprised to learn that the facility he was sent to was also a hospital for patients with leprosy. At first he was afraid, but he learned to like and respect several of the patients, as well as several of his fellow prisoners. Interesting nonfiction. A-

The Middle Place - Kelly Corrigan. In this memoir, Corrigan tells about her life growing up with a father she adores, and also dealing, in her adult life, with a breast cancer diagnosis. Although she makes it clear that she feels like her father hung the moon, I didn't like him very much at all, which affected my opinion of the book. For the most part I enjoyed her humor and her storytelling ability and I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this book. I just wouldn't encourage them either. B

Await Your Reply - Dan Chaon. A well-written, well-constructed literary thriller. Three people, in three parts of the country, leave their lives behind and assume new identities, and it's not until the very last page (DON'T PEEK!) that you learn how the three stories are tied together. A very good read. A

There were a few other books that I started but could not finish, including South of Broad by Pat Conroy and Perfection by Julie Metz. Although I'm a huge Conroy fan, I thought SoB `was awful. The guy can write glorious prose, but his characters were obnoxious and unrealistic and the dialogue he put in their mouths was ridiculous. When I decided to quit reading, I skimmed to the back of the book to see how the story ended, and the over-the-top, soap-operaish ending made me glad I didn't finish reading it. Perfection is the memoir of a woman who, when her husband dies unexpectedly, finds out he'd been unfaithful to her. A few weeks after he dies, she has the feeling that his spirit is trying to contact her but without a body, they can't make a connection. So she asks a young, handsome South American friend of the family if he will have sex with her because she thinks that in that way, her deceased spouse can connect with her. He does. Guess when I quit reading Perfection.

Alias Reader wrote: "JoAnn, I am almost done with Unlikely Disciple. I hope to finish it today. I just wanted to thank you for mentioning this book. I am enjoying it a lot. I learned a few things and laughed a lot..."

I read "Unlikely Disciple" earlier this year and enjoyed it a lot. Then this past week, one of my Facebook friends - a kid who grew up with my boys and then went on to graduate from Liberty University - posted that he'd just finished reading it. When I told him how much I'd enjoyed it, he added that he got a kick out of knowing that someone as far removed from Liberty as I am, enjoyed the book, and that he felt it was very fair to the school.

Belated August Reads.

Labor Day - Joyce Maynard. On the last summer weekend of 1987, a troubled woman and her adolescent son are held "hostage" by a man who escaped from a prison hospital. The relationship that develops between the three of them makes for some excellent storytelling. I really enjoyed this book. A


Zero at the Bone - John Heidenry. I've always been fascinated by the 1953 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease and this book tells that story, so I should have been fascinated by this book, but I wasn't. It's very thorough in the telling but I found the details to be somewhat tedious. Every street address, every intersection, every minute detail........thorough, but mind-numbing. The most interesting part of the book for me was the fact that the crime was committed in September, and the perpetrators, Hall and Heady were tried, convicted and executed by December. C


Audition - Barbara Walters. The first part of this book was fascinating. Walters talks frankly about her early life, her troubled family, and the difficulties she had starting a career in television at a time when women weren't accepted in that field. The book ran a little long for me, and the later parts which mostly tell about all the famous people she's met and interviewed, got kind of boring. By the end when she got to the story about The View, I think I was skimming just to get it over with. B


This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper. The reviews on this one were great, and it was a good book.......but. It's quite funny and I frequently find it tiring to read books wherein the author tries to be funny all the time. It's the story of the Foxman family who gather after the death of the family patriarch, to observe the traditional seven-day Jewish mourning period called shiva. Every last family member is dysfunctional in his or her own way and hilarity ensues as they're all forced to live under the same roof for a week. I did laugh out loud at parts, and other parts were painfully sad and touching, but I also got to the point where I couldn't wait for shiva to be over and for everyone to pack up and go back home. B

Donna in Southern Maryland wrote: "As someone who was born in the third week of September, I ask you: Do you know lots of people born then? Know why? It's 40 weeks after Christmas!! :o)

Both of my sons were born in mid-September - the 16th and the 18th- and you're exactly right about the timing, Donna!

