What I'm Reading in October - 2012

[Joan]

As we recently passed through Amish country, on vacation, I wanted to learn more about them, other than the way they are marketed as "ideal country folk" or conversely despised as animal abusers and hypocrites. I found the following book gives a really balanced look at the culture, showing the specifics of their lifestyle.

Plain Secrets by Joe Mackall.

Mackall, a college professor at Ashland University in Ohio, resides near a large Amish community He befriended Samuel and his family who , over a 16 year period, agreed that he could write a book about the Swartzentruber Amish, the strictest of the Amish sects. Mackall demythologizes many of the prevalent conceptions about the Amish, especially how they have been marketed as tourist destinations, or conversely disdained as hypocrites who drive cars and use electricity—which some Amish sects permit, though they are condemned by the more fundamental as having gone over to the “English.” Mackall’s story includes the experience of Jonas, a boy who leaves the Amish for a secular life. Throughout the book, the author worries how Samuel will react to his descriptions of the Amish. On the surface, they are friends, Samuel often confides in Mackall, and Mackall’s family has aided the Amish family on many occasions, driving Samuel and his daughter to a funeral in Canada, interceding with insurance companies when an accident threatens Samuel with the loss of his farm, but Mackall never truly penetrates the Amish culture and is always regarded as an outsider. We never learn Samuel’s reaction to Mackall’s published book, though Mackall has warned him throughout that he will present the facts as he sees them, as fairly as possible. It would be interesting to know what Samuel, upon reading this book, really does think.

[Greer]

Larry wrote: "Just finished John Grisham's The Racketeer. Thrilling all the way through. It gets a bit rushed at the end, almost too sketchy, but still a thoroughly enjoyable book. And now on to Justin Cronin's ..."

I'm also looking forward to The Twelve. I need to read The Passage first however. Sadly I was about 3/4 of the way through it and enjoying it thoroughly when things went crazy at work. By the time I resurfaced, it had been so long I need to start from the beginning again to refresh the characters and events in my mind. Hate it when that happens on long books...

[Nicole]

Put down The Night Circus and picked up The Good Thief.

[Marjorie]

Larry wrote, "I put down Ken Follett's Winter of the World for a few days to read John Grisham's new The Racketeer. After a few pages of the new Grisham, I know why I like him so well. He just gets better and better."

I have both at the top of my TBR list. Glad to hear you liked The Racketeer. Have you read his The Litigators? Another very good one.

Marge

[Carol]

Starting The Forgotten Waltz , after that will get to Our Man in Havana

[[deleted user]]

Nicole wrote: "Put down The Night Circus and picked up The Good Thief."

The Night Circus was difficult for me to get into, but I stuck with it, and ended up liking it very much.

[Larry]

Marjorie wrote: "Glad to hear you liked The Racketeer. Have you read his The Litigators? Another very good one..." Marge, I thought the Racketeer was more exciting, but that the Litigators was a better book. In the end, I thought that they both were excellent.

[John]

I tried The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, but gave up after a while - the writing wasn't bad, but I just couldn't get into the Forest Gump-like aspect. Anyone else?

[Renee]

I haven't been on Good Reads in awhile because life has gotten in the way but now I'm back.

I just finished City of Glass by Cassandra Clare and I'm starting on The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman.

I have been really impressed with the Mortal Instruments series.

[Carol]

Hi Renee, welcome back. Those books sound interesting, especially the Stedman.

[Ruth]

After I finished Cloud Atlas for our discussion, I took a brief interlude to get caught up on magazines, and make a dent in the poetry journals piled up around here.

Now I'm back to a book again and it's The Queen Of The Tambourine by Jane Gardam. I'm loving it.

[John]

I read "Queen" before "Old Filth" -- it's great!

[Greer]

Plan to work my way through Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion books and just finished the first The Eternal Champion and also finished up another of Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch mysteries, Lost Light.

[[deleted user]]

Yesterday, I read Tell the Wolves I'm Home, and I highly recommend it. I usually do not enjoy a teenage narrator, because of the egocentric focus of adolescence, and there is some of that in June, the protagonist. But she is caring and complex, and this is not her story alone. The character development is strong, as is the writing. This one goes at the top of my list for 2012.

[Joan]

Just finished "Show Dog" which I found a bit disappointing--I thought it would be entertaining like the film "Best in Show." Here's my review.

Show Dog by Josh Dean/. The book follows the career of Jack, an Australian Shepherd in AKC conformation showing; giving a thorough (sometimes too much so) look at what some would see as a subculture devoted to breeding and exhibiting perfect canine specimens. As one who has trained and shown obedience competitors, I confess to a prejudice against conformation shows believing the emphasis on looks has in many cases created extremes that result in dogs who can’t breathe, procreate naturally and are prone to inheritable disorders. Jack, who according to all testimony, is smart and attractive, is praised for his spirit which sometimes leads to “bad” behavior such as jumping on his handler or the judge. Or defecating in the ring. It’s my opinion that such behaviors should be corrected. Nonetheless, Jack has unusual success for a young dog. His career with professional handlers is financed by owner Kimberly (who can ill afford the expense) and breeder Kerry. Dean makes the point that top winning dogs ordinarily have wealthy owners or sponsors—an annual campaign can cost well into six figures. Owners without such bankrolls, who become addicted to the sport, have gone bankrupt in the pursuit of titles for their dogs.