Connie

And where is Jordan from? I think they said Mathews, NORTH Carolina. And she sounds like she is from NC. But I swore last night Julie said SC. Please no..

Jordan is from North Carolina but Julie did call it South Carolina once on Sunday night's show. I have a friend who used to live in Matthews, NC, so I'm moderately familiar with it, so when Julie said SC, I actually corrected her out loud. (A stupid thing to do, but it was an impulse.)

Connie

I floundered quite a bit in July and didn't read anything I really loved.

Sarah's Key - Tatiana de Rosnay. An American woman living in Paris learns that the apartment she's about to move in to had been owned by a Jewish family that was rounded up and sent to a concentration camp in 1942, and she sets out to learn about that family and what happened to them. This book was very readable, but there were a few unlikely plot twists that bothered me enough not to give it a very high rating. B

The Senator's Wife - Sue Miller. I really loathed this book. Both of the Miller books I've read have characters in them who are unable to control their sex drives, no matter how inappropriate they are, and who ruin their lives because of it. And yet the books aren't one bit sexy or erotic. I felt like I had to take a shower and wash all the ickiness off me when I was done. If anyone ever sees me reading another Sue Miller book, you have my permission to punch me in the nose, take away the book and toss it in the trash. I'm only giving it a D- because I finished it. Otherwise, it deserves an F.

Dean and Me (A Love Story) - Jerry Lewis. Lewis writes with genuine affection of his long-time friend and partner. It was fascinating to read the behind-the-scenes stories from their 10-year long career in clubs, on television and in the movies. I'm old enough to remember when they broke up and that all the buzz was that Jerry Lewis would do fine, but Dean Martin would flop. I'm glad, and so is Lewis, that that didn't happen. A-

Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut. If I hadn't nominated this for my newly formed book group I doubt if I would have finished it. I'm sure it's brilliant, but it just didn't speak to me the way it might have when it came out in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War. Billy Pilgrim travels through time and galaxies to learn something......I'm just not sure what. Was he mad? Was he the sanest one around and all the rest of us are mad? Beats me. To be honest, I was reading this at the same time I was doing the above mentioned "floundering" so maybe the trouble was with me and not the book. Hey, I was always happy to get a C when I was in school. Hope Vonnegut would be too.

I started but did not finish two other books in July. Trail of Crumbs by Kim Sunee just didn't engage me, in spite of the fact that it came very highly recommended. I also got about halfway through the new Jennifer Weiner book, Best Friends Forever. Let me explain that ordinarily I would NEVER read a book with that title, but I've enjoyed Weiner's work in the past, so I gave it a chance. It was so dumb I couldn't force myself to finish it.

On to August.......sure to be a better month!

Connie

JoAnn/QuAppelle wrote: "Connie, thanks for the reminder of that "rule"! That would mean I only have to give a book 37 pages, which is about right for me. Although I have been known to abandon a book after many fewer pages..."

JoAnn......Best Friends Forever isn't a YA book. It's about two women in their 30s who were friends growing up, then not friends, and then friends again as adults. At least I think that's what happened......I didn't read far enough along to be sure. But it's definitely not aimed at teens.

Connie

JoAnn/QuAppelle wrote: "Strangely enough in light of the conversation going on here.... I got an e-mail today from an Arts and Entertainment writer for a newspaper- she wants to interview me about how I give up on a book ..."

Be sure to mention the "Deduct Your Age from 100 and Read That Many Pages Before Giving Up on a Book" rule. I think the best part of that is that the older you get, the less crap you have to read.

I actually just gave up on the new Jennifer Weiner book yesterday, at almost exactly the halfway mark. And rather than wondering what I might be missing by not finishing it, I'm wondering what I might find next to read that will surely be better than "Best Friends Forever." (I should have known I would dislike a book with that title, but since I've enjoyed JW in the past, I was willing to try her again.)

Connie

Kim/kparksrec wrote: "No BB comments? What does everyone think so far? There are not really any houseguests that I like so far but many I don't like! There are always rumors that the game is fixed and I really thought t..."

I was really determined to watch BB this season, but it's so boring I can hardly stay awake for an entire episode, and I'm thinking that maybe I've just outgrown it. I don't like any of the contestants very much, but I did laugh at the Entertainment Weekly synopsis of the show that described Laura as having breasts that are bigger than her head. I think it's true!

Connie

Goldengrove - Francine Prose. Disappointing story of a teenage girl who, when her older sister dies, develops a relationship with the dead sister's boyfriend that you sense is going to end badly. This wasn't a long book, but it was too long for me. There was some nice writing here, but not enough to compensate for a story I just didn't care much about. C


The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, A History - Lewis Buzbee. I absolutely loved this little book! It's about books and bookstores and being a bookseller and reading and enjoying bookstores and the past and future of the book business. I'm not sure if a non-bookseller would like it as much as I did, but I think that anyone who loves to read, who remember ordering books from the Weekly Reader or Scholastic Books and waiting impatiently for them to arrive, would enjoy it. One tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Buzbee makes is that there should be compulsory National Retail Service for everyone in the country, thereby assuring that, having worked in retail, they would become better retail customers in the future. Hear, hear! A


The Help - Kathryn Stockett. In Jackson, MS in the early 1960s, a young college graduate, troubled by the way her Junior League friends treat their housekeepers, begins collecting stories from these black woman of what it's like to work in the homes of white families who entrust their children to them but won't let them use the family bathroom. The maids tell their stories at some risk to their own safety but their stories are compelling and Skeeter's plan is to publish them anonymously. I felt like there was a bit of stereotyping in the parts of the book about the Junior Leaguers, but the voices of "The Help" seemed genuine. A-


For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb, and the Murder that Shocked Jazz Age Chicago - Simon Baatz. The story of Leopold and Loeb and what was, in the 1920s, the "Crime of the Century." I thought the first 200 pages of this book were fascinating, learning about the two men and the crime itself. The second part of the book, concerning the trial, was way too detailed and I found it tedious. Baatz clearly did a lot of research, but I think he could have edited some of it out. As I was reading abut Leopold and Loeb I found myself thinking about the similarities between them and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.......also well-educated, intelligent, from good families and completely amoral murderers. I give the first 200 pages here an A and the second 200 pages a C. Averages out to a B.


The Well, and the Mine - Gin Phillips. This fairly short book was a slow read for me. Set in rural Alabama in 1931 it starts out with the mystery of who threw a dead baby in the Moore family's well, but after that it just becomes a kind of set piece on being poor in the South during the Great Depression. All the characters were upstanding, decent, hardworking and honest but I still didn't like them that much, and no comments, please, about the possibility that I just can't relate to such good people! <g> My F2F group members like this one a lot more than I did. B-


Butcher's Crossing - John Williams. Williams is the author of "Stoner" - one of my all-time favorite books and since he only wrote 3 novels, I thought I should try at least one of his others. This one is about a young man who leaves Harvard in the 1870s, to head west, full of idealism, to discover his authentic self. He joins up with a buffalo hunter and travels to Colorado with him and a motley crew of what I felt like were sort of cartoonish characters. Although I'll always love John Williams and William Stoner, I don't think that Westerns are my genre. There's really good writing in this book. Just not a subject I cared much about. B

Alias Reader wrote: "As usual, I enjoyed your monthly list, Connie.
And, as usual, you've expanded my TBR list !


[bookcover:The Unl..."

I think you'll like Unlikely Disciple, Alias. The author, Kevin Roose, first visited Liberty University when he was an assistant to AJ Jacobs, the guy who wrote "Year of Living Biblically" as well as "The Know-it-All. I remember how much you liked the latter, and there's that same vibe in Roose's book as there was in both of Jacobs'.