[Jennifer]

Finished four this week:

Viola in Reel Life -- everything I read by this author delights me. I finished Brava, Valentine last month and it had a holiday family dinner meltdown scene that was so funny and riveting I couldn't have stopped reading it long enought to take my hand off a hot burner. Picked this one up last week and it was simply delightful.

The Wedding Quilt: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel another good outing in this series, which, for the uninitiated, tends to alternate between historicals based on the ancestors of the current characters and books about the current characters. It's an interesting approach to a series and the books are thoroughly enjoyable.

The Paris Wife I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would, given that I think Hemingway was a misogynistic ass.

Her Highness, the Traitor. I always enjoy Higginbotham but I liked her earlier four better than this one. (But I'm fed to the teeth with the Tudors, and in fact wouldn't have read this if H hadn't written it.)

[Kat]

I'm reading too many books at once. Happens once in awhile, and pretty soon I get paralyzed. Have decided to focus on Lively's HOW IT ALL BEGAN, which I'm enjoying much more than the last Lively novel I read (FAMILY ALBUM), until I finish it, then go back to one or more of the others.

[Jennifer]

Kat wrote: "I'm reading too many books at once. Happens once in awhile, and pretty soon I get paralyzed. Have decided to focus on Lively's HOW IT ALL BEGAN, which I'm enjoying much more than the last Lively no..."

I agree that happens, and I usually find I resolve it by zeroing in like you are, and often that proves very telling in deciding which books have really caught my attention. And once in awhile it identifies something that I clearly think is a total dog, because months will go by and I'll realize I never went back to it! Then into the donate pile it goes. Life is too busy to waste time on bad books.

[Peggy]

Joan wrote: "Just finished "Show Dog" which I found a bit disappointing--I thought it would be entertaining like the film "Best in Show." Here's my review.

Show Dog by Josh Dean/. The book follows the career o..."

Joan, thanks for the review. I've had this book on my TBR for a while - the library doesn't have it and I wasn't quite interested enough to order it from Amazon. Sounds like my hesitation may have paid off.

I just finished Visit Sunny Chernobyl, by Andrew Blackwell. It's a collection of essays by a writer who visits what are reputed to be the world's most polluted places. I started out really enjoying it, and he seems to present both the positive and negatives sides to each location, but by the end of the book, I was kind of tired of hanging out with him. It reminded me of Douglas Adams' book, Last Chance to See, in which he traveled around the world looking for the most endangered species'. Except that I didn't get tired of Adams.

[Lyn]

I will be glad to encounter a good book again that makes me glad I read it. I just read I Hate Everyone... Starting with Me, and though I often enjoy books by comediennes, this one just made me feel blecchy. I can enjoy Joan Rivers schtick for 5 minutes live, but the funniness of being horribly negative about everything and not caring about anything but superficial pleasures, all presented in one-liners, grows very thin very fast. Sometimes I really hate how persistent I am in continuing to read even when I'm not liking it at all.

[[deleted user]]

Lyn wrote: "I will be glad to encounter a good book again that makes me glad I read it.

It is so frustrating to go through a streak of bad reads. I recommend
Tell the Wolves I'm Home and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

[Diana S]

I finished:
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
I'm curious how the movie will match up to the book.

Currently I'm Reading:
Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez
It seems to have it all: vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc...

The Last Empress by Anchee Min
It's been on my TBR list for a long time.

[Mary Ellen]

[Apologies in advance for this long-ish post. I wanted to share an unusual book with the group, but don't think it worth its own thread.]

I just finished a book that isn't listed on GR: The Pagoda and the Cross, about an American missionary bishop (Francis Xavier Ford) who died in a Chinese prison in 1952. The book was written in Cold War 1968, by a priest co-worker of Ford's in China. As a Catholic, I was amazed by what Ford was willing to endure, and apparently endure gladly, in service of his mission. (I don't mean what he endured in prison, but the daily deprivations of his 34 years in China: the meager food, the unheated rooms, the difficult travel.) It made me uncomfortably aware of how attached I am to the many comforts of my life.

On another level, the book is very much a product of its time and so the reader bangs up against one dated remark after another. So it is a good measure of changing attitudes and understandings, even within the Church. The book helped broaden my understanding of China also - the author begins with a resumé of European and American imperial ambitions and arrogant interventions in China, from a Chinese perspective. "Four centuries of humiliation" is how he phrases it at one point. (And this is the country to whom the US is hugely in debt! Interesting & scary.)

Finally, there was the sad irony that, wholly devoted to the poor of the area where he worked though Ford was, he was pretty clueless about the forces working in China on the broader scale: the reasons why the Communist revolution would be able to take hold, and its capacity to overcome some of the fundamentals of ancient Chinese culture, particularly respect toward elders and family loyalty. But then, if the book is at all accurate, many high-ranking US diplomats were similarly blind-sided.

For several reasons, this book captivated my attention, though it certainly would not be to many readers' tastes.

[Mary Anne]

All, it's time to move our discussions on what we're reading over to the November 2012 thread.

Keep calm and carry on.