Connie

May Reads........a very good month

Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia - Mark Salzman. In this memoir, Salzman writes about his middle class childhood in the Connecticut suburbs and how he never felt he fit in with the traditional life he saw around him. He never takes himself too seriously, and laughs at his earnest attempts to train to be an astronaut by sitting still in a cardboard box for hours. Later when he becomes interested in martial arts, he decides he wants to grow up to be a wandering Zen master. As a huge fan of Mark Salzman, I'm glad he grew up and became an author. A-

Still Alice - Lisa Genova. I guess I'm never really going to love a book about Alzheimer's, but this one was pretty good. Alice is a brilliant 50 year old Harvard professor who develops the early onset form of the disease, and the novel is the story of her decline. I thought there were some very good insights into the progression of the disease, but I also thought Alice was portrayed slightly unrealistically, especially as it related to the things she continued to accomplish even as she got worse and worse. And I take issue with the concept that love survives even when memory is gone. I've been there and done that. I wish it did, but it doesn't. B

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University - Kevin Roose. Roose transferred from Brown University to spend a semester in Virginia at Liberty University, what he refers to as "bible boot camp." He intended all along to write about his experiences, but not with an eye to mocking the school, and he did not mock it. He wound up liking the students, respecting the teachers and advisors, even if he didn't always believe in what they were teaching or advising him. He benefited from the experience and I think I benefited from reading about it. I shook my head a lot in disbelief, but for the most part it was interesting, well-written and highly recommended. A

This month I was also fortunate enough to reread two wonderful books for my F2F book groups - Book Thief by Markus Zusak and Stoner by John Williams. I don't like rereading, and I intend not to do any more of it for a while, but in the case of these two books, which I loved the first time, I found that I loved them even more on second reading. I think that when I read a book once, I'm usually interested in what's going to happen next. The second time, when I know what's going to happen, I'm able to focus on the language and the metaphors and the foreshadowing and all the wonderful details. A+ and A+

April Reads - Two books set in Africa and two books dealing with famous American tragedies, made for very interesting reading last month.

Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese. Although I had resolved not to read any books longer than 500 pages this year, I'm glad I broke that resolution and picked up a copy of "Cutting for Stone" - I loved this book! The main characters are twin sons, born of an illicit relationship between a nun and a surgeon working at at Ethiopian hospital in the 1950s. But like with most good books, there's a page-turning story, interesting secondary characters, twists and turns, moral dilemmas, heartbreak and redemption. Can't recommend it highly enough and I can't wait until it comes out in paperback next year so my book group can read it too. A

November 22, 1963 - Adam Braver. They say you're not an official Baby Boomer unless you can say where you were on the day Kennedy was assassinated, and although I can and I am, this book just didn't resonate with me the way I hoped it would. It's part fact and part fiction and relates, mostly in brief passages, the experiences of those who were there, both the primary and peripheral characters. The reviews on this one were amazing, so I was hoping to be dazzled. I wasn't. B-

Columbine - Dave Cullen. Whose great idea was it for me to read about the Kennedy assassination and Columbine in two successive books? This book was hard to read at times, but even harder not to read. Cullen was a reporter in Denver back in 1999, and he stayed with the story for the next 10 years. The details of the tragedy are all here, although thankfully there are no photos. But the most interesting parts of the book were his revelations about how so many of the "facts" we think we know about what happened that day, aren't facts at all. No bullying, no Trench Coat Mafia, no "girl who said yes" but those rumors, once started, took on lives of their own. There's much more here than just the retelling of a school shooting. A

Little Bee - Chris Cleave. An ill-fated meeting between a British couple and two young African girls at a Nigerian beach resort is the basis of this novel. I loved Cleave's earlier book, "Incendiary" and expected to love this one, but I didn't. I didn't care for the characters who I felt like talked too much, and I especially disliked the obnoxious four-year old son of the British couple. The story was interesting and full of surprises, but for the most part, I wouldn't suggest anybody rush out and read it. B

I went to high school with a Paul Escott.....I wonder if it's the same guy. I think he was voted Most Lik...

I watched Book TV last night and yes, that was the same Paul Escott I went to high school with, although to be honest, it took me a while to be sure. He's a very nice looking man, but I had to adjust my brain to see if the boy with the crew cut I remember from school could have grown up and become the gray-haired guy on TV.

I got out my yearbook to see if I remembered him correctly and he was indeed voted Most Likely to Succeed, along with being class president, delivering a speech at graduation and winning something called the Harvard Book Award. What an underachiever!!

Connie

Paul Escott, What Shall We Do with the Negro? Lincoln, White Racism and Civil War America

I went to high school with a Paul Escott.....I wonder if it's the same guy. I think he was voted Most Likely to Succeed, but I'm not sure if being on C-SPAN Book TV is the equivalent of succeeding. I'll have to check it out.

Connie

Kim ( Kimsrdnbks ) wrote: "I too haven't been around for along time. Right now I'm reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Loving it!"

I just finished "Cutting for Stone" yesterday and am thinking about reading "The Help" next. Or maybe I'll read one of the dozens of books I already have right here in my house. Decisions, decisions!

Oh, and "Cutting for Stone" was wonderful!!

Connie

Alias Reader wrote: "What are you reading ? "

I'm currently reading "Cutting For Stone" by Verghese. I know I made a resolution not to read anything longer than 500 pages this year, but heck, I never kept any other New Year's resolutions, so why should I bother keeping that one. The book is excellent and it's one of those that, when I put it down (like now!) I can't wait to pick it up again.

March Reads

Constant Princess - Phillipa Gregory. Interesting historical fiction about Henry VIII's first wife, Katherine of Aragon. I learned quite a bit about her - that she was the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain and that she was married briefly to Henry's older brother Arthur, who died a few months after the wedding. I enjoy reading historical fiction once in a while because I find I really lose myself in those distant times and places and sometimes I'd put this book down and look around me and halfway wonder what happened to my tapestries and ladies-in-waiting. <g> When the story involved wars and battles, my interest flagged a little, but for the most part, this was a very good read. B+

Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky. I might have enjoyed this book if I'd read it decades ago when I was in high school, but at my age, I didn't care at all for this story of teenage angst. The narrator of this first-person epistolary novel is a high school freshman boy who is very introspective and sensitive and who cries more than any 15-16 year old boy I've ever known......and I've known a few. I had to force myself to finish this one and I strongly disagree with anyone who compares it to "Catcher in the Rye." C-

Important Artifacts and Personal Property From the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry - Leanne Shapton. This is the story of a relationship told in the unique format of an auction catalogue disposing of the random possessions of Lenore and Harold. I expected the book to be all style and no substance, but there's a touching, heartfelt story behind all the photographs and captions. Not much text here, but the pictures are worth many words and you have to follow closely to understand what happened. They're supposed to make a movie of this book, starring Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman, and I just wonder how they'll change the title. A-

Olive Kitteridge - Elizabeth Strout. I got halfway through this book when it came out last year, didn't like it, and quit reading it, but when my book group chose it this year, I figured I'd try again.......and I still didn't like it very much. It's the story of a retired, small-town math teacher in Maine and it's told in the format of several different short stories, some where Olive is the main character, and some where she only passes through. There were things I liked here, and I have to admit that after my group discussed it, I liked it slightly better than I had before. Olive is revealed through her own actions and choices, and also through how she's observed by others, but my observation of her is that I didn't like her, or her book, all that much. B

The Believers - Zoe Heller. As opposed to Olive Kitteridge, I didn't like many of the characters here, but I loved this book! The dysfunctional Litvinoff family struggles when radical lawyer father Joel suffers a stroke and goes into a coma. His wife Audrey - who I wanted to slap more than any other fictional character I can remember - makes life a misery for her two grown daughters and her adopted son, and pretty much everyone she comes in contact with. But there is wonderful character development here as Audrey, Rosa, Karla and Lenny struggle and grow and try to learn what they really do believe. The storytelling is fast paced and well plotted and even the secondary characters are interesting. This one will surely be one of my best books of this year. A